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

[Barrister]

Malthus, re: your plan to end any special Indian status in exchange for a one-time cash payment:

You know in university I thought something like that was the way to go.

But I don't think you'd get universal acceptance.  Native culture is (yes still!) funny when it comes to money.

Have you heard of a reserve called Hobbema?  It's a reserve (actually several reserves) in Alberta that sit on some very rich oil wealth.  Until fairly recently they dispersed that oil wealth by giving each citizen a very large cheque (approx $100k) when they turned 18.  Sounds great, right?  Maybe they'll turn into dickhead trustafarians, but they should be able to set themselves up in life.

Unfortunately what typically would happen is the 18 year old would buy themselves a brand new pickup, but then send the rest on parties and gifts for family and friends, and typically the money is gone in a couple of years.

The sense of community, of sharing, which to me seems like a bad idea when taken to that level, is central to native culture.

Which is a long way of saying - I don't think you'd get an overwhelming number of natives to accept your bargain.  And then what?  Maybe you reduce by half the number of status indians, but you still have all the same number of disfunctional communities, just with half the population (and a sudden influx of the other half to the cities).

I don't get your position. On the one hand, you are against paternalism for natives - "go in a sibling, not a parent" - yet in your very next post, you are telling us that natives can't be trusted with having their own money, for "cultural" reasons.

Somehow I was the one taking all the heat for having the temerity to mention culture, and people are calling my position "paternalistic", and my arguments "obtuse". Yet my position all along was to give natives the choice, and to trust them with making it.

As for the objection that not all will take the choice the same way - I say, that's not a flaw, that's a feature. Some natives may well value the sense of native community above becomming part of the larger community. As you point out, some native communities are actually good places. Those will remain as such, because people have the *choice* to stay there. Just as they will have the *choice* to leave the shitholes.

How is that not a good thing?

My point was not to say that "they can't be trusted".

It's that they, generally, put a different value on money.  So the notion of getting some huge cheque from the government may not exactly thrill them.

[Barrister]

Which is a long way of saying - I don't think you'd get an overwhelming number of natives to accept your bargain.  And then what?  Maybe you reduce by half the number of status indians, but you still have all the same number of disfunctional communities, just with half the population (and a sudden influx of the other half to the cities).

I don't understand this objection. If you can only save half of the population it would be better to save no one? I think saving half the population would be an enormous success.

Because you haven't done a damn thing to "save" them.  They are still the same people, with the same problems as before.  They just have more money now.

[Jacob]

Considering I never said I wanted them to discard their culture in the first place, and have instead repeatedly stated the opposite, exactly who is being "obtuse" here? 

You.

You started by saying Native culture was broken because it was divorced from substance (posts 167 and 170). Then you went on to say that the solution was assimilation in every meaningful sense (post 179).

I think that's a pretty obtuse way to indicate your opposition to the discarding of First Nations culture.

I also think your lengthy discussion on plans for how to make Natives give up their limited sovereignty and their First Nations status, and your identification of the problems around status vs non-status and how that's determined as one of the biggest causes of the problems facing Natives today, is a pretty obtuse way to indicate your opposition to the discarding of First Nations culture.

[Malthus]

My point was not to say that "they can't be trusted".

It's that they, generally, put a different value on money.  So the notion of getting some huge cheque from the government may not exactly thrill them.

That's the beauty of giving them the choice. If they value the sense of community over the money, they can choose so.

[Jacob]

It is nice to see you have a use, even if it is just as an extreme cariacature of an academic.

How rude.

[Malthus]

Considering I never said I wanted them to discard their culture in the first place, and have instead repeatedly stated the opposite, exactly who is being "obtuse" here? 

You.

You started by saying Native culture was broken because it was divorced from substance (posts 167 and 170). Then you went on to say that the solution was assimilation in every meaningful sense (post 179).

I think that's a pretty obtuse way to indicate your opposition to the discarding of First Nations culture.

I also think your lengthy discussion on plans for how to make Natives give up their limited sovereignty and their First Nations status, and your identification of the problems around status vs non-status and how that's determined as one of the biggest causes of the problems facing Natives today, is a pretty obtuse way to indicate your opposition to the discarding of First Nations culture.

This is similar to the old "so, have you stopped beating your wife yet"? Followed by "your discussion of violence in the family is a damn bad way of indicating you have stopped beating your wife".

No-where have I ever, not once, advocated natives "giving up their culture" or "discarding their culture". That's a pure invention on the part of you and Oex. The fact that you have repeated it so many times has confused you.

Look at the examples you are claiming. Just look at them in context.

Now, if we made Ukranians pretend to be peasant farmers, perhaps feeding themselves a little from peasant farming, as their "traditional lifestyle" (which of course cannot compete with modern farming techniques in any meaningful sense), while subsidizing them with government grants, I think you would find many of the same symptoms of uselessness and dispair breaking out among them, as you do in native communities here.

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

Are you claiming I'm advocating Ukranians "giving up their culture"? Is that a fair-minded reading of that? Bullshit. It is saying that Ukranians should be "assimilated" in the sense of not attempting to remain peasant farmers.

I have no need to "indicate [my] opposition to the discarding of First Nations culture" because I never advocated that in the first place. As I said, that's a pure invention by you, and you are clinging to it like a monkey to its mother no matter how many times I repeat that it is not what I meant.

Edit: you seem to be claiming "sovereignty" and "status" are cultural matters, so that arguing about changing these things is insulting native culture. No wonder any sort of change or reform is so difficult, if this view is widely shared.

[Jacob]

Well, that's how it came across to me.

[KRonn]

Is the right, august and proper UN also making the same claims towards Mexico, Honduras, Brazil, Peru and others? Wow, there were much larger populations in Central and South America; those nations would giving more land back than the US, I'd think.   

[garbon]

Is the right, august and proper UN also making the same claims towards Mexico, Honduras, Brazil, Peru and others? Wow, there were much larger populations in Central and South America; those nations would giving more land back than the US, I'd think.   

That reminded me to look up our good friend Evo. Apparently for May Day he nationalized Bolivia's electricity grid.

[KRonn]

Is the right, august and proper UN also making the same claims towards Mexico, Honduras, Brazil, Peru and others? Wow, there were much larger populations in Central and South America; those nations would giving more land back than the US, I'd think.   

That reminded me to look up our good friend Evo. Apparently for May Day he nationalized Bolivia's electricity grid.

Hmm, I wonder if any Natives of Bolivia have any sacred lands on parts of that energy grid.   

[jimmy olsen]

I bet you support Newt's plan to place a colony on the moon, don't you?!

I do!

[jimmy olsen]

Which is a long way of saying - I don't think you'd get an overwhelming number of natives to accept your bargain.  And then what?  Maybe you reduce by half the number of status indians, but you still have all the same number of disfunctional communities, just with half the population (and a sudden influx of the other half to the cities).

I don't understand this objection. If you can only save half of the population it would be better to save no one? I think saving half the population would be an enormous success.

Because you haven't done a damn thing to "save" them.  They are still the same people, with the same problems as before.  They just have more money now.

They're off the reservation, starting a new life in a town or city where they have better life prospects. How is that not a huge improvement?

[dps]

Which is a long way of saying - I don't think you'd get an overwhelming number of natives to accept your bargain.  And then what?  Maybe you reduce by half the number of status indians, but you still have all the same number of disfunctional communities, just with half the population (and a sudden influx of the other half to the cities).

I don't understand this objection. If you can only save half of the population it would be better to save no one? I think saving half the population would be an enormous success.

Because you haven't done a damn thing to "save" them.  They are still the same people, with the same problems as before.  They just have more money now.

They're off the reservation, starting a new life in a town or city where they have better life prospects. How is that not a huge improvement?

For those individuals, sure, though I'm not sure how great the prospects of an under-educated hick with money in his pocket moving to the big city are--might simply have a great prospect of being taken for all that money by a city slicker. 

And as BB points out, you still have the same number of dysfunctional communities, but with half the population.  And what he didn't point out is that it would be mostly the less ambitious, enterprising half.

[Barrister]

Which is a long way of saying - I don't think you'd get an overwhelming number of natives to accept your bargain.  And then what?  Maybe you reduce by half the number of status indians, but you still have all the same number of disfunctional communities, just with half the population (and a sudden influx of the other half to the cities).

I don't understand this objection. If you can only save half of the population it would be better to save no one? I think saving half the population would be an enormous success.

Because you haven't done a damn thing to "save" them.  They are still the same people, with the same problems as before.  They just have more money now.

They're off the reservation, starting a new life in a town or city where they have better life prospects. How is that not a huge improvement?

To pick the worst-case scenario (because there are in fact some people living on reserves who are doing just fine):

-because the person in question is still un-educated, learning-disabled, has never been employed, and is addicted to various substances.  They live in a city now, but you've actually just cut them off from a number of programd run through DIAND (Dep't of Indian and Northern Affairs) that were designed to help such people.

[Zoupa]

Colonialist!

Well, if anything, at last I will have provided you with a little toy to play with.

Have fun.

It is nice to see you have a use, even if it is just as an extreme cariacature of an academic.

Oex's work adds a little stone to the ever growing pyramid that is the human experience.

Your life does not and your work is pointless. One would think the polite thing to do would be for mouthbreathers like you to be quiet when your betters are talking.

And it's spelled caricature, by the way.