UN official: US must return control of sacred lands to Native Americans

[Berkut]

If conditions continue to deteriorate individuals will continue to leave those communities in ever increasing numbers (they're already doing so at a pretty good clip anyways).

Jesus Christ Beebs, you are basically saying that we are terrible human beings for saying that further assimilation should be encouraged via enticemetns and/or simply removing dis-incentives to do so, yet your solution is to cause further assmiliation through making living conditions so miserable they are forced to leave?

And lets be clear here - this misery is the kind of misery that causes Native Americans to kill themselves at a rate roughly double the national average. So we are talking about people dieing, and many, many more people living in what amounts to third world conditions inside one of the richest countries in the world.

And WE are the bad guys here? :boggle:

[Malthus]

If conditions continue to deteriorate individuals will continue to leave those communities in ever increasing numbers (they're already doing so at a pretty good clip anyways).

Jesus Christ Beebs, you are basically saying that we are terrible human beings for saying that further assimilation should be encouraged via enticemetns and/or simply removing dis-incentives to do so, yet your solution is to cause further assmiliation through making living conditions so miserable they are forced to leave?

And lets be clear here - this misery is the kind of misery that causes Native Americans to kill themselves at a rate roughly double the national average. So we are talking about people dieing, and many, many more people living in what amounts to third world conditions inside one of the richest countries in the world.

And WE are the bad guys here? :boggle:

They may be living in poverty or dying ... but at least no-one is guilty of "colonialist thought".

Gotta keep matters in perspective and focus on the truly important, Berk! 

[Oexmelin]

Your position makes nop sense at all. Of *course* culture is going to be "part of the system" in a systemic problem dealing with people! Are you of the opinion that culture exists serenely outside of people's lives, in some sort of Platonic place?

*sigh*. I'll try to spell it out again. Your description of Native culture is flawed. They do not ascribe to their old ways the kind of power you think they ascribe to them. They do not live in the past anymore than we do. "Native culture" is a misnomer. There are tons of very different nations. Inuits are different from Indians. Ergo, while it is very possible that unspecified elements in "Native culture" play a role in their sorry situation, the type of solution you propose, and which relies on the desireability of getting rid of Native culture such as you have defined it, is misguided. 

You have it 100% wrong if you think my position is that natives are somehow responsible for their own misery beacuse their culture is somehow not as good as European culture.

It is partly what it amounts to (you cast judgements as to what is desireable, out of criteria for which you fail to appreciate the asumptions), and partly - as I say again -  an argument which is the exact same as those of the past: it is not that their culture is inferior (many late 19th c. - 20th c. people thought it admirable), it is just that it is no longer possible in the modern world... (hence, let us help their transition into modernity...).

living an existence in the middle of nowhere with nothing to do cannot be made "meaningful", no matter what you do and no matter what culture you have.

Perhaps, though it also has a lot to do with a) portraying the place where they live as "the middle of nowhere", thereby contributing to the problem, b) "having nothing to do", can, and could, be solved in a great many ways, especially these days with wireless communications, or even - for the sake of argument, need I spell out - not be solved at all. After all, we are quite content with leaving other communities die a slow economic death in the name of changing times. In this case, we rarely evoke "culture". 

Thank you for putting me neatly into a label. That'll learn me! 

We all use labels. They are useful tools of analysis; they can stiffle thought, but they can also provoke it by searching for analogies and reconfiguring arguments. I am not saying you are a blood-thirsty imperialist who rails against dirty savages. I am pointing out that your argument, at its very core, is identical to what was put forth a hundred and fifty years ago, and that it should perhaps give you food for thought. 

I take it that my challenge to produce facts and arguments has produced the result I expected - nothing.

I have provided many arguments. You simply have chosen to disregard them. Then again, if you already expect nothing there isn't quite much to discuss, is there? The main mode of argument on Languish is analogy and easily digestible facts. In this case, the issue is so simplified, and uses such grand terms of analysis ("Natives"; "culture", "sovereignty") that the next step would require detailed examples and analysis of scholarship. Maybe when I have time, I will answer your challenge. 

[mongers]

I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest, probably the only working answers to some of the very real problems they face, are going to have to come from within the nations themselves; any 'ultimate solution' imposed on them from the outside is unlikely to succeed.

I take it your solution is to - wait for them to come up with their own solution?

It has the virtue of not requiring the rest of us to do anything. But what if they don't come up with anything, and conditions continue to deteriorate?

No, maybe they could do with some outside help, perhaps you should sign up to one of the first nation forums and posit this question there ? 

Perhaps you could bring some practical law-speaking skills to the table, I think it's worth a go on your part.

I might give it a shot. If you've read the thread you will know I already have some involvement.

But I doubt my pro bono skills, no doubt awesome as they are, will amount to a full solution. 

Then perhaps you should, it would be pretty impressive is a discussion/argument on languish actually led to some real world change or more active participation from a Languishite, rather than the usual armchair 'putting the world to rights' that most of us just engage in.   

[Berkut]

If conditions continue to deteriorate individuals will continue to leave those communities in ever increasing numbers (they're already doing so at a pretty good clip anyways).

Jesus Christ Beebs, you are basically saying that we are terrible human beings for saying that further assimilation should be encouraged via enticemetns and/or simply removing dis-incentives to do so, yet your solution is to cause further assmiliation through making living conditions so miserable they are forced to leave?

And lets be clear here - this misery is the kind of misery that causes Native Americans to kill themselves at a rate roughly double the national average. So we are talking about people dieing, and many, many more people living in what amounts to third world conditions inside one of the richest countries in the world.

And WE are the bad guys here? :boggle:

They may be living in poverty or dying ... but at least no-one is guilty of "colonialist thought".

I don't know whether to laugh or cry.

[garbon]

Hmm, so it seems like we should just ignore the problems that Native Americans are facing as they aren't our problems.

[Malthus]

*sigh*. I'll try to spell it out again. Your description of Native culture is flawed. They do not ascribe to their old ways the kind of power you think they ascribe to them. They do not live in the past anymore than we do. "Native culture" is a misnomer. There are tons of very different nations. Inuits are different from Indians. Ergo, while it is very possible that unspecified elements in "Native culture" play a role in their sorry situation, the type of solution you propose, and which relies on the desireability of getting rid of Native culture such as you have defined it, is misguided. 

I love what you have italicized for emphasis! 

Here's an easily fulfilled challenge (since you do not like my other): find anywhere where I have recommended "getting rid of Native culture".

This is an easy one, since all you have to do is read this thread.

You will I predict not be able to do so - because I never said it. I have no intention of, nor do I think it is in any way, shape or form a good idea to, "get rid of native culture". 

It is partly what it amounts to (you cast judgements as to what is desireable, out of criteria for which you fail to appreciate the asumptions), and partly - as I say again -  an argument which is the exact same as those of the past: it is not that their culture is inferior (many late 19th c. - 20th c. people thought it admirable), it is just that it is no longer possible in the modern world... (hence, let us help their transition into modernity...).

Oh what's the use. I tell you I did not say something, and don't mean something, and you just blithely ignore me.

You are not arguing with me, you are arguing with some construct of your own.

Perhaps, though it also has a lot to do with a) portraying the place where they live as "the middle of nowhere", thereby contributing to the problem, b) "having nothing to do", can, and could, be solved in a great many ways, especially these days with wireless communications, or even - for the sake of argument, need I spell out - not be solved at all. After all, we are quite content with leaving other communities die a slow economic death in the name of changing times. In this case, we rarely evoke "culture". 

That's your solution - let them die a slow economic death?

Need I point out that other communities don't, in general, receive positive *incentives* to exist in places where they have "died a slow economic death"?

There are exceptions of course. This reminds me of an anecdote.

When I was a dewy-eyed law student, I worked with a (semi) famous Law and Economics Professor named Professor Trebilcock - I was a research assistant (not that I know anything about economics, mind).

He told me that one of his projects way back when he started out was working as a government consultant. There was a community in Nova Scotia or somewhere like that which relied on a coal mine that was failing, economically. The government asked the prof to come up with a solution.

He worked out that, given reports by geologists and certain economic assumptions concerning the coal industry, the mine would lose money at a certain predictable rate. The amount necessary to subsidize it for the next 20 years would be $X - after which it would invariably play out, putting everyone on the dole (I simplify here).

The prof's proposed solution was to take $X, divide it by the number of people working on the mine *now*, and simply let them do what they wanted with it within reason - start other businesses, move elsewhere, etc. It turned out to be a very large sum of money for the time - something like half a million each.

The government totally rejected this solution as politically unfeasable. Instead, they kept subsidizing the mine, and as predicted it failed twenty years later, putting everyone on the dole - having cost $X. The difference of course is that, in return for the money, instead of choices, the inhabitants were forced to work at dangerous labour in a mine, producing subsidized coal. The beneficiaries were users of coal, not the people.

We all use labels. They are useful tools of analysis; they can stiffle thought, but they can also provoke it by searching for analogies and reconfiguring arguments. I am not saying you are a blood-thirsty imperialist who rails against dirty savages. I am pointing out that your argument, at its very core, is identical to what was put forth a hundred and fifty years ago, and that it should perhaps give you food for thought. 

I have provided many arguments. You simply have chosen to disregard them. Then again, if you already expect nothing there isn't quite much to discuss, is there? The main mode of argument on Languish is analogy and easily digestible facts. In this case, the issue is so simplified, and uses such grand terms of analysis ("Natives"; "culture", "sovereignty") that the next step would require detailed examples and analysis of scholarship. Maybe when I have time, I will answer your challenge. 

I've given you an easier one - to back up your (mis) characterization of my arguments made in this very thread.

Should not prove a great strain on your scholarship.

[Malthus]

Hmm, so it seems like we should just ignore the problems that Native Americans are facing as they aren't our problems.

Apparently, suggesting that anything should be done about the problems makes you a "colonialist".

Indeed, I suppose I should re-think Monger's suggestion I help natives out with some pro bono work. I might be guilty of making the insulting and patronizing assumption that they need my help, for free. 

[Malthus]

I don't know whether to laugh or cry.

"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." -  Edmund Burke

[garbon]

Hmm, so it seems like we should just ignore the problems that Native Americans are facing as they aren't our problems.

Apparently, suggesting that anything should be done about the problems makes you a "colonialist".

Indeed, I suppose I should re-think Monger's suggestion I help natives out with some pro bono work. I might be guilty of making the insulting and patronizing assumption that they need my help, for free. 

Yes, I was thinking that same thing. An outsider thinking he could volunteer to help out? Typical.

[Oexmelin]

Here's an easily fulfilled challenge (since you do not like my other): find anywhere where I have recommended "getting rid of Native culture". 

I do not have to dance to your tune. 

Isn't your ideal stated goal assimilation? (as in:)

So the "solution" we see adopted is - assimilation in every meaningful sense.

And wasn't your ideal of assimilation for Natives to get rid of the "meaningless", "broken" parts of their culture - or, as I wrote above "getting rid of Native culture as you have defined it".

Perhaps you meant something else.

That's your solution - let them die a slow economic death?

Perhaps, though it also has a lot to do with a) portraying the place where they live as "the middle of nowhere", thereby contributing to the problem, b) "having nothing to do", can, and could, be solved in a great many ways, especially these days with wireless communications, or even - for the sake of argument, need I spell out - not be solved at all. After all, we are quite content with leaving other communities die a slow economic death in the name of changing times. In this case, we rarely evoke "culture". 

Obviously, it turns out I really needed to spell it out...

My point was that situations similar to that of the Natives with regards to unemployment, and the woes associated with it, exist out there, and yet in these situations, a) the culture of the affected communities is not especially singled out as a cause, and b) in your "brilliant plan", once you get rid of Native status, and you are stuck with exactly the same type of communities, with exactly the same type of problems, you have essentially supplied the excuse of consent for the rest of society to turn its back to them.

As of now, I venture that we can much more powerfully fight against racism than we can against the all-powerful motive of consent, and that there are much more chances of arriving at a solution by treating this as a problem of Natives, to be solved with Natives and a form of political entity, than as a future municipal problem of the exact same communities.

snip the anecdote.

[Malthus]

I do not have to dance to your tune. 

Obviously not - but if you are going to impute bad motives to me, I think a reasonable person would expect you to have cause, no?

Isn't your ideal stated goal assimilation? (as in:)

So the "solution" we see adopted is - assimilation in every meaningful sense.

And wasn't your ideal of assimilation for Natives to get rid of the "meaningless", "broken" parts of their culture - or, as I wrote above "getting rid of Native culture as you have defined it".

Perhaps you meant something else.

Indeed I did mean something else. My "solution" was never to make natives to discard their culture. 

Now that you have been disabused of that, perhaps we can move forward.

Obviously, it turns out I really needed to spell it out...

My point was that situations similar to that of the Natives with regards to unemployment, and the woes associated with it, exist out there, and yet in these situations, a) the culture of the affected communities is not especially singled out as a cause, and b) in your "brilliant plan", once you get rid of Native status, and you are stuck with exactly the same type of communities, with exactly the same type of problems, you have essentially supplied the excuse of consent for the rest of society to turn its back to them.

I'm confused.

By "brilliant plan", do you mean the one I actually posted? The one where natives are given the choice - one choice being, to follow the "plan" basically what you want all natives to follow?

How is this a problem for you? Those natives who want to live life under the Indian Act and all the rest of it can. Those who don't, don't have to.

All that changes from now is the incentives - which are imposed "from outside" in any case.

As of now, I venture that we can much more powerfully fight against racism than we can against the all-powerful motive of consent, and that there are much more chances of arriving at a solution by treating this as a problem of Natives, to be solved with Natives and a form of political entity, than as a future municipal problem of the exact same communities.

I literally do not know what you mean by " As of now, I venture that we can much more powerfully fight against racism than we can against the all-powerful motive of consent ...".

[11B4V]

So, are we any closer to figuring out the "Indian Question"?

Can someone recap the ideas here. A poll would due.

[katmai]

All i know is Berkut and Malthus hate Indians as much as Neil.

[CountDeMoney]

All i know is Berkut and Malthus hate Indians as much as Neil.

Yeah, that pretty much sums it all up. 

And BB is an Uncle Tonto.