I know this is hacker news but I think an article/review like this is the perfect opportunity to point out the continued injustices being committed against the people native to the land that is now the USA.
After a genocide and several centuries of discrimination, the American government continues to enact and enforce policies that lead to abject poverty on native reservations[1]. The relationship between the US government and native tribes is a disgusting example of how our elected officials have leveraged their power systemically against a minority group and abuses continue to this day[2]. These aren't just people in folk lore stories, they are living tribes condemned to poverty in barren swaths of land by our government.
In Colorado there is still a monument at the capitol in Denver and a prominent mountain named after one of the men that orchestrated the Sand Creek Massacre, an undeniably disgusting and heinous moment in our history.
Maybe if folks would ignore the symbolic distractions (statues and holidays) and actually put effort into fixing IHS then things would actually get better. The statue isn't killing anyone, but poor health care is. How about put some effort into housing so large family units aren't cramped in a house when a plague hits, and maybe when picking colleges to partner with, you pick a Tribal Community College (TCU). Maybe actually report how many enrolled developers or executives work for your company instead of putting them in other. Maybe shame people with no enrollment who steal scholarships or positions that are set aside. Maybe understand that a lot of Native Americans start college late and stop holding that against them.
I would argue that symbols are important too, for purely pragmatic reasons. Memorials are one way we transmit community norms and values. So removing a shameful symbol can be part of the process of building consensus around the historical events and policies that it symbolizes. It serves as a visible focal point for issues that would otherwise be invisible to many people. But I definitely agree that in terms of making real, concrete impact in peoples lives, taking down a statue is pretty much irrelevant.
Those who make change and those who make a lot of noise are both arguably necessary, usually separate groups of people. The latter unfortunately have perverse incentives, mostly gaining virtue points on social media. They get their little boost of self fulfilling ideology. Boots on the ground folks need to be celebrated and usually don’t need the virtue signaling masses - they’re stern men and women driven by righteousness.
"Founded in 1980 by a handful of outdoor-oriented economists in Bozeman, Montana, PERC—the Property and Environment Research Center—is a conservation and research institute dedicated to free market environmentalism."
Free market environmentalism does not describe the position of most tribes in the US and I'm fairly sure that the vast majority consider allotment one of the major injustices and not something to repeat. Many tribes have been working to repurchase land that was lost due to allotment.
You undermine your own case by calling out federal injustices, but only citing as concrete instances of discriminatory policies the presence of symbolic monuments and names.
Crossing through the Midwest in the winter of 1703, the Lakota traverse a frozen lake, and discover that a tremendous herd of bison has been trapped beneath the ice. The natural refrigerator feeds them all winter. The book contains multiple moments of this kind of shocking, strange beauty, as when in a major conference women drop pieces of buffalo fat into their tipi fires at night, turning lodges into gigantic lanterns in a “sea of sparkling light.”
This is a book review. The book is 544 pages. This is just an enticing taste of what it contains.
I've added this to my reading list, thanks for sharing.
In another thread earlier today I was talking about the book American Buffalo by Steven Rinella. He has a whole section dedicated to the demise of bison in water, mud, floods, and swamps. In one bit he mentions that an entire herd was killed when they ran into a river too deep to ford, resulting in a literal stream of tens of thousands of bison corpses floating down the river.
I live in Minnesota, the land of the great Anishinaabe tribes. I was surprised to learn that these Anishinaabe drove out the Lakota and sent them westward in 1750 in the aftermath of a bloody battle in the north of which Red Lake was named, because it ran with Lakota blood. It's a complex history and this is a tiny slice of it.
The name "Sioux" that the Dakota were called for many years is also an Ojibwe (Anishinaabe people) term meaning "little snakes." Wisconsin and Minnesota are littered with little battlegrounds where there was mass slaughter between the two tribes well before European colonists arrived
Well, Minnesota also failed to remove from its books a law banning Dakota from the state. The documentary 'Dakota 38' is worth a viewing. https://m.imdb.com/title/tt2838564/
Why surprised? Before Europeans arrived, it's not like everybody lived happily ever after in a utopian pastoral lifestyle. They are people too and have fought, murdered, and slaughtered each other just as much as the Europeans did to themselves and to others. I frankly find it a little concerning that just as much emphasis isn't placed on the genocide of the non-existent tribes by those which remain.
I have no idea if this is one of the reasons your comment is grey, but the “it’s not like natives didn’t have conflict” is just as much projection as “magical natives” portrayals are bullshit. If you don’t recognize that colonization contorted indigenous peoples into conflict based on colonial prerogatives, you’re not telling yourself or anyone else the whole story.
It’s a shame for both sides of the shameful misinterpreted history that people don’t, yes, acknowledge that native peoples had real wars and conflicts, and also that colonizers instigated and coordinated other conflicts that were either less likely or more brutal or both than they would’ve been otherwise.
I'm not sure what your point is; are you saying they would've gone extinct anyway so whatever the Europeans and early US did was fine / didn't make a difference?
Not that long -- remember, the horse went extinct in North America and were unavailable until the Spanish brought them in the 16th century, so hunting from horseback was relatively recent technology.
I have this book in my to read stack and another American history in there is “Fifth Sun” by Camilla Townsend. It is a history of the Aztecs, referenced from Aztec historians. It sounds like a wonderful book.
We know that in 1835, Lakota chief Lame Deer shot a Crow warrior twice with the same arrow. We have little idea why.
Well, they really, really didn't like each other at a tribal level. Heck, when you start naming places for the people you killed there, its a bit in the hatred side.
Anyone subdued enough that you can pull an arrow out of them is subdued enough that you can deliver a coup de grace with a knife or axe. It's demonstrably not an act of mercy to shoot them twice with the same arrow.
It seems pretty clear that it's a demonstration of how badly defeated the enemy is... that the enemy is incapable of putting up the smallest bit of defense.
The nuances of the message being sent may be a mystery to us, but the high-level message seems pretty clear to me. Some of the possible aspects of the message are (1) demonstrating military his military prowess to his tribe (2) demonstrating his bravery to his tribe (3) increasing the shame felt by the enemy as he died (4) demonstrating his military prowess to surviving enemies to demoralize them.
If the primary intent of the message was to emotionally torture an enemy through shame in his dying moments, then contempt and hate would appear to be the primary motivators.
I hate someone so much I shoot him with an arrow now, he's having trouble moving so I realizing I'm out of arrows walk up yank out the arrow (smiling as he screams while trying to crawl away) and shoot him again at point blank range for the lulz.
EDIT: Not trying to endorse this kind of viewpoint at all, or support it but it is an explanation for how you can hate someone so much that you'd shoot them with an arrow twice.
Battlefield success was a huge sign of leadership fitness for Plains Indians. Comanche called it "puha" - it was sort of a marker of divine blessing or luck (good medicine) and it meant you could more easily gather more tribesmen for your war party to go on raids against other tribes.
Shooting them twice with the same arrow would be like the modern equivalent of a 360 no scope in Call of Duty, demonstrating your "puha." See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counting_coup
Well, he probably retrieved the arrow and realized the warrior was still alive so shot him again with it. Why put forth the effort to draw another arrow on someone you hate and have contempt for when you have one in your hand? Plus, it probably made a heck of a story to tell his friends. Bragging is a bit of a thing.
"It’s a staggering success while it lasts; by the late 1860s, the average family owns upwards of twenty horses. The empire these nomads build is rapacious; more than once, the Lakota are forced to move westward because they have looted the neighboring tribes out of existence and are therefore out of farmed food. Over several more generations, the Lakota shift fitfully west, until a series of visions reveals the Black Hills as their final home."
Funny but I have never seen genocide committed by white folk called a staggering success. If a white person said God gave white people Utah until the end of time we would think they are nuts, why is it any different when a native says the same?
> Over the course of the eighteenth century, the Lakota become a horse people. It takes generations, a huge expenditure of wealth, and day-long rides clinging onto wild and bucking horses until they break, but they do it, earlier than other tribes.
> [...]
> Hämäläinen brilliantly documents the transition from a largely hunter-gatherer-farmer society, settled in Mississippi River valleys, into a fully nomadic one. It’s a staggering success while it lasts; by the late 1860s, the average family owns upwards of twenty horses.
The transition to horse people and to a nomadic life is considered successful.
"Hämäläinen brilliantly documents the transition from a largely hunter-gatherer-farmer society, settled in Mississippi River valleys, into a fully nomadic one. It’s a staggering success while it lasts; by the late 1860s, the average family owns upwards of twenty horses."
By omitting the preceding sentence you have allowed yourself to be misled about what the context is. The "staggering success" being referred to here is the transition of their society to a nomadic way of life, as facilitated by the introduction of horses.
Readit News
After a genocide and several centuries of discrimination, the American government continues to enact and enforce policies that lead to abject poverty on native reservations[1]. The relationship between the US government and native tribes is a disgusting example of how our elected officials have leveraged their power systemically against a minority group and abuses continue to this day[2]. These aren't just people in folk lore stories, they are living tribes condemned to poverty in barren swaths of land by our government.
In Colorado there is still a monument at the capitol in Denver and a prominent mountain named after one of the men that orchestrated the Sand Creek Massacre, an undeniably disgusting and heinous moment in our history.
[1]https://www.indigenouspeoples-sdg.org/index.php/english/ttt/... [2]https://www.vox.com/first-person/2019/9/23/20872713/native-a...
https://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2014/03/13/5-ways-the-...
"Shawn Regan is a research fellow at the Property and Environment Research Center (PERC)”.
https://perc.org/about-us/
"Founded in 1980 by a handful of outdoor-oriented economists in Bozeman, Montana, PERC—the Property and Environment Research Center—is a conservation and research institute dedicated to free market environmentalism."
Free market environmentalism does not describe the position of most tribes in the US and I'm fairly sure that the vast majority consider allotment one of the major injustices and not something to repeat. Many tribes have been working to repurchase land that was lost due to allotment.
Lot of work ahead of us, it seems
This is a book review. The book is 544 pages. This is just an enticing taste of what it contains.
In another thread earlier today I was talking about the book American Buffalo by Steven Rinella. He has a whole section dedicated to the demise of bison in water, mud, floods, and swamps. In one bit he mentions that an entire herd was killed when they ran into a river too deep to ford, resulting in a literal stream of tens of thousands of bison corpses floating down the river.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_jump
Deleted Comment
I live in Minnesota, the land of the great Anishinaabe tribes. I was surprised to learn that these Anishinaabe drove out the Lakota and sent them westward in 1750 in the aftermath of a bloody battle in the north of which Red Lake was named, because it ran with Lakota blood. It's a complex history and this is a tiny slice of it.
https://www.tolatsga.org/ojib.html
The (few) other histories there are also good:
https://www.tolatsga.org/Compacts.html
https://indiancountrytoday.com/news/the-traumatic-true-histo...
The largest mass execution in US history, personally approved by Abraham Lincoln.
It’s a shame for both sides of the shameful misinterpreted history that people don’t, yes, acknowledge that native peoples had real wars and conflicts, and also that colonizers instigated and coordinated other conflicts that were either less likely or more brutal or both than they would’ve been otherwise.
The Europeans killed 90 to 95% of indigenous people in the Americas, killing tens or hundreds of millions.
Yes, there was obviously war and conflict between indigenous communities. But it was not anywhere close to the scale the Europeans did to others.
[1] Remember, coal in England long before oil in America
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/44244939-fifth-sun
Well, they really, really didn't like each other at a tribal level. Heck, when you start naming places for the people you killed there, its a bit in the hatred side.
It seems pretty clear that it's a demonstration of how badly defeated the enemy is... that the enemy is incapable of putting up the smallest bit of defense.
The nuances of the message being sent may be a mystery to us, but the high-level message seems pretty clear to me. Some of the possible aspects of the message are (1) demonstrating military his military prowess to his tribe (2) demonstrating his bravery to his tribe (3) increasing the shame felt by the enemy as he died (4) demonstrating his military prowess to surviving enemies to demoralize them.
If the primary intent of the message was to emotionally torture an enemy through shame in his dying moments, then contempt and hate would appear to be the primary motivators.
EDIT: Not trying to endorse this kind of viewpoint at all, or support it but it is an explanation for how you can hate someone so much that you'd shoot them with an arrow twice.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam%27s_razor
Shooting them twice with the same arrow would be like the modern equivalent of a 360 no scope in Call of Duty, demonstrating your "puha." See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counting_coup
What will future authors write about this event?
Funny but I have never seen genocide committed by white folk called a staggering success. If a white person said God gave white people Utah until the end of time we would think they are nuts, why is it any different when a native says the same?
> Over the course of the eighteenth century, the Lakota become a horse people. It takes generations, a huge expenditure of wealth, and day-long rides clinging onto wild and bucking horses until they break, but they do it, earlier than other tribes.
> [...]
> Hämäläinen brilliantly documents the transition from a largely hunter-gatherer-farmer society, settled in Mississippi River valleys, into a fully nomadic one. It’s a staggering success while it lasts; by the late 1860s, the average family owns upwards of twenty horses.
The transition to horse people and to a nomadic life is considered successful.
By omitting the preceding sentence you have allowed yourself to be misled about what the context is. The "staggering success" being referred to here is the transition of their society to a nomadic way of life, as facilitated by the introduction of horses.
Dead Comment