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Comment by mquander | Hacker News Reader

Well, I'm not sufficiently satisfied with my historical knowledge to hang around and argue this point with you, but I would point out that Moldbug defends it vigorously. If you can't be arsed to wade through his lengthy mumblings, you can CTRL-F "The fundamental observation of colonialism is that non-European societies thrive under normal European administration, at least in comparison to their condition under native rule" in the above essay and read for a bit from there. His conclusion is that "...to assert that their average quality of government service was anything but far better than either their predecessors, or their successors, is a political distortion of history which I have no trouble at all in comparing to Holocaust denial."

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Right. It's worked out soooo well for Native Americans here in the US. Except for the whole smallpox thing. And the reservations. And the massacres. And the Interior Department.

Yes but now they have a better "average quality of government service."

Most folks I know living on reservations would debate that. Just saying, it's a strong claim to make.

I was being facetious, I might have said, "sure the government service is great, if you survived."

don't get sick after june http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31210909/ns/health-health_care/

> Right. It's worked out soooo well for Native Americans here in the US. Except for the whole smallpox thing. And the reservations. And the massacres. And the Interior Department.

The US didn't colonize NA land. We took it and "gave" them reservations, which we mostly ignore.

They'd be better off as colonies or independent. As colonies, we'd care about getting a return on our investment. As independent, they'd benefit from whatever development that they did.

Only vaguely related, but I've heard it explained that the term "reservation" derives from the idea that it's land that the Indians "reserved" for themselves, rather than ceding in treaties.

Now, that's of course a distortion of the forces at work that caused the so-called reservation of lands to be necessary, but there's also some contemporary value to Indian leaders in restoring that sense of meaning to the word today.

Well, I can tell you that the land picked for reservations was not picked by the tribes. Mostly it is not the best or nicest. Some tribes got lucky because of what was discovered later. I would need a source cited who thinks this interpretation of the word would be good for a tribal leader.

The source cited is me. I think it would have value as a method of strengthening a sense of autonomy.

There's a lot of difference in the idea of land someone else reserved for you vs land you reserved for yourself.

The place where the land is will not be changing, but it's possible to change the perception of what that land represents, and thus the benefits of that land in a political sense.

That is not part of the history, nor is does it jive with some of the ongoing land claim. Changing wording and trying to convince people that something that didn't happen did does nothing except base your leadership and cause in a lie. Changing perception is only a good thing when it brings you closer to the truth of a situation, not clouds future decisions in more fog.

The point is that it is in fact a part of the history.

Perhaps only nominally so originally, but that doesn't mean it can't be used to advantage now.

Denying the truth doesn't motivate or cause cohesion. A vision of a brighter future with opportunity and prosperity does.

No, the interpretation of the word reservation was not the historical meaning. Changing words to mean more pleasing things is still not telling the truth.

This is tangent to my arguments against using the new term "differently enabled" as opposed to "disabled". "Disabled" indicates that there is a problem that society needs to spend some resources on to correct and fix. "Differently enabled" is some politically correct term that seems to mask a problem and make people feel ok when they shouldn't.

> The point is that it is in fact a part of the history.

No, it isn't. Native Americans didn't pick the land that they were sent.

In your terms, that land was reserved for them. It was NOT reserved by them.

While the initial idea of the word "reservation" may be true, usually the US government reneged on their promises and continued to move the Indians around to smaller and less desirable lands, while still maintaining the name "reservation". Also the idea of signing a contract, with the only alternative being annihilation doesn't really bode well for the idea that the Indians had a whole lot of choice in the matter.

Europeans colonized NA land. The Europeans descendants then colonists then declared independence, but that did not benefit the original inhabitants.

North America is a pretty unique case, in most places the locals weren't so completely wiped out (See: Africa, Asia). They also faired slightly better in South America (there are significant numbers of people of indigenous descent alive).

see: Belgian Congo. East Timor. post-colonial Africa including Biafra and Rwanda.

And even putting the genocides aside, look at South Africa under the Afrikaaners. Explain to me how this was a good thing for the colonized?

In the long run, South Africa has done quite well.

Those are all quite different from North America, in all cases, the indigenous people are still around and are going to be indefinitely. The Native American tribes are tiny, vastly outnumbered, and shrinking over time.

The blog post that so outraged you argued that colonial administration was better than the post-colonial regime, so I'm not sure if you're engaging with that and missing, or just raging.

North America sounds pretty similar to Australia to me in that regard.

Something that struck me both times I visited New Zealand was how strong and honestly respected Maori culture was. The Maori identity seemed to be much more positive and proud than the Aboriginal identity is in Australia. I'm not sure if we have an Australian equivalent of the Treaty of Waitangi (http://www.nzhistory.net.nz/politics/treaty/the-treaty-in-br...).

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