Not that I really disagree with anything you have said but:
a) I didn’t say that all nor most Native Americans were hunter gatherers when the Europeans came. In fact, I made no attempt to break out the division between farmers and hunter gatherers at all, simply noting that both existed.
b) While there were significant farming civilizations among the Native Americans, in North, South, and Central America, there were also large swaths of lands that were principally occupied by nomadic peoples. E.g. this list of Plain’s tribes or, while I have only heard excerpts from them, I understand that Spanish tales of sailing around South America or down the Amazon featured wide varieties of small, hunter gatherer tribes. Overall, I suspect that a full study of farmer versus hunter gatherer society, covering the entirety of the Americas, including the islands, would either come out 50/50 or in favor of nomadic lifestyles. But even if that is not correct, see point a above.
c) I did not, anywhere in my post, describe how modern day Native Americans live, other than by mentioning that they get last choice infrastructure and build casinos in the reservations, neither of which seems like a reasonable start point to inferring that I somehow think that modern Native Americans are living a Neolithic lifestyle.
While I will grant that I did not specify that Native Americans are no longer living in the “traditional” way, given that that’s the subject of the thread seemed like it should have made that sufficiently clear to anyone reading the thread. So, yes, you are correct. But, no, that’s a bizarre reading of my words.
While not stated in the most diplomatic language, this. While the American culture has done a lot of bad things to Native Americans (like genocide, for example) it has also tried just about every good thing. Recently, in a wonderful bit of serendipity, Native Americans were given the right to operate casinos. Have you seen an improvement in their lot?
We may argue as to how we got in this situation, but here we are. Native American culture is close to dead and cannot be saved.
My understanding is that one of the problems with reservations is not that there’s much concern that the US government is going to take them away, but that the land is all owned by the “tribe”, and the Native Americans don’t really own their own land, so there’s no incentive to improve it or build anything of value on it. Basically, all the problems you outlined, except the entity that’s causing the problems is the tribal government, not the US government.
I did a project with a credit union that worked almost exclusively with a tribe. Every adult member of the tribe received a substantial pay-out every month thanks to the casino. It was basically the closest I’ve seen to something like a UBI, and their lives were still a mess. “Just throw more money at it” doesn’t seem like a complete solution.
It reminds me of species which have gotten so low in numbers that they’re below a critical threshold and are doomed. I don’t know how far we can take the analogy between genetics, culture and economy though.
I’m also curious about what it means to preserve native cultures. Rely on 15th century economic activity? That’s gonna suck. Speak the same language and have the same cultural references? It might be difficult to get people to produce and consume cultural goods for/from a small base. Culture and especially language are subject to network effects.
As to actually helping Native Americans live better (rather than helping them reclaim their culture), a very specific recommendation that I could suggest would be that the tribes team up and start issuing a “complementary currency” to the US Dollar for rural areas. They can pitch it as an alternative currency that allows monetarist intervention to stabilize the economy separately from the big business of the cities, helping to prevent the sort of issue that Greece ran into in the EU of being too different economically from the factory and high tech nations, but unable to set monetary policy in a way that made sense for their needs.
Being spread around nationally, but almost universally in rural areas, and having partial sovereignty, makes native lands an ideal place to provide banking services and starting the initial stores and outlets that work natively in Native currency.
An intrastate economic union of the various tribes would be great. Also, do the various reservations have full political autonomy? If not, they should; they should be actual separate nation-states.
How many of you commenting have spent significant time on a reservation? Because I have. I worked for over a year at a business located on a reservation in Washington state. And it was the sorriest, most depressing place I have ever seen. Adult men visibly drunk, standing on streets during work hours. All the real farm land owned and operated by 6th generation white men, who employ illegal immigrants to farm it. You want to know what “reparations” would be like? Look at what happens when some trailer park denizen wins the lottery. It would be useless at best and more harmful at worst.
The best way to help Native Americans is to abandon the fiction that they aren’t Americans. Stop throwing them scraps and tell them to jump in and participate as citizens. Reservations are an insulting lie. They have no real authority other than the condescending paternalism that US law enforcement chooses to give them at their convenience. Lose the whole reservation garbage and tell them to sink or swim like every other American. This will fix it.
Yeah, it’s a painful dose of medicine that might cause some short term suffering. But the reservation system is a cancer that needs to be cut out for long term benefit.
I have not, though I did grow up near a community of non-reservation holding Native Americans and their town was generally avoided by everyone due to general fear of drunkenness and violence. About a decade ago, a reservation was summoned into existence in the area, for a casino to be put on that had no relation to the local tribe and was not granted to them.
While I agree with the sentiment, I am simply too loath to believe that there aren’t legal loopholes that can be baked in to the reservation system. While it may be that the reservation system has largely hurt the communities, if there is to be anything that can end up directly supporting them, I would have to believe that this would be the nucleus.
Removing the reservations in whole still isn’t going to put them on desirable land, it’s not going to make them a large voting block, it’s not going to put them near commercial centers, etc. It doesn’t really advantage them in any way in a practical sense. They’re still in bumfuck nowhere with no jobs and a remote government that won’t give a shit. At least with the reservations, there might be a chance that they can take advantage of their bizarre legal status in a way that benefits them in a way that can lead to actual jobs.
No, they DONT own the land. And they have historically been unceremoniously removed to less valuable land at the whim of those in power. First we valued fertile fields for growing crops and shifted them to forests. When we wanted timber we shifted them to useless rock outcrops. When we needed ores or oil we just shifted them again. And if we need the resources beneath where we have them now we WILL simply shift them off to whatever we deem to be useless land without hesitation. Because we own the land, not them. Part of why we can force a pipeline on them at the point of a gun. As it’s always been, shamefully.
If you want to fix things consider fixing this first. They only get to have casinos because we let them. How wrong is that? Would you be invested in fixing or building up your land if it could be snatched from you anytime? And has been, repeatedly throughout history. Would you build homes and businesses on land you don’t own?
Truth has to come before reconciliation. And the truth is if this was any other minority being denied outright ownership of land that, by treaty, they should properly own, the UN would be involved I should think.
Canada has enough crown land to make good on every treaty with the First Nations peoples, ten times over. No, we can’t return Vancouver island to them, but we could make them whole with an equal number of acres of virgin forests, mountains and valleys. Are we doing so? No, instead were considering a deep water port just off Haida Gwai. An absolute outright crime, in my humble opinion!
If the majority of Native Americans don’t want to or can’t be bothered to “save” their culture, then why should a bunch of white people care in the least if it disappears? All cultures have to adapt to changing conditions or die. Cultural evolution is a harsh mistress.
Here in central CA, the challenge seems to be that the tribe keeps throwing people out of the tribe to give the remaining pool a larger paycheck. (Table mountain Rancheria)
Or in one case a real live shootout at the casino between opposing political factions within the tribe over who should be in charge… (chukchansi gold casino)
Do you think, though, that they can assimilate fully (be told to “sink or swim” as you put it) without losing their identities fully? I mean in terms of the language, culture, etc.
I’m not arguing for a reset to their state in 1500 or so, that would be impossible and would be unfair. But I also don’t believe the culture is dying because it “sucks” as someone else said. They’ve been beaten down time and time again.
And I feel like, from what you’re saying, it’s kind of lose-lose for them. Which makes me really sad.
The nature of the treatment of the Natives is one of the saddest things in history to me. It’s even sadder than the Holocaust. The Holocaust was systematic murder and horrific, but the Jews at least retained their culture, their historic languages, their customs; they were able to bounce back as a people; Israel didn’t become a giant reservation. The fact that the Native was so crushed, and so broken, by the repeated assaults on them is so heart-breaking.
Because the whole reason their culture is so decimated is kind of our/white people’s fault. That may sound paternalistic, but, how many times were they lied to, betrayed, had land stolen from them by force, were treated like utter shit? Why should we not care, when our predecessors had a big hand in shaping their current lot?
So what, and no. Sucks to be them, but that’s what conquering nations do. Do you think Julius Caesar said “I came, I saw, I felt really bad about it?” (Thank you, Jane!)
If you want to be really paternalistic, you give them opportunities to assimilate. After that, they are on their own.
I’ll re-ask the question I asked earlier, but in a different way. Earlier I asked *how *we might do this if we had magic-level powers.
Now I’ll take a different tack. What outcome would constitute “saving?” What would “save / preserve / improve / strengthen their identity” look like? What would “save / preserve / improve / strengthen their culture” look like? Which of those 4 action words is the one that best describes what we’re doing? Or is there some other word you (any you) prefer to pursue?
It’s a truism in management that you can’t manage to a goal until you can specify the goal. Until we can choose a destination we can’t navigate. Nor figure out what vehicle / process might move us from here to there.
So let’s start with the easy part: defining the goal. Then we can think about vehicles and paths that might work to take us from current reality to the goal state.
Is the end state something like Quebec, a distinct fully modern culture within a larger country that even speaks a different language? Or like Puerto Rico culturally distinct and sorta-within the USA and sorta-not? Or more like the concentration of Chinese in and around San Francisco: some immigrants and some 10th generation locals? Like the large and variegated Jewish community in and around NYC?
I am clueless on the details of any one tribe’s culture, much less all of them. My grade school-based caricature of their societies is of something much more communal than our 21st Century finance capitalism and disintegrating nuclear families. If so, that’s going to be a tough cultural feature to grow and nurture in the modern world.
Last night Hector_St_Clare introduced a comparison to the Amish. That might be apt. They define themselves by their separateness from the mainstream society; the “English” in their parlance. They pick and choose what aspects of modernity to embrace and what to eschew. Their creed is ascetic, which they believe gives more room for what matters: a relationship with the Earth, with others, and with their god. Does any of that fit any tribes’ molds? Would that be something to model? I know I don’t know.
Above all it seems to me that “helping NA culture”, “helping tribe X”, and “helping particular NA person X” may have three very different answers. If they do have different answers, then doing a good job on any one may be antithetical to doing a good job on the others.
It takes great fortitude to be Amish. Some Dopers live in Amish country and have written of learning about their Amish neighbors’ struggles with dedicating their lives to doing it the hard way. And with the pain of kids who leave and don’t come back. Maybe the kindest thing to do for some fraction of NA people is to encourage them to simply be American individuals as the rest of us are. I’m not advocating for forced assimilation. I’m questioning whether we have unnecessary barriers to voluntary assimilation that trap people in dead ends they’d rather escape.
I know that I don’t know. But I think the OP might want to noodle on what he thinks success would look like. Otherwise we’re likely to be doing “ready shoot aim.”
Well, from what one guy posted, the reservations are a mess in terms of morale and quality of life. I’ve read from others that the culture is being lost because people are leaving the ranch. It just seems to me like a hellish life. What would it look like? It would look to me like a life where the Native was proud to be a Native, wherein he or she enjoyed prosperity on par with their American counterparts; where the Reservations were united in some monetary way ala the Eurozone; where they had full autonomy. As far as their culture? Perhaps some federal funding to cultural programs to better educate/provide incentives for the youth to learn about their heritage and culture.
Improve their quality of life;
Improve their sense of pride;
Increase their autonomy;
Help to increase a unified “Native” sentiment as an identity;
Help to protect the historic languages from going extinct;
Help to preserve the tales and traditions which make up the various tribal cultures.
Ideally somewhere between Quebec and Puerto Rico. They deserve full autonomy, with some grandfathered legal protections and status that ends after a certain point.
I would ideally love if they could be separate nation states or be given the same status as Puerto Rico, but with greater administrative and legal autonomy.
I just want us to make up for what we did. My ancestors weren’t here when the Natives were put to genocide, but I’m sitting on stolen land nonetheless. I don’t feel guilty about it. But I feel there has to be more we can do to meet the objectives I outlined.
Why? More specifically, why them? All sorts of groups and people have been fucked over by TPTB. Why should Native Americans get special treatment that others don’t?
They can get pride on their own dime.
Fuck autonomy. That way lies rebellion, revolution and madness. Assimilate or die.
Again, why? See above.
Yet again, why? So nobody speaks some Athabasca dialect anymore. Big whoop.
Take it to Wiki. Record all the tales and traditions you want. None of my concern.