This article is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis. It was originally published at The Conversation.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?p=1474339
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?p=1474339
as historian Patrick Wolfe wrote, “settler colonizers come to stay: invasion is a structure, not an event.”
Speak to the people of Ukraine.They were invaded.
I’ve seen personally another invasion. Czechoslovakia in 1968 when the Russians invaded. They weren’t interested in colonizing anything. Rather it was killing and destruction. Same in Ukraine.
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FRIST!!!
Critter pics…
Gobble gobble!!
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I started 1st grade in 1948. The teacher told us we must be extra kind to Bertram, a Navajo boy, because he was far away from his family. We complied, though had no awareness of why Bertram was in Phoenix going to school instead of living with his family. The Heard Museum in Phoenix displays photos of hundreds of indigenous children taken from their families, dressed in the formal attire of white politeness. Their facial expressions are heart rending. On Thanksgiving Day, along with our celebrating, we might pause to reflect on the deep ambiguities of human being: it is one thing to be grateful for gifts given and received. Another arrogantly to assume entitlement when what we have was taken by force. I’ve always wondered what happened to Bertram.
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Part of stripping native identity and further humiliating children, they were assigned unusually dorky “white man” names. We see this all over Indian Country in New Mexico.
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I have wondered if the college students currently protesting Israel at any point had the epiphany that they themselves are colonizers on native land. At lease Jews have a plausible historical claim for being in Israel.
If the remaining Cherokee decided to form militia groups and brutally scalp nearby towns, I wonder which side the protesters would support? It would be a conundrum for them, I’m sure, but I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for them to pack up and sail back to Europe or wherever.
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In Connecticut there are so many colonial features - old stone cellars in the middle of the woods, dinnerware plate shards, charcoal mounds, you name it - that the state archeologist and her teams don’t bother to catalogue them any more (unless they’re really extraordinary). In fact, archeologists in CT are much more interested in pre-contact discoveries and features.
I lead hikes through property owned by a land trust. There’s so much to be discovered. Talking about the colonists and the 19th c industrialist whose family donated the land is one thing, but the real kick is starting off saying people have been walking where you’re walking now for around 12,500 years.
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In the late 1970’s I spent considerable time on the San Carlos Apache Reservation east of Globe, AZ. I was hired to work cattle on the “A-100 unit” run by an Apache gent by the name of George Stevens. That was his land. All 17 miles by 10 miles. I enjoyed my time there and made good friends among the Apache cowboys, I was the only White guy around. Good break between grad school and what would be my career in science.
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Arab Palestinians also have a plausible historical claim to the land now known as Israel. Their claim is no less valid than that of the Israeli and Zionist Jews.
That supposed conundrum does not negate their protests against the colonization, relocation, and eradication policies of Netanyahu. As the article correctly concludes, “The past cannot be undone, but it doesn’t have to dictate the future.”
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On PBS here in Maricopa County a program called Indian Country Today airs from 4:30-5:00 in the afternoon M-F. It is delightful, shows compellingly that native folk are anything but disappearing. A plus is that it is almost always good news, a welcome respite from the doom and gloom of the networks.
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It’s certainly not dictating the future out here in Ohio Country:
… the Native American Indian Center of Central Ohio (NAICCO) that Smith helps run from Columbus, Ohio, reached a goal he never thought possible: raising $250,000 to buy a small piece of rural land meant to foster Native American life and activities
Happy Thanksgiving to All!
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The winner gets to write the history books, as always. I’ve told this story before here, but it’s a good day to tell it again. I once hosted a party at my house in Miami many years ago, where a friend brought a guest, a young Native American woman. Something of an activist for Indian rights. We got into an interesting conversation that eventually arrived at her asking me what actual right did I have to be the owner of this house we were sitting in?
I asked her how far back she wanted to go with that. The land my house was built on was once occupied by the Tequesta Indians in South Florida, who had taken it from earlier indigenous peoples, who took it from others, down through the chain of history as long as humans had occupied the area.
Then Spain took the land from the Tequesta, wiping them out along with the Calusa Indians in the Keys and Southwest Florida. Then Britain took Florida from Spain, and eventually the USA took it from Britain. At least it wasn’t the USA that wiped out the indigenous inhabitants in South Florida like we did in other parts of the country.
Half jokingly, I said she should blame the Spaniards. I didn’t get very far with that argument, but it still made me think about something I had never considered before, which was no doubt her goal in bringing it up. An interesting evening.
Happy Thanksgiving y’all, for whatever reasons you celebrate.
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I’m also sure these students are super aware, which is why they’re protesting colonialism happening right now in the first place.
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All the people everywhere originally came from somewhere else. They came seeking the things all people seek - food, shelter, safety, a good life for their kids. What a gift it would be if we could learn to live together in peace while acknowledging and honoring what we share in common and also the wonderful diversity among us.
May everyone here have a peaceful day giving thanks with family and friends.
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I’m pretty sure a reason students are demonstrating is exactly because they know their history, have learned about the damage it spreads across generations, and are making a statement now against a colonial situation presently unfolding in another country.
What happened in the US is tragic but it’s in the past. The best we can do is recognize that tragedy and make sure it doesn’t happen again.
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Vermont has a turkey hunting season once or twice a year. Not sure if anyone eats those stringy, gamy birds, though.
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You may say I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope someday you’ll join us
And the world will be as one
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If it was in your power, would you like the past to be undone on behalf of native Americans? Do you think the world would be a better place if the United States had never existed? Or if colonization had never occurred continuously throughout all of human history for that matter?
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Sorry, but this article is written with the self-serving idea that European settlers (or Colonists, if you prefer) were a phenomenon that suddenly happened in 1492. Bullshit! There were indigenous people here for thousands of years before that. And, probably none remained in one area for more than a few centuries. Famine, disease, over population cause constant movement wherein one group would “colonize” a new area because they were strong enough to do it. The “Ancient Ones” of the cliff dwellings of New Mexico are a good example. So are the Mayans and Aztecs. The Comanches and Apaches of the south west constantly moved and displaced weaker groups in North America. Over thousands of years, groups settled and colonized the most recent “indigenous people” worldwide. I’m not claiming that the settlers of the New World were not colonizers, but they sure as hell didn’t invent the practice. As I’m sure the Ancient Ones would agree: “Life’s a bitch, and then you die.”
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