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Recently there's been a few Native issues that have been in the news:

 

currently in Canada

  • In two unanimous decisions, Canada's highest court ruled that commercial
    logging is not the logical evolution of a traditional Mi'kmaq trading activity.
     
    Two native men from Nova Scotia and New Brunswick had argued that
    treaties their ancestors signed with Britain in 1760 and 1761 gave them
    the right to commercially log trees on Crown land without permission.
     
    But the judges said the two natives did not prove aboriginal title to the lands they logged.
source

and currently in the USA

  • The Shinnecock Indian Tribe of eastern Long Island, which
    historically has lived in poverty next to the summer mansions of New
    York's super-rich and famous, recently filed suit for 3,500 acres allegedly
    stolen in what it calls the Great Dispossession of 1859. Although the fate
    of the suit is uncertain, it draws attention to a roster of serious
    grievances and one of the most dramatic juxtapositions in the
    country of mainstream wealth and Indian exploitation.
     
    The suit names New York state, Suffolk County, the town of
    Southampton, Long Island University, the Long Island Railroad,
    and several local developers and businesses, including two
    championship-level golf courses. It does not go after any
    individual landowners, although the tribe left open that possibility
    in a later suit. Tribal Board of Trustees Chairman Randy King told
    Indian Country Today that the tribe's lawyers were researching an
    aboriginal rights claim that could cover the entire town of Southampton.
source

 

Now I'm having a tough time with these issues.

I do believe that Native peoples should have a right to live like they believe is the 'traditional way of life', but when does that time line end? With the logging example, some lumberjacks are chopping down trees on 'Crown Land' because it used to belong to their ancestors. I'm fine with that if they were doing the same volume as their ancestors. I'm sure when the treaty was signed, chainsaws and flatbed trucks were not part of the picture. If someone discovered diamonds on crown (public) land, could a native tribe make a claim that the diamonds belong to them even though their ancestors had no way to get diamonds out of the ground? At what point does a land treaty become negated by history?

 

Take the second news article as a point of reference. A Native tribe is claiming that the entire town of Southampton was built on land belonging to them. Well now some of the houses there can sell for $200million, so should those houses, built in the past 100 years be transfered to the original owners of the land? The thing that actually gets me kind of mad about this issue is that there's talk about building a casino if the case is decided in favor of the first nations. Do we really need another casino? Is there no concern for gambling addiction and cycle of poverty that casinos cause? Was the term 'casino' ever listed in the treaties or does that fall under the header of 'self-rule'?

 

So what's the crossfire take on the issue?

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I'm in a bind because I dont know what side to take.

I agree that the First Nations were totally abused by the invaders

but at the same time, find me a country in the world that hasn't

at some point been invaded. In Canada the native people get

their college education paid for, plus they dont pay sales tax on

a lot of things. Care to ask the Hutus what the Tutsis are doing

for them now? As much as I wish the 'fuck all nations' thing could

work, we're not going back in time, so we need a real solution.

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I think the solution is for Native Americans to stay in school, avoid drinking alcohol to excess and taking drugs, go to college and become educated people and get to work like the rest of the citizens of the nations where they reside. If they want to live on the reservation in a bark lodge or a tepee, be my guest. Society doesn't guarantee them the right to live a modern, middle-class existance at the expense of the rest of society.

 

Native Americans are just as capable of becoming educated and living a normal American life as anybody else. We do not owe them a living. So, their ancestors lived here before the Europeans came, big deal. That was then. This is now. "Get to work, or be hungry." And no, they cannot cut down the public forests for their own personal gain. Why should anyone have to tell them this?

 

The attitude of "entitlement" and "the world owes me a living" is just very difficult to understand.

 

Once in Arizona, I was driving with some friends through a National Forest in December, and we saw a big fire. We zoomed to a Ranger Station up ahead (it was like a big fire station, with trucks, etc.) to report it. The Rangers said, "Oh, don't worry about it, that's just the Indians, burning the forest to keep warm." We were like "WHAT?"

"Yeah, they get drunk, and it's cold, so they set the woods on fire to get warm. They do it all the time. Don't worry about it, we'll go down there and get them, put the fire out, and bring them back up here to sleep in the firetruck garage."

 

My stunned reaction was "WHAT THE FUCK? They do it all the time? Why aren't they in prison? If I did that, I'd go to prison!"

 

"Ah, you know--they're Indians, they do shit like this all the time. What do you expect?"

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Originally posted by KaBar2@Jul 30 2005, 01:53 PM

So, their ancestors lived here before the Europeans came, big deal.

 

 

It's hard to imagine anyone saying anything worse than talking about genocide like this.

 

Well if the natives didn't live in abject poverty and weren't driven out to barren wastelands they probably wouldn't have to resort to such extreme measures to get warm.

 

This has to be the most ignorant thing I've ever heard you say.

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You're honestly going to make that arguement on the behalf of those guys? They were starting random forest fires. Kabar's reaction is pretty fucking understandable. Judging from the 'they get drunk and it's cold' comment, I would assume this isn't some shit where the tribe gathers and ceremonially burns the woods. This sounds more like some guys getting shit faced and getting ignorant. Oh, and they happen to be natives.

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I come from Alberta. Oil lands and oil sands have been the subject of discussion for as long as i can remember.

 

There is a reserve less than 20 minutes drive from where i grew up where there happened to be a huge deposit of oil.

So the agreement that the reserve signed with the oil company is that every kid that grows up on the reserve gets a lump sum of $100 000 when they turn 18 with ongoing payments for life. plus they get the free college and no sales tax bonus too.

 

is this fair over a hundred years after the fact? contracts are contracts, right? i can get with that. but how are you going to just be like, "Yo, my ancestors, who I may or may not have any connection to, are making a claim to this land!" and try to take over things?

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Originally posted by Krakatau@Jul 30 2005, 05:01 PM

You're honestly going to make that arguement on the behalf of those guys? They were starting random forest fires. Kabar's reaction is pretty fucking understandable. Judging from the 'they get drunk and it's cold' comment, I would assume this isn't some shit where the tribe gathers and ceremonially burns the woods. This sounds more like some guys getting shit faced and getting ignorant. Oh, and they happen to be natives.

 

 

Obviously you aren't aware that alcoholism is a disease the white man gave them. Go live on a reservation in Arizona then see if you can complain about how they are.

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Originally posted by KaBar2@Jul 30 2005, 06:53 PM

My stunned reaction was "WHAT THE FUCK?  They do it all the time?  Why aren't they in prison?  If I did that, I'd go to prison!"

 

 

Jeolous?

 

You're like the nerdy kid that narked out the party kids cause subconsciously you were just mad that they were getting away with being free and you weren't. :haha: :haha:

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Originally posted by KaBar2@Jul 30 2005, 12:53 PM

That was then. This is now.

 

 

 

 

why don't you feel that way about the waco incident? they murdered themselves by refusing to surrender. it's in the past, there's no use worrying about it. who cares? the native americans were no less innocent, and the fact of their persecution is no less valid.

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Good point, and the Waco thing could have been completely avoided if the BATF had not had a big grandstanding "ATF raid" in mind from the very start.

 

How many years do you suppose have to pass before Native Americans are just going to be like the rest of us--no special priveleges, no reservations, just "work hard in school, and go to work?"

 

Conflicts where one country conquers another have been going on forever, and the same thing was true of the Native Americans, it's just that the Europeans had better technology. The Cherokees had the right idea--they started farming and became "civilized". They did their best to adapt, and to emulate the Europeans. They had a written language, newpapers, a Constitution modeled on the U.S. Constitution, and the vast majority of them were Christians. But it did not save them from being evacuated, along with their neighbors, the Creeks, the Seminoles and a slew of other tribes. They were removed from Georgia and the Carolinas, Alabama, Florida and other southeastern states to "west of the Mississippi", ultimately to Oklahoma Territory.

 

The reason they were removed, by force, by the U.S. Army, was because they were not white. They had adopted every European element of culture that they could, but ultimately, the Europeans wanted their land, and they took it, at bayonet point.

 

An estimated 8,000 of them died on the Trail of Tears, in 1838, because the decision to move them was taken late in May, and winter set in before they arrived in Oklahoma. All able-bodied men, boys and girls walked the entire way. Women, infants, small children and elderly people rode in wagons.

 

When the Europeans arrived on North American there were an estimated ten million Native Americans. By 1838, there were about one million left alive. The nine million that died were the victims of European diseases, warfare and the hunger, cold and disruption caused by the Relocation to Indian Territories. The greatest number of deaths were from European diseases such as measles, to which the Native Americans had never been exposed, and to which they had no immunity or resistance.

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Originally posted by Krakatau@Jul 30 2005, 05:01 PM

Judging from the 'they get drunk and it's cold' comment, I would assume this isn't some shit where the tribe gathers and ceremonially burns the woods. This sounds more like some guys getting shit faced and getting ignorant. Oh, and they happen to be natives.

 

natives who have lost the ceremonial ways of their ancestors... more sad than anything.

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  • 3 weeks later...

YOU GUYS ARE MAKING MY FUCKING BLOOD BOIL! :hatred:

 

SERIOUSLY WE ARE TALKING ABOUT GENOCIDE HERE. YOUR COMMENTS ARE MAKING ME THINK VERY VIOLENT THOUGHTS. I WILL COME BACK LATER WHEN I HAVE CALMED DOWN. BUT FUCK!!!!!!! HOW THE FUCK CAN YOU GUYS THINK THIS WATY. I WANT TO FUCKING.. ARGH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

I AM A NATIVE PERSON, AND EFFYOO, SHUT THE FUCK UP, YOU DONT EVEN KNOW A GODDAMN THING ABOUT HOBBEMA, I AM FROM HOBBEMA, AND IF YOU EVER MAKE ANOTHER COMMENT THAT IS NOT 100% TRUE I WILL ZAP-STRAP YOUR ASS AND DROP YOU IN THE SAMSON GHETTO. FUCKING PUNK

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I have a bad temper, and this shit is the only thing I know that has any importance in my life. So I take this subject seriously. To me it is not something that I might think about from time to time. No I am an Indian, so I constantly think about what the white man has done to us, and how we can pull ourselves from under the hegemony that his been imposed onto us through evil imperialism, and the lack of respect for Mother Earth. I have a bad temper because i have serious underlying issues. I am md about the theft of lands, I am mad that the world refuses to acknowledge the genocide that is being commited in America. I am mad because mainstream America is so ignorant to the real history of America, and I am mad because every dumb mother fucker thinks they have the right solution to problems affecting Indians. Like alcoholism and drug abuse, sexual abuse. I am mad because the new colonial governments stole children from their homes and forced them to live in schools that were church and state run, and focused on cleansing the Indian of their mother language and culture, these schools taught that Indians are evil, and probably the worst thing about them was that they were operated by pedophiles. These schools operated for a hundred years.

So there is your solution right there Kabar, educate Indians the White way and then everything will be gravy. Too bad your predecessors were dirty fucking skinners eh?

How many years do you suppose have to pass before Native Americans are just going to be like the rest of us--no special priveleges, no reservations, just "work hard in school, and go to work?"

Hopefully that never happens, I don't know why anyone would want to become a fat slob that consumes chemicals he can't even pronounce and watches and believes lies on tv. And what was with your comeback talking about the Cherokee? You are a fucking idiot. Where did you read your information? The back of a menu at some greaseball family restuarant? Because it is fucking bullshit. Don't you know anything about the history of the government that you love so much? The United States constitution was based on the constitution of the Iroquois Confederacy, a constitution that has been in place for thousands of years. You may have been lied to in school and believed the constitution was based on the greeks, but that is a lie your government told you to keep thinking the Indians were uncivilized and had were primitive. Your statistics on the TRAIL OF TEARS are wrong. Nobody knows the exact number, but it is higher than 8000. Wagons? yeah right. Even your numbers of total population before contact are false. North America was very densly populated in 1492.

Effyoo. Do you know anything about the numbered treaties that were signed between the Crown and mulitple Indian Nations? Do you know which treaty area you reside in? It is treaty 6. treaty6map.gif

That is the land mass that my people gave up, we traded it for a list of demands, health care and education. You see all that land? we live on less than 2 percent of that. it was supposed to be more, but the colonial treaty negotiators lied and shafted us, also in good faith during the world wars we lent some land to the government, and they forgot to give it back. Anyway what got me so mad was your analysis of the oil agreement my people have with the crown, You said that my people signed an agreement with the oil company that assures a lump sum of a hundred grand, plus college and no sales tax. What the fuck is that? That is an uneducated response to a subject you obviously know little about. The oil did not last forever, the royalties were put into a trust fund until the oil ran out. so yeah, we get trustfunds, but it is now less than half of what you said. And what really got me mad, was that somehow you believe the oil company is behind my right to education. Like I said, we ceded all of treaty six in exchange for those rights. To me the land is sacred, all of my ancestors are buried here. So you trying to make false statements about why I get free school makes me mad. I have a deep connection to this land and my ancestors. The treaty was signed over 100 years ago, and it was signed with the intention that it will be upheld for ever. You want it gone? Well if we did follow Kabar's advice and adopted traits of white men, then we could very well utitilize this retarded excuse that mite is right and just take it back. Or i could just walk up to you, break your jaw and steal your wallet with the excuse that I am stronger and it happened 5 minutes ago so get over it.

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Originally posted by wild turkey@Aug 21 2005, 02:21 PM

Or i could just walk up to you, break your jaw and steal your wallet with the excuse that I am stronger and it happened 5 minutes ago so get over it.

 

I like this example.

 

Im not white nor am i native american, and this whole issue doesnt affect me directly, other than the fact that since two years ago i know have sveral casinos in my area that i can go to. Yeah the government stole your land, but how many times has that happened in history, all over the world. You guys are nothing special, it happened to latin america, it happened to south america, and it happennd in north america. If you feel the need to punch the next white man in a business suit and take the keys to his lexus and drive off with it, im not going to be mad at you, in fact i might shake your hand.

 

What you need to do is stop having such a victim mentality, its not the "white man" thats holding you back, youre holding yourself back by thinking the government owes you something. Even if they did owe you land/money/whatever, i really dont think the governemnt is going to have a change of heart and startn giving you shit out of nowhere. You could have all the proof you want about treaties or whatnot but the fact of the matter is youre not going to get that shit back, its a fucked up situation, but you have to be realistic here.

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"...other than the fact that since two years ago i know have sveral casinos in my area that i can go to."

 

this is sooooooooooooo overlooked, that it isn't even funny.

 

there are dozens of "bands" of natives in california who lobby the state to allow them to build casinos in areas that they never even lived in! and, the fucked up thing is, the common myth is that the "bands", which is portrayed by the media as being representative of the tribes they spring from, benefit from this. and, maybe they do....but, it's a pie, right? and, there's only so much of that pie to go around, and if i don't miss my bet, the tribe at large probably gets the smallest piece. where does the rest go? these casinos don't exactly operate on an open-books basis. what i think is that a few people figured out how to play this to their benefit, and now are making loot...and, i'm sure that there HAS to be a few white guys out there getting their free mercedes on with a wallet full of comps to all those casinos. the fact is, gambling is an addiction just like st. ides or crack, and we're well on our way to having a full-blown casino industry in a state that can barely afford to keep its schools open.

 

and for this, we have our boy to thank...terminatorsm.jpeg....who promised, when elected, that he wouldn't take a cent in "political contributions"...then, last week, held a $25,000 dollar a plate dinner at which he was the key speaker. i wish i could have been a fly on the wall at that one.

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Originally posted by SF1@Jul 29 2005, 11:47 AM

"Shinnecock"??? LOL! Is that pronounced "shiny-cock"? :haha: :haha: :haha: :haha:

 

 

"Oooooooh tee hee its so funny, I'm 5 years old. Tee hee..."

 

It's pronounced "Shin-nuh-cock".

 

Having grown up on L.I....I would just like to say "Fuck you" to all the South Hampton assholes. I'm not sure exactly where their boundaries used to lay, but I surely hope that they find proof that it was over the town. Ideally, in my fantasy world, it would lead to the rich slobs being given the boot. I do know that the Native Americans over there are in quite bad shape and such.

 

 

Fuck the Hamptons.

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