Originally Posted By: Captain Sammitch
 Originally Posted By: whomod
 Originally Posted By: Pariah


In the end, it was to the benefit of both the Indians and the Americans to co-mingle.



That's monstrous!


Yeah, I'm sure they'd be happier in teepees in the middle of wheatfields waiting around for a buncha dead buffalo to show up.

Unrealistic? For sure. The only way for Native Americans to have preserved their culture as it was would have been to have never encountered Europeans on this continent in the first place. That means no United States. And while that might make some people happy (I don't think you're one of them), it just plain didn't happen that way. Now we can pout about it all we want, but until Doc Brown rolls up in the DeLorean it's not gonna change. From the initial post of the Thanksgiving thread it sounds like some Native Americans have dealt with it better than a number of posters in this thread. And if you asked most of them, the answers you get would probably be along the lines of yeah, whitey screwed us over, and that sucked, but at least we're not living in the Copper Age anymore! Which I could live with. Groups of people have been putting the hurt on each other for most if not all of our nation's history. We can either have people who weren't the direct offenders wringing their hands about it and incessantly apologizing to people who weren't the direct recipients for the rest of time, or we can attempt to deal with it, put it aside, and all get on with our lives and maybe try to be friends. I know which one I like more.


Well my take on it is that yeah, it's the past and there is atrocity enough to go around the world over. That doesn't mean one has to just shrug it off and rationalize it. the Nazi analogy works for me because it'd be,,, um monstrous! to say "oh well 6 million Jews were killed but at least they got their own country afterwards so they should be happy about the Holocaust!

It's completely insensitive and sort of asshole-ish. As for the cultural differences, we tend to see everything from a very materialistic POV. What we value shouldn't be taken as what everyone values or what is really important either. We value stuff essentially. Material goods never saved anyones soul or brought lasting happiness. In fact one could argue that it's an impediment to spirituality and true happiness.

Ultimately though it is an academic argument so it's going to change nothing. Still, it is a measure of character and the ability to empathize in how one responds to it.