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[Ed note: In observance of the US federal holiday which is observed on Monday October 11, 2021, I am inviting the editorial staff to run stories on a weekend schedule tomorrow. Please join me in thanking them for all their hard work and for the sacrifice of their spare time and energy! --martyb.]
Biden becomes first president to issue proclamation marking Indigenous Peoples' Day:
President Joe Biden issued a proclamation commemorating Indigenous Peoples' Day on Friday, becoming the first US president to do so, the White House said.
"The contributions that Indigenous peoples have made throughout history — in public service, entrepreneurship, scholarship, the arts, and countless other fields — are integral to our Nation, our culture, and our society," Biden wrote in the proclamation Friday. "Today, we acknowledge the significant sacrifices made by Native peoples to this country — and recognize their many ongoing contributions to our Nation."
Biden also marked a change of course from previous administrations in his proclamation marking Columbus Day, which honors the explorer Christopher Columbus. In that proclamation, the President acknowledged the death and destruction wrought on native communities after Columbus journeyed to North America in the late 1500s, ushering in an age of European exploration of the Western Hemisphere.
"Today, we also acknowledge the painful history of wrongs and atrocities that many European explorers inflicted on Tribal Nations and Indigenous communities. It is a measure of our greatness as a Nation that we do not seek to bury these shameful episodes of our past — that we face them honestly, we bring them to the light, and we do all we can to address them," Biden wrote.
More than 100 cities -- including Seattle, Los Angeles, Denver, Phoenix, San Francisco -- and a number of states -- including Minnesota, Alaska, Vermont and Oregon -- have replaced Columbus Day with Indigenous Peoples' Day, choosing instead to recognize the native populations that were displaced and decimated after Columbus and other European explorers reached the continent. Berkeley, California, was the first city to adopt Indigenous Peoples' Day, in 1992.
Also at Al Jazeera.
(Score: 3, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 10 2021, @06:21PM (20 children)
How sweet, give them a holiday so we can treat them like shit the rest of the year...
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 10 2021, @06:43PM (2 children)
Yup. And everyone else just gets dumped in the ocean to drown, because there's really nowhere else for them to go. With rare exceptions, they don't belong in Mexico, Canada or other north american locations, and Europe sure as shit doesn't want them, so ...
Yay! It turns out that making an aquarium from fish soup is a lot harder than fish soup from an aquarium! Of course, that hasn't prevented all sorts of racially-based lunatics from demanding racial subdivision of the USA. After all, it just makes sense that BLM would demand the establishment of a new form of apartheid in the USA.
No, wait, that makes no sense at all unless you think that they're all ignorant, stupid and/or malicious.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 10 2021, @07:56PM (1 child)
The indigenous "land back" movement does not seek to ethnically cleanse native lands of the colonizers.
https://globalsolidaritylocalaction.sites.haverford.edu/what-does-land-restitution-mean/ [haverford.edu]
https://landback.org/ [landback.org]
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 10 2021, @09:56PM
Fuck off.. you've already got casinos you greedy wagonburners.
(Score: 2) by Username on Sunday October 10 2021, @09:16PM (5 children)
I will not go like a buffalo,
Nobody can track me down,
I'll make my stand like a buffalo,
Make my way to higher ground,
People come from far away,
Brought the plow and the will to stay,
They broke ground and their promises,
Now we pray for a brand new day
What would you do for the buffalo?
Sacrifice everything you own?
Give up your life and security
Would you give them back their home?
Don't you pretend they disappeared,
We killed em off with electricity,
But now they're back on a sacred ground,
We celebrate, the spirit is free
~ Ted Nugent
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday October 11 2021, @01:53AM (4 children)
Yeah, poetic license and all that shit. But electricity had nothing to do with killing off the buffalo. Government paid men to go out, and kill the buffalo. They shot entire herds, and left them rotting under the empty sky. Not one electric light in sight when the sun went down.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Monday October 11 2021, @02:34AM (3 children)
And before that, the natives ran entire herds off the buffalo jumps, wasting all the but very top layer of the crushed corpses (per archeological excavations of several sites). The usual method before whites generously brought 'em horses and rifles (because no one in their right mind hunts bison with a short bow on foot) was to set fires to drive the herd, which of course did what grassfires do.
Government hunters mostly shot from stands and railway cars, which was a pretty narrow swath. The natives had a much broader effect on the bison population.
This is an interesting read on the topic:
https://fee.org/articles/buffaloed-the-myth-and-reality-of-bison-in-america/ [fee.org]
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Monday October 11 2021, @02:59AM (1 child)
The truth of the matter is, the US government intentionally slaughtered the buffalo herds, primarily because the buffalo provided sustenance to the native people. The natives lived for tens of thousands of years with the buffalo, and the rest of nature, without destroying nature.
That link has some merit, but lets not get carried away with it. Sure, running a herd of animals off a cliff provides all the meat for your clan, that you can preserve. But it didn't happen 6 times every year, year after year. Burning off new farm land is something that man has done all around the world, since we first mastered fire. And, accidents happen. Again, that didn't happen year after year. When fires are permitted to happen naturally and/or with some intelligent oversight, the litter on the forest floor doesn't accumulate for 20 or 50 years. THAT is our primary problem with fires today.
I'm not one to make saints of the Indians - but it chafes my hide when I hear Europeans bragging that they brought enlightenment to the natives. That's a crock of shit - worse, a crock of shit that's been sitting in the sun for a week. White men came here for their own greedy purposes, and they intended to exterminate any who resisted them. If Indians aren't saints, then the white man sure as hell aren't saints.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Monday October 11 2021, @05:56PM
Some tribes depended on the buffalo. Most didn't. Many tribes cultivated the Three Sisters [wikipedia.org], which comprise everybody from the Algonquins of the NE to the Ojibwe in the Dakotas, to the Puebloan peoples of the Southwest. Some of those supplemented with wild edibles like ragweed and wild rice and smaller fauna like deer, ducks, elk, turkeys, etc.
It's also not clear how long those tribes were doing what they were doing. Archaeological estimates vary wildly. Some say 13,000 years ago, others push the arrival of humans in the Americas way back. Among them, some have been around a long time, others, like the Navaho and Apache, are quite recent arrivals (est. 1400 AD).
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Monday October 11 2021, @02:36PM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_bison [wikipedia.org]
While Wikipedia isn't the be all end all, it's certainly a decent first stab at a topic.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by Opportunist on Sunday October 10 2021, @10:27PM (1 child)
So... basically the same idea as with mother's day?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 11 2021, @04:45PM
More like Yo Momma day.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 11 2021, @02:38AM
...Lay down the reeking ore
Don't you hear the shrieking in the trees?
Everywhere you touch the earth she's sore
Every time you skin her all things weep
Your money mocks us
Restitution what good can it do?
Kenneled in metered boxes
Red dogs in debt to you...
Joni Mitchell, Lakota
--
(Score: 3, Informative) by Thexalon on Monday October 11 2021, @02:57AM (6 children)
Is it symbolic rather than substantive? Absolutely. So was getting rid of the mascots, renaming the Washington DC football team and the Cleveland baseball team, and a bunch of other stuff.
On the other hand, celebrating Columbus is just plain a bad look. The guy was responsible for the robbery, rape and/or death of millions of people. It would be like Cambodia celebrating the legacy of Pol Pot every year. And no, he wasn't a product of his time: A lot of his contemporaries were horrified by his actions.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 11 2021, @05:12AM
To be completely fair, many people are horrified by Bezos and Musk, but you couldn't say they aren't products of their time.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Monday October 11 2021, @06:31PM (4 children)
Was he? Did he command that? I wasn't aware that Columbus was equal to or greater than Genghis Khan.
Many other people had a hand in European colonization of the Americas. If you go to the Vatican, the sheer weight of gold and silver in that place that was plundered from the Americas sort of hints that they might have had something to do with it. Neither is it a straight line from the Europeans interacting with native tribes to conquest. When the Dutch started buying beaver pelts from the tribes in the Hudson River valley it was enough to spur the Iroquois to start exterminating the Algonquins around them because they were the competition.
Or, take the Pilgrims' advent in Massachusetts. The local tribes helped them survive because they were desperate to find new allies to help them stave off the Iroquois.
Columbus's voyages helped change the course of history in the Americas and the world, and for that he should be recognized. Yes, it sucked for a lot of the native inhabitants eventually, but on the other hand it was sort of useful to have America as we know be available to help beat back the Nazis later.
Trying to take a Manichaean view of history is usually not very enlightening. History is not a thread, but a fabric.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Thexalon on Monday October 11 2021, @08:07PM (3 children)
Yes, yes he did.
Estimates of the number of Taino people living on Hispaniola (Dominican Republic and Haiti today) when he arrived was around 2 million. Columbus arrived, and on day 1 noted the gold jewelry some of the welcome committee were wearing and said that he thought it would be really easy to take it from them by force. When it was time to leave, he stole some of their gold and kidnapped a few of them so that he'd have proof that he'd found something worth colonizing. On his subsequent trips back, he set up a permanent colony, and established an absolutely brutal regime that was, according to contemporary accounts by people like Bartolome de la Casas, cutting off their hands for failing to give the Spaniards gold (which mostly happened because the gold didn't exist on the island in the quantities the Spanish were demanding), raping the women and girls (Columbus himself wrote that he preferred them younger than age 13 both for his own use and because they got a better price on slave markets), and in some cases hunting them for sport. And Columbus as far as we can tell was proud of all of this.
It was brutal enough that within a couple of decades, there were no Taino left, and the Spanish monarchy had reacted to the news with "Whoa, dude! Not cool!" and stripped him of his titles and power.
One of my ancestors was part of that crew, and my mother has studied that early colonial history as part of some history work she did under an NEH grant.
The first thing to note here is that the Pilgrims had actually engaged in a borderline mutiny on board the Mayflower to redirect the ship from the Jamestown colony (where most of the people on board thought they were going) to where they landed.
Among the first things the Pilgrims did upon landing on Cape Cod was to go grave-robbing. They were for the most part middle-class tradespeople who had approximately zero clue how to build, fish, farm, or hunt, and they relied on robbing the Wampanoag early on for their food supply before Tesquantum (who you probably got taught about as "Squanto") showed up and saved their butts. And Tesquantum, so we're clear, understood and could speak English because he'd traveled across the Atlantic half a dozen times, sometimes in captivity and sometimes as a free man trying to get home to his family, and been to England during his travels as a free man.
And yes, the Wampanoag probably helped them survive because they needed help protecting themselves, but it wasn't the Iroquois that they were worried about, it was the Narragansetts and Pequots right on their borders in what's now Rhode Island and Connecticut. One of the first military encounters the Plymouth colony had was fighting with the Wampanoags against the Pequots and absolutely shocking the Wampanoags with their brutality. And once they were more established, the Plymouth colony started mistreating the Wampanoags to steal their land and just plain kill them off. So it's not surprising that when Massasoit died, his son Metacomet organized an attack on the now-much-larger Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay colonies that wiped out almost half of their population.
So yeah, also not people to be proud of, really.
I'm of the mindset that genocide isn't OK, period. Because as soon as you say "but on the other hand ..." to a genocide, you're well on your way to saying "their genocides are bad, but our genocides are necessary and therefor justified for some greater good", which is exactly what genocidal monsters use to convince ordinary people to commit genocide.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday October 12 2021, @02:30PM (1 child)
Columbus showed up with 87 guys, and slaughtered 2 million Taino?
The Taino died because of diseases the Europeans brought. It worked out in the Europeans' favor, to be sure, but blaming Columbus for it doesn't make much sense because they had no idea how diseases worked then.
Being brutal, keeping slaves, rape, and all of those heinous acts were what everyone did to everyone in that day. Seen with modern eyes it's barbaric. Then, it was normal. All of those things, too, were practiced by natives across the Americas. So the idea that Columbus was worse than everyone else in the Americas is incorrect.
The Narragansetts and Pequots were being pressured by the Iroquois to their west [wikipedia.org]. The Iroquois were in an expansionistic phase, and were also exterminating the Neutrals and Hurons to their north and west.
The Wampanoags' strategy of making the Pilgrims allies worked in the short term. The colonists even dubbed Metacomet "King Philip." Long term, they turned on each other and the Wampanoags lost out.
I am of the same mindset. But the term genocide does not apply to European colonization of the New world, unless we're blurring the definition for rhetorical effect. And if you're calling European colonization of the Americas genocide, do you also call European colonization of Africa and South Asia genocide? Because the European colonizers did the same thing the same way wherever they went.
Columbus did not exterminate the peoples of the Americas. He did not exterminate the Taino either. Laying that at his door is incorrect. Disease was the culprit, and could have been the only culprit, because there is no other physical way for a few hundred or thousand colonists to wipe out tens of millions of Native Americans. The European colonists were not even as physically strong or as healthy as the natives they encountered because their diet and lifestyles were worse. And, no, a brace of muskets that are single shot and take a while to reload are not a magic wand to repel warriors adept with bows and atlatls (like de Soto found out).
It is tragic that the vibrant cultures of the Americas came off so badly with their encounters with European nations. Humanity lost a lot. But the narrative, the penchant, of describing the Native Americans as angels and Europeans as devils is inaccurate. History and reality are more complicated than that.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Tuesday October 12 2021, @03:28PM
No, it wasn't normal, as evidenced by contemporary reactions to it.
There were numerous very intentional efforts to kill off or expel from a territory large groups of people based on ethnicity. Many cultures that once existed in the Americas no longer do, in large part because of that effort. If that's not genocide, neither is the Holocaust.
And I did not claim the people Columbus exterminated were angels. They were people, some holding political power.
And yes, disease absolutely played a role. And while the people of the 1500's and 1600's didn't know germ theory, they did notice that if they gave blankets to the Natives that had been used by people dying of smallpox, those Natives that used them died of smallpox, so they did quite a bit of that sort of thing as a very primitive form of biological warfare.
In addition to disease, Spanish policy, and later English policy, and later US and Canadian policy all played a role. About the only ones who can't be blamed too much were the French, who were more about trading with the people already in North America rather than taking their stuff, enslaving them, or killing them. And I don't consider it an accident that by the 1700's, most of the native peoples were allied with the French, not the English colonies.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday October 12 2021, @04:11PM
So, while I agree with almost everything you have said, I will put forth a small "it was the nature of the times" defense for some of what went on in colonial days. Columbus is no saint, he was point man for the winning team and history (written by the victors) has tried its best to whitewash his legacy. However, if it wasn't one colony ship full of brutal morons landing at Plymouth, it would have been another much the same, maybe a little better, maybe a little worse.
I feel this way most strongly about Hawaii and New Zealand. The indigenous people there were terribly abused, but it was nothing special or specific about the colonizers... In those cases I would argue that alternatives would mostly have been worse. Left uncolonized, another colonial power - less capable and therefore likely more brutal - would have invaded instead. Examples like Vietnam or many places in Africa where the colonizers were eventually expelled aren't exactly tales of sweetness and light.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 11 2021, @07:08PM
Fuck you, dumb bitch. Fuck the Mongolian savages. Whites should have expelled or killed all of them. Monkeys should have been shipped back after the civil war. Lincoln was trying to but the Jews had him killed. Mestizos should be forced to stay in Mexico where they belong. White Mexicans (100% Spanish of real Spanish blood, not moors, sephardi jews, etc) can move to the US if they want.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 10 2021, @07:43PM
For starters, they definitely improve the profitability of our whiskey manufacters.
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 10 2021, @07:49PM (26 children)
>> wrongs and atrocities that many European explorers inflicted
How about the wrongs and atrocities that these Indians were inflicting on each other before their betters arrived on the continent? And the atrocities committed by Indians on innocent white settlers?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Tork on Sunday October 10 2021, @08:21PM (6 children)
Grading on a curve doesn't actually reduce the amount of atrocity.
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 11 2021, @04:54AM (4 children)
It's literally called "the lesser of two evils" because you are acknowledging that both options are still evil.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Tork on Monday October 11 2021, @05:07AM (3 children)
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 11 2021, @09:27AM (2 children)
Apparently I didn't make it clear enough that I'm a different AC that was agreeing with you.
(Score: 2) by Tork on Monday October 11 2021, @03:01PM (1 child)
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 12 2021, @12:31AM
It happens. Like I said, it was partially my fault. No worries.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Monday October 11 2021, @06:02PM
Mass human sacrifice like that practiced by the Aztecs pretty much achieves maximum atrocity.
Assigning relative weight to what one side did to the other is a political exercise; there were no saints involved in the process. It's much like arguing that Stalin was better than Hitler, or vice versa.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 10 2021, @10:28PM (3 children)
"Innocent white settlers". How cute. Genocide and slavery were the order of the day, but don't try to pretend like any side was better than the others.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 10 2021, @10:35PM (2 children)
The winners were better. Always have been.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 11 2021, @07:10PM (1 child)
and "winning while white" is called "colonialism", according to these Jews' puppets.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 12 2021, @12:12AM
Lookit here, its the racist incel angry about "dUherR j00z" so guess he wasn't picked up after Anonymous dumped his kiddie porn collection. Wonder what the cops are waiting for?
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday October 11 2021, @01:55AM (13 children)
Yeah, well, there probably were a few innocents in the mix. But the native Americans didn't invade Europe and slaughter all the natives they found there.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 11 2021, @02:10AM
That's right, the Africans did, they lived in caves and turned white, ate the dinosaurs, built Rome, and killed Jesus
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Reziac on Monday October 11 2021, @02:39AM (5 children)
As an Ojibwe friend of mine says, she's bloody glad the Europeans came, because she likes modern life, and the idea of squatting in a skin tent in the cold and dark while suckling your dozen papooses lacks all appeal. (And if your ancestors have done nothing different for the past 20,000 yeas, they're unlikely to suddenly up and develop modern conveniences.)
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday October 11 2021, @03:08AM (2 children)
Weren't the Ojibwe part of, or allied with, the Iroquois nation? Gotta look - - - ahhhh, same as Chippewa. I don't think they lived in skin tents very often, most of the northeast American tribes had long houses, cultivation, and trade - a long step up from plains Indians who chased the herds, dragging their wigwams behind them.
Mmmmm. OK, there were bands of Ojibwe a lot further west who went in for that nomad lifestyle. Your friend probably does know her tribal history.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Monday October 11 2021, @03:26AM
She's an elder, she might have one or two clues. ;)
Exaggerates, yeah, but still it was a pretty rough lifestyle compared to what we enjoy today.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 12 2021, @04:22AM
I think they were futurists
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday October 12 2021, @04:14PM (1 child)
It's very much a mixed bag. Hard to overlook the millions killed outright or the suffering along the way, but for today's descendants it is a more attractive life, at least until technoarmageddon hits.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 12 2021, @05:19PM
We would be living better anyway - it's been 500 years, and the cultures that existed were not static or unchanging, they were vibrant and evolving.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 11 2021, @07:16PM (5 children)
The Mongoloid hunter gatherers likely did kill Whites they found in North America at some point in the exchange. The Cherokee's own mythology hints at that very occurrence. Why do you think there were some "civilized tribes" who even look mixed(from before, not later)? Because Whites had once ruled and likely founded.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday October 11 2021, @07:37PM (4 children)
*yawn*
Sounds like one of those myths started by white supremacists who are feeling inadequate or something. You'll have to look real hard, and find some very convincing evidence that whitey ruled these continents before the 1500s. Or, have you fallen for that critical race theory? Whatever feels good (to you) has to be true.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 12 2021, @12:15AM (3 children)
You're so close to becoming aware, just a few more mental diseases to clear out and we can call you human again!
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday October 12 2021, @05:48AM (2 children)
I you hold yourself as an example of "human", I'll pass, thank you. I most certainly DO NOT want to join your tribe.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 13 2021, @02:57AM (1 child)
You're either part of the tribe called humanity, or a broken mammal that approximates human behavior. Very odd how you understand the reality of racism and do not personally care for it, yet you swallow rightwing narratives and criticize CRT in the same sentence. Your lack of education oozes out when you parrot propaganda at the exact same time as you decry it. Really odd, yet we continue to hold out hope you'll be able to catch these paradoxes as they come out of your brain.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday October 13 2021, @03:32AM
"Right wing ain't right, but left wing is grossly wrong. It's that simple, really.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 12 2021, @12:10PM
Oh noes! Why won't anyone think about the innocent, white settlers?
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Sunday October 10 2021, @08:21PM (1 child)
Thank you all. Your hard work and dedication are appreciated, especially since i find a lot of the time i have no time to even comment nowadays; i just read the headlines and go "Huh" and pass on.
Keep on truckin' and stay safe.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 10 2021, @10:38PM
Wait.... is that for the indigenous back room staff? Digital natives? Now get back in the cold room, boys.
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by Username on Sunday October 10 2021, @09:06PM (3 children)
You didn't even try to make this political propaganda piece related to anything nerdy.
(Score: 2) by Tork on Sunday October 10 2021, @09:20PM
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 4, Informative) by FatPhil on Sunday October 10 2021, @11:21PM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday October 11 2021, @04:02PM
If you don't like this piece, soon enough there will be a different president who can declare another
indigenou...indiginouu...native people's day. Celebrating the white people who were always on this land since the beginning of time all the way back to the big bang 6,000 years ago.To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Sunday October 10 2021, @09:22PM (2 children)
Stops short, they probably need an act of Congress to really change the name:
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Monday October 11 2021, @06:19PM (1 child)
When Christianity took over in Rome, they layered their holidays on top of the old Roman ones. It was an effective way of erasing the old pagan rites.
Layering Indigenous People's Day on top of Columbus Day sounds similar.
Personally I think there ought to be more recognition of Native American accomplishments, but there are a lot of available days that could be used without erasing somebody else.
Also, it might bear thinking about that lumping all tribes in together is itself a bit suspect, because somebody descended from the Maya might not particularly like to be equated with an Inuit, or vice versa.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 11 2021, @09:59PM
》 Personally I think there ought to be more recognition of Native American accomplishments,
Then we would be celebrating Native American Hour, not Native America Day.
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 10 2021, @09:32PM (35 children)
I've never heard of a culture that hates itself as much as Americans. Everything resulting in what they have -> out the window with it. It's shit. It needs to be thrown away.
I've never heard of such a culture ....... so I wonder what's going to happen to it.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Username on Sunday October 10 2021, @09:44PM (4 children)
In your face china, you'll never hate us as much as we hate ourselves!
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 10 2021, @09:59PM (3 children)
Dollars to donuts, when you get down to it you'll find it's the Chinese fomenting this race and gender nonsense. They'll gleefully watch us destroy ourselves, knowing that their military might could never inflict such damage.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 10 2021, @10:17PM
I wish I could get donuts round here for a dollar.
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 10 2021, @10:41PM
Yes, the lucky Chinese with their racial purity and perfect One Party state dictator-for-life. They must be laughing, because if they don't they'll get arrested.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Monday October 11 2021, @02:16AM
Well let's not blame them for being so successful then. Would all this "fomenting" make a difference if not for our own antipathy?
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 10 2021, @10:06PM (3 children)
》 I've never heard of such a culture ....... so I wonder what's going to happen to it.
It'll get voted out in 2024 and Trump will make everything great again. Hopefully this time he sends all the SJWs to Guantanamo for their traitorous activities during the interregnum
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 10 2021, @10:43PM (2 children)
For the shits and giggles, I hope that does happen.
Give us the chance to finally test the 25th Amendment, the Emoluments clause and various other Presidential exception bullshit.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 13 2021, @03:01AM (1 child)
Rightwing mod brigade is here, they laid low for a few weeks then came back when they figured staff was over it.
Aristarchus the prescient, the alt-right has steadily ruined this place with their racist garbage driving off most users.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 13 2021, @03:37AM
Oh, can it, ari. You aren't "most users". You don't even represent "most users". You should get back in the closet, and stop drawing attention to yourself.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by darkfeline on Sunday October 10 2021, @10:10PM (4 children)
Actually there is one: communist/Maoist China. The Cultural Revolution was all about destroying the rich history and culture of China and replacing it with modern politically correct doctrine. Now that I think about it, that explains a lot about the current state of the US and some other Western countries.
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 10 2021, @10:27PM (1 child)
Sure, though another motivation was one of the primary tenets of communism: Slaughter people more successful than yourself then appropriate their wealth for "redistribution."
The "共匪" (communist bandit) moniker is quite apt in this regard.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 12 2021, @04:44PM
The stupidity is strong with this one, almost stronger than the blind faith of a ccp revolutionary. At least they had the excuse of being uneducated peasants. You? Just another greedy self-important asshole.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 10 2021, @10:45PM
Does it help explain that income inequality is greater than any time since the Great Depression?
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday October 13 2021, @03:40AM
I think the Cultural Revolution was less about destroying history, than about elevating Mao above history, or anything else that might detract from Mao's greatness. A lot of stuff just happened to get broken in the process.
(Score: 3, Touché) by Opportunist on Sunday October 10 2021, @10:33PM (11 children)
You've never been to Germany, I take it?
You see, the first thing I noticed when I was in the US for the first time is the sheer amount of flags flying about. Not just from public buildings, private people having flagpoles and flying the US flag, not for independence day or other special occasions, but any day, all day.
If you see a German flag flying somewhere, you can be sure that there's a football world championship going on. Outside of these events, no flags please. Someone could think you're proud of your country, and that's not very German.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 10 2021, @10:48PM
Not just flags, endless signs and adverts. And homeless and wage slaves. Proud American folk.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 10 2021, @11:14PM (6 children)
A result of the denazification program [princeton.edu] in Western Germany, in which the US were advised by Herbert Marcuse. To a communist, the actual story of a genocidal lunatic seizing power and manipulating the population would be close to a confession. The "real" problems of National Socialism to a Socialist must therefore be nationalism (erroneously conflating civic-nationalism with ethno-nationalism) and Capitalism (which Hitler thought was a Jewish plot). Marcuse's claim that the German people were immune to "counter-propaganda" was an admission of exactly what he was doing.
The reason Germans don't fly national flags and the rise of "woke" in the US trace their origins back to the same anti-intellectual counter-propagandist. Isn't that interesting?
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 11 2021, @04:27AM (5 children)
Yes, because Hitler famously got along great with socialists and communists.
(Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 11 2021, @12:08PM (3 children)
Hitler was a Socialist who believed both Bolshevism and Capitalism to be Jewish conspiracies.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 12 2021, @12:58AM (2 children)
Disagree? [annefrank.org]
Does the NSDAP 25 point plan from 1920 [fordham.edu] read like it was written by a free-market capitalist?
Remember kids: just say "no" to socialism of either the nationalist or internationalist variety.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 12 2021, @05:15PM (1 child)
annefrank.org says only a small portion of Jews were communists! lmao! they were fucking taking over towns and assassinating politicians, as well as sabotaging Germany during ww1. They were/are a parasitic infection in any White nation. Hitler was right!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 13 2021, @03:07AM
The world will be better off when you're no longer a part of it. Just a thought, though I guess you might be able to grow as a person so that this current "you" is gone. Either way would be a win, your call.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 11 2021, @04:50PM
Particularly fond of minorities and LGBTQ, I heard.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 11 2021, @12:22AM
When I still lived in Germany, an American lived in our village. She installed a flag pole on her short front yard and raised Old Glory.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 11 2021, @11:31AM (1 child)
By law you can't have the flag in the flag pole at night, atleast here in the Nordic countries. You have to use a pennant instead if you want to have it all day all night.
Don't know about German laws, but considering that they put the flag on every product they make, they sure are more proud than we in my country.
I've had this joke that US people need the flags so that they know they haven't gotten lost to Canada or one of the Mexican countries. Relax, it's just a joke and a joke within a joke, not that they are allowed anymore, but there you go, have a laugh or a frown.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 11 2021, @04:53PM
In America, we usually make our jokes funny. No flagging necessary.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 11 2021, @01:43AM
Great post, Runaway! I know, you posted this AC to avoid the wrath of aristarchus' sock puppets. But it's still a great post!
Darkies hate America. They've just convinced everyone else to hate America, too. I can't understand why we would create an American holiday for those who hate America. What's next? Renaming Veteran's Day to "9/11 Terrorists' Day" to be politically correct to sand niggers?
Star Trek: Voyager is a great analogy. Voyager is from a civilized part of the galaxy but ends up in the Delta Quadrant. The Kazon are the Star Trek equivalent of injuns, battling among themselves with no real technology. When civilized people show up with better technology, the Kazon attack them. Just like the injuns. There's a reason the Delta Quadrant was a technological backwater, other than the Borg. Of course the Borg deemed the Kazon unworthy of assimilation, so I can't imagine they'd find much value in injuns or any other darkies, either.
Niggers, kikes, towelheads, wetbacks, chinks, dune coons, pajeets, japs, pakis, gooks, injuns, and all other darkies hate America. That's why I hate darkies. My hate is strong and I'm damned proud of it. In fact, my hate is getting stronger as I talk to you people. However, I'm not racist, and there's nothing racist about my post. Of course, the left will try to label me a racist because they can't refute anything I posted. If darkies didn't hate America, they wouldn't pillage and burn our cities while calling their riots free speech and free expression. I'm attacked because I'm a strong, independent woman who doesn't mindlessly accept leftist propaganda. It's funny that when I don't say that I'm a woman in my posts, people tell me I'm one of the best posters on this site. When leftists mod me down and spam mod me, it's because they're misogynists who can't handle the truth.
The left wants to indoctrinate an entire generation of Americans to hate America. That's why they're pushing critical race theory in schools, spreading propaganda for darkies and teaching our kids to hate America.
Darkies are trying to invade and destroy America. We're fools for aiding and abetting them.
Melissa
(Score: 2) by shortscreen on Monday October 11 2021, @02:50AM
For some reason your post has me wondering if software development could be a culture. They wouldn't be able to observe a holiday for more than two consecutive years without slapping a deprecated/legacy alert on it.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by bradley13 on Monday October 11 2021, @09:25AM (4 children)
To be fair, that pretty much only applies to "woke" Americans.
Conquest was the norm throughout most of human history. Conquering the indigenous tribes in the America's was just human "business as usual".
One can say the same about slavery. The US wasn't even one of the big players. History happened.
All the modern Angst about the doings of people long dead is, frankly, pretty dumb. We are where we are. Learn from the past, sure, but look towards the future.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 11 2021, @04:55PM (2 children)
And I'll just inherit this nice big house that I earned while you keep renting a shack for 50% of your wages. That's only fair.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 11 2021, @09:18PM (1 child)
It takes 1 to 2 generations for dirt poor, non-white immigrants to make it to the upper middle class. Those who are poor for generations are mainly poor due to their culture and upbringing that they then pass on to their kids who repeat the cycle. Never before in history has there been so many free resources for you to use to make your life better. That they so often go unused is 'your' fault, not mine.
How many of those poor families grabbed old clothing, manually sewn them into masks, and bootstrapped themselves into something better? I know one family of immigrants who did just that and ended up going from something like 17k a year to 30k. Almost doubling their incoming while being able to work at home sitting in front of the TV. Still poor by many standards, but they certainly feel rich now.
Rundown shacks go for cheap and you can rebuild them from the inside out while living there or out of your car or in a tent. Then resell for 500% markup and repeat. How many poor bother to do that? Learning to do so isn't difficult. There are always new shacks being put on the market.
(Score: 2) by SunTzuWarmaster on Wednesday October 13 2021, @02:28PM
Pretty much. Look at basically any immigrant population in the US. "Ha ha ha, Indian people own all the gas stations, ha ha ha, Apu. Simpsons". Like - I know a few Indian people that moved to the country with nothing, got a big loan on a gas station property, and now own/operate three mostly-restored gas stations for $200K/year net income. Their kids went to college while ignoring the "student debt crisis".
The Patels did so with the motel industry.
The Korean people did so with dry cleaners.
The list goes on.
(Score: 1) by Well placed aim... on Sunday October 24 2021, @04:29AM
THANK YOU! Shit, I do like it when I read common sense!
W.P.A.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 11 2021, @07:18PM
this is due to cultural marxist jews teaching the kids indirectly through dumb goy slaves. it's not just america but all white nations. all part of the kalergi plan.
(Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Monday October 11 2021, @09:34PM
You remind me of my cousin, when I would suggest that we as a people need to be using less resources. He would rant that "I wanted us to go back to living in caves!". The only ones with your attitude are those who believe that any suggestion we aren't living sustainably, and that we haven't behaved the best way possible while getting where we are, are attacking your entire way of life. If we are, then you seriously need to reexamine the way you live. Acknowledging past mistakes is not "throwing every thing away". Behaving better (by this I mean treating them as we would want to be treated) towards marginalized groups is a step forwards, but taking that step seems to enrage many who perceive that they have benefited (whether they really have or not) from such mistreatment. We can't roll back the clock and we can't fix past mistakes, but by acknowledging we have made mistakes maybe we can prevent ourselves from making them again.
(Score: 0, Insightful) by Snotnose on Sunday October 10 2021, @09:52PM (28 children)
Using a mortar and pestle to grind spices? To use animal bits to hide what Europeans considered naughty bits? To not kill more than they needed to in order to eat/cloth/house themselves (also called the 40 hour workweek).
Do you really think that if the locals had figured out iron working and gunpowder they wouldn't be killing indiscriminately, just like the feckless white dudes shooting buffalo from a train and thinking they're better than average? Do you really think that if a single tribe had invented gunpowder they wouldn't have overrun the entire continent?
Did they figure out iron working? No
Did they figure out algebra? No
Did they figure out astronomy? No
Did they figure out how to build cities? No
Did they figure out how to build ships to travel for a month or three to unknown lands? No
Did they figure out how to live peacefully with their neighbors? As long as said neighbors could fight them to a standstill, no
Did they figure out how to put feathers on their heads, dance like LSD was invented long ago, and make a tradition of it? Hell yeah.
I can feel my karma draining from my sorta drunk mostly hungry body.
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 10 2021, @10:01PM
It's their day (technically their footnote to Columbus Day), so you have to pretend they added value and didn't lead miserable short lives before civilized races showed up.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 10 2021, @10:33PM
Who didn't have astronomy, math, or cities? You're full of shit and propaganda. Europe was failing badly, and the incredible agricultural prowess of the Americans is all that saved them from another dark age as everybody starved to death.
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 11 2021, @01:26AM (14 children)
How the fuck is this Nazi bullshit getting modded "4 insightful"?
If the new efforts to address sock puppet accounts has been effective, the far-right extremist, fascist, nazi, alt-right, racist scumbags are out in full force on this site again.
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 11 2021, @02:01AM (3 children)
Relentless wokeness with it's year-zero, fact-free, revisionist zeal is annoying people. If you see bigotry everywhere, there's a good chance you're the bigot. It is you employing epithets in place of argument.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 11 2021, @02:43AM (2 children)
> Relentless wokeness
No. Just not a fascist spreading lies as fascists do.
Cities:
https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/aug/17/lost-cities-8-mystery-ahokia-illinois-mississippians-native-americans-vanish [theguardian.com]
And, the Maya, Inca, Aztec, and Olmec cities south of the US border also were sized similarly to their European contemporaries.
And, this list is not exhaustive; there were others.
And, nearly everybody knows this. Lying about it is just a Nazi tactic to try to win over more ignorant basement dwelling incels into their ranks.
The GGP is just a far-right racist rant. And, calling it out as such isn't wokeness nor any other B.S. term fascists use to describe non-Nazis and ideologies opposed to Nazis/Alt right/Christian Identity/KKK/fascists/whatever term Nazis are re-branding themselves as today.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 11 2021, @07:21PM (1 child)
and all those "native cities" were engineered by white men, according to the mongoloids own religions. dumb fucking slave.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 13 2021, @03:09AM
APK is a low IQ piece of shit. Wouldn't you agree?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 11 2021, @02:53PM (9 children)
Dude/dudette, you did nothing to counter the claims and are here just name calling. You are the problem here.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 11 2021, @04:14PM (8 children)
Have you read the comments on pretty much any recent article lately?
This site is turning into Parler, MeWe, Gab.
If folks are not going to mod the Nazis into oblivion, this site will be lost to them.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Monday October 11 2021, @05:02PM (4 children)
If you bother to log in YOU could moderate them - but that is obviously too difficult for you.
There is no need to rant about it - this site is way better than those you refer to and nothing like as bad as you are suggesting.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Tuesday October 12 2021, @02:08AM (3 children)
No, I can't, janrinok, even if I log in. Thanks for letting the Nazis take over SoylentNews!
(Score: 4, Insightful) by janrinok on Tuesday October 12 2021, @06:00AM (2 children)
No, YOU can't. You abuse this site far more than the Nazis you accuse of doing the same.
They haven't taken over this site. Your world view is so skewed you see things that do not exist. You earned this ban - you can now wait until it is lifted.
Discussion closed.
(Score: 1, Troll) by aristarchus on Tuesday October 12 2021, @07:43PM (1 child)
Peace in our time, eh? That is a good British politician! Happy Chamberlain, janrinock!
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 13 2021, @03:50AM
Wir sind alle auf aristarchus.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 11 2021, @07:27PM (1 child)
"Nazi" is a Jew slur for national socialists who were just trying to get the Bolshevik insurgents out of the country and the international jew bankers out of Germany's finance. Communist Jews were taking over cities and sabotaging Germany's ww1 war efforts, among all their other corrosive tactics. Talmudic, supremacist Jews are the problem, not "Nazis".
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 12 2021, @04:48PM
Aww the degenerate Nazi wants to rewrite history because no one likes Nazi incels. Poor little nazi baby, I hear they have pills for all your personal failings.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 12 2021, @12:19AM
"This site is turning into Parler, MeWe, Gab."
Has been for a long time, nothing new there. The sock puppet hunt was incredibly strict on evidence so only the most blatant offenders got caught. It is 100% still occurring, and the sad fact is that the trolls are paid agitators meant to destroy any conversations that lead to real change. Well, some are just useful idiots spreading their alt-right bigotry and conspiracy theories.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 11 2021, @01:45AM
When did Murrica ever live peacefully with its neighbors, particularly the extant nations that were invaded, conquered, and exterminated?
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 11 2021, @02:35AM
Europeans didn't figure it out until 1945, when they became vassals of the United States.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Reziac on Monday October 11 2021, @02:44AM (1 child)
The Iroquois were working on that overrun the continent thing. And when they conquered another tribe, if at the moment they didn't need any more slaves, they killed the losers. My professional mentor was an Ojibwe chief born about 1900; he had tales from his grandmother's grandmother about fleeing from the Iroquois.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 11 2021, @05:07PM
We can look at the pre-Columbian Americas two ways: 1. A parallel of Europe with some advanced civilizations, mostly in Mezoamerica and South America with some less advanced tribes mostly in the north. The parallels between Rome and the barbarians are definitely there.
2. As peaceful people living in harmony with the Earth until Europeans arrived.
The evidence for 1 is much more compelling, but the political heft of 2 is very much in evidence and not going away any time soon.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Monday October 11 2021, @03:42AM (4 children)
You mean contributions apart from developing the primary agricultural crop in the Americas today and possibly the world, and a related agricultural system that remained the backbone of the European colonist's diet for centuries after their arrival? Or some of the political ideas that were included in the US Constitution? Or the eagle holding arrows on the seal of the USA, which was straight-up ripped off from the Iroquois? Or establishing trade and travel routes that in many cases would form the basis of modern road routes?
Lots of native peoples had metalworking well in hand when Europeans arrived. One reason we know this is that when Columbus showed up, he immediately noticed the metal jewelry these guys were wearing.
They by all appearances had a very good understanding of geometry. We don't know about their algebraic knowledge one way or another, since they mostly didn't keep written records.
But also importantly, the Europeans hadn't really figured out algebra in the late 1400's. An Arabic guy had figured it out and was responsible for the name "al-jebra", and it was just starting to be understood in Europe well enough to refine it, so Columbus and his crew probably didn't know algebra very well. They probably knew enough math to use a astrolabe reasonably competently, but couldn't solve quadratic equations or anything like that.
Since they had documented accurate calendar systems, including in societies near the equator where the sun doesn't provide much of a clear measurement, yes, they probably did have a decent understanding of astronomy. Since we can't read the written languages of the cultures that had writing, we don't know exactly the extent of their astronomy knowledge, but it was definitely more than nothing.
Oh, and this is another one of those areas where in Europe around 1500 had their knowledge cribbed from Arabic scholars. This was decades before Brahe, Galileo, Newton, Kepler, et al.
That's absolutely ridiculously wrong. Maya cities had had large populations and significant cultural influence centuries earlier. Aztec Tenochtitlan was, according to the Spanish, the largest city they'd ever encountered by a wide margin. Even if you just limit it to the present-day US, Cahokia had been a thriving city located near present-day St Louis, exactly where you'd want to be for a major hub of commerce. Like in Europe, there were lots of different-sized settlements depending on the needs of the people living there.
... unless you count the native Hawaiians, who like pretty much all Polynesian peoples did exactly that.
Like all people, sometimes there was peace, sometimes there was war, and which one you're talking about depended a lot on politics and diplomacy. There's no evidence that suggests that Americans in 1450 were any more violent than Europeans or Asians or Africans or Australians in 1450.
A common use of feathers was to stick it on the side of their face to shade their eyes from the sun glare. A cheap, easy innovation that has been tested and works nicely. Sure, some of them also used feathers as decorative bling ... just like Europeans did at the same time and would continue to do into the Victorian period.
As for the drugs, as lots of hippies can tell you, they'd discovered psychedelic mushrooms a very very long time ago. So if your the sort that likes tripping, that's definitely a native contribution.
And that's just the stuff before European contact. After European contact, there's stuff like code-talkers that saved a lot of people's butts in WWII.
To summarize, I don't think you have the faintest idea what you're talking about and are instead commenting based on stereotypes rather than reality.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 11 2021, @04:32AM
Does that mean in all those staged pictures of indian chiefs with all the feathers, that those bonnets are on backwards?
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Monday October 11 2021, @06:09PM (2 children)
The Maya had sailing craft that could travel long distances, though they tended to keep it to coastal voyages. Trade routes also existed in the Caribbean, which perforce required sailing long distances.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Monday October 11 2021, @06:22PM (1 child)
GP was suggesting that natives couldn't handle journeys in the thousands of miles, not the much shorter distances between, say, what's now Honduras and Jamaica (not saying the Maya couldn't do that - basically any culture that isn't completely landlocked figured out ocean-worthy boats). Whereas the Hawaiians were part of a culture that was navigating the Pacific with remarkable levels of skill long before any Europeans showed up, and by all appearances doing things like making the 2500 mile trip to the North American coast to do some trading and swapping of knowledge.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday October 12 2021, @01:27PM
Sure. Pacific Islanders were by far the best navigators and seafarers of that time, far better than the Europeans. I was only adding in that those in the Americas proper had some maritime chops too.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Monday October 11 2021, @09:52PM
They had no need of it, so why bother?
Of what use would this have been to them?
They could probably navigate over land and knew seasons by the stars, so yes.
They most certainly did build cities. Most of course were wiped out when Europeans introduced new diseases, but the sites were there and in several cases were used by white settlers for their cities. They also grew orchards and cleared land for agriculture, most of which were again abandoned after disease swept through native populations.
Why on earth would they ever have to do this? Most lived in what they considered paradise.
Most did at least as well as Europeans did, and it is probable a whole lot better. We don't find evidence of continent wide wars continually ravaging the land.
Ah I see, you've watched Hollywood movies.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday October 12 2021, @04:20PM
Did they figure out X? Well, no. Mostly because they didn't need to. Necessity/desperation is the mother of invention. Somehow we have managed to crank up that desperation fuelled invention engine into terminal overdrive, starting around 100 years ago.
🌻🌻 [google.com]