One can do a deep dive in how American Native Peoples dealt with societal issues. Yes, there absolutely were all the same problems we have today, from theft to lazy people to “fame” issues. Look up “Shame the Meat” for example. There were also punishments, some severe.
So the idea that tribal societies had it all figured out is absurd. They were people too, and had problems like anyone else.
I came here to talk about the “Noble savage BS” myth. I wrote a college paper on it. Society always had a small fraction of psychopaths who didn’t follow the laws of man. Society also knew to lock them up, or get rid of them.
Fun fact: the noble savage was originally counted by hateful racists, before it was repurposed by more “well meaning” racists.
There is no theft if you don’t have a concept of ownership or value wealth.
See e.g. the punishments used by members of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy for theft.
Well it doesn’t look too bad:
Theft [in Haudenosaunee/Iroquois society] was comparatively rare, for land was the property of the community, surplus food was commonly shared with needier neighbors, and the long bark dwelling belonged to the maternal family, and the personal property like the tools and weapons of the men, the household goods and utensils of the women, were so easily replaced that they possessed little value. Practically the only objects open to theft were the strings of wampum beads that served both as ornaments and currency; but such was the value the community of spirit of the Iroquoians, so little did they esteem individual wealth, that a multitude of beads brought neither honor nor profit except so far as it gave the owner an opportunity to display his liberality by lavish contributions to the public coffers.
– The Indians of Canada, D. Jenness (1934), pg. 135-139, excerpted in The Iroquois: A Study in Cultural Evolution, by F. G. Speck (1945) pg. 32-33
[In Tsalagi/Cherokee society] Rather than coercion and punishment, social sanctions like ridicule, withdrawal, and ostracism, were used to bring wrongdoers and non-conformists back into harmony with the community.*
Native people are people – they possess the same capacity for good and evil as anyone else. The only difference is they lacked the industrial capacity for cruelty other cultures had.
Especially when they began trading in the fur trade for guns, they created their own little fiefdoms for hunting, which meant keeping other tribes off their land.
I hate to criticize your source on this one, but “The Indians of Canada, D. Jenness (1934)” is not going to be a reliable authority on native american culture. At that point in history we still had to deal with shit like Just One Drop policies, and although Jenness was a great deal less shitty than many others at the time, the cultures he had access to weren’t representative of the cultures as they stood pre-genocides.
I’ll take your word for it, just looked it up since I knew little about them.
I’m sure they lied plenty as justification for scummy behavior but on this particular topic it looks like a genuine and objective description to me.
He could’ve made up stuff to depict them as violent savages but that isn’t the case here.
Positive racism is still racism - all Asians are good at math, all black people are good at sports, all native american cultures were noble and didn’t have crime. At the very least a canadian anthropologist in 1934, while they may not have been actively perpetuating the cultural genocide, would still have been describing cultures in the midst of being genocided.
This noble savage stuff sounds great, but native americans not culturally monolithic so these sweeping generalizations just aren’t accurate.
Is there no other conclusion than racism, positive or negative?
As I said and AFAIK " it looks like a genuine and objective description to me".
“in the midst of being genocided” does not define the perspective of every individual.
I’m sure there were positive, negative and neutral articles written about jews during WW2.
Very few would have been written by the german government, though.
Again, no, I do not think that Diamond Jenness was necessarily themselves racist - I do think that what they were writing about were cultures actively being genocided by the institution they were working for, at a time period where native people were barely considered human, and the perspective they present will be necessarily colored by that.
It’s not credited, there’s just a picture of an indigenous person that people aren’t expected to recognize. The image is meant to imply that this is how all indigenous people lived by not specifying, using the words of one singular person from one singular nation to do so, which may not even be true to such an extent. The image is taking the quote and using it to perpetuate the myth.
They had “personal property”, property that is movable and possessable; chattel or personalty.
But they most assuredly did not have “private property,”, ownership of immovable, “real property” by non-governmental entities. Who can own a lake or a sky? Obviously that belongs to all of us.
It’s a minor phrasing difference but is foundational to out understanding of class inequality.
Ownership is probably the wrong word, but you can’t overstate the importance of a horse to a Native American. “He took my horse so I stabbed him” would get a bunch of approving nods.
Horses were in the Americas but went extinct before Europeans reintroduced them. There is significant oral tradition that remembers the importance of horses. How long ago the extinction of horses happened is hotly debated between white and native academics and likely varied widely depending on what part of the Americas you are studying. Scientists keep discovering horse bones that are radiologically dated to more and more recent times. The “official” extinction date has been revised down several times in the last few decades. There is even one highly debated sample that puts the date as little as 1500 years ago. Some native academics are working on genetic testing of wild horses in an attempt to prove American horses never went totally extinct at all.
I was writing a fantasy story with a Cree friend of mine that included realistic representation of Native American culture. We did extensive research to incorporate elements of the Cree, Haudenoshone, and Tlingit mythology and culture derived specifically from non-white sources. I don’t have a doctorate or anything, but I know what I’m talking about.
Do you have any recollection if the relationship was many-to-many, like “my (group) takes care of these horses, and you aren’t in our group” or singular stewardship “this horse and I take care of each other” or something?
IIRC a lot of it depended on the size of the tribe. Smaller ones everyone was basically treated like an extended family group, so everything was very communal. Larger tribes had more in-group/out-group politics, where certain families within the tribe maintained their own family property. People being people, there is sometimes bonding that happens with some animals. A horse or a dog becomes “yours” because of mutual preference and affection, not economics.
“Owned” as the definition we use no, but there definitely was a sense of ‘this is not yours, don’t use this’. I think the point that the speaker was trying to get across is that between people they considered the same as them there was no ownership. It wasn’t all peace and free love but it wasn’t being okay with watching a community member starve to death because they’re poor and therefore deserve it.
But you still talk about owning a horse. It has a name and temper and it’s offensive to attack the bond, just like it would be offensive to “take” a daughter
What a load of revisionist / “noble savage myth” horseshit. See e.g. the punishments used by members of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy for theft.
Every society has had theft. Every society has had thieves. Every society has had to deal with this.
What I will note is that native Americans didn’t invent the prison-industrial complex.
One can do a deep dive in how American Native Peoples dealt with societal issues. Yes, there absolutely were all the same problems we have today, from theft to lazy people to “fame” issues. Look up “Shame the Meat” for example. There were also punishments, some severe.
So the idea that tribal societies had it all figured out is absurd. They were people too, and had problems like anyone else.
I came here to talk about the “Noble savage BS” myth. I wrote a college paper on it. Society always had a small fraction of psychopaths who didn’t follow the laws of man. Society also knew to lock them up, or get rid of them.
Fun fact: the noble savage was originally counted by hateful racists, before it was repurposed by more “well meaning” racists.
There is no theft if you don’t have a concept of ownership or value wealth.
Well it doesn’t look too bad:
Theft [in Haudenosaunee/Iroquois society] was comparatively rare, for land was the property of the community, surplus food was commonly shared with needier neighbors, and the long bark dwelling belonged to the maternal family, and the personal property like the tools and weapons of the men, the household goods and utensils of the women, were so easily replaced that they possessed little value. Practically the only objects open to theft were the strings of wampum beads that served both as ornaments and currency; but such was the value the community of spirit of the Iroquoians, so little did they esteem individual wealth, that a multitude of beads brought neither honor nor profit except so far as it gave the owner an opportunity to display his liberality by lavish contributions to the public coffers.
The Haudenosaunee/Iroquois also practiced slavery, including ritual torture and mutilation.
Native people are people – they possess the same capacity for good and evil as anyone else. The only difference is they lacked the industrial capacity for cruelty other cultures had.
Especially when they began trading in the fur trade for guns, they created their own little fiefdoms for hunting, which meant keeping other tribes off their land.
I do want to be clear: I am not excusing what was done to the Native Americans or any other native people by colonizers – it’s inexcusable.
But regardless of good intentions: the “Noble Savage” myth is racism and it needs to die as it’s an erasure of agency.
Definitely sounds better than what it is now
I hate to criticize your source on this one, but “The Indians of Canada, D. Jenness (1934)” is not going to be a reliable authority on native american culture. At that point in history we still had to deal with shit like Just One Drop policies, and although Jenness was a great deal less shitty than many others at the time, the cultures he had access to weren’t representative of the cultures as they stood pre-genocides.
I’ll take your word for it, just looked it up since I knew little about them.
I’m sure they lied plenty as justification for scummy behavior but on this particular topic it looks like a genuine and objective description to me.
He could’ve made up stuff to depict them as violent savages but that isn’t the case here.
Positive racism is still racism - all Asians are good at math, all black people are good at sports, all native american cultures were noble and didn’t have crime. At the very least a canadian anthropologist in 1934, while they may not have been actively perpetuating the cultural genocide, would still have been describing cultures in the midst of being genocided.
This noble savage stuff sounds great, but native americans not culturally monolithic so these sweeping generalizations just aren’t accurate.
Is there no other conclusion than racism, positive or negative?
As I said and AFAIK " it looks like a genuine and objective description to me".
“in the midst of being genocided” does not define the perspective of every individual.
I’m sure there were positive, negative and neutral articles written about jews during WW2.
Very few would have been written by the german government, though.
Again, no, I do not think that Diamond Jenness was necessarily themselves racist - I do think that what they were writing about were cultures actively being genocided by the institution they were working for, at a time period where native people were barely considered human, and the perspective they present will be necessarily colored by that.
It is the “noble savage myth” if it is a quote from a leader in the Lakota nation? https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Fire_Lame_Deer
“Can people incorrectly lionize the past of their own cultures, a past they never even experienced and don’t even have the excuse of nostalgia for?”
[quick glance at any number of reactionaries, revanchists, and nationalists]
Yes. Next question.
It’s not credited, there’s just a picture of an indigenous person that people aren’t expected to recognize. The image is meant to imply that this is how all indigenous people lived by not specifying, using the words of one singular person from one singular nation to do so, which may not even be true to such an extent. The image is taking the quote and using it to perpetuate the myth.
No but it is from John fire lame deer
The unilateral and undisputed expert on every single indigenous nation’s philosophy, culture, and law, John Fire Lame Deer?
No. Sorry that I answered your question
I understand your feelings but that information was already provided.
Yes.
How can there be theft if literally nobody owns anything?
personal property ≠ private property.
no one owned the land, but if someone took all my clothes that would be theft.
They still had private property. You try to take a man’s only horse and you think he is going to be okay with it?
They had “personal property”, property that is movable and possessable; chattel or personalty.
But they most assuredly did not have “private property,”, ownership of immovable, “real property” by non-governmental entities. Who can own a lake or a sky? Obviously that belongs to all of us.
It’s a minor phrasing difference but is foundational to out understanding of class inequality.
I’m not an expert, and perhaps it varied by tribe, but I don’t think native Americans believed they “owned” horses.
I imagine the mere suggestion is offensive to them.
Ownership is probably the wrong word, but you can’t overstate the importance of a horse to a Native American. “He took my horse so I stabbed him” would get a bunch of approving nods.
You know horses aren’t native to North America and were brought over by the Europeans right? Horses are only a brief part of their history.
Horses were in the Americas but went extinct before Europeans reintroduced them. There is significant oral tradition that remembers the importance of horses. How long ago the extinction of horses happened is hotly debated between white and native academics and likely varied widely depending on what part of the Americas you are studying. Scientists keep discovering horse bones that are radiologically dated to more and more recent times. The “official” extinction date has been revised down several times in the last few decades. There is even one highly debated sample that puts the date as little as 1500 years ago. Some native academics are working on genetic testing of wild horses in an attempt to prove American horses never went totally extinct at all.
Based on…
I was writing a fantasy story with a Cree friend of mine that included realistic representation of Native American culture. We did extensive research to incorporate elements of the Cree, Haudenoshone, and Tlingit mythology and culture derived specifically from non-white sources. I don’t have a doctorate or anything, but I know what I’m talking about.
That’s neat
Do you have any recollection if the relationship was many-to-many, like “my (group) takes care of these horses, and you aren’t in our group” or singular stewardship “this horse and I take care of each other” or something?
IIRC a lot of it depended on the size of the tribe. Smaller ones everyone was basically treated like an extended family group, so everything was very communal. Larger tribes had more in-group/out-group politics, where certain families within the tribe maintained their own family property. People being people, there is sometimes bonding that happens with some animals. A horse or a dog becomes “yours” because of mutual preference and affection, not economics.
“Owned” as the definition we use no, but there definitely was a sense of ‘this is not yours, don’t use this’. I think the point that the speaker was trying to get across is that between people they considered the same as them there was no ownership. It wasn’t all peace and free love but it wasn’t being okay with watching a community member starve to death because they’re poor and therefore deserve it.
But you still talk about owning a horse. It has a name and temper and it’s offensive to attack the bond, just like it would be offensive to “take” a daughter
Trump’s trying to bring back the exile/deport for crimes thing at least.