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Let's start with the basic fact: A staggering historic injustice was done to native people by the Europeans who arrived here centuries ago and eventually took over virtually all the desirable land that natives had long occupied. As injustices go, this ranks high by any standard. Yet, the suggestion that we Canadians bear some sort of collective responsibility for the actions of our forebears seems to rankle some Canadians.

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Linda McQuaig:
I'd say we got off lightly in this compensation package. In a perfect world, we'd actually give them back their land.

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In a perfect world, we'd actually give them back their land. By my lights, in a perfect world land would not be commodified.

This would be like if I robbed a bank and gave all the money to my daughter (or some stranger on the street for that matter) ... I get the blame but my daughter gets to keep the stolen money.

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Originally
posted by No Yards:
No blame? possibly; but there is no question that you get to profit
from the deeds of others who are to blame.

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Edited to add:

And if this logic applies to so many historical acts, that does not mean that the logic is flawed ... thinking that it does make it flawed logic simply because of the range of application is in itself flawed logic.

[ 29 November 2005: Message edited by: No Yards ]

As for undeniable damage ... take a look at just about any treaty agreement and you will find lots of evidence for damages due to unhonoured contracts.

How many Canadians have any real sense of our betrayal of, for example here in Manitoba, the Cree, the Dene, the Sioux, and the Ojibiway ?

I think the problem is very deep and not particular to this, we live in a state of denial and that denial affects every aspect of our lives.

I had a conversation with someone recently who maintained "I didn't do it, I'm not responsible, there are plenty of opportunities, blah, blah, blah" and I managed to be civil but it is precisely this kind of thinking that keeps us locked in this stalemate.

Sometimes I wish we could all just cry. I saw a Senator speak about his experience and it was heartbreaking. I remember a friend of mine in university telling me how as a child in a school near Portage la Prairie she was strapped for speaking her language. I had a friend who was five when the Dene were relocated to Camp 10 in Churchill and by eight she was an alcoholic.

I've had enough of these conversations over the years to recognize that a number of people hear me as some kind of "bleeding heart" and "unrealistic". I will admit that after I discovered I was "white" I did feel guilty but at some point I realized that my guilt did nothing to improve the situation and I dropped it.

I really appreciated sknguy's post in another thread about obligation. That is my feeling, regardless of what my ancestors did we are now here together and how do we make it work? My concern is that if we continue down this road we will go to war, if I and my friends and family were so consistently mistreated I think I would be looking for war.

Perhaps we need reconciliation meetings, just as they do in countries like Rwanda, but then we would have to admit what was done and that what we benefit from was an atrocity. I know people will say and have said, "well how far do we go back in compensating people" and I would say if it is in the body of the culture it needs to be addressed.

I'm sorry if it seems I dismiss the success of this recent agreement. I do think we are making steps forward. I just don't trust the Liberals.

[ 29 November 2005: Message edited by: a citizen of winnipeg ]

quote:

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Originally posted by a citizen of winnipeg:
How many Canadians have any real sense of our betrayal of, for example here in Manitoba, the Cree, the Dene, the Sioux, and the Ojibiway ?

I think the problem is very deep and not particular to this, we live in a state of denial and that denial affects every aspect of our lives.

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How to address that injustice is a complicated and tricky issue, and I don't know enough to make any assertions, beyond expressing my willingness to support just proposals.

I owe much to Art Blue who started the Native Studies Department at Brandon University, back in 1975 he said, “this land is Native and will change those who live on it”. I’ve thought of that many times over the years. It has opened into questions that I do not have answers for and I am grateful for that.

I worked in a Women’s Shelter in Northern Manitoba and the women there taught me a lot. I learned how vital the Cree culture is despite everything. I learned how important humor is and how gently people speak and I saw how strong these women were that got up every day and tried.

Late one night I got a phone call from the shelter because a woman I will call Mary had drunk a bottle of Listerine and had gotten into a fight with another woman (also drinking Listerine), who subsequently passed out on the floor. The one staff person was going to call the RCMP and have Mary locked up in the drunk tank. Mary, who had been raped at knife point when she was 7, Mary who fell in love and got pregnant but was married off to an older man who beat her, Mary whose sufferings are too numerous to relate here and they are only the ones I know about because they were extreme enough to be etched forever, Mary who had only one thing in her life that she took pride in, her eldest child, the child of her love, lived with a Minister. Earlier that day Mary had received a phone call from the Minister’s wife, he had only recently married, she had found him molesting Mary’s son. It didn’t seem fair to me that with a day like that Mary deserved, no matter what she had done, to wake up in the drunk tank so we sat up late together that night. I rolled cigarettes and she cried and cursed and tried to turn the music up too loud. We sat across from each other, eyeball to eyeball, and at some point she started to talk about the land, the land and I said, “I love this land” and in a breath she reeled back and stared at me with hatred, she said, ”you fucking white bitch” and I looked out the corner of my eye at the woman Mary had decked earlier in the evening and from nowhere I said, ”are you trying to piss me off” and we laughed eyeball to eyeball and in that moment we were friends.

There have been so many crimes piled on top of crimes committed against the First Nations peoples over the years.

We've come to expect it as "normal" that the water that comes out of the tap isn't going to make you sick...or kill you. That isn't the case in aboriginal communities.

We often speak of the housing crisis in major urban centres...and its bad. But in First Nations communities its horrendous.

While in many communities there's high unemployment and things are pretty tough, in many First Nations communities the majority of folks are unemployed with no hope to earn any kind of decent living.

All of that on top of the various forms of cultural genocide that continued up until very recently...and the actual acts of genocide in the past.

And what of the European nations that plundered Turtle Island and continue to reap the rewards of those riches? I found in Europe that knowledge of the mere continued *existence* of First Nations was extremely low, let alone any concrete understanding of how they benefited and the global privilege they reaped through colonialization in Asia, the Americas and Africa. Everywhere, but especially in regard to the Americas, they view it as not their problem.

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Perhaps there are lessons to be learned from the South African Truth Commission? I don't know for sure, but South Africa shares a lot of history with us, and that process seemed to do them a lot of good.

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There's more shared history than one would think. IIRC, South Africa's National Party studied Canada's reserve system and used it as a model in establishing the apartheid system.

The way I see it, these aren't wrongs that happened a long time ago...some of the worst of them are within living memory of alot of folks...and others continue to this day.

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Originally posted by nister:
You may argue that there should have been some aboriginal people to shoo them off, but you can't assign any blame to the newbies.

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Well some very large group of bozos in Canada have been voting for the same two old line parties election after election, decade after decade for the last 100 years in a row. So don't look at me.

[ 30 November 2005: Message edited by: Fidel ]

quote:

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Originally posted by radiorahim:
IIRC, South Africa's National Party studied Canada's reserve system and used it as a model in establishing the apartheid system.

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Originally posted by kurichina:

That's what I was alluding to, thanks. I just didn't feel like pulling out the reference late last night.

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But where are the First nations leaders today? I assume, and I know I will be corrected if I am wrong that natives can Vote, surely they must be able to decide on several MP's just for their numbers and to represent the reserves. Have they approached Jack and shown him the problems? I am going to ask a few friends about what they know about the First Nations Reserves, I bet the only one with a clue is the one who works for the First Nations.

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I'd say we got off lightly in this compensation package. In a perfect world, we'd actually give them back their land.

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Makwa:
....the ravages of historical white supremacy ....

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White supremacy, maybe, but historical? In what context? The problem here is far broader than race, it is about a traditional concept which was until recently the accepted norm, the right of conquest. Race, religion, whatever, were and are only tools.

Natives on this continent are guilty of dominating other natives, Asians in Asia have dominated other Asians, and so on, all much the same way as you condemn "whites" or the Koreans condemn Japanese or any of numerous other examples.

Tying this or any other similar issue to race merely allows us to avoid the real issue.

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Jeremy Tregunna:
I must also say that giving them back their land [now] is just not possible. ....giving my land to someone else....

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In BC the First Nations exempted private land from the settlement process. Giving them back Crown Land, however, is another issue. A fair settlement would and should include a significant transfer of Crown Land back to the people who traditionally inhabited it.

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Well, while I will admit that what was done to them was terrible, I must also say that giving them back their land [now] is just not possible. I am as much a native of Canada as any aboriginal person. I was born here, live here, and will die here. I will also say that paying out money's were the next best thing; but as for giving the land back to the native people, giving my land to someone else would invoke as much hatred to me as I'm sure some aboriginal people must have felt way back.

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No first nations organization is asking to have all the land "given back" that I'm aware of. But there are some lands that are in dispute and claims where they exist should be dealt with in a fair and reasonable manner with generous compensation.

There are also fishing and hunting rights issues that need to be settled fairly...along with issues of self-government, victims of the residential schools system and various other genocidal "re-settlement" programmes...housing, infrastructure and economic development...along with many other things I've probably missed.

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so I am not sure that a whole bunch of do gooding people no matter how progressive can help, unless someone from the First nations directs the campaign.

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Originally posted by Jerry West:
White supremacy, maybe, but historical? In what context? The problem here is far broader than race, it is about a traditional concept which was until recently the accepted norm, the right of conquest. Race, religion, whatever, were and are only tools.

Natives on this continent are guilty of dominating other natives, Asians in Asia have dominated other Asians, and so on, all much the same way as you condemn "whites" or the Koreans condemn Japanese or any of numerous other examples.

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Originally posted by Ichy Smith:
so I am not sure that a whole bunch of do gooding people no matter how progressive can help, unless someone from the First nations directs the campaign.

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Makwa:
Nice try to squirm out of your historical guilt,....

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Don't have anything here to feel guilty about. Nice try, though.

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All other territorial conflict has been long superceded by the common destruction visited upon all non-europeans in Turtle Island by the sons and daughters of Europe.

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Hyperbole at best, bullshit mostly, and cetainly an opinion based on personal predjudice.

How can you excuse one crime with another?

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The 500 year period following 1492 was characterized by lands taken with subtrefuge, murder, rape, enslavement, the destruction of property, the theft of culture and environments resources....

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Sounds just like the usual flow of history prior to 1492 also. What happened in the western hemisphere was terrible, but not special or unusual. It is only an issue now because we, in theory at least, have moved beyond the right of conquest.

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....and more human rights violations than ever existed before or since in the history of humankind.

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Really, I suppose you can back that statement up with figures and credible references to sources? We are waiting to see them.

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To dismiss such widespread cruelty and debasement as 'only' a tool is such a base misrepresentation of historical reality....

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It is not the cruelty and debasement that is being dismissed, but the claim that racism was a cause rather than an agent. Maybe instead of a misrepresentation here we have a misunderstanding.

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....the most deluded of ideological syncophants....

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Originally posted by Jerry West:
Don't have anything here to feel guilty about. Nice try, though....(the most deluded of ideological syncophants)....Clearly a case of the pot calling the kettle black.

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But the claim of the conquest of the Americas representing the largest mass imposition in recorded history of what are now understood as human rights violations, and the primacy of racism as opposed to religious or cultural dominance as the main engine of this process, I stand by this claim.

Yet, you are right, I should take some time to put together my sources in a pile. It would be a good exercise, and allow me to have resources at hand rather than relying on a memory that is never half as sharp as my tongue at the best of times.

[ 01 December 2005: Message edited by: Erik the Red ]

quote:

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Give me a couple of days, and I will post a list of my favourite sources in the racism forum, and we shall see if I am in fact full of "hyperbole, bullshit and personal predjudice." Of course that would not actually negate the possiblity that I am full of bullshit, hyperbole and prejudice, but it would be nice to have some footnotes.

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You said it.

Makwa, I'm tired of your race hustling.

Let me tell you, I don't owe you fuckall.
People move around, get used to it.

Makwa's philosophy:

1.) You're a guilty racist.

2.) You owe me.

3.) Don't you ever forget it.

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Makwa:
Funny how you choose an inadverdantly racialized metaphor, though, with the classic 'black as impurity' negation.

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That's a stretch, but OK. I'm open to any cliche of your choice that does the job.

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....the primacy of racism as opposed to religious or cultural dominance as the main engine of this process....

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Try economics instead. The driving force was not because the natives were not white, but because they had something the invaders wanted. Had the western hemisphere been occupied by Stone Age caucasians they still would have been disposessed. Had they had far superior technology than the Europeans it would probably be European natives still fighting for their rights against colonizers from the west.

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But the claim of the conquest of the Americas representing the largest mass imposition in recorded history....

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That qualification makes your claim not so far fetched, but still "more human rights violations than ever existed before or since in the history of humankind" is a stretch. It may not be provable one way or the other.

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I will post a list of my favourite sources in the racism forum....

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Do it here, one forum is enough to keep track of.

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Erik the Red:
I believe the 16th century Catholic church held a debate on whether los Indios possessed souls.

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There are interesting comparisons between the different colonization policies in the Americas. Religion was a major player in the Spanish effort which saw various orders establishing missions all over Spanish held territory.

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(certain Aboriginal nations were technically allied with the competing European powers)

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That's an understatement.

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....it was the largest genocide in history I know of.

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Possibly if you count the deaths from introduced diseases, which of course begs the question how much was intentional and how much incidental.

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Ginger Jar:
Let me tell you, I don't owe you fuckall.
People move around, get used to it.

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Except now we recognize that everyone has rights and driving people off of their land and exterminating them is out of bounds, at least theoretically.

I have been thinking of something Makwa said earlier on about people spending time and energy on underwear but not having the time to consider the reality of First Nations people. We like to think of ourselves as fair and just and concerned with issues of social justice and we are but we look away from our own history.

What are we afraid to see?

I was remembering working in the women's shelter and Mary calling me a "fucking white bitch" and the hatred in her eyes that came with those words and I was remembering that I wasn't afraid of Mary even though she had decked another woman earlier that night. I remember thinking Mary had good reason for that hatred. It was to a white man she had entrusted her joy, her son, he was the good news in her life. She would light up talking about him and the pride she took that this wonderful minister had taken an interest in her son. In one act this man ripped everything away. I heard a radio program recently about him, more and more young men have come forward. The suicide rate in these communities is incredible. It is FUCKING HEARTBREAKING.

[ 01 December 2005: Message edited by: a citizen of winnipeg ]

quote:

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Originally posted by Ginger Jar:

You said it.

Makwa, I'm tired of your race hustling.

Let me tell you, I don't owe you fuckall.
People move around, get used to it.

Makwa's philosophy:

1.) You're a guilty racist.

2.) You owe me.

3.) Don't you ever forget it.

Got anything new to bring to the table?
Or like Li'l Joe, does everybody have to pay, and pay? When I'm through paying, I'm still paying, eh? Try cashing it, ain't gonna work.

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I have never seen Makwa race-hustle since Ive been coming here. Why can't his frustrations be legitimate?

What have you ever paid for? How does this stack up to complete cultural obliteration of entire groups of original inhabitants? Have you bothered to look into the sophistication of the social networks of the First peoples? Or the beauty of their traditions or the indigineous scientific knowledge we are basically (westerners?) only just catching up on (ie boreal forest management? or any environmental management for that matter?) The respect among people such as approaches to kinship and egalitarianism (who gets along with kin all the time though right), especially the regard First Nations (generally) held towards the weak or elderly or put-out.

They were here for millenia, some of harshest places on the earth, we don't even know how long for sure, but for instance, the Dene say theyve been here forever. Canada as a country is how old?

The constant disregard that Canadians have for First Nations, unintentional or otherwise makes me angry. They are not asking for your house or home. But a concept of justice that allows them to heal.

Ive seen Makwa emotional on babble, but always reasonable.

And you do owe Makwa, more than you know, especially the sound of his voice.

[ 01 December 2005: Message edited by: Jeb616 ]

[ 01 December 2005: Message edited by: Jeb616 ]

Essentially, First Nations wants solutions to their current tangible problems, which include poverty and deprivation; and justice for historical wrongs. The former is easier to address as it's a matter of money, social programmes and management. Most Canadians think alot of money is already being pumped into First Nations. If it isn't enough, First Nations should lobby accordingly and make their case just like any other special interest group. The latter case is impossible to address in today's Canada- unless we invent the time machine. Really, all the education and programmes will never raise the collective guilt and there will never be enough justice to right this wrong. Moreover, the First Nations has failed to articulate what exactly they desire. Instead, their repititive message has been ignored like a CD replaying itself over and over again.

If you talk to many Canadians, especially in an new immigrant city like Vancouver, you will not attract much sympathy for First Nations' cause. If you remove the paralyzing threat of political correctness there is little sympathy for First Nations causes. Perhaps it's ignorance, but it's also due to First Nations' failure to articulate their cause and demands. Most Canadians want to help and support First Nations, but unending demands must be capped. Most ask the simple question: what do you want (in 150 words or less without all the intellectual dressing). Impressing new Canadians with collective guilt is a waste of time. Many come from nations where they have been oppressed in one way or another in forms as bad, if not worse than being strapped and beaten for speaking a First Nations' language. Most immigrants have chosen to move on and build a better future for their children in the future. Most believe their culture is strong enough to integrate with Canada's while retaining their own values and ways.

"Many come from nations where they have been oppressed in one way or another in forms as bad, if not worse than being strapped and beaten for speaking a First Nations' language."

Citizen of Winnipeg hasn't answered my questions. By saying to mainstream Canadians they don't understand the problem and then making ceaseless demands for compensation, reparation and justice you only exacerbate your dilemma. Unless you don't see your situation as a dilemma, unless you wish to wallow in self-pity and recrimination. Because like it or not, politically correct or not- most that's how many Canadians feel about First Nations grievances. And by blaming the rest of Canada, First Nations leaders do themselves a disservice by not examining their own shortcomings.

Look around you. The composition of Canada is changing. Collective white guilt is diminishing. New Canadians don't understand or empathize with your plight. Why don't you talk to a recent immigrant from China. Odds are he/she directly or indirectly suffered the insanities of the Cultural Revolution. Or Vietnamese or Cambodian immigrants. I could tell you stories of great personal heroism, resilience and hope, but you'd just dismiss them. Or call me a racist.

quote:

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Originally posted by far away eyes:
Look around you. The composition of Canada is changing. Collective white guilt is diminishing. New Canadians don't understand or empathize with your plight. Why don't you talk to a recent immigrant from China. Odds are he/she directly or indirectly suffered the insanities of the Cultural Revolution. Or Vietnamese or Cambodian immigrants. I could tell you stories of great personal heroism, resilience and hope, but you'd just dismiss them. Or call me a racist.

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Now that the greatest of the genocidal activities have ceased, the wars have stopped, the mass graves are forgotton, the residential schools are closed, we are to turn our attention from the last set of whiners on their poverty infested reservations, except for blaming the First Nations leadership, and point to the streams of refugees arriving as evidence of our largesse and endless empathy. How can you whine and snivel you say, when these other hapless souls have suffered more than you.

It may be true that some refugees have suffered more than many Aboriginal today, but have they suffered more than our grandparents and great granparents? (ed to add) Moreover, many refugees I have talked to openly support the struggles of FN people. I've talked to Syrians, Palestinians, Chinese and many Africans who are very sympathetic to the First Nations, who liken the oppression in their homelands with the oppression of the Indians in Canada. So I'm afraid your argument does not wash. This attempt to erase history and start with a clean slate is cynical, hollow and contemptable.

[ 01 December 2005: Message edited by: Makwa ]

This is about the past, in the sense that they once had this control, until it was taken away from them, whether through government fiat, government turning a blind eye to settlers breaking laws, or government turning a blind eye to its own laws / treaties. In most cases, First Nations were then forced from large land bases onto tiny reserves that were the dregs of what they'd had before, and that in many cases were continually chipped away at. In a nasty Catch-22, when First Nations came into conflict with settler populations for the resources, the Crown would impose conservation measures that had an inordinate impact on aboriginal populations. When there were more than enough resources for everyone, the Crown would often say that First Nations weren't using their resources to their full capacity, and would take away whatever they considered to be excess.

But more importantly, it's also about the future. It's important to understand the history here, first so we can understand what was taken away, and following from that, so we can understand what to do now.

Now it's physically not possible to restore everything that was taken away, given the extent of urban and industrial development over the last few hundred years. But then First Nations haven't stayed static either. Traditional activities are still a critical component of aboriginal cultures and economies, but First Nations are also engaging in forestry, oil drilling, and mining in rural areas, and residential and commercial construction in urban areas. There really isn't a one-size-fits-all model. We're not talking about giving the entire continent back to an amorphous single aboriginal nation, but giving individual First Nations back a central role in deciding what happens on their traditional territory, as well as an appropriate share of any revenues from the use of that territory.

[ 01 December 2005: Message edited by: obscurantist ]

quote:

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Originally posted by obscurantist:
To me, the important thing is First Nations getting control over their traditional land bases and resources once again. ... But more importantly, it's also about the future. Now it's physically not possible to restore everything that was taken away, given the extent of urban and industrial development over the last few hundred years. But then First Nations haven't stayed static either. Traditional activities are still a critical component of aboriginal cultures and economies, but First Nations are also engaging in forestry, oil drilling, and mining in rural areas, and residential and commercial construction in urban areas. There really isn't a one-size-fits-all model. We're not talking about giving the entire continent back to an amorphous single aboriginal nation, but giving individual First Nations back a central role in deciding what happens on their traditional territory, as well as an appropriate share of any revenues from the use of that territory.

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Originally posted by far away eyes:
I am never deterred from speaking my mind on controversial issues. But, it's very easy for any criticism to be labelled as intolerance and racism- and that's why First Nations issues become stalled- because no one dares to address the core problems. Makwa has given me unusual leeway to express my view, which I believe many Canadians hold.

Most parents want their children to be better than them, to escape the tyranny of their past, build better lives, be better people. That of course, requires a degree of positve hypocrisy- like telling your kids it's bad to smoke while you used to smoke. I hope the First Nations can take that approach so their future generations won't be trapped in a welfare state spiral negotiating against the tyranny of history.

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Their history has never died. It is still lived. I don't understand what you mean when you say its time to break away from the past. Its time to move forward I concur, but to say that it's time to break from the tyranny of history is is disingenuous, as its impossible.

Its seems like a lot of people are still rallying against the ugly notion that we fucked up. Until there is wide acceptance of this fact, the spiral of cultural upheavel will keep churning.

Many Canadians might feel the same as you, but really I can't see any positive change until we realize the structures and histories that are apart of the ugly conditions of many first nations communities. You can't leave hubris behind no matter how much you wish it to be so.

Someone posted about the Labrador Inuit land claim and self-governance today and I was happy to see that posted. Look into the self-government issues of first nations, i myself have only recently been exposed to these issues, and they are positive and still evolving. This will be positive empowerment and some of these communties have their share of social problems.

There are interesting comparisons between the different colonization policies in the Americas. Religion was a major player in the Spanish effort which saw various orders establishing missions all over Spanish held territory.

Is an interesting side angle. Religion played a somewhat different role for different colonizing powers, true enough, and the settlement patterns that followed reflected that to some extent. But in the end they all wanted to convert the survivors to secure their conquests, albiet with somewhat different methods and attitudes.

quote:
....it was the largest genocide in history I know of.

Possibly if you count the deaths from introduced diseases, which of course begs the question how much was intentional and how much incidental."

Noone kept accurate records of course but it's possible to make some educated guesses about that, and from what I would guestimate it would still be in the many millions, probably tens of millions killed by intent. Not as many people killed as other genocides in Asia or Europe perhaps, but much higher as a percentage of population, estimated eighty to ninety five percent, and the results were more permanent. The Chinese are still in control of China, even after the Boxer rebellion massacres, Japanese invasion, and Mao's own pogroms, while the Aztec, Quechua, Mayans and hundreds of other once independent nations are still submerged by the tide. Some still in the process of being dispossesed. Even if the great majority of depopulation was the result of exotic germs, this happened within the context of purposeful dispossession, scores of large and small massacres and generally brutal warfare, forced assimilation and legal chicanry, and this has been happening over succesive generations for four hundred years, so that would multiply the murder rate, which is what most of this was. I think I could break it down in more detail but I'll spare others the bother unless someone's interested.

[ 03 December 2005: Message edited by: Erik the Red ]

quote:

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Erik the Red:
But in the end they all wanted to convert the survivors to secure their conquests, albiet with somewhat different methods and attitudes.

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I think that to say that they all wanted to convert may not be accurate. The Catholics certainly wanted to convert and worked hand in hand with the Spanish in the Conquest. Although there was certainly Protestant proselytizing among the First Nations, and church run schools and such, I don't think it was as integrated an effort as the Spanish/Catholic one, and I think that many, particularly on the secular side, cared not whether the First Nations were converted or not, their only interest being in having them out of the way.

I also seem to recall that some of the various missions to the First Nations actually sided with their cause.

quote:

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.... it's possible to make some educated guesses about that, and from what I can guestimate it would still be in the many millions, probably tens of millions killed by intent.

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One estimate I read said about 12 million first Nations in the Americas in 1492, and less than a million 400 years later. How accurate this is, I don't know.

There is no doubt that some of this represented genocide. How much is the question, and part of that answer will depend on how genocide is defined. No matter how it gets labled part of it is certainly criminal by today's standards and much of it morally reprehensible by any decent standard.

Death by smallpox and other foreign diseases can't be considered as murder of course, but even there there's some evidence that some epidemics weren't entirely accidental. Sick members of exploring parties were rarely kept away from contact among various groups met, and some historians say there's circumstantial documented evidence that English governor Geoffry Amherst knowingly gave infected blankets as a token of "truce" during Pontiac's rebellion. I've also spoken to Musqueam and Haida elders who were quite adament that some traders gave them infected "Hudsons Bay blankets" on purpose. All I could verify is that several WestCoast tribes were on the verge of war at the time they told me of, and coincidently there were some shipments of blankets made to the Haida and others just before the worst epidemics hit. No real resistence after that.

Also grey areas like native people on reservations being denied any medical care during outbreaks, which could at times help, and others being herded onto them and held while they were still in progress, things like that. Quaranteen perhaps, but surviving elders again insisted that some hadn't been in contact yet and only wanted to escape to some other out of the way spot. Who can really say for sure now, I just tend to put more weight behind what the victims recall than what the Indian agents recorded.

[ 03 December 2005: Message edited by: Erik the Red ]

http://www.h-net.msu.edu/~west/threads/disc-smallpox.html

http://www.nativeweb.org/nativelaw/nw_legal/amherst/lord_jeff.html

[ 20 December 2005: Message edited by: Erik the Red ]

quote:

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Originally posted by far away eyes:
You have to leave the past behind before you can move ahead. It's not easy, but necessary.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Erik the Red:
Oh, and the more current pre-Columbian estimates for the entire new world tend to be closer to ninety million or more, the old estimates are generally accepted as way too low, though the newer ones are themselves probably a bit high. They tend to assume the maximum numbers that the technology and land could hold at the time, but worsening climate, increased warfare and breakdown of Mayan and Mississipian civilizations would have lowered populations somewhat right before the Europeans arrived. I'll leave the rest for later.

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I believe the current concensus for North America is around the 25 million mark pre-Columbus - I've seen it on several occasions. Think of the current population of Canada spread throughout the continent.

Far too few of us recognise the fact that the reason the land wasn't well populated when Canada was being settled was because we arrived during a Dark Age caused by a plague of disease that Columbus introduced.

excess babble edited...

[ 22 December 2005: Message edited by: Erik the Red ]