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Comment by hhernandez | Hacker News Reader

"Indigenous Nations" are ethnotribal-pseudostates. They are racist and problematic. Claiming that some land is "Native Land" is the same as claiming some land is "White land".

This is not flamebait. The reservation system is a relic of a time when both the white European settlers AND the Natives saw themselves as separate enough to be unable to live together in a single Nation.

It is time we undo these artificial racial separations.

As for my claim that asserting the existence of Native Land is equivalent to asserting the existence of White Land, well, if we choose to treat people equally, why would certain prohibitions applied to one race not apply equally to others? If we decide that White land is a racist concept, which it is, how can we not apply that same reasoning to everyone else, unless we are racially targeting White people?

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Funnily enough, we tried disestablishing the reservation systems. It was the Native Americans who objected to that.

Can you explain further? I don’t see how you reach your conclusion from your premise. Or, how you reach your premise at all.

I do want to hear more from more versed people since I hear arguments in favour of indigenous rights that are variations of pro-(insert your ethnogroup) rights. Why are some pro-ethno rights alright and others not? Is it that because some ethnogroups are considered in disadvantage and hence deserving special rights?

I understand the concept Affirmative Action, is this what we are talking about?

"Some ethnogroups are considered in disadvantage" is one way to put it, but it's minimizing it. We're talking about groups that were specifically targeted for their ethnicity: murdered, raped, disenfranchised, and exiled (with no hyperbole).

You can't decimate a group based on ethnicity and then ask why they deserve special treatment for their ethnicity. Further, they're not even getting special treatment- they are having the sovereignty and jurisdiction our _own system_ assigned them validated and reaffirmed after having it unlawfully stolen from them.

You can argue that a tribal government should adopt open, non-ethnocentric policies, but that is their decision to make, not ours.

First of all, there's a complication here in that some Indian reservations were created by the Indian nations themselves (particularly in the Pacific Northwest), while others were created as part of the genocide of Indians carried out by Europeans in the Americas.

So let's focus first on the second category. Imagine that some people from elsewhere showed up, rounded up you and all your relatives and everybody else living within a 400 mile radius, killed 80% of them, then marched the rest to a patch of land you'd never seen before and said "you'll be living here now, it's yours in perpetuity". Then a hundred or more years go by, and the descendants of those people say to your descendants "Well, actually, that land we said was yours isn't really yours, and so the problems with resources, jobs, social order, purpose and meaning you folks have had for a while are going to get worse".

And then someone shows up and says "why should these particular ethnic groups get treated differently from any other?"

If you then turn your attention to the self-created reservations, the story is a bit different. Now imagine that some newcomers show up in your part of the world. They seem ready to fight, and you've heard stories from people who have travelled east over the mountains that they are brutal nasty SOBs. The newcomers say that they are ready to strike a deal, so you decide that this makes more sense. You tell them that they are welcome to come and live in this area, but that you want a treaty that recognizes that you will reserve areas for your own people, along with certain distributed rights like fishing. The newcomers sign the deal, apparently quite happy with it. 200 years later, your descendants realize that the treaty rights are no longer recognized, and that the newcomers have changed everything so much with their logging, mining and dams that even the original terms of the treaty don't much sense any more.

And then someone shows up and wonders why your people should treated any differently from anyone else.

I see, so it's akin to a breach of contract your second scenario. How is this controversial then?

I don't know. Maybe ask the state and federal DOJ's that have consistently fought against enforcement of treaties for more than a century. Or the many Americans who view the treaties as worth less than toilet paper.

Not the original commenter, but what I'm taking from it is that the notion of land ownership was/is foreign to indigenous people. Given that, using the term native land can be misrepresenting native history. I'm not sure what the alternative verbiage would be to describe an area has inhabited by an indigenous tribe. Urban Native Era, a pretty large Native movement/brand, holds the slogan "You Are On Native Land" and I believe they are holding themselves to a pretty high standard of racial sensitivity.

"indigenous people" comprises hundreds of tribes, with distinct cultures and beliefs. Talking about what was or wasn't a "foreign concept" in that context is like doing so for Africans or the kind of Indians that Columbus intended to find.

It's difficult to come to an objective conclusion because so much of what's believed and reported about native culture is often done through appropriate by the descendents of European settlers, rather than the natives themselves, and a lot of mythologizing, fetishizing and stereotyping has taken place over the years as a result. One should at least be wary of sweeping "just so" truisms about historically oppressed people.

Anecdotally, I was able to find some evidence to the contrary[0], and I would expect the actual truth to vary according to tribe.

[0]https://daily.jstor.org/yes-americans-owned-land-before-colu...

[1]https://mises.org/wire/did-indians-understand-concept-privat...

I agree, I do think it is disingenuous to make a blanket statement on Native American's knowledge of land ownership and border establishment. I was merely interpreting what the original comment said.

Given your points, is there a more correct way to define the lands once inhabited by Native peoples?

I strenuously disagree with that part of hhernandez's premise and I don't think "native lands" is actually problematic at all. It's just a generic, umbrella term to me. You could say tribal lands, First Nations lands, aboriginal lands, it's all the same.

It's fundamentally irrelevant anyway to the immediate questions; the land rights they have were assigned by our own system and have been unlawfully disregarded.

It is a very widely accepted notion (among everyone who matters) that ethnostates have no place in the modern world. Hell, it is nearly as universally accepted that the very concept of "ethnicity" is problematic. So why should it not be applied in these cases? Why do some groups deserve their own land, but others don't? Either we all do or nobody does.

> If we decide that White land is a racist concept, which it is, how can we not apply that same reasoning to everyone else

I think there's a pretty obvious difference between referring to land in historical North America as "Native land" and calling it "White land." And the specific label doesn't matter much, you could say "European land" or "colonized land" and the point remains unchanged.

Your comment seems like the standard appeal to "colorblindness," as if one group of people can invade or otherwise oppress another group, actively set up a vastly unequal distribution of resources and freedoms, and then claim that the only way forward is to deliberately ignore the history and even the existence of the different groups. But of course, to ignore those now is to explicitly support the status quo, and the status quo is still dominated by the historical unequal distribution of resources and freedoms between the groups.

What happened in the past, good or bad, is unchangeable. The only way forward is a colorblind approach as building specific policies around race simply encourage further racial division and entrenchment.

Preventing racial discrimination (a good thing) should not lead into encouraging racial division, but unfortunately our well meaning desire to be equitable often causes that to happen.

I'd concur, a colorblind approach would have detrimental effects to indigenous people. Colorblindness leads to ignorance and turns a blind eye to the past when working for a fair future. There's a great journal article on this exact subject:

Fryberg, S. A., & Stephens, N. M. (2010). When the world is colorblind, American Indians are invisible. Psychological Inquiry, 21, 115-119. doi: 10.1080/1047840X.2010.483847

PDF: https://www.nicolemstephens.com/uploads/3/9/5/9/39596235/34_...

> What happened in the past, good or bad, is unchangeable. The only way forward is a colorblind approach as building specific policies around race simply encourage further racial division and entrenchment.

Of course that's definitely not the only way forward. You can fix unequal distributions of resources by, well, redistributing the resources, which requires acknowledging the existence of different groups and the history of how those groups have distributed resources among themselves. And note that acknowledging the existence of a social construct that distinguishes people into different groups does not imply condoning that social construct.

It's not that radical. If a thief steals my car, the way forward is to recognize who is the thief and who is the victim, and to redistribute the resources accordingly. That does not "simply encourage further division and entrenchment between thieves and victims of theft," or if it does, I think that's okay. We don't say "hey, I'm blind to the differences between thieves and victims, we're all just human beings."

The problem isn't remediation for an injustice. The problem is the overt and explicitly racial language and philosophy behind your arguments for remediation. The problem is the inability to remediate history. There is no such thing as cosmic justice.

Are you saying that, unlike other injustices where we as a society generally approve of at least attempting to correct the injustice, this particular injustice is unique, and we shouldn't even attempt to remediate? Or do you oppose all attempts to correct past injustices because "cosmic justice" doesn't exist? I don't hope for cosmic justice, I think justice is up to us humans.

Nothing about my argument relies on racial language or philosophy, any more than my argument for returning stolen property relies on "'thief'-like language or philosophy." My argument for remediation is simply that the injustice occurred, and I think our society should attempt to correct this past injustice just like other past injustices.

> Nothing about my argument relies on racial language or philosophy.

It does because you're relying on racial identity to determine who pays and who receives rather than who stole and who was stolen from. The matter of who did what to whom is "settled" in the sense that all parties are dead.

> I don't hope for cosmic justice, I think justice is up to us humans.

What is your solution to the "stolen land" problem?

What is your solution to the "stolen land" problem?

I am by no means an expert, but I think the recent SC case is probably the right approach. I don't see why the US government should not be held to the treaties they signed - I mean, the court still relies on law settled centuries ago.

And if the gov't can't hold up their end, then restitution is reasonable. However, I wouldn't restitute based on today's value just because the tribal land is Manhattan now. But it would seem fair to make them whole based on if the treaty had been fairly followed.

> It does because you're relying on racial identity to determine who pays and who receives rather than who stole and who was stolen from.

I did not say or imply this.

The question remains. How do you solve the problem of historical injustice? Focusing specifically on land stolen from Native Americans by European settlers.

There probably isn't an easy, simple or universally acceptable answer.

But... the US taking its treaty obligations with native peoples as seriously as it does with other nations would be a good start.

As I said yesterday in our conversation, we are in agreement there but I'm not quite sure it solves the problem. A "good start" isn't a solution to the problem and even the "good start" requires enforcing some form of racial governance model otherwise its just another county of the United States.

The situation is at the very least complex and will likely require a "morally impure" solution.

It wouldn't solve the problem, but it would solve a problem. And the USG refusing to act in good faith is a pretty big problem. Any mutually beneficial solutions would be at best infeasible or at worse impossible without at least that.

Yes, it would be messy and complex. International relations already are, why would intranational relations be different?

Historical injustice is not something that people living today are responsible for. Therefore the "problem" of historical injustice is best solved by people today forgiving the people from the past and moving on with their lives.

I don't have the experience to suggest specifics, but I think more government aid programs targeted to Native American communities is a good start. I don't pretend that there's some way of perfectly undoing the land distribution, but I also don't claim that there is absolutely nothing that can or should be done.

If you want to provide government aid to poor communities then by all means do it. But let's not pretend that welfare even approximates a solution to the problem. There is likely no solution.

Well... aside from letting go of past injustices and instead focusing on some better future. Which isn't really a solution at all since it relies on the permanent good will of all future generations.

There is almost certainly no perfect solution. I think everyone is in agreement there. "If you want to provide government aid to poor communities then by all means do it" is major progress over complete resignedness.

> Well... aside from letting go of past injustices and instead focusing on some better future.

This is a false dichotomy. I'm not suggesting attempting to change the past, of course. I am proposing we try to improve things in the future and allow ourselves to be informed by the past.

The concept of a colorblind approach ignores the existence of historical context. One might as well take a disability-blind approach to whether buildings need wheelchair ramps.

People today are generally not limited by the historical context from which they come. Your parents' individual personalities and ability to raise you does matter, but broader historical context matters very little, unless we try to make it so and that generally just causes conflict.

People in wheelchairs are on the other hand affected by the presence or absence of wheelchair ramps.

Dude, go visit the Pine Ridge Reservation and then come back here and say "prople today are generally not limited by the historical context from which they come.

Or the Standing Rock reservation, or ...

Or your local BLM protest. The Brookings Institution has a good survey of the relevant history, here: https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2020/02/27/examining...

Why does that article not address the most dominant cause of the wealth gap, which is broken homes and blacks dropping out of school, not going to college etc?

That's an issue of personal choices more than anything else.

The reservations themselves are responsible for the deplorable state of the people living on them.

If the Natives had integrated a few generations ago they would be far better off today.

Dude, I'm sorry for you.

> Your parents' individual personalities and ability to raise you does matter, but broader historical context matters very little

Broader historical context plays part in what defines your parents' personalities and ability to raise children in the first place. You're trying so very hard to abstract it away in order to solve this problem but many of us know this won't work.

Please try to make high quality comments on Hacker News. Here are the public guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

There are plenty of high quality, _critical_ comments and discussion to be made on this submission and broader subject - why eschew that in favor of flamebait?

edit: You've since edited your comment, but I still think it could be substantially improved if you want an interesting (and provoking!) discussion.

I don't agree that's its flamebait, and I am even skeptical of the concept of flamebait as one person's flamebait is another's honest opinion.

In fact I think the comment in question is a strait forward and honest opinion that is just missing the usual euphemisms and massaging that usually accompany such controversial topics.

And I also think that questioning whether tribal pseudo sub-states should exist is completely relevant to a discussion about tribal reservations.

The original comment has changed significantly. It was much more terse in its initial posting. I think another important factor to keep in mind here is age of account.

I also read it in it's initial form, and my reply was based on that.

I hate to detail so much from the article content. I strongly disagree with the flagging of that comment. Accusing a nation of being a racist ethno-state is completely on topic, even if controversial. And we regularly see the same accusations levied at America or Israel (I would not want those removed either). I fear a double standard is developing.

Is there any way to refute a flagging? I think the original comment spawned some great conversation which relies on it being visible.

If you had more karma, you could "vouch" for the comment. If enough people were to do so, the [flagged] status would disappear. Failing that, you could email the mods to draw their attention to unfairly flagged comments. They do have good taste, however, so they're likely to leave the comment in question [0] flagged. Unlike IRL, the system at HN is rigged against racist dog whistles. If one is ever tempted to write the sentence "This is not flamebait.", one should think more deeply.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23794262

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