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Native Americans not Offended by "Redskins"

You don't think being merciful in victory is moral?

US treatment of the defeated Native Americans was extraordinarily merciful in historic terms. Defeated peoples who lost their territory have routinely disappeared. The US was under no obligation to offer treaties, but did. The US was under no obligation to offer reservations, but did. (And yes, many treaties were violated, but the fact of their existence was itself remarkable.) Did the Native Americans suffer? Yes. But the treatment they were given was unprecedented in its lenience.
 
US treatment of the defeated Native Americans was extraordinarily merciful in historic terms. Defeated peoples who lost their territory have routinely disappeared. The US was under no obligation to offer treaties, but did. The US was under no obligation to offer reservations, but did. (And yes, many treaties were violated, but the fact of their existence was itself remarkable.) Did the Native Americans suffer? Yes. But the treatment they were given was unprecedented in its lenience.

I'm not sure if you answered my question except to claim we were merciful in victory, a claim I dispute.
 
Had we not been merciful there would be no Native Americans today.

Actually, if we had been merciful, there would be many more Native Americans today.

And I answered your question.

From what I gather, then, you think signing treaties with the Native Americans, treaties we largely tore up shortly after signing, and confining Native Americans to reservations are moral choices.

I have to say they seem more immoral than moral. Of course, you are correct that the US government is under no obligation to act morally, back then or today, unless we insist it be so obligated.
 
Actually, if we had been merciful, there would be many more Native Americans today.



From what I gather, then, you think signing treaties with the Native Americans, treaties we largely tore up shortly after signing, and confining Native Americans to reservations are moral choices.

I have to say they seem more immoral than moral. Of course, you are correct that the US government is under no obligation to act morally, back then or today, unless we insist it be so obligated.

Prior to the US treaties with Native Americans no European state had ever extended any sort of treaty to vanquished natives. The reservations were likewise innovations. I do not claim that such actions would pass muster today, but in the context of their time they were strikingly humanitarian. And btw, the Native Americans were not saints either.
 
Native Americans and European Americans fought a war for North America that lasted over 300 years. The Natives lost. There's no moral upper hand either way.

Fought a war after European disease killed 91% of entire population. There was a literal doomsday happening, then we fought a war with the Natives and still almost lost. Schools don't necessarily tell you the truth, you know that right?
 
Fought a war after European disease killed 91% of entire population. There was a literal doomsday happening, then we fought a war with the Natives and still almost lost. Schools don't necessarily tell you the truth, you know that right?

I know the story, and I know enough to know that your 91% figure is firmly disputed. It really doesn't matter, however. I'm not arguing for military glory, only for an unromantic view of a very long war.
 
I know the story, and I know enough to know that your 91% figure is firmly disputed. It really doesn't matter, however. I'm not arguing for military glory, only for an unromantic view of a very long war.

Of course it's disputed, who wouldn't dispute the fact the accidentally ended a civilization because of their nastiness.
 
I know the story, and I know enough to know that your 91% figure is firmly disputed. It really doesn't matter, however. I'm not arguing for military glory, only for an unromantic view of a very long war.

One of the charities I actively support benefits the children of the Lakota. I recently received an invitation to attend the annual Pow Wow In South Dakota late this Summer as a guest. I'd like very much to attend if I have time, so we shall see... Pilamaya...
 
Well now. This may change the course of public discussion.

Poll finds 9 in 10 Native Americans not offended by Redskins’ name
The new Washington Post survey indicates few American Indians support forcing the NFL team to change its moniker.



Nine in 10 Native Americans say they are not offended by the Washington Redskins name, according to a new Washington Post poll that shows how few ordinary Indians have been persuaded by a national movement to change the football team’s moniker.
The survey of 504 people across every state and the District reveals that the minds of Native Americans have remained unchanged since a 2004 poll by the Annenberg Public Policy Center found the exact same result. Responses to The Post’s questions about the issue were broadly consistent regardless of age, income, education, political party or proximity to reservations.
[12 Native Americans talk about the furor over the Redskins name]
Among the Native Americans reached over a five-month period ending in April, more than 7 in 10 said they did not feel the word “Redskin” was disrespectful to Indians. An even higher number — 8 in 10 — said they would not be offended if a non-native called them that name. . . .

I don't know about that poll but last Christmas a poll of my Native inlaws showed that 3 out of 3 thought the named sucked and shouldn't be there in this day and age.
 
I recall this same type of thing years ago with the Atlanta Braves when the fans were wearing headdresses and doing the 'tomahawk chop'.
As to the Redskins, a campaign to force the team to change its name has been going on for quite awhile and I found it odd oh I think it was last year they had a tribe saying they were offended and I wondered well what tribe is this I mean there are a lot of tribes native to the east coast ... but no it was a tribe from California... no a peep from any tribes in the east.
In looking up info on the tribe at the time I found they seemed to be involved in this kind of thing all over the place and several tribe members were lawyers.. they seemed to be making a living out of suing all over the place of discriminatory names.

Yes and the Braves had to get rid of "Chief Nacahoma" the mascot banging the drum. I thought back then PC had gone mad but it's REALLY gone mad now.
 
Prior to the US treaties with Native Americans no European state had ever extended any sort of treaty to vanquished natives. The reservations were likewise innovations. I do not claim that such actions would pass muster today, but in the context of their time they were strikingly humanitarian. And btw, the Native Americans were not saints either.

I think they scalped a few euros back in the day no?
 
US treatment of the defeated Native Americans was extraordinarily merciful in historic terms. Defeated peoples who lost their territory have routinely disappeared. The US was under no obligation to offer treaties, but did. The US was under no obligation to offer reservations, but did. (And yes, many treaties were violated, but the fact of their existence was itself remarkable.) Did the Native Americans suffer? Yes. But the treatment they were given was unprecedented in its lenience.

Yeah? Show me an example of the US treating a defeated enemy worse than they did the Natives. The Japanese were war criminals with the Bataan Death March, but the Trail of Tears killed 10,000 Natives from exposure and starvation. Imagine 10,000 Americans killed in death marches after military defeat?

edit- Bataan Death March, 60 miles, maybe 650 Americans died
 
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Yeah? Show me an example of the US treating a defeated enemy worse than they did the Natives. The Japanese were war criminals with the Bataan Death March, but the Trail of Tears killed 10,000 Natives from exposure and starvation. Imagine 10,000 Americans killed in death marches after military defeat?

The appropriate comparison is Euro treatment of vanquished native peoples. In that context US treatment of Native Americans was groundbreakingly progressive.
 
Yeah? Show me an example of the US treating a defeated enemy worse than they did the Natives. The Japanese were war criminals with the Bataan Death March, but the Trail of Tears killed 10,000 Natives from exposure and starvation. Imagine 10,000 Americans killed in death marches after military defeat?

edit- Bataan Death March, 60 miles, maybe 650 Americans died



Here again we have years of propagandizing and phony portrayals of the "savages" to be slaughtered every Saturday morning on TV. It has only been in recent years that the majority think of the "Battle of The Little Big Horn" as an actual battle and not a "massacre".

It was late in my life when I became exposed to the true North American native culture, a culture that considers it shameful to show anger, where disputes are settled by placing the two combatants in a tent with nothing but tobacco and a pipe. Most were a culture where the concept of "owning" land was ridiculous, which Europeans exploited to the hilt. Wasn't Manhattan bought for some beads?

I have spent time in Canada's north and BC's coast. These are people of the most generous and easy-going culture as I have known.

Just don't anyone try to sell me native art. Talk about over-exposed.
 
The appropriate comparison is Euro treatment of vanquished native peoples. In that context US treatment of Native Americans was groundbreakingly progressive.

No it was not. It was very brutal, even for the day. Go ahead, look around the world and find worse examples of barbarity and say, "Look! We weren't that bad!" but the only legitimate comparison is Canada and the USA. That's the only way to find nearly similar circumstances.
The US treatment of their Native population is a national disgrace made worse by the fact that the disgrace is denied, unacknowledged, minimized and even justified.
 
Here again we have years of propagandizing and phony portrayals of the "savages" to be slaughtered every Saturday morning on TV. It has only been in recent years that the majority think of the "Battle of The Little Big Horn" as an actual battle and not a "massacre".

It was late in my life when I became exposed to the true North American native culture, a culture that considers it shameful to show anger, where disputes are settled by placing the two combatants in a tent with nothing but tobacco and a pipe. Most were a culture where the concept of "owning" land was ridiculous, which Europeans exploited to the hilt. Wasn't Manhattan bought for some beads?

I have spent time in Canada's north and BC's coast. These are people of the most generous and easy-going culture as I have known.

Just don't anyone try to sell me native art. Talk about over-exposed.

It's mind-boggling how history can be ignored, even denied, when it's inconvenient, when it gets in the way of the myth that's being presented, unrelentingly, to the people who need to believe in the goodness and rightness of their tribe.
 
No it was not. It was very brutal, even for the day. Go ahead, look around the world and find worse examples of barbarity and say, "Look! We weren't that bad!" but the only legitimate comparison is Canada and the USA. That's the only way to find nearly similar circumstances.
The US treatment of their Native population is a national disgrace made worse by the fact that the disgrace is denied, unacknowledged, minimized and even justified.

The historic Euro response would have been to enslave or exterminate the natives on the spot. The Trail of Tears, brutal as it was, represented an advance over that paradigm. Sort of a half way house on the way to the later reservation system.
 
It's mind-boggling how history can be ignored, even denied, when it's inconvenient, when it gets in the way of the myth that's being presented, unrelentingly, to the people who need to believe in the goodness and rightness of their tribe.



It must have been an ancient Greek, or maybe a Roman emperor who said: "He who controls history, controls the future."
 
The historic Euro response would have been to enslave or exterminate the natives on the spot. The Trail of Tears, brutal as it was, represented an advance over that paradigm. Sort of a half way house on the way to the later reservation system.

The Trail of Tears was the reservation system in action. Natives from east of the Mississippi were marched hundreds of miles to the Indian Territory (Oklahoma) under the Indian Removal Act. Your Euro response was hundreds of years earlier. It was Euros who governed the situation in Canada at that time and there was no slaughter, no war, no death marches.
It doesn't matter now. Your national myth has no room for anything so disgraceful so you find ways to minimize it and justify it, even deny it happened at all, but there's almost no Natives left in your country so, no matter.
 
The Trail of Tears was the reservation system in action. Natives from east of the Mississippi were marched hundreds of miles to the Indian Territory (Oklahoma) under the Indian Removal Act. Your Euro response was hundreds of years earlier. It was Euros who governed the situation in Canada at that time and there was no slaughter, no war, no death marches.
It doesn't matter now. Your national myth has no room for anything so disgraceful so you find ways to minimize it and justify it, even deny it happened at all, but there's almost no Natives left in your country so, no matter.

I don't minimize anything. The conquest of North America was a fearsomely violent three century war, bloody and cruel. That makes the establishment of the US just like the establishment of almost every other country on Earth. No country anywhere is today governed by its original inhabitants. Thus, there's nothing to justify. You might as well try to "justify" grass growing or rain falling. I don't minimize the violence, I just don't find it remarkable.
 
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Here again we have years of propagandizing and phony portrayals of the "savages" to be slaughtered every Saturday morning on TV. It has only been in recent years that the majority think of the "Battle of The Little Big Horn" as an actual battle and not a "massacre".

It was late in my life when I became exposed to the true North American native culture, a culture that considers it shameful to show anger, where disputes are settled by placing the two combatants in a tent with nothing but tobacco and a pipe. Most were a culture where the concept of "owning" land was ridiculous, which Europeans exploited to the hilt. Wasn't Manhattan bought for some beads?

I have spent time in Canada's north and BC's coast. These are people of the most generous and easy-going culture as I have known.

Just don't anyone try to sell me native art. Talk about over-exposed.

Greetings, F & L. :2wave:

I have bought "dream-catchers" made by Indian tribes, as well as some turquoise jewelry - which is beautiful - but that's it as far as souvenirs of native art goes when I have traveled to their area of our country. :thumbs:
 
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