[U184]

^OK...

You seem to be selectively quoting only bits of the OP. I.e. you are ignoring those parts that differentiate settler colonialism from other types of colonialism.

No, I concentrate on just settler colonialism, as used by the OP and by direct quotation from the reference material provided by the OP.

Did they engage in racism and capitalism?

One pillar of white supremacy is the logic of slavery.
This logic renders black people as inherently enslaveable—as nothing more than property.
This logic is the anchor of capitalism.
That is, the capitalist system ultimately commodifies all workers: one’s own person becomes a commodity that one must sell in the labour market while the profits of one’s work are taken by somebody else.

Said tribes used slaves for personal gain, both by profiting on the slaves work and by trading said slaves services, or the slave for personal gain. As per the definition of capitalism, in regards to slavery, said tribes engaged in capitalism, in regards to slavery.

Settlers, in their bid to destroy local customs and cultures, outlawed the potlatch, an event associated with the gift economies of the Pacific indigenous communities like the Haida. This imposition of capitalist economy is not paralleled in any way by any indigenous conflict prior to settler arrival.

Individual tribe members owned items privately, they sold/traded said items for profit. Given the basic terms of capitalism, said indigenous people engaged in both commerce, capitalism.

Capitalism is an economic system in which capital assets are privately owned and items are brought to market for profit.

You might want to read up on Neo Tribal Capitalism.

Indigenous people did not practice slavery as a business that required a racist paradigm. Nor did they go around pretending that the indigenous race was somehow uplifting blacks and others into civilisation. There was no "red man's burden".

The OP did not mention black white slavery issues. Tribes did indeed think their tribe was better, thus their 'right' to enslave members of other tribes.

"It should be noted as well that, said indigenous people of color, also took whites as slaves so slavery in this instance is a shared cultural construct, not a white racial construct"

Please provide evidence for this claim. Thank you.

You can find that here under: Slavery among Native Americans in the United States
The only difference being that tribes did not exploit slave labor on a large scale, then again we are discussing the concept of slavery.

And now we get to the part where we are supposed to pretend that the oppression of indigenous peoples by settlers is exactly the same as some minor and non-oppressive prejudice that in no way affected white cultures.

In order to show the argument as a false dichotomy, one only need show that the points made in the argument, are not mutually exclusive.

Did indigenous people create a residential school system where they kidnapped white kids and forced them to learn indigenous things in a systematic effort to erase settler cultures? If the answer is no, then we cannot say that whites and indigenous people shared overlapping experiences.

The answer, without being painted into a corner, is: Indigenous people 'kidnapped' members of opposing tribes and forced them to learn different indigenous things in a systematic effort to erase the previous tribal culture.

That's like saying that blacks being lynched and white people lynching have overlapping experiences because both people were targets of anger by the other.

You could, it would be useless but you could.

It was common practice for tribes to raid other tribes for women, slaves and goods. No amount of 'white washing' will change that fact.

Did indigenous people sign treaties with other indigenous people and then break those treaties? No.

False. Indigenous peoples made ORAL treaties and then broke them.

Do indigenous people to this day, still keep those lands despite the glaring illegality of it? No.

False. Tribes that took lands away from other tribes did not give them back, they may have negotiated those lands for some other gain, but they did not give them back, nor did they consider spoils earned from forceful occupation as illegal.

Do indigenous people still force white people off their land in this day and age? No.

This does not follow the outline made by the OP and thus, for this debate, is a non issue.

And to get to the issue of genocide, there is no recorded case of indigenous people perpetrating genocide against settlers, yet we have evidence of mass graves of indigenous people who were supposed to be cared for by the settler gov't.

False. The James town massacre is a good example. There were no other such settlements, the argument being that each time said tribes attacked singular settlements without the knowledge of other settlements, they were engaging in genocide.

Most importantly, did indigenous people ever try and completely get rid of whole peoples in order to secure ownership of most of the land of North America? No.

False. Indigenous people had no problem killing whole tribes of other nations, for land, hunting areas, etc.

"The same concept of war can also be seen within the tribal conflicts seen historically practiced by... wait for it... indigenous peoples of North America. "
Please provide evidence for this claim. Thank you.

Tribes were in a constant state of war with other tribes. As nomadic hunter gatherers they were competing over hunting grounds, with the stronger tribes vying over fertile areas. I see no reason to provide evidence regarding tribal conflicts with other tribes, not when the fact is common knowledge.

How about you provide evidence that tribes did not fight other tribes in long drawn out wars, mass wars, etc.

Or even answer the above questions I posed to you...

Stop asking for things that are common simple knowledge, especially when you would NEVER do so yourself.

No. This is just you trying to excuse settler colonialism by ignoring history and pretending (without evidence) that indigenous people did the "exact same thing" when in fact they did not. There is no false restriction of options.

I have shown that said tribes engaged in all of the points made in the OP, toward other tribes and the settlers.

My point is not to "excuse settler colonialism", but to show the argument that settler colonialism was prompted by expansion and took the form of forceful occupation. Not prompted by racial constructs. Unless of course you can show that the settlers left England with the express goal of killing the "red people" and taking their land. Yet, of course you can not, because this is not the case.

"These actions are intrinsic to the human condition and are shared by most cultures. Trying to place those concepts on the door of racism, is rather quaint, at best."

I don't think this is true, and you have not shown it to be true. Even if it was, would it then excuse the theft of lands and systematic destruction of cultures that settler gov'ts have engaged in?

You call forceful occupation as a result of war... theft, I do not.

Following that line of thought, no one has a claim on any land. I agree to that. However, land that is taken by force, becomes the other peoples land, sad as that is, it happens. It, that being war and or the forceful occupation as a result of war, is sad but it is intrinsic to the human condition and are shared by most cultures.

War, is war. Claiming that there are racial reasons for said war, when there are none, allows for the demonization of those who engaged in said war. It is a feel good tactic and gains nothing.

The OP seems to have wanted to discuss the treatment of the indigenous population by settlers, however it seems that the OP and resulting posts from said team, has confused the cultural interactions of the settlers and the indigenous population with the actions forced on the indigenous population after forceful occupation of the same by said settlers.

Should one want to discuss the cultural interactions of the settlers and the indigenous population, then one would talk about the first contact scenarios, the various tribes involved, the interactions that came from said first contact.

One would look at the form and timeline of how the peaceful contact turned into conflict, how that occurred, the reasons for said conflict, etc.


Should one want to discuss the actions forced on the indigenous population, after forceful occupation by settlers, then one would be talking about the associated morals and ethics regarding the rights and humane treatment of a conquered people.

Should one just want to say the 'white man did bad things because he is a white man', well then, I would have little interest in such a racists point of view.

[Pants-of-dog]

No, I concentrate on just settler colonialism, as used by the OP and by direct quotation from the reference material provided by the OP.

Did they engage in racism and capitalism?

One pillar of white supremacy is the logic of slavery.
This logic renders black people as inherently enslaveable—as nothing more than property.
This logic is the anchor of capitalism.
That is, the capitalist system ultimately commodifies all workers: one’s own person becomes a commodity that one must sell in the labour market while the profits of one’s work are taken by somebody else.

Said tribes used slaves for personal gain, both by profiting on the slaves work and by trading said slaves services, or the slave for personal gain. As per the definition of capitalism, in regards to slavery, said tribes engaged in capitalism, in regards to slavery.

Indigenous people did not engage in a slave trade to such an extent that a whole industry and economy were based on it. As your link says:

Pre-contact forms of slavery were generally distinct from the form of chattel slavery developed by Europeans in North America during the colonial period.[2] European influence greatly changed slavery used by Native Americans. As they raided other tribes to capture slaves for sales to Europeans, they fell into destructive wars among themselves, and against Europeans.[2]

This, we can say that, in terms of supporting a capitalist economy, there is no similarity between indigenous practices and settler practices. For example, your link clearly states that there was no buying or selling of slaves in indigenous cultures. Since there was literally no market for slaves, there was no way to base an entire industry on slaving. Moreover, there was nowhere near the numbers where the entire economy of a region, like the southern US, to develop an entire economy around slavery.

I think a lot of the resistance to acknowledging the effects of slavery is similar to the resistance to acknowledging the effects of taking land from indigenous groups: it is partly economic. In both cases, people would have to acknowledge that the economic privilege they currently enjoy is based on taking from others.

Thanks for giving me an opportunity to point this out.

Individual tribe members owned items privately, they sold/traded said items for profit. Given the basic terms of capitalism, said indigenous people engaged in both commerce, capitalism.

"Capitalism is an economic system in which capital assets are privately owned and items are brought to market for profit."

You might want to read up on Neo Tribal Capitalism.

No. It was not capitalism. There was no privately owned means of production. There was no division between the owner of the business and the worker. There was no corporate personhood. Ceremonies like the potlatch specifically opposed accumulation of capital.

While there was a huge variety of different economic systems (due to the huge number and difference among indigenous groups), we can say that there was no capitalism as we know it, especially in the exploitative sense that enriches colonialism. Since indigenous groups were (and are) land based, indigenous groups did not take the riches of one nation, and then use those riches to enrich the colonising nation. The current gov'ts of Canada and the US are getting rich right now off the resources that legally belong to indigenous groups. There was no comparable group of indigenous people using their economic leverage to exploit other nations and take their wealth.

Thank you for giving me another opportunity to point out how settler colonialism is different from the barter and trade used by indigenous people.

The OP did not mention black white slavery issues. Tribes did indeed think their tribe was better, thus their 'right' to enslave members of other tribes.

From your link:

Native American groups often enslaved war captives whom they primarily used for small-scale labor.[2] Some, however, were used in ritual sacrifice.[2] While little is known, there is little evidence that the slaveholders considered the slaves as racially inferior; they came from other Native American tribes and were casualties of war.[2] Native Americans did not buy and sell captives in the pre-colonial era, although they sometimes exchanged enslaved individuals with other tribes in peace gestures or in exchange for redeeming their own members.[2] The word "slave" may not accurately apply to such captive people.[2] Most of these so-called Native American slaves tended to live on the fringes of Native American society and were slowly integrated into the tribe.

As you can see, your own link says that you have no evidence that racism played a role.

Once again, another difference.

You can find that here under: Slavery among Native Americans in the United States
The only difference being that tribes did not exploit slave labor on a large scale, then again we are discussing the concept of slavery.

You are incorrect. There is no mention whatsoever of indigenous people owning white slaves in that link of yours. Thus, your claim that slavery is a shared social construct between settlers and indigenous people is wrong. In fact, your link clearly, repeatedly, and explicitly points out that European contact radically changed the nature of slavery in North America.

In order to show the argument as a false dichotomy, one only need show that the points made in the argument, are not mutually exclusive.

What does that have to do with the fact that we are supposed to pretend that the oppression of indigenous peoples by settlers is exactly the same as some minor and non-oppressive prejudice that in no way affected white cultures?

The answer, without being painted into a corner, is: Indigenous people 'kidnapped' members of opposing tribes and forced them to learn different indigenous things in a systematic effort to erase the previous tribal culture.

No, they did not.

From your link:

In many cases, new tribes adopted captives to replace warriors killed during a raid.[2] Warrior captives were sometimes made to undergo ritual mutilation or torture that could end in death as part of a grief ritual for relatives slain in battle.[2] Some Native Americans would cut off one foot of captives to keep them from running away. Others allowed enslaved male captives to marry the widows of slain husbands.[2] The Creek, who engaged in this practice and had a matrilineal system, treated children born of slaves and Creek women as full members of their mothers' clans and of the tribe, as property and hereditary leadership passed through the maternal line. The children did not have slave status.[2] More typically, tribes took women and children for captives for adoption, as they tended to adapt more easily into new ways.

Marrying a captive into a tribe is not a way of systematically destroying the culture from which that captive came.

Ritual mutilation and torture, though reprehensible, is not a way of systematically destroying the culture from which that captive came.

Adopting captives as warriors of the tribe is also not a way of systematically destroying the culture from which that captive came.

Let us pretend for a second that your poorly researched and ahistorical attempt at an argument had a glimmer of truth in it. Would that then make all the exploitation and oppression suffered by indigenous people somehow fair? Would that rationalise the fact that we still have all the land we stole from them?

You could, it would be useless but you could.

It was common practice for tribes to raid other tribes for women, slaves and goods. No amount of 'white washing' will change that fact.

Raiding other tribes for women, slaves and goods is also not a way of systematically destroying the culture from which those captives came.

False. Indigenous peoples made ORAL treaties and then broke them.

False. Tribes that took lands away from other tribes did not give them back, they may have negotiated those lands for some other gain, but they did not give them back, nor did they consider spoils earned from forceful occupation as illegal.

Please provide evidence for these claims. If it is as useful to me as your last source, you will definitely deserve my traditional thank you.

This does not follow the outline made by the OP and thus, for this debate, is a non issue.

As long as we agree that indigenous people do not still force white people off their land in this day and age, like settlers continue to do to indigenous communities.

You may consider the fact that settler colonialism is ongoing as irrelevant. But the truth is that this is yet another difference between the conflicts that took place among indigenous people and settler colonialism: the former stopped centuries ago, and settler colonialism is happening right now.

False. The James town massacre is a good example. There were no other such settlements, the argument being that each time said tribes attacked singular settlements without the knowledge of other settlements, they were engaging in genocide.

That is the best you can do?

By that logic, the My Lai massacre was genocide.

From your link:

Opechancanough did not finish off the colony. Instead he withdrew his warriors, believing that the English would behave as Native Americans would when defeated: pack up and leave, or learn their lesson and respect the power of the Powhatan.[19] Following the event, Opechancanough told the Patawomecks, who were not part of the Confederacy and had remained neutral, that he expected "before the end of two Moones there should not be an Englishman in all their Countries."[20] He misunderstood the English colonists and their backers overseas.

Wow. For someone supposedly contemplating the entire destruction of a people, he really seemed to rely on not killing everyone as part of his strategy. Your link not only shows that this specific example was not an act of total extermination, but also that the tradition at that time among those indigenous groups was also one of war without genocide.

False. Indigenous people had no problem killing whole tribes of other nations, for land, hunting areas, etc.

Not according to the text I quoted from your link.

Tribes were in a constant state of war with other tribes. As nomadic hunter gatherers they were competing over hunting grounds, with the stronger tribes vying over fertile areas. I see no reason to provide evidence regarding tribal conflicts with other tribes, not when the fact is common knowledge.

How about you provide evidence that tribes did not fight other tribes in long drawn out wars, mass wars, etc.

Or even answer the above questions I posed to you...

Stop asking for things that are common simple knowledge, especially when you would NEVER do so yourself.

Why? If I ask enough questions, then people post evidence that refutes their claims, like you.

By the way, hunter gatherer societies would never kill everyone in other hunter gatherer societies. That would basically destroy the accumulated knowledge of how to hunt and gather in that area.

I have shown that said tribes engaged in all of the points made in the OP, toward other tribes and the settlers.

My point is not to "excuse settler colonialism", but to show the argument that settler colonialism was prompted by expansion and took the form of forceful occupation. Not prompted by racial constructs. Unless of course you can show that the settlers left England with the express goal of killing the "red people" and taking their land. Yet, of course you can not, because this is not the case.

No, you haven't shown that indigenous conflict was anything like settler imperialism.

Now, if settler colonialism was not prompted by expansion and took the form of forceful occupation, then it must just be a HUGE COINCIDENCE that it ended up in exactly that and IT JUST SO HAPPENED that the settler gov'ts and communities made lots of money off it.

If someone has the opportunity and the motive for a crime and happens to profit incredibly from a crime, it may be reasonable to assume they committed the crime.

You call forceful occupation as a result of war... theft, I do not.

Following that line of thought, no one has a claim on any land. I agree to that. However, land that is taken by force, becomes the other peoples land, sad as that is, it happens. It, that being war and or the forceful occupation as a result of war, is sad but it is intrinsic to the human condition and are shared by most cultures.

War, is war. Claiming that there are racial reasons for said war, when there are none, allows for the demonization of those who engaged in said war. It is a feel good tactic and gains nothing.

The OP seems to have wanted to discuss the treatment of the indigenous population by settlers, however it seems that the OP and resulting posts from said team, has confused the cultural interactions of the settlers and the indigenous population with the actions forced on the indigenous population after forceful occupation of the same by said settlers.

Should one want to discuss the cultural interactions of the settlers and the indigenous population, then one would talk about the first contact scenarios, the various tribes involved, the interactions that came from said first contact.

One would look at the form and timeline of how the peaceful contact turned into conflict, how that occurred, the reasons for said conflict, etc.

Should one want to discuss the actions forced on the indigenous population, after forceful occupation by settlers, then one would be talking about the associated morals and ethics regarding the rights and humane treatment of a conquered people.

Should one just want to say the 'white man did bad things because he is a white man', well then, I would have little interest in such a racists point of view.

So, you're saying it does excuse the theft of lands and systematic destruction of cultures that settler gov'ts have engaged in.

[U184]

I have work and a 4 month old baby (my Son) to take care of and will come back to this as I am able. I just wanted you to know it will be a few days before I can get back to the forum.

Both of you enjoy your time together and congratulations!

[Pants-of-dog]

Thank you.

Enjoy your time with your son.

[quetzalcoatl]

If you live in a settler colonial state, you benefit from all of these factors, as they maintain the supposed legitimacy of that state. Merely thinking these things are bad, without doing anything to actively change them, means nothing and maintains colonialism.

Doing what, precisely? Or even approximately? I'm quite serious.

If you want to be rid of capitalism, I'm on board. What is it you have in mind?

As for the settler/colonial question, it's way too late. The deed is irreversibly done, and the only remaining mitigation is preventing further destruction of native peoples. Once the settler/colonialism paradigm has morphed into an entrenched multi-generational nation state, you are left with no recourse. Shitouttaluck is the technical term. Reconquering the continent is not possible. It doesn't matter who benefits from what, since only the colonial/settler legal framework remains to deal with questions of ownership.