but, you really need to take it to the next level. because, it's not surprising and shouldn't be shocking. the judaic religions place human beings at the centre of the universe. the sun revolves around us, after all. and, so the eco-systems should revolve around us, too. shocking? far from it - it's what ought to be expected from the culmination of western culture. and, conversely, indigenous cultures tend to place themselves in a holistic balance with the systems around them. that's not to romanticize or exaggerate, but they don't take this judaic perspective of human beings being at the center of creation. they're consequently not warped by it.
John NoNameGibbon
Something curious about American culture regarding our weird settler-colony history is that we sort of gloss over the fact that we killed off all of our Natives. That's weird enough, but then we sort of exaggerate/distort the amount of Natives killed in neighboring countries like Mexico, to make ourselves seem better by comparison. We started calling people of native blood "latinos" to mask it recently, I noticed. The subject has always interested me. It shows our weird psychology.
xyZenTV
We call them 'Latinos' because they are no longer strictly native. Modern (Continental) Americans predominately have a mixture of Native American and European heritage. The real tragedy in all of this is not our ignorance of our history, but our ignorance of the ongoing difficulty facing modern Native Americans. It is a real tragedy that we are STILL turning a blind eye to the plight of the ancestors of the people from whom we stole our lands.
John NoNameGibbon
No country is strictly anything, but the vast majority are in fact Native. Which is the point. A more recent study on Mexico, for example, found that about sixty percent of the people tested were just Native. Thirty percent had some European in them, but it ranged from half to much less. Plus, even if they were half white, which really isn't the case for most people living south of us, they'd still be half Native. Most of the people we acknowledge as Native in our own reservations are much less than half. Yet we still consider them "Native". Why are they any different?
We apply a double standard to Mexicans and other Latin Americans, in my view, as an attempt to hide the obvious fact that they're by and large indigenous. It's kind of self-evident, yet we hide it. "Latino" still implies they're something other than Native.
And guess what? After hearing the terms Latino and Hispanic for the last half century, people have actually began denying the obvious. Most Mexicans and Latin Americans are offended when they hear that most people in the region are Native. It's a type of self-shaming that was encouraged by the terms.
They are no longer strictly Native in the same way Jamaicans and Haitians aren't strictly black. But most are. In my view that's an attempt to blow smoke and distort the obvious. And it works.
xyZenTV
That's interesting. Do you have sources for your claims that the majority in Mexican nationals are predominately native, and that most counted as natives on US reservations have only a small percentage of actual native heritage? I'd love to learn more about how much of the native population actually remains, and where they actually are.
John NoNameGibbon
A lot of this isn't and hasn't really been studied too well because as Chomsky would say, it's not the right question to ask in our society. You're suppose to assume that our Indians are Indians and theirs are somehow fake or illegitimate. And that's the way it's framed.
My reasoning comes from a study I read earlier this year by an American doctor (I think) living in Mexico who wanted to know their genetic makeup for medical reasons. I'll post it separately if I can find it again today, but I'm afraid Google might get rid of the comment because it has a link in it. And Google hates links. They assume it's spam.
As for our Natives actually being the real Mestizos (or much less than that), I arrived at the conclusion by studying our tribal blood quantum laws for Native Reservations. Often the standards are extremely laxed, bordering on absurd.
I'm not bashing US Natives and I understand that there is more to tribal affiliation than blood ties, but I can' help but see some purposeful distortion of facts there. It makes us feel better about exploiting their labor, I guess.
Yes, most of the Americas are still indigenous, though you won't hear that outside of a few anthropology circles that are in the know. It's sort of suppressed by both sides.
John willow
Don't forget that the U.S. basically stole about a third of Mexico. Of course, it offered Mexico a choice - sell us what is now the Southwest or we'll invade you and take it anyway.
John NoNameGibbon
Exactly. A lot of people say "Hey, John, we paid for that land fair and square, why do you frame it that way?"
And I have to remind them that we did it at gunpoint. Like all conquerors.
Code Python
C'mon John. We could have taken it all. Instead we paid 15 million for the southwest. Add in the 100 million to wage the war (not to mention about 14,000 lives lost) and we got the entire southwest for the bargain basement price of about $3.5 billion in today's dollars. But that was when imperialism paid. Today we spend 2-3 trillion dollars on one country in the middle east and have nothing to show for it except a lot of extra debt.
Curious? What do you mean curious? Kind of like we committed genocide on an entire race of millions like Hitler, but pretty much completed the job? Or curious like we did it all in the name of god like a jihadist would?
John NoNameGibbon
Curious like we casual dismiss it ever occurred and ironically act like our more Native neighbors to the south were somehow guiltier of Indian killing than us, despite us being white and them being Indian still.
Curious as in insane. Perhaps like a fox.
Jared Lupton
if we killed them all off, how are they still here. But I get your point- most of them were killed off.
John NoNameGibbon
We virtually killed them all off, which is a feat that would make Hitler blush. Latin Americans were saved because they were outside of our borders. Notice most of our more pure looking American reservations used to be Mexican?
Douglas Jack
What is at stake in how people of the whole world view ourselves. Whether we consider ourselves from within the very recent colonial 'exogenous' (Latin 'other-generated') submissive frame or from all humanity's true ancient roots as 'indigenous' (L 'self-generating') peoples in our traditions of free & equal sovereignty. Europeans forget our indigenous Celtic traditions pre-Semite, Greek & Roman violence and we in turn have beat it out of just about everyone & everywhere we have gone as ecological-economic refugees from our war-torn Europe. Rediscovering our ancestor's indigenous knowledge of abundant polyculture orchards & peaceful relations is what we need to restore the earth & peace among us. If humanity musters only colonial subservience, then life is lost. www.indigenecommunity.info
John NoNameGibbon
You're referring to first nations style cultures? Yes, they, ironically, seem to be the only ones interested in democracy and preserving nature. And, yes, I study Iberian history (Southwestern Europe) and though people tend to view them as Latin Europeans, they're actually originally Celts. And that is the bedrock of where Spain developed its anarchistic traditions. They almost beat Rome without a central government. And Rome stole a lot of technology and battle formations from them shamelessly. So that runs deep in Western European culture. But it was beaten out of most of the culture in Britain and Ireland.
Douglas Jack
Please share more about your studies of the Celtic Appenine & Iberian peninsula's before their original colonization & perversion into violent empires. Humanity's worldwide 'sylvalizations' were sustainable, abundant, peaceful & collectively-intelligent The problem of violent colonization has subverted human memory & will to unjust hierarchy. Never before in human history have people known so little about human heritage & how to pilot spaceship earth & its life support systems. Here's a section on Economic Democracy upon which all indigenous peoples founded political democracy as a subset. @8
John NoNameGibbon
I've been studying the region mostly for fun since I was in high school. I noticed that a lot of the history of Spain was buried by England and we inherited English history and their slant on it, so most Americans know very little of the region. We study Britain, but never Spain.
The thing that stood out to me about the anarchistic nature of Spain's early Celtic culture was the fabled kingdom of Tartessos. Archaeologists are baffled by it since they can't find much about it other than a few accounts of it's splendor and wealth, but not too much evidence other than a lot of scatter sources. Then it turned out that the reason for this was because they were not one kingdom, but more like a loose patchwork of advanced tribes. In other words, what Chomsky often mentions. This is the bedrock that Iberian Anarchism was formed from. It can be found in pre-English Ireland, as well. Before the Flight of the Earls to Spain, Ireland had less centralized government. And a lot of their textile technology was stolen by England.
After Rome occupied the Celts of Spain, they finally admitted that they were never really Barbarians. According to a Greek/Roman historian they lived too well to be labeled as such and were more advanced in the metal works than Rome proper. And for the last golden years of Rome's history most of it's best leaders were of Iberian (Celtic) heritage.
It's a good bit of Celtic history that often goes unacknowledged because it's tied to Spain. And Spain's been all but wiped out of English and American history for a myriad of reasons.
Douglas Jack
Wonderful research. I'd like to add the 'economic' (Greek 'oikos' = 'home' + 'namein' = 'gift or service') engine of indigenous Celtic & all humanity's worldwide 'indigenous' (Latin 'self-generating') peoples, which is based in systematic intentionally planned: 1) multihome (Longhouse/apartment, Pueblo/townhouse & Kanata/village) living with designed privacy in the proximity of a critical mass of 100 people for collective female-male intergenerational collaboration. 2) time-based human-resource accounting on the string-shell (accounting tool & value measure) based in the specialized Production-Society/Guilds with universal progressive ownership for all over the course of their lifetimes. These 2 are the foundation of what the 'Haudenosaunee' (Iroquois 'People of the extended rafters or welcome') in NE US & Canada call the 'Kaianerekowa' ('Great-good-way-of-kindness') or the Nguni of southern Africa call 'Human-kindness'. Kindness forms the basis of indigenous nation constitutions. Petr Kropotkin (anarchist) correctly describes the Guild aspects of these in his descriptions of Mutual Aid, A Factor of Evolution. @2 I'd love to look at this in detail with you. douglasf.jack@gmail.com
Douglas Jack
This website had trouble with the last weblinks which I included, but here they are again. If they don't work send me an email to douglasf.jack@gmail.com Celtic @3 Mutual Aid, A Factor of Evolution. @2
John NoNameGibbon
That view is frankly ridiculous and backwards. Considering the vast majority of Americans today are White and Mexicans are clearly indigenous. I'd say the population that was wiped out was obviously those in English speaking America, not Mexico and Central America. Why do you think they aren't white? Magic?
That's a very strange view found in the US.
We romanticize our Natives because they barely exists. When we are confronted by swarms of ingenious people south of the border we pretend they aren't native as to rob them of their culture. That's called denial.
The very reason we don't like Mexicans is because they're too Indian looking.
Douglas Jack
1491 & 1493 are 2 books by Charles C. Mann who gives an ethnohistorical account collected from 1st Nation sources on the history of the Americas North, South & Central before & after invasion. These serve as a good overview with excellent references, upon which we can understand some substance beyond the colonial propaganda which negates 1st Nation sovereignty with 1000s of lies. Indigene Community compiles humanity's universal worldwide 'indigenous' (Latin 'self-generating') heritage including economy, food-growing & balances for peace & prosperity. The road forward is back-to-the-future.
John NoNameGibbon
Yes, but you have to see how bizarre claiming that our Natives (which makes no sense because they had more in common with our neighbors to the south than us culturally) are somehow more valiant and fought harder considering we have almost none left, while Mexico is chock-full of indigenous people. So much so that people there brag about having a distant white relative, while we here brag about a distant, often mythical, Native great grandparent.
It's just funny how backwards it all was.
Douglas Jack
I don't identify with the "valiant" statement. The invasion genocide brutality here on Turtle-Island, North-America still is atrocious in terms of 10s of 1000s of years of heritage, we disavow & try to erase. All humanity's 'indigenous' heritage is the core of being integral parts of life on earth. Each of us for that part of us from Europe or elsewhere in the world, need to understand the pain & tragedy which we carry around inside of us for the great loss of life capacity we have experienced & continue to grieve unconsciously. All US, Canadian, NATO, Israel violence which we create for others in our colonial consumption of the earth, is based in our subconscious desire to recreate the pain we have suffered in an attempt to make it tangible. Our goal should be to understand our stewardship role as primates on earth. Humans as primates are the stewards of the Polyculture Orchard, which is the operating climate-control, food, water, energy, materials, co-pilot species diversity system for spaceship earth.
deathtokoalas
you're on to something, but you're missing the thing we gloss over the most: there was actually large amounts of interbreeding between settlers and colonists - and on both sides of the frontier. instead of accepting this, we pretend we killed them all and replaced them. and, we certainly did kill a lot of them. but, we assimilated even more of them.
if you study the genetics in the native american population on the east coast, some populations have european genotypes of astonishing frequencies - upwards of 80% in some cases. the first giveaway is the r1b that dominates western europe and could not have come from any other source. the second is the blood types, which show influence from both europe and africa. if you look at colonial history carefully, you will see this constant stream of largely forgotten stories of europeans escaping the colonies to "join the indians". it was something that happened from the day we set foot here, this tendency to flee european civilization and escape into the wilderness. it's consistently kept track of in the margins - but there is never any attention drawn to it. and, it's left a dramatic genetic footprint. the english and french merged with the natives as much or more than we slaughtered them. but, it is immensely important that we don't know this, that we maintain the mental hierarchical separation of colonizer and colonized.
by contrast, the spaniards would not intermarry with anybody. they just slaughtered whole populations outright (under warped religious justifications), and enslaved what was left. and, they didn't really settle the areas to the same extent, either, and when they did it was to set up systems of exploitation that were broadly always seen as temporary. so, the natives were able to maintain their own identity, repopulate and eventually become majorities again in their own land, while in the north they became assimilated and have largely forgotten their identity.
if you take a walk through canada, and you know what to look for, it is easy to see that the so-called white population is almost entirely metis.