Hacker News Reader

Comment by vbezhenar | Hacker News Reader

I thought americans won war against indians. Why would they have any obligations? It's the other way around, those who lost the war pay contributions.

View on HN

The native peoples of north american were not a contiguous group. Plenty of first nations were allies of the US. Of those that were variously at war with the US, conflicts resolved in treaties dictating new borders, not some form of abject right stripping subjugation or medieval rent seeking.

The idea that as victors, the treaties you entered into with the opposing side are somehow not meant to be upheld is not a righteous notion. The US' repeated violation of promises made to the various first nations is a detestable part of our nation's history. That modern jurisprudence has starting to uphold treaties our country entered into and never formally revoked is a good thing. A nation should be its word, not merely a bludgeon.

Never heard of first nations but as somebody who grew up around Indian country I think we should approach this area with a little more scholarship and learn about what actually happened instead of jumping to conclusions.

I hate this kind of disingenuous bullshit response.

You grew up in such an area and yet you've never heard the term "first nations"?

Isn’t it a more Canadian term? First time I heard it as an American was in relation to Canadian tribes.

I don't know. I grew up in the US (Pacific NW) and it's been a common term for at least my whole life. Same with its synonym, "First Peoples".

Yeah, I thought it was a Canadian thing as well. Coming from an area that was heavily populated by Indians, it was a relatively large part of the curriculum back in my younger days. And I never heard that term in relation to Native Americans.

I'd be a bit reluctant to quickly judge someone's exposure to the various terminology around this topic. CGP Grey has a good video on the terminology as used in the US [0]. From the video: "Talking to people over the last [sigh] 5 years revealed a strong correlation: the closer a person had ever been to a reservation, the more likely they would be to use the word 'indian'. The farther, the more likely they would be to use the word 'Native American'." and also "At the time of writing [this video/2019], 'Indian' is used by Indians on Indian reservations to describe themselves"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kh88fVP2FWQ

Firstly, I actually have no idea if there was a war with this particular tribe that resulted in this particular treaty. That's not always the way it went; sometimes it was just diplomacy and trade (with the odd group of assholes sprinkling violence in for fun; it was rarely 100% peaceful, even when it was mostly peaceful).

Second, what do you think winning a war means?

It's not always -- usually? almost never? -- a matter of one side eliminating or crushing the other to the point of abject subjugation. Rather, once there's a clear "winner", the losing side is usually willing to accept a unfavorable treaty that gives the victor whatever land or trade benefits they were after, and in return for the losing side not saying "fuck it" and trying to take as many people as possible with them, the winning side generally agrees to leave existing power structures largely intact and leave them some part of what's theirs.

> It's not always -- usually? almost never? -- a matter of one side eliminating or crushing the other to the point of abject subjugation.

If you decide they're going to live then yes. You need to show them that if they can't or won't unconditionally surrender and change their ways then they will in fact be abjectly subjugated and their lives will be miserable. Eventually enough of them will agree that it's not worth it. That was more or less the the USA approach with Japan in WW2. The thought being that they will fight to the death if they feel there's any sliver of hope. So nukes were dropped which showed there was not and that it wasn't worth fighting anymore.

The other option is to just slaughter them. This has been used more frequently throughout history.

While the Potsdam Declaration called upon Japan to surrender unconditionally, it did, in fact, lay out the conditions for the surrender, including that the armed forces of Japan would be permitted to disarm and return home, they would retain sovereignty of their four principal islands, and that the Japanese people would not be enslaved or destroyed as a nation.

After the atomic bombings -- and the Soviet advance -- Japan accepted these conditions, unconditionally, instead of holding out for better terms, like retaining conquered territory.

(Edit: Now, if you want unconditional surrender, the German Instrument of Surrender, now there's an unconditional surrender.)

Wars often end in treaties. Is the USA a country that abides by treaties, or not?

https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/19pdf/18-9526_9okb.pdf

JUSTICE GORSUCH delivered the opinion of the Court.

On the far end of the Trail of Tears was a promise. Forced to leave their ancestral lands in Georgia and Alabama, the Creek Nation received assurances that their new lands in the West would be secure forever. In exchange for ceding “all their land, East of the Mississippi river,” the U. S. government agreed by treaty that “[t]he Creek country west of the Mississippi shall be solemnly guarantied to the Creek Indians.” Treaty With the Creeks, Arts. I, XIV, Mar. 24, 1832, 7 Stat. 366, 368 (1832 Treaty). Both parties settled on boundary lines for a new and “permanent home to the whole Creek nation,” located in what is now Oklahoma. Treaty With the Creeks, preamble, Feb. 14, 1833, 7 Stat. 418 (1833 Treaty). The government further promised that “[no] State or Territory [shall] ever have a right to pass laws for the government of such Indians, but they shall be allowed to govern themselves.” 1832 Treaty, Art. XIV, 7 Stat. 368.

There's not one single way to end a war, and not all treaties are the result of war. Regardless, the US, and the colonies before the US existed, fought wars with many Indian tribes. But in most cases, either to end wars or to avoid them, treaties were made between the United States government and the various Indian tribes to define how the entities would deal with each other. Those treaties, like any international treaty, give obligations and responsibilities to both parties. If the tribe still exists, then the obligations still exist.

This didn't even apply in World War II. You should google "Marshall Plan."

In the case of Canada, the ‘war’ was won/avoided by giving them concessions and treaties, that were reneged on and violated by the colonial government.

The current government tend towards ‘truth and reconciliation’ is an attempt (or at least a gesture) to investigate and rectify these wrongs and treaty violations.

I’m sure the same holds in the US in areas where there was not a wholesale genocide.

And the results in Canada offer positive and negative examples to choose from when it comes to the current governments approach to indigenous issues.

I only say that to caution advocating for other countries to adopt the approach Canada has taken. I am of the view there were a lot of classic examples of well intentioned policies with disastrous results.

At the same time, I don’t know enough about the issue to offer alternative policy without worrying about the sensitivity of the issue.

I was neither praising nor deriding Canada’s approach, I was providing context for the parent.

The logic of ‘conquest->hegemony’ does not quite work in parts of North America because the ‘conquest’ was not a traditional one, but rather because of duplicity and breaking treaties, which- in a rules based order- typically have methods of restitution.

Parts of the USA, like the Russian conquest of Eurasia, were traditional conquests where the invaders drove out the inhabitants by force, but that is not a universal narrative in the European colonization of North America.

white guilt

Reply on news.ycombinator.com