I’m all for the general gist, but “no criminals?” Bullshit.
They had slavery. Don’t imagine it was a utopia just because colonizers hadn’t made it worse yet.
They, like most other people in the world, had slavery, genocide, theft, the death penalty, and all sorts of other bad things. None of this excuses colonialism, at all. But to pretend that native peoples were some kind of wonderful noble savages is very very racist in and of itself. Even this comment is fairly racist because I just implied some kind of homogenous culture in North American indigenous peoples, which was obviously not the case.
Yeah but they didnt have a single instance of movie piracy.
YoU wOUldNt dOwNLoAd a HorSe
The self flagellation is a bit much, but I get it.
I mean, the quote is from a first nations person. The only one “pretending that native peoples were some kind of wonderful noble savage” is the person the quote is attributed to. A holy man of the Lakota tribe. Calling him discussing his tribe racist is…weird.
Comparison of “we” versus “our white brothers” is a racial one and not a tribal one.
Who exactly are you talking about when you say “they”? Indigenous peoples weren’t all the same culture and didn’t have all the same cultural practices.
WTF
I was all set to type up a little semi agreeing comment about how it was a continent-spanning complex mixture of very different tribes with different cultures and practices, only some of whom practice slavery
But I don’t really know what I’m talking about so I read a little and I got distracted by this
Several tribes held captives as hostages for payment.[2][3] Various tribes also practiced debt slavery or imposed slavery on tribal members who had committed crimes; full tribal status would be restored as the enslaved worked off their obligations to the tribal society.[2][3]
Slaves would sometimes be killed in potlatches, to signify the owners’ contempt for property.[citation needed]
And this
Captive-taking was most often used to replace a dead loved one within the family with a new person. The captive would then take on this deceased person’s sexual or labour-related capacities.
What the fuck was going on with the Native Americans
People being monstrous to each other is the norm. We’re the weirdos.
Tru dat
It also helps that for the most part we have food and shelter and indoor plumbing refrigeration and etc
You seem like an expert on the topic, do you know if they had chattel slavery?
You seem like an expert on the topic, do those goalposts come with wheels?
Uh that was my first comment. How did I move the goalposts? How would you have asked the question? The other comment gave a decent answer. Not sure why you’re offended. It’s a legit question
I read your comment as being as snarky as mine was. I didn’t realize it was an honest question, sorry.
Not until white people, no.
Source: am Cherokee and we didn’t have chattel slavery until we were deemed “the south” and tried to fit in. Then some (that were rich enough) got slaves, and treated them horribly. Before that, “slaves” were more like indentured servants in that they could conceivably get freedom and were considered part of the tribe.
There was a huge exhibit in Tahleqah in the Cherokee courthouse museum last summer all about it. Even named names.
Indentured servitude is slavery. Full stop.
Indentured servitude is NOT chattel slavery. That’s also not what pre-colonial Cherokee practiced, but it’s a closer concept. It’s a much longer oral explanation that I doubt you’d accept anyway.
I suggest you look up the definitions of both before equating the two. I’m partially Cherokee, and another part was a white man who was shipped to the American colonies as an indentured servant, under penalty of death. After 14 years he was free, purchased land, chose a wife, and had a family. That family wasn’t born into slavery, the children weren’t sold and shipped off as soon as they could be weaned from their mother’s breast, and he was given all the rights that a white landowner could have in the 1700s. Someone sold into, or born into, chattel slavery could not do this. They were born, lived, and died at the mercy of their master.
There is a reason historians make a distinction. No, neither is acceptable. But chattel slavery was not practiced by native tribes prior to colonization.
You’re Cherokee? Nice to meet you my very, very distant cousin. My white ancestors came in two waves, in the first most died during witch trials. The second wave (the relevant one) was a few Indentured servants, all but one died of bring overworked. That’s a distressing common patttern of indentured servitude, there was an end date but you were unlikely to survive your master trying to get the best out of his investment. To call I Indentured Servitude less than slavery is degrading to every one of those people. For a more modern analogy, if Indentured Servitude isn’t a form of slave labor, then prison labor, which is even listed in the Constitution as a form of slave labor is not in fact slavery.
Well I never said indentured servitude wasn’t a form of slavery, but I wanted to make it clear that it wasn’t chattel slavery like was mentioned earlier. I don’t want the two equated, because while some people don’t like the thought of “degrees of slavery”, I think it’s absolutely warranted as human beings in indentured servitude were thought of as human, but chattel slaves were not.
Indentured servitude was a huge step up from slavery though. It was (at least in Europe) a direct result of feudalism: just like the Duke swears allegiance to the king, gives him levies and taxes in exchange for protection, the serf was in a kind of feudal relationship. He received protection and a land to work (or a job in general) in exchange for a tithe and days of free labor. He wasn’t treated as a commodity, bought and sold at a market, he was more like an apprentice, a subordinate or something of that kind.
E: i apparently confused classical servitude with indentured servitude💀 point still stands, slaves were slaves and there was no way for slaves to be freed if not by will of their masters.
E: also, goes without saying, if you were born a slave you would (most likely) have died a slave and so on for your children. It wasn’t like that for indentured serfs, the contracts were signed for a specific amount of time, and they could “purchase their liberty” through their labor. Still an unjust system, but comparing it to slavery is just watering down the term tbh.
Most indentured servants never saw their contract end date, their masters would work them to death first.
Yeah, that makes sense to me. I would’ve been very surprised if they had chattel slavery on any level similar to the US.
It’s interesting some people were offended I even brought it up. It’s like they prefer to pretend all slavery was the same. I’m curious if they ever wonder who/what benefits from that mentality/narrative
Thanks for the info on that exhibit. It sounds super interesting!
chortle
Criminality as we understand it is a European concept. Native Americans had relatively advanced societies before the colonial settlers came through and genocided hundreds of tribes. Their politics were pretty complex, but they didn’t have criminals the way we understand the term.
I wasn’t able to dig much up on precolonial crime and punishment. Where did you find this?
I had some better luck digging with pre colonial natives crime US
https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3n0u88/what_sort_of_criminal_law_did_native_american/ is of particular interest
Every group had their own culture. There is no universal First Nations/ Native American culture. Beware of anyone expressing pan-indigenous viewpoints.
So are we just propping up noble savage ideology now?
OP is about to reinvent anarcoprimitivism
No we are pushing that exile, torture, and capital punishment are better than rehabilitation
I said this, and they deleted my comment.
This quote appears to be from Lame Deer, Seeker of Visions about John Lame Deer’s tribe, the Lakota people, and his experiences.
I didn’t read the book I just wanted to find out where the quote was from. It is from one man’s lived experiences in his tribe.
Communities with less took care of those who were the worst off, why can’t we?
Communities with less took care of those who were the worst off, why can’t we?
We can. We choose not to. There’s a difference.
Take that as an indication of everyone you interact with during your day on where their priorities lie.
Including you I assume
This is always such a stupid take.
Like whenever I say humanity should be purged there’s always that one guy “tHaT iNcLuDeS yOu”
No shit. I’m part of the problem whether I want to be or not.
Lol and you thought mine was a dumb take. If you survive the next few decades your post history is gonna cripple you with cringe.
lol ur cringe
Yeah, attribution for quotes is kinda important - especially when there’s so many people faking native American quotes out there. Any time you see something about “native wisdom” or a a quote, you should immediately look for attribution. At the very least, you should get the nation/tribe and time period of the quote. Otherwise, it’s pablum
it’s insane to me that so called “human sacrifices” in Central America happened at a lower rate than public executions were happening in Europe.
In those times there were only a handful of gods to appease, but thousands of capitalists.
Really cool quotes but they also didn’t have much in the way of academics and professional specializations. Simple solutions to complex problems are doomed to fail and cause harm.
They also fought each other over access to land. We are so much more peaceful than any pre-industrial civilisation
We’re still doing that and I would argue that we are no more peaceful, we just now have a NIMBY approach to conflict
They also fought each other over access to land. We are so much more peaceful than any pre-industrial civilisation
Said without irony as the IDF slaughters thousands in order to control access to Gaza. Not to mention Russia and Ukraine and the dozens of other conflicts that the media doesn’t cover because their not in places where the West can profit. Industrialization only increased our killing capacity.
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Wetiko is the great evil of modern civ.
Meanwhile, the imperialistic native Americans of my side of the Americas were conquering everything that moved left to right before the conquerors from the other side of the world did the same to them. Lol. Skill issue.
What’s the relevance? Jesus.
He’s saying Native Americans lived in societies, that they had wars, territories, and slaves the same as we do now.
Exactly. They were and are not noble savages like many people believe.
Right. Again, how is that relevant to the post?
My point is that perhaps the comment was designed to undercut the post. But it’s off topic, so the best they could do was be ambiguous about why they wrote it. This kind of vague insinuation is a classic political argument tactic.
How dare people add context or nuance to your perfect world.
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Eye for an eye rules. The good old times.
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Such a shit take.
“Exterminate All The Brutes” - an excellent docu-series and book for anyone interested in why many Americans believe things like this, and/or things like the antebellum period existed as a time of peace and not one marked by domestic terrorism and gov-sanctioned violence, and/or things like cowboys were the good guys (look up scalping and how it was amplified by the American government with the use of rewards for bounties)… and on and on
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