I know this is hacker news but I think an article/review like this is the perfect opportunity to point out the continued injustices being committed against the people native to the land that is now the USA.
After a genocide and several centuries of discrimination, the American government continues to enact and enforce policies that lead to abject poverty on native reservations[1]. The relationship between the US government and native tribes is a disgusting example of how our elected officials have leveraged their power systemically against a minority group and abuses continue to this day[2]. These aren't just people in folk lore stories, they are living tribes condemned to poverty in barren swaths of land by our government.
In Colorado there is still a monument at the capitol in Denver and a prominent mountain named after one of the men that orchestrated the Sand Creek Massacre, an undeniably disgusting and heinous moment in our history.
Maybe if folks would ignore the symbolic distractions (statues and holidays) and actually put effort into fixing IHS then things would actually get better. The statue isn't killing anyone, but poor health care is. How about put some effort into housing so large family units aren't cramped in a house when a plague hits, and maybe when picking colleges to partner with, you pick a Tribal Community College (TCU). Maybe actually report how many enrolled developers or executives work for your company instead of putting them in other. Maybe shame people with no enrollment who steal scholarships or positions that are set aside. Maybe understand that a lot of Native Americans start college late and stop holding that against them.
I would argue that symbols are important too, for purely pragmatic reasons. Memorials are one way we transmit community norms and values. So removing a shameful symbol can be part of the process of building consensus around the historical events and policies that it symbolizes. It serves as a visible focal point for issues that would otherwise be invisible to many people. But I definitely agree that in terms of making real, concrete impact in peoples lives, taking down a statue is pretty much irrelevant.
Removing the symbols before doing the real work simply removes the problem from sight and gives people a false sense of accomplishment. The statue isn't the problem, the crappy conditions that are nowhere near the statue are.
These activities visibly focus people on the wrong thing.
It serves to unite people around a clear and visceral goal. The anger that brought many of us together to remove the enslaver statues left behind networks that brought the son of sharecroppers to the senate in my state. And the networks are still around building more concrete day to day stuff -- money for families facing eviction, stripping of the budgets of some of the more egregious local police, bail bonds. You have to start somewhere. We have a long journey ahead.
Those who make change and those who make a lot of noise are both arguably necessary, usually separate groups of people. The latter unfortunately have perverse incentives, mostly gaining virtue points on social media. They get their little boost of self fulfilling ideology. Boots on the ground folks need to be celebrated and usually don’t need the virtue signaling masses - they’re stern men and women driven by righteousness.
Nope, those who make a lot of noise take up all the oxygen and brag they did something when they did nothing and often leave a worse situation since they scare off the people who could help. Changing your Twitter picture doesn't fix the problem, and awareness is only useful if followed by action.
The two groups are in much less dichotomy then you make it to be. Neither group takes away from the other and besides, people can walk and chew at the same time.
They themselves complain about each other significantly less then people who dont engage with neither of those issues (But who like to use the other group to criticize the first one without engaging with history)
In my experience, the symbol-focused people get pretty upset when people start trying to shift the conversation to understand the underlying causes of problems and questioning assumptions. Imagine walking into a funeral for someone who has died from the Therac-25 and you start talking about poor UI design, cultures where people don't stop to fix problems, and hardware interlocks. It would be pretty poor timing and people would get upset at you making excuses for incompetent doctors and greedy hospitals.
Now imagine that the entire sphere of public discourse is that funeral.
Symbol-focused people see risk assessment and systems-thinking as signs that someone is disloyal to the cause of dismantling systemic racism.
But isn't broad ignorance and complacency of the injustices committed the real issue here?
I feel GP is right to question what drives this, because the few that tangentially "take up the cause" are likely lacking a more useful outlet as well as driving further complacency.
I really dont see honest question of "what drives this" nor attempt to drive people toward the other cause. It is just disdain toward one of those groups and that is all.
Saying that there is a false dichotomy between taking down a statue and passing an appropriations bill is like saying there is a false dichotomy between commenting on hackernews and writing a pull request.
No, one does not block another...but there are only 24 hours in a day.
No, one does not block another...but there are only 24 hours in a day.
Well, the symbol folks actually do block change. As you say, there are only 24 hours in a day, but it gets worse when dealing with politicians and their schedules. If they can be seen as doing something by doing a low-cost thing, it is do and move on to the next thing. When actual action is demanded, it is a time consuming thing. Bills are hard work even with a staff.
The path to change is attention of politicians to writing bills to address the root problem. PR looks exactly like change but is much cheaper and often removes the problem from sight.
Most people on hacker news do actually both, write on hacker news when they take break and do pull requests when they work. By the exact same logic, any activity you have, you could have spend that time by advocacy for good cause. Whoever works on own side project or plays board games afternoon could have instead be activist for better healthcare and is now starwing oxygen to those causes.
Plus, quite honestly, if I would seen advocates for better healthcare or better affordable school system complaining about the other issues being distracting to them, then it would sound like a good faith argument.
But, I have seen this opportunity cost argument being done by those who oppose one advocacy and don't practically care about the other. I mean, I am not doing anything activisty/charitable either, but I am not claiming it is because another cause starwed the oxygen or what not.
"Founded in 1980 by a handful of outdoor-oriented economists in Bozeman, Montana, PERC—the Property and Environment Research Center—is a conservation and research institute dedicated to free market environmentalism."
Free market environmentalism does not describe the position of most tribes in the US and I'm fairly sure that the vast majority consider allotment one of the major injustices and not something to repeat. Many tribes have been working to repurchase land that was lost due to allotment.
You undermine your own case by calling out federal injustices, but only citing as concrete instances of discriminatory policies the presence of symbolic monuments and names.
Crossing through the Midwest in the winter of 1703, the Lakota traverse a frozen lake, and discover that a tremendous herd of bison has been trapped beneath the ice. The natural refrigerator feeds them all winter. The book contains multiple moments of this kind of shocking, strange beauty, as when in a major conference women drop pieces of buffalo fat into their tipi fires at night, turning lodges into gigantic lanterns in a “sea of sparkling light.”
This is a book review. The book is 544 pages. This is just an enticing taste of what it contains.
I've added this to my reading list, thanks for sharing.
In another thread earlier today I was talking about the book American Buffalo by Steven Rinella. He has a whole section dedicated to the demise of bison in water, mud, floods, and swamps. In one bit he mentions that an entire herd was killed when they ran into a river too deep to ford, resulting in a literal stream of tens of thousands of bison corpses floating down the river.
I live in Minnesota, the land of the great Anishinaabe tribes. I was surprised to learn that these Anishinaabe drove out the Lakota and sent them westward in 1750 in the aftermath of a bloody battle in the north of which Red Lake was named, because it ran with Lakota blood. It's a complex history and this is a tiny slice of it.
The name "Sioux" that the Dakota were called for many years is also an Ojibwe (Anishinaabe people) term meaning "little snakes." Wisconsin and Minnesota are littered with little battlegrounds where there was mass slaughter between the two tribes well before European colonists arrived
Well, Minnesota also failed to remove from its books a law banning Dakota from the state. The documentary 'Dakota 38' is worth a viewing. https://m.imdb.com/title/tt2838564/
Why surprised? Before Europeans arrived, it's not like everybody lived happily ever after in a utopian pastoral lifestyle. They are people too and have fought, murdered, and slaughtered each other just as much as the Europeans did to themselves and to others. I frankly find it a little concerning that just as much emphasis isn't placed on the genocide of the non-existent tribes by those which remain.
I have no idea if this is one of the reasons your comment is grey, but the “it’s not like natives didn’t have conflict” is just as much projection as “magical natives” portrayals are bullshit. If you don’t recognize that colonization contorted indigenous peoples into conflict based on colonial prerogatives, you’re not telling yourself or anyone else the whole story.
It’s a shame for both sides of the shameful misinterpreted history that people don’t, yes, acknowledge that native peoples had real wars and conflicts, and also that colonizers instigated and coordinated other conflicts that were either less likely or more brutal or both than they would’ve been otherwise.
Yes, that's absolutely true and the brutal treatment natives around the world experienced as a result of colonialism shouldn't be downplayed. I'm not acting as a colonial apologist. What irks me is that it seems the popular mindset does appear to be that one of "surprise" of conflict amongst tribes as the parent commenter suggested, unless I misinterpreted them.
Trying to read that comment charitably, I honestly can't ascribe a motive to the "surprise". I've often stated I was "surprised" to learn something that was particularly detailed/nuanced in an area I already generally had fairly deep knowledge, especially if it revealed a new history or layer of depth I could integrate into my base knowledge.
I'm not saying that's definitely how I interpret it, but it's definitely a reasonable possibility. And I guess I wish more people here would at least try to read others' comments more charitably. At worst, your assumptions are right but you gave an opportunity for the other person to be better understood and for your own frustration level to pause before rising.
The bulk of those indigenous deaths is due to the unwitting introduction of smallpox by the Europeans, which was then spread from one indigenous people to another at a time when Europeans still had little knowledge of the interior of the Americas. Yes, in the wake of this sudden demographic shock Europeans did institute horrible policies of violence and submission (beyond the already bloody initial conquests), but the "tens or hundreds of millions" figure should not be all ascribed to intentional warfare.
I'm not sure what your point is; are you saying they would've gone extinct anyway so whatever the Europeans and early US did was fine / didn't make a difference?
Not that long -- remember, the horse went extinct in North America and were unavailable until the Spanish brought them in the 16th century, so hunting from horseback was relatively recent technology.
I have this book in my to read stack and another American history in there is “Fifth Sun” by Camilla Townsend. It is a history of the Aztecs, referenced from Aztec historians. It sounds like a wonderful book.
We know that in 1835, Lakota chief Lame Deer shot a Crow warrior twice with the same arrow. We have little idea why.
Well, they really, really didn't like each other at a tribal level. Heck, when you start naming places for the people you killed there, its a bit in the hatred side.
Anyone subdued enough that you can pull an arrow out of them is subdued enough that you can deliver a coup de grace with a knife or axe. It's demonstrably not an act of mercy to shoot them twice with the same arrow.
It seems pretty clear that it's a demonstration of how badly defeated the enemy is... that the enemy is incapable of putting up the smallest bit of defense.
The nuances of the message being sent may be a mystery to us, but the high-level message seems pretty clear to me. Some of the possible aspects of the message are (1) demonstrating military his military prowess to his tribe (2) demonstrating his bravery to his tribe (3) increasing the shame felt by the enemy as he died (4) demonstrating his military prowess to surviving enemies to demoralize them.
If the primary intent of the message was to emotionally torture an enemy through shame in his dying moments, then contempt and hate would appear to be the primary motivators.
I hate someone so much I shoot him with an arrow now, he's having trouble moving so I realizing I'm out of arrows walk up yank out the arrow (smiling as he screams while trying to crawl away) and shoot him again at point blank range for the lulz.
EDIT: Not trying to endorse this kind of viewpoint at all, or support it but it is an explanation for how you can hate someone so much that you'd shoot them with an arrow twice.
I'm thinking they were trying to avoid downvotes from people who think conceiving of a way someone might have a particular point of view is essentially an endorsement of that point of view.
Do you lack so much empathy that you can't even put into words your perception of another person's malicious or pathological reasoning? Or do you just assume to get into their mind is to share it?
I don't think vmception is necessarily someone who thinks that way, I read it as someone relatively cynical and finding the note superfluous and unnecessary. So the did it work read as being sarcastic to me, but not because he thought downvotes were deserved.
Arrowheads were not particularly rare or valuable. Smaller points can be made in 5-10 minutes by experienced knappers. The shaft and fletching take a bit more work, but any war group would have been constantly producing them.
I always hated recording knapping sites because the thousands of lost or partial pieces that they just didn't care to pick up are a pain to document.
But if an enemy is unable to prevent the victor from pulling an arrow out, it's both more merciful and less risky to the arrow and the victor to deliver a coup de grace with a knife, axe, or club.
If that were the answer, why would anyone have recorded that the event took place? Reusing arrows would be common, and no particular arrow would be memorable enough to know you shot someone twice with it.
Battlefield success was a huge sign of leadership fitness for Plains Indians. Comanche called it "puha" - it was sort of a marker of divine blessing or luck (good medicine) and it meant you could more easily gather more tribesmen for your war party to go on raids against other tribes.
Shooting them twice with the same arrow would be like the modern equivalent of a 360 no scope in Call of Duty, demonstrating your "puha." See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counting_coup
Well, he probably retrieved the arrow and realized the warrior was still alive so shot him again with it. Why put forth the effort to draw another arrow on someone you hate and have contempt for when you have one in your hand? Plus, it probably made a heck of a story to tell his friends. Bragging is a bit of a thing.
"It’s a staggering success while it lasts; by the late 1860s, the average family owns upwards of twenty horses. The empire these nomads build is rapacious; more than once, the Lakota are forced to move westward because they have looted the neighboring tribes out of existence and are therefore out of farmed food. Over several more generations, the Lakota shift fitfully west, until a series of visions reveals the Black Hills as their final home."
Funny but I have never seen genocide committed by white folk called a staggering success. If a white person said God gave white people Utah until the end of time we would think they are nuts, why is it any different when a native says the same?
> Over the course of the eighteenth century, the Lakota become a horse people. It takes generations, a huge expenditure of wealth, and day-long rides clinging onto wild and bucking horses until they break, but they do it, earlier than other tribes.
> [...]
> Hämäläinen brilliantly documents the transition from a largely hunter-gatherer-farmer society, settled in Mississippi River valleys, into a fully nomadic one. It’s a staggering success while it lasts; by the late 1860s, the average family owns upwards of twenty horses.
The transition to horse people and to a nomadic life is considered successful.
"Hämäläinen brilliantly documents the transition from a largely hunter-gatherer-farmer society, settled in Mississippi River valleys, into a fully nomadic one. It’s a staggering success while it lasts; by the late 1860s, the average family owns upwards of twenty horses."
By omitting the preceding sentence you have allowed yourself to be misled about what the context is. The "staggering success" being referred to here is the transition of their society to a nomadic way of life, as facilitated by the introduction of horses.
Please don't take HN threads into racial flamewar, or whatever kind of flamewar that is.
Just because an article contains a provocation doesn't mean you have to take it, and certainly doesn't mean you have to haul it in here and provoke a repetitive flamewar yourself.
I'm not sure what the "genuine spirit" is in celebrating a man whose incredible brutality towards indigenous people was astonishing even for his time. Here is merely one atrocity from amongst the many he committed:
"So Columbus tried again for gold, but this time he and his men didn’t go looking for it. They ordered all Taíno people 14 and older to deliver a certain amount of gold dust every three months. If they didn’t, their hands would be cut off.
At this point, the Taíno were refusing to grow crops, and those who didn’t bleed to death after their hands were removed began to die of famine and disease. When they fled into the mountains, they were hunted down by dogs. Many killed themselves with cassava poison."
You're absolutely right and I applaud you pointing out his brutality. But I wanted to add (since I can't respond to the parent comment):
> historical appreciation of European settlement of the Americas
What is there to appreciate? Like, say you're completely willing to ignore or just completely ignorant of the brutality of all of this. What is to appreciate or celebrate about European settlement of the Americas? Like, it's astonishing to me that this is just such a rote value and I sincerely cannot imagine anyone has an explanation for why it's so important or valuable or worth celebrating. Like pretend the Euro story of an "empty continent" had any validity... okay what then? You made... lebensraum? Cool beans, you put more people on more land. Big fuckin deal, welcome to being literally every human group on literally every piece of earth.
I think it's because people are too damn lazy to ask or even lookup what days the tribes celebrate and are trying to get rid of some guilt on the cheap. Plus, this whole using the word 'Indigenous' is some serious bull.
Why would we celebrate Columbus Day? Columbus never actually set foot on what would become the U.S., and it is only by the generosity of the indigenous peoples that he encountered in South America that he even survived the trip.
It was established as a way to include Italian-Americans in the national creation myth, at a time when xenophobia against Italian immigrants was still high in the US. Many Italian-Americans still feel strongly about it:
Unfortunately, proposals to eliminate Columbus Day and tear down statues of Columbus don’t typically include concessions for Italian-American pride. This has led to some friction:
Well, fortunately for Italian Americans they're no longer in the same position they were when this was put into place. This is great news, and it means we can move forward with eliminating Columbus Day and replacing it with Indigenous People's Day to prompt recognition of the xenophobia and discrimination that those people face to this day.
Colorado was able to remove Columbus Day as a state holiday by creating a new holiday honoring another Italian-American, Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini (1850-1917), effective in 2020.
"Settlement" is part of what happened. It was a war of extermination with scorched earth tactics with the purpose of acquiring land. It was also ethnic cleansing, otherwise today you would have Native American neighbors, or relatives of Native American ancestry, or at least a significant portion of the people you met in school or at work would be Native Americans... but I bet none of that is the case for you. I wonder why that is?
Why do you think it is more likely for you to meet someone of an obscure country in Oceania than for you to meet a Native American?
How many Native American languages can you speak, or even name? Do you know any speakers of Native American languages? Do you own a Native American language dictionary? No. None of that. Why do you think that is possible in a continent that is full of Native Americans at some point? There's a reason for it.
Because they were exterminated, that's why. Cut the bullshit. Be a man and own your history, don't be a coward.
It's almost like you didn't even read the summary of the book this thread is highlighting.
> The empire these nomads build is rapacious; more than once, the Lakota are forced to move westward because they have looted the neighboring tribes out of existence and are therefore out of farmed food.
> The various poxes overturn intra-native relations: at various points on their journey, the Lakota narrowly dodge or are less brutally affected by diseases that ravage the tribes already present in the land, making conquest that much easier.
The Lakota, as many other native tribes, ended up exterminating other groups in just the centuries we've documented. This seems to be the general pattern of every culture on Earth - Europeans, Native Americans, Africans, etc.
In fact, if there's a main point one should derive from the Native Americans' story, it'd include being very wary of welcoming foreign peoples onto your lands, even if it's just for trade. Diversity did NOT make the Lakota stronger (especially when it carried Smallpox, liquor, etc).
Interesting. I am curious to what extent the indigenous people were wiped out by europeans vs their own enterprising kindred who were quicker to jump on new methods of war and looting.
New methods of war and looting brought upon by the horse culture is a great documented case study we have of indigenous tribes in North America.
The "cowboys and Indians" stereotype that has been popularized around the world was really only a few tribes in N. America, and it lasted for only about 200 years from when the Spanish explorers left horses on the plains until the Indians were finally subdued. The vast majority of tribes in N. America were not nomadic, on foot, and are undocumented because they were long gone by the time Europeans arrived.
The Lakota in the north and the Comanche in the south were the two main tribes who mastered the horse, exterminated and pushed out every other tribe, and gave the most plausible defense against American settlers and troops. They were not native to the large areas they controlled when Columbus arrived. Over the next centuries, they mastered the horse, became "war machines", and together with their allies, completely annihilated the existing tribes in the areas we now consider their original "homelands".
If the Lakota are "rapacious" then, I wonder what would be the best adjective for their successor.
In only 245 years of existence, the US: has almost completely depleted the Ogallala acquifer, one of the largest acquifer in the world, once thought to be inexhaustible. And the same will happen soon to the California Central valley.
The American bison, an animal that once roamed in large herds that lifted enough dirt to darken the sky, is now almost extinct.
From rivers and oceans full of fish where you could see fish jumping everywhere, to people eating mediocre farmed fish due to overfishing.
From a continent full of fertile land and biodiversity, to a place where topsoil will be almost impossible to find in 60 years.
From a country full of insects and birds, to a place completely devoid of them that will soon become a desert.
Native Americans were able to live sustainably for over 10,000 years here.
Next time you sit to have lunch, try to putting aside any ingredients made from Native American crops: tomato, potato, corn, squash, avocado, peppers, most species of berries, chocolate, etc. Then avoid preparing any recipes that do not have a strictly domestic origin. I bet after you do so, you'll be left with nothing to eat.
You benefit from diversity and cultural exchange every day without even noticing. The very language you used to write that comment is the product of endless cultural exchanges...
Anyone concerned about water issues should consider reading Salt Dreams and reading up on the history of Fresno water development. Fresno actually has had years when they have increased their level of ground water.
> reading up on the history of Fresno water development. Fresno actually has had years when they have increased their level of ground water.
I'm very interested in fresh water topics broadly but in particular those of California (because I live here and am concerned about the drought and our future). Thanks for the book recommendation and for the writing you've done on the situation in the Fresno area!
Fresno has a really rich history with regards to water development and I don't understand why it doesn't get more press for that. I also liked the bus system there.
Meanwhile, Fresno is the butt of jokes in movies and otherwise mostly gets ignored.
> Fresno has a really rich history with regards to water development and I don't understand why it doesn't get more press for that. I also liked the bus system there.
> Meanwhile, Fresno is the butt of jokes in movies and otherwise mostly gets ignored.
I've never cared for the disparaging attitude that many Californians have towards Fresno and the rest of the Central Valley, either, but then I am not a California native, either. At the same time, I'm also definitely guilty of ignoring the place and it's history. I honestly only know where it is on the map as a pit stop before going into the Sierras and Yosemite.
I placed a hold on a copy of Salt Dreams with the library. I'm really looking forward to reading it. The only books I really had any awareness of around this topic were Cadillac Desert and a couple of others that I vaguely recall ever reading.
After a genocide and several centuries of discrimination, the American government continues to enact and enforce policies that lead to abject poverty on native reservations[1]. The relationship between the US government and native tribes is a disgusting example of how our elected officials have leveraged their power systemically against a minority group and abuses continue to this day[2]. These aren't just people in folk lore stories, they are living tribes condemned to poverty in barren swaths of land by our government.
In Colorado there is still a monument at the capitol in Denver and a prominent mountain named after one of the men that orchestrated the Sand Creek Massacre, an undeniably disgusting and heinous moment in our history.
[1]https://www.indigenouspeoples-sdg.org/index.php/english/ttt/... [2]https://www.vox.com/first-person/2019/9/23/20872713/native-a...