In the USA there seems to be constant tension between Native Americans and Caucasion. I have never really experienced it first hand, but it seems to be constant news in politics.
My question is, are there any places where Natives and Conquering (right word?) people have really good relationships?
I wouldn’t consider ‘conquering’ to be the correct word, unless you’re deliberately skewing in favor of native Americans. It’s the same as referring to Caucasians as ‘slave-holding’ when discussing black-white racial issues. I’ve never owned a slave and no one in my veritable family history has either.
Tell me a word you would use then? There was a series of wars with various tribes and they lost and lost their land. That is the exact definition of conquering.
Extermination? Genocide? Ethnic cleansing?
A rephrasing of the OP’s question might be: Are there Natives who are happy for being Conquered. (Let the Native people reply…)
Yeah, it seems like a pretty unreasonable expectation to me too. Hardly anyone enjoys a good decimation.
How long afterwards are we talking about? I think the Normans and the Saxons in the United Kingdom get along OK now. I’m not sure they can even tell each other apart.
I assumed the OP was speaking in terms of currently, not the distant past. If you still consider calling the current European-descended population ‘conquering’ appropriate then you might as well still call the current Native-Americans ignorant savages.
How about the current population of Mexico and the rest of Central & South America? They slaughtered the native peoples just as much as the English…
They might get on, but what do the Celts think about those two invading groups?
The same as what the picts felt when the celts invaded, and on it goes. It sucks to be on the losing side of history and I think its pretty clear that no, there is nowhere in the world where the invaded get on peacefully with the invaders with no grudge.
The scots will still (rightfully) hold a grudge against the english in 500 years time, even if Scotland gets independence.
The French generally had the best relationships with native populations. Better than the English and certainly better than the Spanish or Portuguese.
I think that there is no longer tension between the conquerors and the vanquished only when they have mixed/interbred to the point where they are no longer distinguishable.
Not even then. Palestinians and Israelis (who originate from the same area, eg southern Mediterranean jews) are pretty much the same people. Their language and religious culture differences are going to keep them fighting for another 1000 years, most likely.
In what sense are the “pretty much the same people”? Israeli Jews include millions of European Jews whose ancestors lived and interbred with Europeans for over 1,000 years.
The situation is complicated there because in many countries a majority of the population is descended from both the conquerors and the conquered. They are a mixture of European and native (with ancestry from African slaves in many cases as well). Some people of mixed heritage identify more with the native side, others with the Spanish. People with more European heritage often make up the upper classes, while people with darker skin are often poorer.
The surviving indigenous peoples, who still speak their native languages, are generally very poor and discriminated against and there often remains strong resentment because of dominance by descendants of the Spanish.
The best relationship I can think of is between New Zealanders of European heritage and the native Maori. While there may be some resentment among the Maori over the fact that they are a minority in their own land and often economically disadvantaged, the relationship is not as bad as in other former colonial countries.
What about South Africa? The “conquered” are now in the majority with the political power to show for it. Again, I would hardly classify this as “the best”… more like the “least worse”.
I was thinking the Hawaiians. They were not conquered as much as absorbed by the US. Although there exists pockets of resentment, by and large native Hawaiians consider themselves Americans now.
I don’t see Hawaiians as being any more complacent than Native Americans, most of whom also consider themselves to be Americans. There is a small, but vocal, subgroup of both groups who agitate for independence.
I’d say Black-White relationships in South Africa are much worse than White-Maori relationships in New Zealand.
Blacks may have political power, most of the economic power is still vested in Whites.
Though in their case, it was the Scots who were the (more recent) invaders.