The Lakota: A Human Story
kirkcenter.org
kirkcenter.org
After a genocide and several centuries of discrimination, the American government continues to enact and enforce policies that lead to abject poverty on native reservations[1]. The relationship between the US government and native tribes is a disgusting example of how our elected officials have leveraged their power systemically against a minority group and abuses continue to this day[2]. These aren't just people in folk lore stories, they are living tribes condemned to poverty in barren swaths of land by our government.
In Colorado there is still a monument at the capitol in Denver and a prominent mountain named after one of the men that orchestrated the Sand Creek Massacre, an undeniably disgusting and heinous moment in our history.
[1]https://www.indigenouspeoples-sdg.org/index.php/english/ttt/... [2]https://www.vox.com/first-person/2019/9/23/20872713/native-a...
Lot of work ahead of us, it seems
They themselves complain about each other significantly less then people who dont engage with neither of those issues (But who like to use the other group to criticize the first one without engaging with history)
I feel GP is right to question what drives this, because the few that tangentially "take up the cause" are likely lacking a more useful outlet as well as driving further complacency.
In my experience, the symbol-focused people get pretty upset when people start trying to shift the conversation to understand the underlying causes of problems and questioning assumptions. Imagine walking into a funeral for someone who has died from the Therac-25 and you start talking about poor UI design, cultures where people don't stop to fix problems, and hardware interlocks. It would be pretty poor timing and people would get upset at you making excuses for incompetent doctors and greedy hospitals.
Now imagine that the entire sphere of public discourse is that funeral.
Symbol-focused people see risk assessment and systems-thinking as signs that someone is disloyal to the cause of dismantling systemic racism.
These activities visibly focus people on the wrong thing.
No, one does not block another...but there are only 24 hours in a day.
Plus, quite honestly, if I would seen advocates for better healthcare or better affordable school system complaining about the other issues being distracting to them, then it would sound like a good faith argument.
But, I have seen this opportunity cost argument being done by those who oppose one advocacy and don't practically care about the other. I mean, I am not doing anything activisty/charitable either, but I am not claiming it is because another cause starwed the oxygen or what not.
Well, the symbol folks actually do block change. As you say, there are only 24 hours in a day, but it gets worse when dealing with politicians and their schedules. If they can be seen as doing something by doing a low-cost thing, it is do and move on to the next thing. When actual action is demanded, it is a time consuming thing. Bills are hard work even with a staff.
The path to change is attention of politicians to writing bills to address the root problem. PR looks exactly like change but is much cheaper and often removes the problem from sight.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2014/03/13/5-ways-the-...
"Shawn Regan is a research fellow at the Property and Environment Research Center (PERC)”.
"Founded in 1980 by a handful of outdoor-oriented economists in Bozeman, Montana, PERC—the Property and Environment Research Center—is a conservation and research institute dedicated to free market environmentalism."
Free market environmentalism does not describe the position of most tribes in the US and I'm fairly sure that the vast majority consider allotment one of the major injustices and not something to repeat. Many tribes have been working to repurchase land that was lost due to allotment.
This is a book review. The book is 544 pages. This is just an enticing taste of what it contains.
In another thread earlier today I was talking about the book American Buffalo by Steven Rinella. He has a whole section dedicated to the demise of bison in water, mud, floods, and swamps. In one bit he mentions that an entire herd was killed when they ran into a river too deep to ford, resulting in a literal stream of tens of thousands of bison corpses floating down the river.
I live in Minnesota, the land of the great Anishinaabe tribes. I was surprised to learn that these Anishinaabe drove out the Lakota and sent them westward in 1750 in the aftermath of a bloody battle in the north of which Red Lake was named, because it ran with Lakota blood. It's a complex history and this is a tiny slice of it.
It’s a shame for both sides of the shameful misinterpreted history that people don’t, yes, acknowledge that native peoples had real wars and conflicts, and also that colonizers instigated and coordinated other conflicts that were either less likely or more brutal or both than they would’ve been otherwise.
I'm not saying that's definitely how I interpret it, but it's definitely a reasonable possibility. And I guess I wish more people here would at least try to read others' comments more charitably. At worst, your assumptions are right but you gave an opportunity for the other person to be better understood and for your own frustration level to pause before rising.
The Europeans killed 90 to 95% of indigenous people in the Americas, killing tens or hundreds of millions.
Yes, there was obviously war and conflict between indigenous communities. But it was not anywhere close to the scale the Europeans did to others.
https://indiancountrytoday.com/news/the-traumatic-true-histo...
The largest mass execution in US history, personally approved by Abraham Lincoln.
https://www.tolatsga.org/ojib.html
The (few) other histories there are also good:
[1] Remember, coal in England long before oil in America
Well, they really, really didn't like each other at a tribal level. Heck, when you start naming places for the people you killed there, its a bit in the hatred side.
EDIT: Not trying to endorse this kind of viewpoint at all, or support it but it is an explanation for how you can hate someone so much that you'd shoot them with an arrow twice.
I always hated recording knapping sites because the thousands of lost or partial pieces that they just didn't care to pick up are a pain to document.
It seems pretty clear that it's a demonstration of how badly defeated the enemy is... that the enemy is incapable of putting up the smallest bit of defense.
The nuances of the message being sent may be a mystery to us, but the high-level message seems pretty clear to me. Some of the possible aspects of the message are (1) demonstrating military his military prowess to his tribe (2) demonstrating his bravery to his tribe (3) increasing the shame felt by the enemy as he died (4) demonstrating his military prowess to surviving enemies to demoralize them.
If the primary intent of the message was to emotionally torture an enemy through shame in his dying moments, then contempt and hate would appear to be the primary motivators.
Shooting them twice with the same arrow would be like the modern equivalent of a 360 no scope in Call of Duty, demonstrating your "puha." See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counting_coup
What will future authors write about this event?
Funny but I have never seen genocide committed by white folk called a staggering success. If a white person said God gave white people Utah until the end of time we would think they are nuts, why is it any different when a native says the same?
> Over the course of the eighteenth century, the Lakota become a horse people. It takes generations, a huge expenditure of wealth, and day-long rides clinging onto wild and bucking horses until they break, but they do it, earlier than other tribes.
> [...]
> Hämäläinen brilliantly documents the transition from a largely hunter-gatherer-farmer society, settled in Mississippi River valleys, into a fully nomadic one. It’s a staggering success while it lasts; by the late 1860s, the average family owns upwards of twenty horses.
The transition to horse people and to a nomadic life is considered successful.
By omitting the preceding sentence you have allowed yourself to be misled about what the context is. The "staggering success" being referred to here is the transition of their society to a nomadic way of life, as facilitated by the introduction of horses.