From: silva@pangea.Stanford.EDU (Holly Silva)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.celtic,soc.culture.british
Subject: Re: Oh, Goodie, a Whole New Lie (was re: This Favorite Lie Again.)
Date: 21 Jan 1993 20:37:43 GMT
Organization: Stanford Univ. Earth Sciences
NNTP-Posting-Host: pangea.stanford.edu

mbrennan@spca.bbn.com (Maeve Brennan) writes:
>
>I don't believe the US provides an exemplary model in its treatment
>of indigenous peoples.  
>
	This is undoubtedly true, but most of the particular incidents 
and issues you raised in the previous post in re: continued abuses 
were rife with facile, PC oversimplifications of now complex 
problems. 

>Matthew is right.  If Britain had followed the US example, then
>most of the indigenous people of Ireland would have been wiped out,
>leaving only a handful of powerless malcontents today, and a 
>United Kingdom of Britain and the whole island of Ireland.

	Most of the indigenous people of Ireland were 'wiped out'. They
weren't killed off, not being as convieniently susceptible to European
disease as the aboriginal Americans, but they sure as hell no longer
live in Ireland, speaking the Irish tongue.
	The population of Ireland c. 1840 was ~7-8 million. That's
twice today's population of ~3.5 million. About 1 million died in the
Potato Famine, and the island exported many (perhaps most) of its best 
and brightest young people for generations after that watershed event.
It still does so. Likewise, the north of Scotland was essentially denuded
of people during the Highland Clearances, and has long been a place from
which one emigrated, not the reverse.
	In terms of that most salient indicator of cultural strength,
language, the Navajo are doing at least as well proportionately as the
celtic people of Ireland or (certainly) Scotland. Even the Cherokee 
language is more viable than Scots Gaelic, and they were among the 
most abused of the indigenous peoples of North America.
	You could perhaps argue that the Native Americans have simply,
through their own tenacity and strength retained their cultures more
readily than the Irish or Highlands Scots, but a more realistic argument
can be made to the effect that a rather successful cultural genocide
occurred in Britain through the past 2 and 1/2 centuries.

	Just as an aside, there is a certain irony that probably should
be kept in mind during any discussion in which the plight of the Irish and
Scottish cultures/peoples is laid in parallel with that of indigenous  
Americans.
	_Most_ of the egregious offenses committed against the native 
Americans in North America in the 18th and 19th centuries were committed
by lineal descendents of these same benighted celtic peoples. Men like 
president Andrew Jackson (Scotch-Irish), who drove the Cherokee from 
their native lands in Appalachia (Trail of Tears, c. 1840). It was
commonly the case that treaties with the Indians here were first
broken not by the Anglo elite who drew them up, but by the hordes of
lower class settlers (Irish, Scotch-Irish and Scottish as often as
not) who moved in behind the troops and abrest of the railroads.
	Your kinfolk and mine, were cruelly from their native lands
in northern Europe. They proceeded then to turn around and do unto 
others as had been done unto them, in spades. Such is life.
--
======================================================================
|| Holly Silva			I have nothing terribly clever to say||
|| Applied Earth Sciences	today.  You're in luck.		     ||
|| Stanford University						     ||
Newsgroups: soc.culture.celtic