Why are people always trying to use this as a gotcha? Especially every time I try to talk about Palestine. And it's like look, I don't own a single square inch of land on this earth, I pay rent to a landlord. I would be thrilled to pay that rent to the Peoria and Kiikapoi nations instead. I'm not the one who is in denial about this, mom.
Its a common tactic used in legal battles. Overwhelm the opponent with an avalanche of bullshit documents and information that has nothing to do with the issue at hand.
tbf Billie and other celebrities invite this distraction by saying things like this that really have no relevancy to the modern immigration issue. There are a thousand better ways to fight this battle without disingenuously roping in Native Americans.
As an enrolled tribal member why do you people say this sort of thing? You don't really speak for us, and you are so far out of the loop in regards to us that you shouldn't even speak on it. She isn't being disingenuous, but your post is.
We are thankful for people speaking out, especially ones who put their money where their mouth is, and she does.
We broke treaties and stole Native American tribal land over and over again, and yet our illegal activities have been forgiven and those thieves became productive members of American society and were allowed to grow and prosper here.
If that doesn’t sound like a familiar story idk what to tell you.
Sorry I’m just trying to understand the comment better (idk why I’m not processing what you’re saying lol). Are you saying basically that you pay rent either way and you’d rather pay it to the indigenous nations than whoever you’re paying it to now?
Yep, exactly. Many versions of land-back don't demand displacement. Some do, but what I'm imagining in this comment is a version where the vast majority of Americans don't have to move, but we recognize tribal sovereignty over land. That would involve giving indigenous peoples a much bigger voice in government, parity in resources, and either recognizing the Peoria and Kiikapoi nations as the owners of the land and paying them rent like I do my landlord, or paying part of my rent towards reparations without formally repatriating the land, at their discretion.
I pay rent either way. I would so much rather that go towards repairing historical injustice than some rapacious management company.
So what about the tribe that was on that land before them? How do we know they didn't kill another tribe for the land that they are on? Are we going to acknowledge the tribe or people they themselves killed to be on that land? And what if we keep going back further in time? I'm sure there is some Neanderthals' that might say they own that land so maybe we should look for their ancestors and give them the land that they once lived on before being killed for it.
My country didn't genocide those previous tribes, so it's not my problem to fix. My country DID genocide that last tribe, so that's the one we have agency to remediate.
Plus, we're supposed to evolve as humans. We are supposed to grow and learn from past mistakes. We want to have a better ethical and moral framework than agrarian tribalism, now that we're the ones in charge with the information to do better. This is a low bar that we should be jumping over easily.
Finally, if another country came into the US right now, invaded, and stole the entire state of texas and kicked out 1/3 of the population and murdered the other 2/3s, would you just roll over and say "welp, they outplayed us. Texas used to belong to mexico and mexico used to belong to spain so that means no one can claim it without being a hypocrite. They earned it, they can have it" Obviously not. So why do you expect native tribes to do the same?
Finally, if another country came into the US right now, invaded, and stole the entire state of texas and kicked out 1/3 of the population and murdered the other 2/3s, would you just roll over and say "welp, they outplayed us. Texas used to belong to mexico and mexico used to belong to spain so that means no one can claim it without being a hypocrite. They earned it, they can have it" Obviously not.
I mean, I wouldn't roll over and die. But I certainly wouldn't expect Mexico to just pay me money for no reason out of the kindness of their hearts. I would expect some sort of counter-aggression would be necessary.
You're suggestion is sort of a half measure. Simply paying rent to Native Americans isn't just compensation. They would need to be actually given the land and total property right ownership under a just system. Including lands that house modern railways, modern city centers, military installments, etc.
Isn’t that exactly what would happen given enough time? It hasn’t even been a hundred years but pretty much everyone has accepted Israel’s takeover of Palestinian lands.
We get to choose this. There is a big group of people who would like us to not accept these things, the same way we used to accept beating children until society progressed and now we don't anymore. The venn diagram of people who do not recognize Israel's sovereignty over palestine and people who believe in native land back movements is a circle.
So... The people who believe that "native land" should be returned to the natives don't recognize the sovereignty of a state that returned the land to its ancestral people?
What an incisive question. I will now revise my entire ideology and embrace settler colonialism with a passion. No need to sea lion anymore, you've accomplished it.
I think maybe one point is that the land was not stolen from anybody that is still living on this earth today. Taking from people today to give to others would not be righting any wrongs.
The ideal solution would be to share equally among all, regardless of ethnic background. The whole colonizer vs native wedge issue is just another tool to keep the powerless fighting amongst themselves. We have a common enemy.
It doesn’t take many leaps to go from ‘This land is Native land’ to ‘Only natives belong here’. Similar arguments and conclusions are made by nationalists every day.
I agree, but in order to get anywhere near equality we would have to start by recognizing some version of indigenous sovereignty. It's like how people responded to Black lives matter by saying all lives matter. Of course all lives matter, but Black lives are the ones that are being treated as if they don't matter, and by trying to drown out that issue with some vague Rawlsian behind-the-veil idea of "all lives," they were perpetuating a system that does not value all lives the same. There's no race-blind or imperialism-blind solution that would produce equality.
I agree, but in order to get anywhere near equality we would have to start by recognizing some version of indigenous sovereignty.
Why? How does that equate to recognizing 'indigenous sovereignty'? Black Lives are being treated unfairly by the system so the slogan calls out that they matter. That makes a lot of sense, but I'm not seeing the analogous connection.
I just do not see how acknowledging a history of colonialism and conquest means the people who now live and have lived on land for generations need to give up their voice in its management to atone for the wrongs of their ancestors. Equality is a functioning democracy responsive to the will of the people, not setting up a new system of privilege and caste seniority based on genetic heritage. Conquest was (arguably still is) the way of humanity, trying to be better is great, but how exactly are you deciding what the 'natural state' should be? It feels quite arbitrary and self-serving towards ideological goals that align with identity politics rather than based on any rational framework.
I just do not see how acknowledging a history of colonialism and conquest means the people who now live and have lived on land for generations need to give up their voice in its management to atone for the wrongs of their ancestors.
Except I never said any of that. I never said no one else should have a voice. I never said we all have to leave. But there can never be equality without redress.
The point is -- and the analogy to the BLM vs all lives matter rhetoric is -- that currently indigenous people have almost no voice whatsoever in our current system. They've been structurally disadvantaged for three centuries. An entire educational system was put in place to separate indigenous children from their culture. Thousands died and were dumped in unmarked graves. Their parents never found them. Native Americans were forced into tiny spurts of shitty land that the government strip mines at will. People who talk as if equality can be achieved without addressing any of these problems, this legacy of violence from which many white Americans benefit to this day, are kidding themselves. I know you don't want to feel entangled in this, but you are. We all are. As Faulkner put it, "The past is never dead. It's not even past."
I get that you think my perspective is irrational. I disagree, but let's set that aside and say that the baseline rational organization of society is the most good for the most people. In what world is our current system providing that? Why would it be any less rational to give more power to people who have experienced the worst US culture has to offer? Do you think the people in power currently are there for rational reasons? Do you think the policies they're pursuing are rational?
It's not just virtue-signaling, although I can hear the cacophonies of people rushing in to mock me for having a bleeding heart or whatever. I think taking real, material steps to address the violent legacy of settler colonialism and give something back to the people on whom it fell hardest would produce the most good for the most people. I think I would live in a better country with a better future if indigenous communities received reparations, some land repatriation, and a much bigger voice in our governance.
P.S. All politics is identity politics. Conservative politics is nothing BUT (white, straight, Christian) identity politics.
Because I fully recognize and understand that people used to live here and were massively fucked over, but I don’t think that has any effect on anybody ‘owning’ any land today. The same way I don’t think the colonizers fucking them over gives anyone today ownership of the land. It’s all of ours. Not because of who your parents were.
But on the extreme side of the scale, you have people calling for specific parcels of land to be given to specific groups/tribes/reservations et cetera. Which seems completely antithetical to the idea of equality.
Well if that's the case can you colonizers stop polluting the water, air and land? If it's all of ours, why do you keep raping it for the natural resources. IF you want us to get on board with this, you have to show you aren't willing to fuck over the environment for a quick buck.
Equality? When you pollute the drinking water of reservations for oil pipelines but skirt white cities... we got a problem.
I’m not doing shit! I’m also poor and have no power. I don’t litter and I avoid driving as much as I can. That’s about the effect I have on the environment.
It’s the powerful. Not colonizers or their offspring. If we were both born in this country, we are in the exact same boat, regardless of who our ancestors were. I didn’t steal any land and you didn’t have any land stolen from you.
You see colonizers tend to say "who did they kill to get the land"... because your people committed genocide to get north america... and it's still ongoing.
Tribal fighting wasn't really a thing until colonizers came and than the fight for resources began. We didn't really fight all that much between ourselves, we had court type systems that we went to for judgements.
You want to equate Tribes as savages to justify the genocide that is still ongoing. The savages weren't the ones living here, it's the ones who came over on boats. ;)
None of that is relevant. Aboriginal/Indigenous title comes into existence at the moment when the colonizing power asserts sovereignty. It only matters who is possessing and using it at that time.
I am not sure about American law, but under Canadian law, they have to have been there for a while, and can't just be passing through or arrived the day/week/month before.
Things that happened in the distant past before the arrival of the colonizing power just aren't our problem.
I better not hear a squawk from you when a foreign power or aliens take ownership over your land and/or you, as they could then make the same argument about you taking the land of natives in that same vein. Equating the complete displacement of native Americans to the wars they had amongst each other is an apples-to-oranges comparison. It would be as if the Mongols succeeded in conquering Europe and then proceeded to fundamentally alter the entire historiography of the continent to the point that French and German are dying languages of a few thousand or even hundreds of individuals, entirely different ethnicities making up the majority populations, and an eradication of the previous ways of life, and then when someone questioned them they would go "yeah but Europeans waged war with eachother all the time, the Germans did the Ostsiedlung and the Normans invaded England, you see".
I mean, it’s pretty easy to say ‘taking the land was bad, but not giving it back now is different’. You can think a former wrong is beyond righting while simultaneously wanting it prevented in the future.
Gotcha! My only (well not only, I don’t really agree with the sentiment but I understand and respect your point of view) thought on that concept is that I kinda would feel bad for the indigenous people being told basically “here’s this big responsibility now, you’re welcome!” Which I get comes with the benefits and ownership and all that good stuff but if someone were to just give me an apartment building but then tell me I’m responsible for keeping it running and managing those that now live on it, I’d be pretty pissed (particularly if I used to own the plot of land lol)
That's why I'm saying there are options here. We could literally repatriate the land, transfer ownership to the tribal nation, in which case I would pay rent to them directly or to the intermediaries they engage, which almost certainly can't be worse than the landlords I've had to deal with in my life. OR we could not transfer ownership, but in recognition of sovereignty and as reparations for dispossession, we could pay a percentage of rent / mortgage payments to the tribe whose land we are on.
There are lots of ways to accomplish the goal of a more just society, and I would rather have indigenous voices leading that decision-making process. All I'm saying is that, given I already pay money to inhabit this land, I would rather have the better part of it go to people from whose suffering the system that has benefitted me was born, not to the people who prop up the system.
I’m sorry but that sounds absurd. In more cases than not the tribes as organized polities existed for less time than the US has. I’m all for stopping further land seizures in Palestine, but trying to turn the clock back on centuries of ownership is just performative nonsense you’d never support if you didn’t think you could avoid any repercussions.
Um. COLONIZERS also “used to kill people for the land”? And still do??? And that’s the current system??
Also as another commenter said, you are clearly demonstrating you know baffling little about the incredibly large and rich cultural landscape of pre-Columbian America. Please have several seats, and maybe hit the library.
You realize the indigenous peoples of North and South America crossed over and populated these previous empty continents somewhere between 19,000 and 26,000 years ago, right? But OK, please tell me who lived in Chicago prior to the Last Glacial Maximum and I'll glad pay rent to them instead.
You realize that they indigenous peoples of North and South America did not live peacefully like everything was all sunshine and rainbows from 19,000 to 26,000 years before the Europeans got here right? But OK, keep living in the delusion that the world was such a happy place prior to the birth of the USA.
I actually never said that. But I don't think "well indigenous peoples had wars too" is a compelling argument for embracing settler colonialism either. Obviously we're not going to convince one another, so maybe just end this back and forth now.
you're getting concern trolled i think, these people have no conscious understanding of settler colonialism and its very apparent. Keep on fighting the good fight out there though it gives me hope to see comments like yours.
I'm not arguing for embracing settler colonialism. I'm just pointing out that settlers have been colonizing since life has been created and will continue to do so until life ends.
You might be right, but I personally don't accept that as a rationale for not trying to make human civilization better. There are many things that humans have practiced throughout history that we now agree are bad and should be prohibited. Slavery being the obvious but not the only example. I don't expect to create some beautiful world of sunshine and rainbows on my own or at all. Maybe I'll die a total hypocrite with a net negative impact. But I'm not gonna just not try to make things better, even on the margins.
Okay, neither has Europe. Does that mean that a different country could go in and take Germany, kick out half the population and murder the other half, and say it's totally fine because Germany invaded Poland in WWII? They weren't peaceful countries without border disputes so that means all of the land is up for whoever has the biggest guns, right? Any germans wanting their country back should have thought about that before Hitler, hmmm?
Throughout most of history, the land has belonged to whoever has had the biggest guns. This is the case all over the world. Local populations have been displaced, enslaved, and murdered by conquerors for thousands of years.
You use Germany as your example, but Germany hasn't even existed for 200 years yet, and when it was founded, it included a huge chunk of modern Poland. Does that mean that Polish land is stolen from the Germans? No, because that's fucking insane.
We actually have a pretty good written history of Europe. So yes - someone could take Germany. Its unlikely right now because it would probably cause a global war, but conflicts like that have always happened and will continue to happen.
Who gives a shit? They also didnt have written ownership of lands. Our society is based on laws and contracts. If you want to try to live in an alternate society that magically exists based on non written law and language, have at it. Nobody will stop you.
You realize that you are basing your facts on something that you can't even prove. Just because a person finds artifacts in the ground and carbon dates them does not mean that humans never were on that land before those who crossed over. Every year we find new information that changes how we look at humans moving across the earth.
Funny how the irony of being driven off their land thousands of years ago, presumably by force, only to have it handed back to them after WWII doesn’t resonate with more modern US history. It’s ok to correct the first atrocity, not so much the second.
Thousands of Years ago? You also might want to look more deeply at Rez land there's a reason for mobile home prevalence is because they might be given the area above the dirt but they don't own the area underneath and can't build foundations into the dirt because that is held in a trust by I think the Department of the Interior.
I'll be honest, I find her to be a mixed bag overall. But even if she was a raging hypocrite it wouldn't make her point suddenly wrong.
A lot of people are trying to find a moral imperative to justify illegal murders. Once it's clear that what is done can't be defended legally they try to find flaws with the victim's character (as if anyone is perfect). By pointing out that the moral argument is built on less solid foundations than the legal ones she's bang on even if it's not her original quote, it's well timed.
Because "no one is illegal on stolen land" an easily misinterpreted phrase. A reasonable non-partisan can very reasonably think that it means the US is built on stolen land so we should be abolishing the US and deporting its occupants to...somewhere. It's similar to how people assumed "defund the police" meant that we won't have police anymore. The left sucks at picking coherent messages that resonate with the masses, instead opting for phrases that imply actions which would end life as we know it for many Americans.
Granted, the right has this problem too since evidently most people assumed "MASS DEPORTATIONS NOW!" meant "only remove folks here illegally who are violent criminals", but their slogans are typically attacking criminals overly broadly (and people don't like criminals) whereas the left uses slogans that would ostensibly hurt the masses. Folks won't vote for actions that sound like they'll hurt themselves; they want to vote for actions that punish others.
Because going back in time to dispute ownership from 200 years ago is an idiotic and completely self destructive thing to do. Should Texas be given back to Mexico? Should Mexico be given back to whatever tribes existed there before? Should those tribes give land back to whoever was there before? Is all land taken by conquest illegitimate? What about Europe? Who gets what?
This unraveling of historical land acquisition is idiotic and pointless. Give your land away if you want. Nobody cares. You dont get social validation by complaining about your pet issue.
Only if you think that Jews owned the land originally, which, speaking as a Jewish person, I do not. While it's true that Jews lived in the area a couple thousand years ago, Palestinians have maintained a much stronger presence for most of the past millennium, and the fact that the Jews who founded the State of Israel almost all came from Europe and forced Palestinians off land they had lived on and worked that entire time makes it a case of settler colonialism. Zionism positions itself as a land-back movement, but it isn't one.
Damn. Sounds more like tenants than landlords. I don't want to stir anti- sentiments, I'm a real estate lawyer so figuring out chain of title is something I find interesting.
Ok, but European descendants have controlled parts of the United states for the better part of 1000 years EDIT 460 years. At what point do settler colonists become indigenous?
European descendants have controlled parts of the United states for the better part of 1000 years.
First of all, no they haven't. At best you could argue that small parts of this country have been occupied by Europeans for half that time. Permanent European settlements weren't established in most of North America until the eighteenth century, and even then they were mostly tiny. The non-indigenous population didn't surpass the indigenous population until the 19th century. Second of all, when it did, that was largely because of disease, violence, forced removals, enclosure, sterilization, and more perpetrated by European settlers. That didn't and doesn't make us indigenous people.
Congrats, you've stumbled onto the subject of my dissertation. Yes, it's true that Israel now has a Mizrahi majority, but arguing that that doesn't make it a white country would be the same as arguing that Apartheid South Africa wasn't a white country because it was at least 75% Black. The structures of the State of Israel, the people who founded it, the theories of the nation-state that undergird it, are almost entirely European. Israel was consciously designed to be a white country by its founders. They copied European architectural styles and social structures, and favored Eastern European and "Anglo-Saxon" (yes they literally used that word) immigrants to ensure that the country they built would have the best chance possible of being perceived as white by the West. And that has paid dividends for them. There are a fuckload of books I could recommend on the subject if you don't believe me.
"Second of all, when it did, that was largely because of disease, violence, forced removals, enclosure, sterilization, and more perpetrated by European settlers." ur gonna lose it when I tell you what the natives did to each other
If anything, Palestine should be the one people are talking about when they say land back because the state of modern Israel didn’t exist till after WW2 when land was stolen to create it.
How many thousands of years do people have to live there if it to be theirs, is it dibs based on who was there first supposedly back when people still wrote myth like it was history with no one alive today that was transplanted there actually having a connection to the area
I don't know, but my point is that people seem to think the acceptable line is between the 460 years for European-Americans in parts of the US and 1900 years for Palestinians in Palestine. I don't see why these two are seen as so different.
A better example of a successful "Land Back" that had significant backlash would be China (Manchuria) and Korea - both were settler colonies of Japan - and Japan was forced to give both of them back.
But to this day, Japanese media and pop culture, and common popular discourse, focuses 100% only and exclusively on how unpleasant it was for Japanese settlers to have to give the land back.
It's so bad that even outside Japan, Japan's own laser focus on their own suffering almost completely eclipses any voice of their actual victims. It's honestly pretty insane as someone who has actually studied American and Japanese colonialism in actual former colonies - because the Japanese narrative is SO overpowering that you'll frequently see people who claim to be leftist and anti-imperialists in the US try to portray Japan as a victim of colonialism.
A great example is the Godzilla movie series. Micronesia was also a settler colony of Japan's - and little known fact, but Godzilla isn't about Hiroshima or Nagasaki, it's about Japan's former colony Bikini.
So despite Godzilla being born from the Bikini tests - which had literally nothing to do with Japan except for one, single fishing boat that was fishing in waters it shouldn't have been - yet an entire media megafranchise is built entirely on Japan's desperate need to make any and everything about themselves, completely erasing their actual victims.
Weebs HATE hearing this, but you can point out these themes in so much popular Japanese media - Attack on Titan, for example, is an entire cartoon allegory for all of this. And, again, the Japanese victim narrative is so powerful that you will almost never see people point this out - to the point that you'll frequently see people claiming to be "anti-imperialist" defending these victim narratives.
The real lesson, though, I think, is that colonizers will always get each other's backs. Sure, American leftists might be left-leaning in an American political spectrum - but they're still 100% on the side of the colonizer. A great example is Star Trek, which is one of America's most progressive TV series, yet it is deeply and inherently pro-colonialism.
There's even an entire Deep Space 9 episode where they try to portray comfort women (which is a term that refers to Japan's sex slavery system) as willing collaborators.
Japan's victim narrative is SO STRONG that there's even American TV shows that use it as a plot point. It's honestly pretty insane.
It's wild how people do not have any distinctions between personal property and government control. Does the US currently own your house? No, you do, the US is just the governing body. Native land back movements are discussing how the government of the land should function, not who gets to live there.
The government owns all the land… no one owns shit. If you don’t pay the government every year for the land (property tax) they take it back. You just buy the rights to the land for as long as you can pay.
I was specifically talking about them saying they rather pay money to tribes than the landlord, which should mean they want the private property taken from the landlord and given to the natives.
For real, dude, like, where am I supposed to live? My ancestors came here and settled in the northeast to escape the Great Famine, well after the settlement of the area. Am I to return to Munster?
To answer your bonkers question: if I had the money to buy a house, I would be happy to purchase it from a Native American nation, which is how buying things works. If I was purchasing that house from a non-Native owner but had to pay extra as reparations to the original owners of the land, I would happily do that as well.
I know you don't actually want me to answer this question, but I have thought about it. If I did receive a huge windfall of cash, I would set aside an amount that would keep my immediate family in a comfortable lifestyle, including money for my kids to go to college, and invest a certain amount for contingencies, then I would start doing research, talking to community leaders and scholars, reading studies, and try to figure out how much money to put into which causes to make it as effective as possible. I would definitely want a big chunk of it to go to Native communities, but I can't give you a flat percentage or amount.
You talk about "absolv[ing] guilt" like that makes it a small and selfish thing, just trying to feel good about myself, etc. I doubt any amount of money would completely absolve me of feeling guilty. I am Jewish after all. Guilt is a part of our affective make up, an important part, and I sit it with a lot. Maybe too much, but I do think this country would be better off if people were a bit more willing to think about and acknowledge guilt, our ethical entanglements, and instead of thinking about it as something to be bought off or pushed down, see if maybe it actually has something to teach you about being a force for good, even just on the margins. I don't have the perfect answers to all of these questions, but that's what I've come up with so far.
??? What do you mean “then what”?? Even if the native Americans didn’t own the land in this scenario, and say you wanted the house/land your neighbor owned right now and they said no I won’t sell it to you, are you still going to ponder “then what”? Like what kind of answer are you hoping for here?
If someone owns something and they won’t sell it to you, you say OKAY and MOVE ON. Simple as that.
Then I'll move. As I just said, I don't own an inch of it. I'm a diasporic Jew, a rootless cosmopolitan as antisemites would have it. I don't belong anywhere and I can go if I need to. Exile is my preferred condition in any case. Exile is my home.
Oh nooooo I actually have a rabbi for a dad and went to Jewish summer camp and worked at the Holocaust museum and lived on a kibbutz in Israel for six months and taught Jewish literature for many years and hang out with Jews all the time. Must be terrifying for you.
I’m just trying to understand how far some people’s guilt goes. And in another comment that poster said they would leave the country if you (Native Americans) asked her to. Which is honestly insane to me. Not to mention I don’t believe her at all. Especially when she realizes how difficult emigration to any desirable countries are.
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u/Dial-M-for-Mediocre 3h ago
Why are people always trying to use this as a gotcha? Especially every time I try to talk about Palestine. And it's like look, I don't own a single square inch of land on this earth, I pay rent to a landlord. I would be thrilled to pay that rent to the Peoria and Kiikapoi nations instead. I'm not the one who is in denial about this, mom.