By what right did the the land belong to the native Americans? Do you think all the native tribes spilled out of Alaska and then neatly fitted themselves into mutually-recognized non-overlapping territories never to be disturbed?
Do the Alaskan natives own their land? I ask because they represent a separate and later migration. The original Alaskan natives are no longer around to dispute the matter as they were replaced by those who now are now called indigenous. This is reflected in their languages, which are unrelated to other indigenous languages in North and South America.
Likewise, the Native Americans who controlled the land before the US likely didn't have it gifted to them freely. Tribes were constantly at various stages of war with each other, and some wiped out completely.
Do they owe reparations to each other, too? And what about the ones that are completely gone?
All of the discussion of reparations and making good on centuries-past injustices always leaves out how it all gets swept under the rug if there are no decendents around to make claims.
If you apply the theory that any conquered land still eternally belongs to whoever it was conquered from, then almost everybody on Earth owes their land to someone else, since everyone is descended from conquerors. This includes the American natives, who warred and took land from each other frequently.
Does place X "really belong" to tribe A, who sold it to white people? Or to tribe B, who were previously conquered by tribe A? Or to tribe C, who were conquered by tribe B even before that? And so on.
It also shades quickly into nativist ideas that delegitimize immigrants since even after generations since they're not "really from" the place where they live. If white Americans aren't "really from" America, it's not hard to argue that e.g. black British aren't "really from" the UK and don't have a true right to exist there if the natives disagree.
If we're going to have any coherent framework around this at all, it has to include some duration of time after which people are considered naturalized to a land. I'm inclined to say that someone who was born in a place and lived there their whole life has a natural, native right to live there. But it's definitely open to discussion. What isn't open is the idea of eternal ethnic land rights. Nor is the unspoken but commonly-applied rule that whites have no exclusive rights to any place but everyone else owns the place they live in.
(The American example even ignores the complexities of settler/native interactions; it was by no means a one-sided conquest; they worked together, and traded, and involved each other in inter-white and inter-tribal conflicts on both sides for centuries. Whites acted very much like just another collection of tribes on the American political field for a long time; the only long-term diffrence was not moral at all, but simply the fact that they managed to succeed where the Lakota and Iroquois and others tried but failed.)
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?
Even that could be debated. Some tribes also subscribed to the right of conquest, such as the Lakota. Not a pretty thought but just thought it was worth mentioning.
It seems like you are trying to avoid the question. What gives indigenous peoples any moral high ground over later settlers? The indigenous* conquered land from each other and moved - an obvious fact which too often gets left out of the conversation. Then, the Europeans came along and possessed the lands for themselves. And you'll find the same story repeated on every corner of the earth. Continual occupation is just not a thing.
* As I've mentioned in another comment, true "indigenous" Alaskans are no more, having been replaced by an unrelated group of people in a later migration to the Americas.
You are here, so it is fortunate for you.
Or unfortunate, compared to those who are dead.
It all depends what angle is chosen.
>>Too often, Native claims to land are argued with, invalidated, or dismissed as far as “we’re all from somewhere else.”
I do not know of any other people(with exception of US and Russia, that have split Aleut lands between them) that _currently_ have claims on Aleut lands, so Aleut claims as primary claims are still very valid. The main issue is that Aleut numbers are small and dwingling to make that claim into independence - a top achievement to any people.
To be fair, this claim is argued mainly for any country, where migrants want to enter, because we are living in times, where US is going through "cultural revolution" and migrants are "new oppressed"(because true working class is too rich and independent and not stupid), whether they like it or not - their opinion is of no matter, where political influence is at play. Coincidentally some natives who play along also can gain something from it, but to an extent of course.
>>I am distrustful of genetic testing/results for the second to last paragraph there—we’ve really been nearly wiped out compared to e.g. Inupiat who still have a fair number of full blooded individuals. Aleuts were enslaved and carted across the coast of Alaska by Russians and our genetic history — to say little of oral history, traditions, and culture — is not perfectly clear as a result.
Judging from the contents of sapiens.org, they are making that statement as a sum of all natives of both Americas - not specifically from Beringia. More or less nowadays 50% of indigenous people have 50% European patrilinear lineage, though 10%+(more than native numbers) of non-native inhabitants carry native patrilinear lineages, so it is something that goes both ways.
In case of Aleutians, it was something, that made me realize, that Russian colonization was not as much different from rest of Siberia(where cossacks left wastelands of bodies that even nowadays are still not repopulated), and contradicts happy picture what can be gained from media, that tells about Russian times in Alaska. But, to be fair - let's not make myth, that Aleuts were peace loving people and that they dwingled, because they were peaceful - they dwingled in numbers, because Russians were more ruthless and had better weapons - Aleuts initially expanded, because they were better at something - including warfare.
Personally to me genetic results was shattering some myths, that I had and I could rediscover history of my own, as my relatives were afraid to talk about past. Also in USSR people were robbed of history and not allowed to have memory, so that is an awakening for me.
I think that understanding history, that can't be changed and not hiding from it is what makes strong people, as the truth and understanding of past is the only foundation on which to build future. Without understanding past, there is only repetition of the same errors - again and again. Even with all the might and power Russians are still in agony, as they can't built their own future and are making same mistakes, because time does not stand still and others who are learning from their mistakes and errors have grown, while Russians have learned nothing and are declining their own growth(and numbers), by living in glorious past - or rather still undecided on which glorious past to live in.
Well, anyway - I think, that nowadays Aleuts in US can do more, compared to Aleuts in Russia and it is up to youth if they want to be Aleuts in future or not - just the same as anywhere else. Yeah, I'm wondering if Aleuts of US are making contacts with Russian Aleuts, but then again - probably now it is a bad time to do so, as Russia is descending into totalitarian state again.
"Indian" land is a meaningless term. When the Sioux fought with the Anishnabe over the Great Plains, whom the Anishnabe occupied earlier than the Sioux, who deserves that land? Do we owe reparations to the Sioux or to the Anishnabe? Presumptively, another tribe controlled that territory before the Anishnabe. There never was this concept of "owned, stable land" until modern times. The way of the world was more like you only got to keep what you could defend. This is why Europe is dotted with massive castles. 1000 years ago, a Viking party could end your town's existence in a single raid. This map is not representative of what is "theirs by treaty". This map is a rough outline of rough territories (some notably overlapping among the individual tribes) from some arbitrary point in the past. It's not relevant in the year 2020, sorry to say. No more so than a map of individual territories of the Germanic tribes of 200 years ago. The native American tribes do enjoy semi-autonomy in various territories across the U.S. and have even contributed to the development of the United States, with native Americans fighting alongside all the other races in nearly every war we've ever engaged in, including the Civil War, Spanish-American War, World War I, and World War II. They are U.S. citizens and part of this country. Rewinding the clock 200 years is not helpful or productive.
Go back far enough and pretty much all land is stolen. It's not like the same native American tribes ruled parts of America since the dawn of man, they fought for territory all the time like everyone else.
Mapping out current or traditional native territories is an almost hopeless task.
e.g. The Eastern Shoshone were, at the time of early European contact, in Alberta. Their territory on this map doesn't even touch Canada. Why? They were forced out (with violence) by the Iron Confederacy long enough ago that they no longer claim any land in Canada.
Tribal territories change, often radically and especially so when nomadic tribes are involved. Hard, immutable, and sharply defined borders are a modern construction. If territory wasn't actively defended, it was free for the taking. Some territories might have had such plentiful resources that they could be shared in peace, but most probably had to be fought for. That's why you see so many territories overlapping. Several tribes may have used a territory and still consider it "theirs", even if their control was never solid.
We tend to think of the land as offering limitless bounty to hunter-gatherers, but just the opposite was true. Compared to land under agricultural or pastoral use, even well-tended land used by hunter-gatherers was far less productive. If another tribe moved into your tribe's territory, that meant less food for your tribe. So, you had to defend your territory. Constantly.
New Guinea is a good place to study if you want to learn about traditional hunter gatherer societies because tribal territories and conflict remained distinct well into the 20th century and have been studied extensively. As late as the mid 20th century, when two strangers met it was customary for them to sit down and try to establish the nature of their relationship. Who was on whose land? Was the person who was not on their own land in any way related to anyone who belonged on that land? They'd recount genealogies for hours towards this end. It was serious business because, if the trespasser had no connection to anyone in the territory he had entered, the other person was socially obligated to run them out of the territory with violence.
Today, we mostly think of strangers as potential friends or, at least, people bringing money to local businesses. Hunter gatherers had to think of strangers as a resource drain that needed to be cut off for the good of their society. It's an alien way of thinking that we've largely forgotten, but it's reflected in this map. People died violently practically everywhere you see territories overlapping, and those borders are just a snapshot in time.
As for peaceful co-existence... This is a modern myth. Hunter-gather societies in New Guinea, although they had no large-scale war or pitched battles, had constant, internecine, low-intensity tribal conflict. The death-toll due to violence of this kind of conflict adds up over time. Jared Diamond, in one of his books, estimated that deaths due to violent conflict in the tribes he was studying was actually higher in just the first half of the twentieth century than in Germany through two world wars. The world wars were catastrophic technological horrors, but they had a start and an end. Not so with tribal conflict. It just goes on.
At least with the native tribes in Alaska, many of their land holdings are managed under corporations[1], so I think it's fair to consider it land ownership rather than just "nations", although there are much more restrictions to the shares of these corporations than what is typical. [2]
I get the US made an agreement. I was talking more of a general principle than this specific case.
I have seen several comments here saying the US was wrong to take land through violent means and as such the US should return the land.
When the natives did the same thing to other natives nobody seems to think they should return it to the people they took it from.
There is a double standard and I don't like it. If we are going to return the land we should return it to the original inhabitants. Of course there isn't actually a way to figure out who occupied the land thousands of years ago.
I am not an expert in Native American history but the Creek Nation are almost certainly not the originally inhabitants.
This is one of my biggest issues with stuff like this. Why should the Creek Nation get this land and not the tribe that lived there previously? Why not the tribe before that tribe?
Americans often did not treat the natives well but this is an issue with all countries. It was quite common for Natives to kill other tribes and take over that area. It sucks but that is how a country is formed.
Yes, and they are white (like my Ketchikan born/raised mom), while the Aleuts who we took the land and the resources from in the first place live in small villages and towns. At any rate, it is just ironic how rural over representation is a right to be granted only when it’s red.
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