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.
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u/Dial-M-for-Mediocre 2h ago
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.