The Cheyenne who lived in what it now modern-day Montana and Wyoming were notoriously ‘genocidal’ with the Lakota, Mandans and other northern plains and Hudson Bay Indians (before they made ‘peace’ with them at spear-point). In fact, the Cheyenne made war as far south as Texas (via trade routes through modern-day Colorado) and east to the Mississippi with the express purpose of either subjugating or wiping-out other tribes. As Blair noted, this was a major concern for the Navajo, who were at the time occupants of what is now known as New Mexico and Arizona. In turn, the Navajo waged ruthless war on the Hopi, who were almost completely wiped-out by the Navajo and who may also be responsible for the disappearance of the Anisazi of the Four Corners region. Also, some members of the Iroquois nation gave smallpox-infested blankets to other members, notably the Mohawks, with the intention to wipe-out those tribes. This is well-documented in Elizabeth Fenn’s excellent work Pox Americana: The Great Smallpox Epidemic of 1775-82.

Now, how about you provide evidence that the people we call “First Nations” did not engage in inter-tribal warfare and genocide? The facts clearly show that the image of “noble savage” as it relates to peaceful inter-tribal coexistence, environmentally conscious and responsible living, etc., prior to contact with Europeans is gargantuan myth.

Continuing: “Blair, Real historians don’t try to make generalizations across an entire continent. Just something you might think about.”

Nor do they make generalizations across an entire race, especially one as diverse as “whites.”

“Plenty of native groups rarely or never went to war.”

Such as? What do mean when you say “groups?” Families? Clans? Tribes? Nations?

Names and citations please.

“Some participated in fairly brutal warfare regularily (although nothing as horrifying as the European warfare of the same period, where travelling soldiers lived “off the land”, raiding farms and cities as they went).”

Absolutely not true. So-called Native Americans did exactly what you describe above, but in addition, killed the men, raped the women and enslaved them along with the children.

“Some lived in sedentary settlements. Some migrated constantly. Some indeed lived in the same place for thousands of years.”

Same thing with many, perhaps most, whites. Your point is?

“One fact is pretty uncontentious and broadly applicable - There are enourmous amounts of land in the US and Canada that was never ceded or conquered, but which the Governments of those countries lay claim to. While their might be some contention over which native group has historical claims to native land due to historical migration, that doesn’t mean America has any claim to it.”

Why?

Unless you’re talking about warfare that was prompted by European invasion and trade, I want to see a source for that. I’m not aware of any wars that happened in between first nations in what is now the US that could be accurately described as genocidal.

Blair, Real historians don’t try to make generalizations across an entire continent. Just something you might think about.

Plenty of native groups rarely or never went to war. Some participated in fairly brutal warfare regularily (although nothing as horrifying as the European warfare of the same period, where travelling soldiers lived “off the land”, raiding farms and cities as they went). Some lived in sedentary settlements. Some migrated constantly. Some indeed lived in the same place for thousands of years.

One fact is pretty uncontentious and broadly applicable - There are enourmous amounts of land in the US and Canada that was never ceded or conquered, but which the Governments of those countries lay claim to. While their might be some contention over which native group has historical claims to native land due to historical migration, that doesn’t mean America has any claim to it.

The perception that Native American tribes have lived on their “ancestral land” since time immemorial is wrong. The tribes migrated constantly due to climate change, the depletion of natural resources, or pressure from hostile tribes. As they migrated, they collided with ribal tribes that sought to resist the invaders.

The Lakota Sioux are a perfect examble. The French had already explored the Black Hills before the Lakota arrived in what is now South Dakota. The Lakota migrated from the Great Lakes area to the Black Hills. As they migrated west toward the Black Hills, the Lakota pushed other tribes out of the way. Near the Missouri, they attacked the fortified villages of the Arikaras, Mandans and Hidatsas, murdering and mutilating 400 men, women and children at one site and 75 at a second site. (By comparison, 150 to 180 Cheyenne and Arapahoes died during the infamous Sand Creek Massacre, the most famous of white atrocities against Native Americans.) They arrived in the Black Hills around 1775, about 40 years ahead of the first permanent white settlement. Native Americans boast about the defeats they inflicted on other tribe and don’t complain about their loses to other tribes because they expected and gave no quarter. They certinaly didn’t set up reservations or attempt to perserve the culture of tribes they defeated in battle.

Today, most Native Americans live in large cities. Reservations with small populations and abundant natural resources, such as oil and gas or mineral deposits, or gambling casino, are relatively prosperous, although casinos are only highly profitable on reservations located near large metropolitan areas). Native Americans trapped on poor reservations can escape poverty by leaving the reservation.

Of course, this is ridiculous. How Hitler became powerful and what he did with that power is a pretty essential part of the story.

Isn’t the same thing true for those of us who have benefitted from the actions and decisions of our ancestors? We don’t detach the name Adolf Hitler from his past, so why do we attempt it ourselves? The ways we who are white became privileged as a group–and the ways we continue to benefit from our whiteness as a social group–make it impossible for us to simply rewind and start over.

Its an excuse pure and simple not to fully engage in this analysis because we don’t know what to do with it. We don’t expect faith to be something handed to us on a platter, with all the answers included, nor should we expect our own struggle to understand history and its total impact on our identity to come easily either. The struggle is both personal and communal, and like faith, we need to be nurtured, encouraged and challenged on both levels.

I know that in the wake of the residential school system here in Canada, while there were reparations offered, what a lot of survivors have said is that it was the apology that mattered more, the aknowledgement that something wrong happened, and there’s a great deal of frustration directed at the churches which have yet to apologize. Money can be a part of reconciliation, but I don’t think it’s at the heart of it. If all the descendants of slaves got some lump sum of cash, they’d still be economically behind white America, because it isn’t just the legacy of slavery that keeps people poor in modern America - it’s an economic system that is instutionally racist in the here and now. That system needs to be changed.

And I pasted that Leviticus verse from the New International Version - the New Revised Standard Version has a translation that communicates better: “And those of you who survive shall languish… because of their iniquities; also they shall languish because of the iniquities of their ancestors. But if they confess their iniquity and the iniquity of their ancestors… if then their uncircumcised heart is humbled and they make amends for their iniquity, then will I remember my covenant with Jacob; I will remember also my covenant with Isaac and also my covenant with Abraham, and I will remember the land. ”

Let’s hope it’s not too late for this land - or this world, for that matter.

Past wrongs are relevant, not because of some mystical energy passed down the bloodline (well, maybe there is, but I wouldn’t know), but because the same wrongs are still reflected in present-day power relations. There are still white people building massive condos and exploring to dig up uranium and further pollute the Black Hills region, while Lakota people living next door on Pine Ridge still have an average life expectancy under 55. Slavery is still relevant because the wealth gap (and health gap, and police brutality gap, and numerous other gaps) still exist, and it just might have something to do with a couple hundred years of forced servitude while my white Mennonite ancestors were busy staking claims to acres of farmland in Indiana that had recently been cleared of its Potawotami inhabitants. That’s why I don’t have much patience for white folks trying desperately to divert the conversation by yammering about how someone mistreated their great-great-grandpa, or Mennonites (that’s my people) asking if they should get reparations from the Swiss who forced them off their farm in 1637. Or this ridiculous business of “Native people mistreated each other too!” Well, of course. But what a transparently self-serving diversion! Sure, the Lakota and Crow fought all the time, but you know, I don’t hear too many Crow talking today about the terrible effects of “Lakota colonization” - which, of course, is first of all because skirmishing with the Lakota was a completely different thing from European colonization, and secondly because it’s not reflected in today’s power structures. In my mind, this is a much more useful guide than some kind of arbitrary “nothing before my grandmother’s day” rule.

Hugo, why is being confronted as a white man so mysterious? Why is it any different from being confronted as a man for your role in oppression of women? You talk in another thread about your “deep masculinity work” - all I’m talking about here is a very similar need for “deep whiteness work”.

The second part of your post, I think, reveals that you really do have a pretty good idea of some things you could do, but you choose to mock your options and take an aggrieved defensive stance instead of thinking creatively about your options as opportunities for growth. I don’t know much about your specific situations in California, but if you were living here in the Black Hills area I wouldn’t give a damn what you buy at your natural-health store, I would want to know whether you showed up last summer at the rally to protect the prayer site Bear Butte from further destructive biker-bar development, or three days ago at the day-long summit (organized by Lakota people) to strategize against further uranium mining in the Hills region.

When I mentioned learning from indigenous people, I didn’t mean “mystical secrets of nature” (which you might find advertised in your local new-age store, quite possibly because some mega-corporation with a new age brand biopirated and patented somebody’s centuries-old knowledge). Obviously anyone who lives in close daily contact with the rhythms of nature, and depends directly on it for survival, will have more such knowledge than most of us do today (and that includes European ancestors of mine, too). But the myth of the “long-gone noble savage” generally functions to make real, present-day indigenous people and their concerns invisible. And in my opinion, white people flooding to reservations to pick up some mystical secrets and co-opt someone else’s culture (because they aren’t satisfied by what they see in their own) is just the latest wave of colonialism.

Camassia: When I think of what Jesus had to say to the oppressor (which, it’s important to remember, was not who he generally addressed his message to), I think of him telling the rich young man to give away everything he had. On the topic at hand, here’s a biblical model that’s all over the Hebrew scriptures: Lev 26:39-42 “Those of you who are left will waste away… because of their sins; also because of their fathers’ sins they will waste away. But if they will confess their sins and the sins of their fathers—their treachery against me and their hostility toward me, which made me hostile toward them…—then when their uncircumcised hearts are humbled and they pay for their sin, I will remember my covenant with Jacob and my covenant with Isaac and my covenant with Abraham, and I will remember the land.”

Ok, that’s more than enough… thanks everyone for the interesting conversation.