The Declaration of Independence announced not just freedom from Britain, but freedom to advance further upon Native land and continue to kill and otherwise remove its longtime inhabitants.
The founding of the country, and its Declaration of Independence, cannot then be separated from the 96% decrease in the Native American population, from 5 million people in 1492 to 237,000 in 1900. Nor can its conceptions of liberty and rights be separated from the freedoms stolen from Native Americans, first in their right to their lives and their land, and later in their right to their culture and religion.
In 1887, the US government divided tribal land into privately owned plots and auctioned off the remaining land to non-Indigenous US citizens, which resulted in the seizure of more than 90 million acres of Native American land.
The US government forcibly abducted Native American children and sent them to boarding schools hundreds of miles away, where they were starved and beaten when they spoke their Native languages. From the 1940s through the late 1960s, the US government enacted Indian termination policies that were intended to force Native Americans to assimilate into US society.
And yet Native Americans were largely absent from US corporate media opinion pieces about America’s semiquincentennial.
And
yetthus Native Americans were largely absent from US corporate media opinion pieces about America’s semiquincentennial.👆
Virtually all societies, past and present, have some form of genocide/slavery/discrimination in their past (or present). Humans can be nightmarishly terrible to one another. To me, it seems like the best we can do with such a bloody legacy is to acknowledge it, accept it, make a sincere apology to any survivors (or their descendants), and learn not to let it happen again.
We can’t even get the “acknowledge” part right, so this is gonna take a while.
Edit: I try to be a reasonable, just, and empathetic person, but I do make mistakes. I’m open to discussion. If someone could explain the downvotes, I’d appreciate it.
What about reparations? Land back? Apologies don’t mean much when the victims are still subjugated and the perpetrators still benefit.
The perpetrators are long dead.
You want to punish the grandson for granddaddy’s sins?
grandson inherited grand daddys plunderings. He should give them back.
You say that, but my guy, some of the most abhorrent shit we did is less than the age of my grandpa.
Edit: fuck now that I think about it, it happened more recently than the birth of my parents.
I keep forgetting this is a Canadian instance.
Edit: Oh wait this is on lemmy.dbzer0. I dunno man, recent wrongdoings (within living memory with alive perps) are probably worth correcting and punishing.
And yet Indigenous populations still suffer needlessly, all it takes is a simple online search to see that this is the case across both the US and Canada. Additionally if by “long dead” you mean “barely a lifetime ago” then sure I suppose you’re right.
This isn’t ancient history. At best it’s maybe a century in the past. And this deterministic mindset of “it’s too late to do anything, so oh, well” is almost exactly what caused this genocide in the first place. It’s frankly pathetic if not downright deplorable.
Why do you avoid a straight answer?
Because you’re not engaging faithfully.
🤦🏻♂️
Some 5500 Native American and Indigenous women go missing every year. The perpetrators, the subjugation, and the brutality absolutely persist today.
You said “land back”.
Meaning you want to give them the entirety of both Americas back, giving the boot to everyone else currently living there, did I misinterpret?
As for the latest twist, how many non-native women go missing every year? Are natives going missing even disproportional per capita? How do you know who the perps are?
https://www.humanrightsresearch.org/post/the-disappearance-of-native-american-women-in-the-u-s
Despite Native Americans constituting a small percentage of the U.S. population, rates of murder, rape, and violent crime committed against Native Americans are all higher than the national averages. In 2022, the National Crime Information Center reported 5,487 cases of missing Native American women and girls in the United States, where the majority of missing persons cases involved girls aged 0-17 years old
Committed by whom?
Why does it matter? You’re not trying to slyly pin these murders on Native Americans and Indigenous people, are you? Just make your point and don’t be chickenshit.
