From: stephen@orchid.UCSC.EDU ()
Newsgroups: ba.politics,ca.politics,talk.politics.misc
Subject: Re: WHAT indigenous people?
Date: 13 Oct 1992 19:04:41 GMT
Organization: Santa Cruz
Distribution: usa
NNTP-Posting-Host: orchid.ucsc.edu

In article <1992Oct13.173811.5030@tandem.com> pearson_steven@tandem.com (Steven R. Pearson) writes:
>What's all this I'm hearing lately about so-called indigenous peoples?
>It's not like they { evolved into humans } here on this continent. 
>                   { were created by God }

It does depend on how we handle the definition of indigenous people.  The 
Native American people who were here on the arrival of the Europeans, had
been here for possibility a very long time, in relationship to our having
been here. Many of us measure on lineage here as only a few or less generations.
These people can measure it as thousands of years.  With that we need to
understand 'how long does it take to become indigenous?'

>Heck, WASP that I am (and a wicked, oppressive male to boot), I am just
>as indigenous as any Native American living today.  I was born here too!
>My ancestors came from Europe, theirs from Asia.  Our common ancestors
>probably came from Africa.
>
True that all of our origins are probably African based, we must look at it
in the perspective of how long a group of people have been in a particular
area or continent.  Remember that we have developed our array of ethicities
based upon locations that people settled (for long periods of time).  It is
difficult to base a uniqueness about a group of people in only say a few
hundred years.  The US is based upon a collection of peoples from virtually
all cultures and civilizations in the world.  

>Don't get me wrong; I am not denying that Europeans gave their ancesotrs
>a raw deal. Part of me is sensitive to that.  And I don't have any
>problem with them wishing to preserve their culture.  Another part of
>me says, hey, this kind of thing happens all the time.  Life is tough;
>people get conquered.  Especially if they are outnumbered and not quite
>up to date technologically.  And nothing is ever going to bring back
>"the good old days" for these folks.

I don't think that the general thrust of the Native American is to take back
the country, or reinstate their own culture as dominate.  It is a matter of
being recognized for who and what they were.  We tend to have and promote ideas
that make indians look like they do in our old western movies.  There is no
doubt that they were dealt a lousy hand, and one has to accept that as people
who came here from another continent, that we took it on ourselves to 
believe that we were right and that we had the 'moral' position to take this
land.  Since we use arguments such as 'we will work the land' and do 'productive
things' in light of our viewpoints. 

>
>That being the case, why can't we focus on the future, that which *can*
>be changed.  It seems to me that the best thing would be to integrate
>Native Americans more fully into the society.  I think this would go much
>further toward restoring their dignity than trying to stir up racial guilt
>over things that none of us experienced and none of us can change.
>
>-steve p.  (opinions mine, no warranty, standard disclaimers)

This is a good point and is what we should do, I am not sure what integrate
them into our society means.  This is an issue that is confronting today on
all sides.  The problem rests in the fact, that many ethnic groups have only
the culture and existence that they brought with them from their own country.
The US in a general sense lacks a culture construct... To say that we need
to act and be American is difficult, since there is no obvious US American
culture.