• Rickety Thudds@lemmy.ca
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    9 months ago

    I’m all for the general gist, but “no criminals?” Bullshit.

    They had slavery. Don’t imagine it was a utopia just because colonizers hadn’t made it worse yet.

    • Bye@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      They, like most other people in the world, had slavery, genocide, theft, the death penalty, and all sorts of other bad things. None of this excuses colonialism, at all. But to pretend that native peoples were some kind of wonderful noble savages is very very racist in and of itself. Even this comment is fairly racist because I just implied some kind of homogenous culture in North American indigenous peoples, which was obviously not the case.

      • TheFriar@lemm.ee
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        9 months ago

        I mean, the quote is from a first nations person. The only one “pretending that native peoples were some kind of wonderful noble savage” is the person the quote is attributed to. A holy man of the Lakota tribe. Calling him discussing his tribe racist is…weird.

        • phx@lemmy.ca
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          9 months ago

          Comparison of “we” versus “our white brothers” is a racial one and not a tribal one.

    • rockSlayer@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      Criminality as we understand it is a European concept. Native Americans had relatively advanced societies before the colonial settlers came through and genocided hundreds of tribes. Their politics were pretty complex, but they didn’t have criminals the way we understand the term.

    • iheartneopets@lemm.ee
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      9 months ago

      Who exactly are you talking about when you say “they”? Indigenous peoples weren’t all the same culture and didn’t have all the same cultural practices.

        • Psychodelic@lemmy.world
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          9 months ago

          Uh that was my first comment. How did I move the goalposts? How would you have asked the question? The other comment gave a decent answer. Not sure why you’re offended. It’s a legit question

          • Zoboomafoo@slrpnk.net
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            9 months ago

            I read your comment as being as snarky as mine was. I didn’t realize it was an honest question, sorry.

    • mozz@mbin.grits.dev
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      9 months ago

      WTF

      I was all set to type up a little semi agreeing comment about how it was a continent-spanning complex mixture of very different tribes with different cultures and practices, only some of whom practice slavery

      But I don’t really know what I’m talking about so I read a little and I got distracted by this

      Several tribes held captives as hostages for payment.[2][3] Various tribes also practiced debt slavery or imposed slavery on tribal members who had committed crimes; full tribal status would be restored as the enslaved worked off their obligations to the tribal society.[2][3]

      Slaves would sometimes be killed in potlatches, to signify the owners’ contempt for property.[citation needed]

      And this

      Captive-taking was most often used to replace a dead loved one within the family with a new person. The captive would then take on this deceased person’s sexual or labour-related capacities.

      What the fuck was going on with the Native Americans

  • Dr. Bob@lemmy.ca
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    9 months ago

    Every group had their own culture. There is no universal First Nations/ Native American culture. Beware of anyone expressing pan-indigenous viewpoints.

  • urist
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    9 months ago

    This quote appears to be from Lame Deer, Seeker of Visions about John Lame Deer’s tribe, the Lakota people, and his experiences.

    I didn’t read the book I just wanted to find out where the quote was from. It is from one man’s lived experiences in his tribe.

    Communities with less took care of those who were the worst off, why can’t we?

    • whoisearth@lemmy.ca
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      9 months ago

      Communities with less took care of those who were the worst off, why can’t we?

      We can. We choose not to. There’s a difference.

      Take that as an indication of everyone you interact with during your day on where their priorities lie.

    • doubtingtammy@lemmy.ml
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      9 months ago

      Yeah, attribution for quotes is kinda important - especially when there’s so many people faking native American quotes out there. Any time you see something about “native wisdom” or a a quote, you should immediately look for attribution. At the very least, you should get the nation/tribe and time period of the quote. Otherwise, it’s pablum

  • gabbbbby
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    9 months ago

    it’s insane to me that so called “human sacrifices” in Central America happened at a lower rate than public executions were happening in Europe.

    • Asafum@feddit.nl
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      9 months ago

      In those times there were only a handful of gods to appease, but thousands of capitalists.

  • FiniteBanjo@lemmy.today
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    9 months ago

    Really cool quotes but they also didn’t have much in the way of academics and professional specializations. Simple solutions to complex problems are doomed to fail and cause harm.

  • Harbinger01173430@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    Meanwhile, the imperialistic native Americans of my side of the Americas were conquering everything that moved left to right before the conquerors from the other side of the world did the same to them. Lol. Skill issue.