Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
And I wonder, conversely, are those who live in Mexico and can trace their roots back to Spain, obligated to pack up and "go back to where they came from"?
that 10 percent or so who do probably would if they didnt have so much wealth in Mexico.
that 10 percent or so who do probably would if they didnt have so much wealth in Mexico.
Don't forget the Mestizo population - they can also trace their roots back to Spain. It would leave the entire country of Mexico to the truly indigenous - which means it would be nearly vacant.
Don't forget the Mestizo population - they can also trace their roots back to Spain. It would leave the entire country of Mexico to the truly indigenous - which means it would be nearly vacant.
I think you're forgetting just how cold and brutal much of this new 'race-based' thinking can be, and how totally inhuman some of the ideas about assigning people 'ethnic rights' based on ancestry.
Think for just a moment...please. To be truly fair and consistent, such a plan would require that the pure-blood Spanish residents of Mexico "go back to Spain", while the Indians stayed on to inherit Mexico. But what about the huge Mestizo majority? Sad and unthinkable as it sounds, this idea would require that Mestizos go HALFWAY BACK to SPAIN (!!!)...and even a first-year geography student knows what THAT means....
It doesn't take much imagination to see that this would be nothing less than a death sentence for millions of people...particularly those who can't swim. Let's hope such 'nutty' ideas never get off the drawing board !!
I think you're forgetting just how cold and brutal much of this new 'race-based' thinking can be, and how totally inhuman some of the ideas about assigning people 'ethnic rights' based on ancestry.
Think for just a moment...please. To be truly fair and consistent, such a plan would require that the pure-blood Spanish residents of Mexico "go back to Spain", while the Indians stayed on to inherit Mexico. But what about the huge Mestizo majority? Sad and unthinkable as it sounds, this idea would require that Mestizos go HALFWAY BACK to SPAIN (!!!)...and even a first-year geography student knows what THAT means....
It doesn't take much imagination to see that this would be nothing less than a death sentence for millions of people...particularly those who can't swim. Let's hope such 'nutty' ideas never get off the drawing board !!
And to run with macmeal's ball further; which 'Native Americans' get to stay and will the others have to 'return' to their ancestral lands as well?
The Navajos were Johnny-Come-Latelys (ca. 1000 AD) yet I do not hear squat about them having to go to Asia.
Besides: if one wishes to play 'squatters' rights'; supposedly there were White Scandinavians here ca. 1000 AD as well. They, IMHO, are just as indigenous as any Apache, etc.
Bottom line: leave well enough alone.
Many other groups suffered as badly as the indigenous New World peoples: Jews, Germans, Japanese, S Koreans, Irish, Italians and Spanish all come to mind------------yet, all of the above have morphed into highly successful cultures just in the last 60 years.
Let's use your OWN situation, Mach, to illustrate your folly. As I recall, half your heritage is Irish.
In much of central Western Europe and the British Isles, the 'aborigines' are Celts. This ethnic group was the original population of a large area. Sometimes they're referred to as "Gaelic" people. The Gaelic language (Ireland and Scotland), the nation of Wales (called "Gales" in Spanish), France (called "Gaul" by the Romans, and Galicia (part of modern-day Spain), all reflect this large, related group. They are the "indigenous people" of that area.
Many later arrivals pushed them aside, so that today, probably only Ireland has a Celtic majority. Given the fact that, for example, France is doing well, SHOULD ANY CELTIC PERSON, from any Celtic country, even their descendants overseas, BE ABLE TO ENTER FRANCE, legally or ILLEGALLY, given the fact that France once "belonged" to the Celts, and it's part of THEIR ancestral homeland?
Good question, and I think very similar to the one YOU posed. But I'm sure the answer would be "NO"...because "the Celts" no longer constitute a recognized "country" (if they ever did)..and France is now a modern nation, and neither it, nor practically any OTHER country, recognizes this type of "ethnic privilege".
Those modern Celts who happen to reside in France, and were born there, ARE French citizens...the "other" Celts, in Ireland, Spain, and around the world (maybe even YOU), have no legal "claim" to modern-day France, simply because it was 'taken' centuries ago from some of their distant 'cousins'.
Alaskan Eskimos (Inuit) have VERY recent ties with those in Siberia....as recently, in some cases, as the past century or so. Yet Siberia is now part of Russia, and Alaska is part of the US, and these people can't 'slip back and forth' without getting into serious legal difficulties. Regardless of their ethnicities, they now live in two VERY different nations, and neither group has a 'claim' to the other nation.
Sounds a LOT like your own hypothetical scenario. What do you think?
Bravo Mac! Excellent post! Wish I could rep you for this one, but I've got to spread the joy.
Regarding the original post, modern Anthropology points out that Meso American Indians and North American Native Americans actually have very little in common in the way of culture, art, religious ideology, and shared language. Although the languages within the Uto-Aztecan language family share some cognates, those cognates are fewer than English shares with Persian. North American Native Americans do not speak with the lateral affricative as do many Mesoamerican tribes. Nauhuatl is to the Hopi language as English is to Ethiopian.
Theory once held that all of the native peoples that populated North, Meso, and South America must have traveled from somewhere in modern day Siberia across the Bering Strait land bridge, down through Alaska and Canada until they reached the modern day U.S. and beyond. Until quite recently there seemed almost an air of “political correctness" in academia to the notion that the earliest migrants into the New World were pedestrians, that the most ancestral Native Americans came walking from Asia across the Bering Land Bridge and then, after spending some time locked by ice and snow in modern day Alaska, they were finally able to move down into North America via the newly-opened ice free corridor.
However, this theory has always been speculative--never proven. In the present, archaeological evidence shows that early migratory peoples were taking advantage of the ecological richness provided by the coastal northern Pacific Rim. Archaeologists also know that early East and Southeast Asians were successfully traveling across open water to places like Australia, Okinawa and parts of the Philippines; that they most probably were doing this as cultures already familiar with coastal travel in some sort of water craft.
Even if such early peoples had lacked water craft, (and that is most doubtful) it is hard to conceive of them having avoided travel along the Pleistocene coasts, gathering shellfish, fishing, maybe occasionally hunting sea mammals – and perhaps doing so just a bit farther along the coasts than had their parents. Even accepting that parts of the Pleistocene coastline may have offered little land before one encountered massive mountain glaciers on their way to the sea, still, people could have slowly worked their way north, east, and then south to what is now British Columbia and then further south.
The implication here being that it is not necessarily true that the Mesoamerican Indians even passed through the modern day U.S. on their way to Mexico. In fact to insist that it must be so shortchanges the culture that became Mesoamerica, perhaps those indigenous peoples who built the magnificient pyramids of Teotihuacán. (No, it was not the Aztecs. The pyramids were there when they stumbled upon the site of Teotihuacán.) We now know of sites on the southern tip of South America which seemingly pre-date any in North or Meso America. This would seem to contradict a complete and total land migration of north (Siberia) to south.
In Anthropological scholarship, theories change all the time. Because those pre-hisoric peoples left so little evidence of their civilizations behind, and indeed, no written language, we are left to interpret artifacts, the formations in which they are found, and the few undisturbed sites we are sometimes lucky enough to stumble upon, the best we can with continually evolving (for the better) dating techniques and middle range theory.
To blatantly state as fact that Mesoamerican Indians and North American Native Americans are one and the same shows very little understanding of genetics, migratory patterns, and paleo-indian cultures as a whole.
Thanks for the opportunity to stretch the brain matter during my summer break. I was afraid I might be getting a little rusty after a few weeks without seminar.
And to run with macmeal's ball further; which 'Native Americans' get to stay and will the others have to 'return' to their ancestral lands as well?
The Navajos were Johnny-Come-Latelys (ca. 1000 AD) yet I do not hear squat about them having to go to Asia.
Besides: if one wishes to play 'squatters' rights'; supposedly there were White Scandinavians here ca. 1000 AD as well. They, IMHO, are just as indigenous as any Apache, etc.
Bottom line: leave well enough alone.
What is Latin America's problem?
Seriously? and very briefly?....Spain invaded the "New World" so long ago, that Spain ITSELF was still just emerging from the "Dark Ages". It was LONG before modern notions of personal liberty had emerged there. This brutal, class-ridden system "took root' in the colonies, and it's never been eradicated since. Why? Probably because it's a very "cozy" system, for those 'on top'...and they make the rules.
By the time Great Britain "got here", some time later the notion of 'personal liberty, freedom of conscience, and the 'rights of the individual' had already begun to emerge in England, the first place this occurred in modern times.
This 'freedom of thought' allowed for the even "Free-er" idea to emerge, that of "freedom from the monarchy", eventually leading up to the American revolution. The result of THAT was the world's FIRST republic specifically founded with the idea of "freedom" written into its laws. It happened here FIRST, and it still hasn't become widespread in most of the world.
Your "Navajo" point was pretty much on cue, as I understand it. The Navajos apparently arrived in Arizona around 1100 AD or so. They're closely related to the Athapascan tribes, and the languages, as I understand it, are as close to each other as Spanish and Portuguese are.
If you want to 'repatriate" the Navajos, you could probably get away with sending them just as far as Saskatchewan to make it "legal". That way, we could save up the REAL money needed to repatriate all the Whites to Europe...we're talking some SERIOUS expenses here !...
Bravo Mac! Excellent post! Wish I could rep you for this one, but I've got to spread the joy.
Regarding the original post, modern Anthropology points out that Meso American Indians and North American Native Americans actually have very little in common in the way of culture, art, religious ideology, and shared language. Although the languages within the Uto-Aztecan language family share some cognates, those cognates are fewer than English shares with Persian. North American Native Americans do not speak with the lateral affricative as do many Mesoamerican tribes. Nauhuatl is to the Hopi language as English is to Ethiopian.
Theory once held that all of the native peoples that populated North, Meso, and South America must have traveled from somewhere in modern day Siberia across the Bering Strait land bridge, down through Alaska and Canada until they reached the modern day U.S. and beyond. Until quite recently there seemed almost an air of “political correctness" in academia to the notion that the earliest migrants into the New World were pedestrians, that the most ancestral Native Americans came walking from Asia across the Bering Land Bridge and then, after spending some time locked by ice and snow in modern day Alaska, they were finally able to move down into North America via the newly-opened ice free corridor.
However, this theory has always been speculative--never proven. In the present, archaeological evidence shows that early migratory peoples were taking advantage of the ecological richness provided by the coastal northern Pacific Rim. Archaeologists also know that early East and Southeast Asians were successfully traveling across open water to places like Australia, Okinawa and parts of the Philippines; that they most probably were doing this as cultures already familiar with coastal travel in some sort of water craft.
Even if such early peoples had lacked water craft, (and that is most doubtful) it is hard to conceive of them having avoided travel along the Pleistocene coasts, gathering shellfish, fishing, maybe occasionally hunting sea mammals – and perhaps doing so just a bit farther along the coasts than had their parents. Even accepting that parts of the Pleistocene coastline may have offered little land before one encountered massive mountain glaciers on their way to the sea, still, people could have slowly worked their way north, east, and then south to what is now British Columbia and then further south.
The implication here being that it is not necessarily true that the Mesoamerican Indians even passed through the modern day U.S. on their way to Mexico. In fact to insist that it must be so shortchanges the culture that became Mesoamerica, perhaps those indigenous peoples who built the magnificient pyramids of Teotihuacán. (No, it was not the Aztecs. The pyramids were there when they stumbled upon the site of Teotihuacán.) We now know of sites on the southern tip of South America which seemingly pre-date any in North or Meso America. This would seem to contradict a complete and total land migration of north (Siberia) to south.
In Anthropological scholarship, theories change all the time. Because those pre-hisoric peoples left so little evidence of their civilizations behind, and indeed, no written language, we are left to interpret artifacts, the formations in which they are found, and the few undisturbed sites we are sometimes lucky enough to stumble upon, the best we can with continually evolving (for the better) dating techniques and middle range theory.
To blatantly state as fact that Mesoamerican Indians and North American Native Americans are one and the same shows very little understanding of genetics, migratory patterns, and paleo-indian cultures as a whole.
Thanks for the opportunity to stretch the brain matter during my summer break. I was afraid I might be getting a little rusty after a few weeks without seminar.
Excellent thoughts...worthy of saving. Though I don't approach your level of expertise, I have OFTEN had the unmistakable feeling that among the native tribes of the NW Coast (Alaska, British Columbia, Washington), there's a strong and persistent feel of a 'connection' with some vaguely-understood Pacific culture....Maoris?..Polynesians? I don't know...but the totem poles, the plank houses, the plank canoes, the carvings, even the 'rain coats' and broad-brim hats, all have a strong feeling of that "Pacific Connection". Whether this is so, or just a coincidence, I can't say..
Excellent thoughts...worthy of saving. Though I don't approach your level of expertise, I have OFTEN had the unmistakable feeling that among the native tribes of the NW Coast (Alaska, British Columbia, Washington), there's a strong and persistent feel of a 'connection' with some vaguely-understood Pacific culture....Maoris?..Polynesians? I don't know...but the totem poles, the plank houses, the plank canoes, the carvings, even the 'rain coats' and broad-brim hats, all have a strong feeling of that "Pacific Connection". Whether this is so, or just a coincidence, I can't say..
Don't forget the articulated carved masks used in ceremonies and celebrations (I'm a big fan of them).
Seriously? and very briefly?....Spain invaded the "New World" so long ago, that Spain ITSELF was still just emerging from the "Dark Ages". It was LONG before modern notions of personal liberty had emerged there. This brutal, class-ridden system "took root' in the colonies, and it's never been eradicated since. Why? Probably because it's a very "cozy" system, for those 'on top'...and they make the rules.
By the time Great Britain "got here", some time later the notion of 'personal liberty, freedom of conscience, and the 'rights of the individual' had already begun to emerge in England, the first place this occurred in modern times.
This 'freedom of thought' allowed for the even "Free-er" idea to emerge, that of "freedom from the monarchy", eventually leading up to the American revolution. The result of THAT was the world's FIRST republic specifically founded with the idea of "freedom" written into its laws. It happened here FIRST, and it still hasn't become widespread in most of the world.
Your "Navajo" point was pretty much on cue, as I understand it. The Navajos apparently arrived in Arizona around 1100 AD or so. They're closely related to the Athapascan tribes, and the languages, as I understand it, are as close to each other as Spanish and Portuguese are.
If you want to 'repatriate" the Navajos, you could probably get away with sending them just as far as Saskatchewan to make it "legal". That way, we could save up the REAL money needed to repatriate all the Whites to Europe...we're talking some SERIOUS expenses here !...
How about the Lakota Sioux? They were the true Johnny-Come-Latelys to the modern day U.S. The Lakota people, who belong to the larger group Oceti Sakowin, meaning 'the seven places of the fire', migrated to the northern Plains in the 1700's from the woods of Minnesota. They are thought to have been a part of one of several Athapascan migrations from modern day Canada to the U.S. Their lives here encompassed barely 150 years before European contact.
Should they be repatriated to Canada, along with all tribes who were here as a result of the Athapascan migrations?
The entire notion is absurd.
Last edited by Kele; 05-30-2008 at 11:40 AM..
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
