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The ones who arrived in 1800CE? Or the ones who arrived in 1000CE? Or the ones who arrived in 1500BCE? Or the ones who arrived in 15000BCE? Where do you draw th

The ones who arrived in 1800CE? Or the ones who arrived in 1000CE? Or the ones who arrived in 1500BCE? Or the ones who arrived in 15000BCE? Where do you draw the line?

jleyank 17d ago
I would think that there was a group of people who got there first and survived. All groups that followed them can be viewed as colonizers or conquerors I would think.
- wredcoll 17d ago
  What if they left for a while then wanted to come back?
  - scarecrowbob 17d ago
    What if you just stated your actual point instead of asking stupid questions? Look, I get that folks in the US and other colonial projects feel a-okay in genociding the folks who were living there previously. I also get that you can't understand the different connection to specific pieces of land that folks such as the Ute, Navajo, and Hopi folks I live around have compared to my own connections to place and people. But you'd be way less annoying if you'd just state your (almost-certainly-inhuman-if-plainly-stated) argument instead of trying to "hah gottem"ing yourself.
    - wredcoll 17d ago
      My point, such as it is, is that trying to divide people into groups that are "good" or "evil", based on the actions of their ancestors is morally dubious at best. It doesn't (should not) matter whether you are descended from "colonizers" or "colonized", even setting aside how hard those terms are to define in any reasonably way. What matters is your current situation, what you've personally done, and what society/government can do to help everyone. People, especially on the left, really like to play oppression olympics where whoever can justify qualifying as the most oppressed is the winner and thus the arbiter of morality and gets to decide who is right and who is wrong. You bring up the Navajo and Hopi and Ute, and I'm certainly willing to make a bet that the average person "born in that tribe" (using that term extremely loosely) is going to be, uh, "economically disadvantaged", to put it mildly. And I would argue with all of my heart that those people deserve help (and, by context, need considerably more help than the equivalent person born in, dunno, the hamptons) but the reason the deserve help is because of things like being born to poor parents in poor towns who don't have access to affordable schools/training/food/whatever. It doesn't matter, morally speaking, whether or not these people are descendents from american indians or india indians or irish or german or russian or whatever. What matters is what is happening right now. I'm certainly open to the argument of "Yes that's all true but it's a lot easier to just select everyone currently from the Hopi tribe instead of trying to be more specific", in a similar way to race based affirmative action type policies for colleges, but lets keep in mind that nobody inherits the sins, or virtues, of their parents. We're all born fresh and it's important to keep that in mind.

The ones who arrived in 1800CE? Or the ones who arrived in 1000CE? Or the ones who arrived in 1500BCE? Or the ones who arrived in 15000BCE? Where do you draw the line?

jleyank 17d ago

I would think that there was a group of people who got there first and survived. All groups that followed them can be viewed as colonizers or conquerors I would think.

wredcoll 17d ago
What if they left for a while then wanted to come back?
- scarecrowbob 17d ago
  What if you just stated your actual point instead of asking stupid questions? Look, I get that folks in the US and other colonial projects feel a-okay in genociding the folks who were living there previously. I also get that you can't understand the different connection to specific pieces of land that folks such as the Ute, Navajo, and Hopi folks I live around have compared to my own connections to place and people. But you'd be way less annoying if you'd just state your (almost-certainly-inhuman-if-plainly-stated) argument instead of trying to "hah gottem"ing yourself.
  - wredcoll 17d ago
    My point, such as it is, is that trying to divide people into groups that are "good" or "evil", based on the actions of their ancestors is morally dubious at best. It doesn't (should not) matter whether you are descended from "colonizers" or "colonized", even setting aside how hard those terms are to define in any reasonably way. What matters is your current situation, what you've personally done, and what society/government can do to help everyone. People, especially on the left, really like to play oppression olympics where whoever can justify qualifying as the most oppressed is the winner and thus the arbiter of morality and gets to decide who is right and who is wrong. You bring up the Navajo and Hopi and Ute, and I'm certainly willing to make a bet that the average person "born in that tribe" (using that term extremely loosely) is going to be, uh, "economically disadvantaged", to put it mildly. And I would argue with all of my heart that those people deserve help (and, by context, need considerably more help than the equivalent person born in, dunno, the hamptons) but the reason the deserve help is because of things like being born to poor parents in poor towns who don't have access to affordable schools/training/food/whatever. It doesn't matter, morally speaking, whether or not these people are descendents from american indians or india indians or irish or german or russian or whatever. What matters is what is happening right now. I'm certainly open to the argument of "Yes that's all true but it's a lot easier to just select everyone currently from the Hopi tribe instead of trying to be more specific", in a similar way to race based affirmative action type policies for colleges, but lets keep in mind that nobody inherits the sins, or virtues, of their parents. We're all born fresh and it's important to keep that in mind.