UN to US: Give it back to the natives.

[Svartalf]

and those who voted for it should be tarred and feathered, whipped through town at the back of an ass, and hanged... yeah, I know.
But until SCOTUS reverses itself on that, it's the law.

[Thumpalumpacus]

No, it's not the law. It's a decision handed down regarding one aspect of the law. It's applicability here would need to be assessed on its own merits. There's a big difference between a municipality citing eminent domain for a permitted project, and the general expropriation of property in order to "right" a wrong.

[Seth]

I'm all for doing the right thing wrt the the native peoples of N. America, but does anyone else see the potential for a slippery slope in this? I mean, there's a lot of the U.S. and Canadia that was taken by very shady means...

Go back in the history of any nation on earth and you'll find conquest and change of ownership. Open that Pandora's box and it'll be never ending.

We had a war with the Indians. They lost. Sucks to be them. Get over it and move on.

Despite my sympathy for the natives, it's hard to argue with this. To the victor goes the spoils. But I wasn't talking about the actual fighting, nothing shady about that. I meant things like trading a handful of beads for vast tracts of land with a native who doesn't even represent the other tribes who lived in the area,

Given the fact that even the tribes involved couldn't agree who "owned" the land, it's a difficult proposition to determine who is the right tribe to make land grants. In the 1700's, in the Pennsylvania/New York region, tribes very often sold land to settlers that they didn't own, and other tribes made demands for payment for lands previously sold by another tribe, leaving settlers frustrated with the attempts at extortion (and occasional murder) by Indians who didn't recognize one another's right to transfer title. Prior to the Revolutionary War (think "Last of the Mohicans" time period) much of the interaction between Europeans and Indians involved settling land claims. The Six Nations Council of the Iroquois Confederation in Onandaga, NY claimed authority to finalize such decisions in order to keep the peace between the Indian tribes and "our brother Onas (William Penn, Proprietor of Pennsylvania)" and his people. In several cases, one of my ancestors was involved in the negotiations between the Iroquois Confederation and the Proprietor and the Governor of New York over disputes about lands sold to the Europeans.

In the West, in the 1800's, the Indians themselves did not claim ownership of the land because they were nomadic peoples and simply didn't have a concept of fixed ownership of property. The United States wrote treaties and paid millions of dollars to acquire lands from the various tribes. In the case of the Black Hills, the government negotiated a treaty and paid compensation to the Lakota, while promising to keep whites out of certain areas of the Black Hills. Unfortunately, gold was discovered in the Black Hills, and whites ignored the treaty boundaries and flooded the region, despite efforts by the government to keep them out. Mining camps like Deadwood and Lead sprang up quickly and tens of thousands of miners showed up, and the government was unable to get them to leave. The Lakota, however, after promising peace, began raiding and killing miners and settlers rather than taking their grievances to the government for resolution, as they had promised. When the Lakota began waging war on US troops sent to keep the peace, the treaty was breached and nullified. The government admittedly used this breach to divest the Indians of title and grant it to the miners and settlers.

Unfortunately, the need to open new land to settlement to America's burgeoning population, particularly given the fact that the Indian tribes who inhabited the regions were relatively small in number and lived an isolated nomadic existence, leaving whites to view the regions as largely unpopulated and therefore "wasted" lands belonging to no one, drove the conflict between the Indians and the settlers in a time when the government did not have the resources to police the expanding frontier effectively to prevent encroachments on Indian treaty lands.

Inevitably, the needs of the majority overwhelmed the tribal nomadic lifestyle, and technology made the settlers more effective at defending their land claims than the Indians were, and so they prevailed. This is how the Right of Conquest always works. Land belongs to those who can take it and hold it against the encroachments of others who desire to take it. That's a fundamental fact of human history that's based in a basic biological urge built into us by evolution, and it's the basis of property rights.

If you cannot hold and defend your property, then it belongs to those who can. This is the conundrum faced by the Indian tribes, not just as it involved whites, but even among the various tribes, who were CONSTANTLY warring for access to resources and land. Ask the Crow what the Lakota did to them if they were caught on "Lakota territory."

Nothing the United States or the settlers did to the Indians was fundamentally different than what the Indian tribes did to one another all the time anyway. Whites just did it far more efficiently and were more numerous, so they won the battle for natural resources and land. Such is life.

unilaterally amending or abolishing treaties,

Most treaties that were amended or abolished were changed because the tribes failed to abide by their obligations, which nullified the treaties. Almost unique in the world however, the US had an Indian policy that acknowledged the "sovereignty" of Indian tribes on their lands, and despite internal government conflicts about Indian management, by and large the US has worked hard to protect Indian sovereignty and existence, whereas most other nations throughout history have either exterminated or assimilated their indigenous people without any compunctions or concern.

smallpox blankets,

This is a false claim laid against the United States which has been conclusively disproven. In point of fact, the "smallpox blankets" claim comes from a letter written by a BRITISH officer, Lord Jeffery Amherst, during the French and Indian War (1754-1763). The idea was mentioned, but there is no credible evidence that a deliberate biowar campaign using smallpox infected blankets was ever actually implemented.

This is often confused with the outbreak of smallpox and other diseases in Indian populations, something that absolutely did happen, but has been credibly attributed simply to a lack of resistance in the Indians combined with exposure to disease organisms from explorers and settlers.

There is absolutely no evidence whatsoever that the US ever deliberately engaged in such actions, and the fact is that disease outbreaks in the Indian Nations was a major concern to the US and millions were spent on smallpox vaccination campaigns and other preventive measures over the decades in an attempt to prevent widespread outbreaks. Unfortunately, despite all the work by the US government, such efforts were not very effective. But it must also be noted that by the time the English arrived in North America, it is now conjectured that diseases to which the Indians of North America had no resistance had ALREADY wiped out the majority of the Indian population, perhaps as many as 150 million people, in the two centuries before westward expansion of the US, and that such plagues were delivered here by the Spanish Conquistadors and explorers of the 1500s and 1600s.

Trail of Tears, etc.

Andrew Jackson was a tyrant and a bully and was a grim enemy of the Indians, that much is true. But his actions do not reflect the overall policies of the United States at the time. Remember, the Supreme Court forbade Jackson from pushing the Indians out of the South, but Jackson defied the Court and did it anyway. There were, however, many people in government who were sympathetic to the Indian's plight who genuinely attempted as best they could to protect their sovereign nation rights over the decades. They didn't succeed as well as they should have, but one cannot accurately characterize US policy as inherently or implacably hostile to Indian rights or interests. That's just wrong.

But you're right, ultimately. The natives lost; we owe them nothing. But for me, that doesn't translate into justifying a lack of basic human compassion and sympathy for them.

[/quote][/quote]

I have lots of compassion for the individuals alive today, which is why I wonder why they stay put on desolate reservations, living in poverty and privation, when absolutely nobody is forcing them to do so. They are free to leave and pursue a bright economic future any time they want. They CHOOSE NOT TO, for reasons of their own, which I fully respect. But if you CHOOSE to live in poverty and privation on a desolate reservation, should anyone else go out of their way to try to "save" you from your chosen lifestyle? Isn't that just more arrogance on the part of whites?

I'm satisfied to let the Indians live as they please on their reservations, even though nobody gave ME a place that I could go and live by right merely by virtue of being a "native American" despite the fact that I was born in the United States just like every Indian alive today, but at the same time, I feel little obligation to provide for Indians who choose to live on their sovereign reservations. I'd be more inclined to be willing to support blacks living in ghetto slums, which they have to rent from the slumlord, than I would be to support an Indian living on a reservation where he and his tribe members get to make their own decisions about how to live. I wish I could have a "sovereign" reservation of my own where the state and federal government were obliged to leave me alone.

I see no reason why my tax money should go towards improving life on the rez, since it's a "sovereign nation" and I'm not even allowed to go there without permission.

I say this latest multi-billion dollar settlement with the BIA over mismanagement of tribal lands should be the end of it. Pay them, and then declare their reservations to no longer be "sovereign nations" and declare them to be nothing more or less than US citizens like every other US citizen, subject to all the same laws, and having all the same rights as any other citizen. No more special status for Indians, because it's the patronistic attitude of the US that has caused all the trouble in the first place. Give them title to their reservations, abolish the BIA and repudiate all prior agreements and let them become, finally, just Americans like everybody else.

[Svartalf]

You bet that they'd use Eminent domain and cite righting said wrong as motive if they wanted to do it?

[tattuchu]

The fuck? We gave them Smallpox infected blankets. That's not enough?!

[Thumpalumpacus]

You bet that they'd use Eminent domain and cite righting said wrong as motive if they wanted to do it?

Considering that Kelo v New London only reaffirmed that eminent domain occur under the Constitutional rubric of "public use", which test this hypothetical expropriation would likely not pass, considering that the reservations aren't held to be public lands, your objection doesn't seem very worrisome.

At least, no lawyers here are rushing to wield such a strategy in court.

[Svartalf]

On another side of the topic, I've read proposals that you folk give NYNY back to the Natives and see how the UN would handle the change in environment (I nearly said landlord, but I'm pretty sure that the UN facility actually enjoys extra national status)

[Seth]

The fuck? We gave them Smallpox infected blankets. That's not enough?!

No, "we" didn't. There is no credible evidence of this ever happening. Smallpox outbreaks were not the result of a nefarious plan, they just happened, and they killed both whites and Indians, though the Indians by far got the worst of it, having no immunity whatsoever.

As I said, the whole "smallpox blankets" canard has been blown up out of all reason and proportion by activists misstating facts. While Lord Amherst did suggest such a plan, it was not carried out. Nor was any such plan carried out by the US after the Revolutionary War.

[Seth]

You bet that they'd use Eminent domain and cite righting said wrong as motive if they wanted to do it?

No government that tried to seize private land under eminent domain to return it to the "natives" would last long enough to enforce it, and no bureaucrat tasked with doing so would live long enough to see it done.

[Tyrannical]

I think they need this UN resolution in London and Paris

[Svartalf]

Britain back to the Britons...

Now, how do I extract the Germanic and Roman genes out of me to retain only the Celt?

[FBM]

Turns out there's quite a bit of credible evidence of giving smallpox blankets to the Indians. Cutting to the chase:

Conclusion

All in all, the letters provided here remove all doubt about the validity of the stories about Lord Jeff and germ warfare. The General's own letters sustain the stories.

As to whether the plans actually were carried out, Parkman has this to say:

... in the following spring, Gershom Hicks, who had been among the Indians, reported at Fort Pitt that the small-pox had been raging for some time among them....

An additional source of information on the matter is the Journal of William Trent, commander of the local militia of the townspeople of Pittsburgh during Pontiac's seige of the fort. This Journal has been described as "... the most detailed contemporary account of the anxious days and nights in the beleaguered stronghold." [Pen Pictures of Early Western Pennsylvania, John W. Harpster, ed. (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1938).]

Trent's entry for May 24, 1763, includes the following statement:

... we gave them two Blankets and an Handkerchief out of the Small Pox Hospital. I hope it will have the desired effect.
Trent's Journal confirms that smallpox had broken out in Fort Pitt prior to the correspondence between Bouquet and Amherst, thus making their plans feasible. It also indicates that intentional infection of the Indians with smallpox had been already approved by at least Captain Ecuyer at the fort, who some commentators have suggested was in direct correspondence with General Amherst on this tactic (though I have not yet found such letters).

http://www.nativeweb.org/pages/legal/am ... _jeff.html

[Seth]

Turns out there's quite a bit of credible evidence of giving smallpox blankets to the Indians. Cutting to the chase:

Conclusion

All in all, the letters provided here remove all doubt about the validity of the stories about Lord Jeff and germ warfare. The General's own letters sustain the stories.

As to whether the plans actually were carried out, Parkman has this to say:

... in the following spring, Gershom Hicks, who had been among the Indians, reported at Fort Pitt that the small-pox had been raging for some time among them....

An additional source of information on the matter is the Journal of William Trent, commander of the local militia of the townspeople of Pittsburgh during Pontiac's seige of the fort. This Journal has been described as "... the most detailed contemporary account of the anxious days and nights in the beleaguered stronghold." [Pen Pictures of Early Western Pennsylvania, John W. Harpster, ed. (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1938).]

Trent's entry for May 24, 1763, includes the following statement:

... we gave them two Blankets and an Handkerchief out of the Small Pox Hospital. I hope it will have the desired effect.
Trent's Journal confirms that smallpox had broken out in Fort Pitt prior to the correspondence between Bouquet and Amherst, thus making their plans feasible. It also indicates that intentional infection of the Indians with smallpox had been already approved by at least Captain Ecuyer at the fort, who some commentators have suggested was in direct correspondence with General Amherst on this tactic (though I have not yet found such letters).

http://www.nativeweb.org/pages/legal/am ... _jeff.html

You might want to make note of the dates involved, and the citizenship of the military officers who were involved.

Here's a clue: They were BRITISH MILITARY OFFICERS.

You see, the United States did not yet exist in 1763, so it's irrational to blame the United States for the actions of the British.

You can blame Great Britain as much as you like. Such heinous tactics were part of the reason that we kicked their sorry asses out of the United States of America.

[Thumpalumpacus]

Such heinous tactics were part of the reason that we kicked their sorry asses out of the United States of America.

Wait, the Revolution was fought in part to secure justice for the native tribes?

[Seth]

Such heinous tactics were part of the reason that we kicked their sorry asses out of the United States of America.

Wait, the Revolution was fought in part to secure justice for the native tribes?

That was certainly a prime concern of the first Continental Congress, which is why the Indian nations are "domestic dependent nations" in our laws and enjoy quite a bit of sovereignty. A careful review of our government's policy towards the Indian nations would profit your knowledge base quite a bit. Contrary to the ideological propaganda that's often heard about this subject, the United States has been one of the most accommodating and careful in its dealing with indigenous peoples, much more so than any other nation. It's far from perfect, and there were certainly episodes where individuals and groups within the government abused the relationship that our nation tried to forge with the Indian tribes, but then again the Indian tribes were not exactly blameless either.

And I was talking about the sort of tactics that the British used on Indians and Colonists alike.