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Comment by carlosjobim | Hacker News Reader

The fate of the native North Americans is one of the largest catastrophes in the history of humanity. Just as so many other times through human history when natives were displaced and replaced, whether by violent or non-violent means, or a mix of both.

Immigration doesn't change the fact of natives dwindling away or not. A nation is the native people, not a name on a map. The exceptions are the United States and other new world ex-colonies. But there was a very dear price paid in blood and tears to make them.

America has had almost no assimilation of immigrants into the cultures which existed there before. Very good arguments have been made that the Enlightenment (or Age of Reason) did originate from native North American ideas and ideals being brought to Europe through cultural exchange, but it's not assimilation on the part of the settlers.

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> America has had almost no assimilation of immigrants into the cultures which existed there before

That's almost a uniquely United States problem, not at all as big of an issue in most of the Americas. Only a few countries in the Americas have had their native population pretty much entirely wiped out without any assimilation whatsoever. The US is one of these few countries (Cuba and Hispaniola would be other examples of total replacement).

The rest has had large degree of intermixing or wholesale population preservation. Aspects of native culture is those countries were suppressed historically but are still preserved in some way to this day.

It's also very fair to say sovereign countries today can build a healthier immigration policy than 1500s Europeans with their extermination campaigns. I'd be the last to say that is an example to be followed.

More to the point here: Japan can be exclusively Japanese for another 200 years and die forever, or be Japanese + something for another 10 thousand years. Unlike 500 years ago, they get a choice.

Interesting! Could you point us towards where the "Very good arguments have been made that the Enlightenment (or Age of Reason) did originate from native North American ideas and ideals" can be found?

  The Native American democracy that the U.S. founders were most likely to know about was the Iroquois Confederacy.

~ https://theconversation.com/before-the-american-revolution-n...

and from other native groups you'll see many statements like:

~ https://collegefund.org/blog/democracy/democracy-is-rooted-i...

IIRC there's a lot of material about the North-North-American fur trade origins piggybacking onto existing Great Lakes and other regions trade networks with the French and the British picking up political and trade habits from those peoples.

( Not a scholar in the field, just a broad reader )

Yes! In the book The Dawn of Everything by David Graeber and David Wengrow. It covers a lot of other things, especially pre-history, but the part about native American influence on the enlightenment they have a lot of sources for. At least I was convinced.

Be aware that the book is a bit academically written and that they want to cover every base in each sentence instead of writing clearly to the point. So sometimes it is extremely interesting and sometimes frustrating and boring.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dawn_of_Everything

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