What are your thoughts on this?

Settlers/Immigrants: We want to buy your land.

Native Americans: LOL!

Settlers/Immigrants: What's so funny?

Native Americans: Nothing. OK, for how much?

Settlers/Immigrants: We can't offer too much.

Native Americans: Lol. We'll take it.

Settlers/Immigrants: Great!

Native Americans: Do you want to buy the clouds too?

-THE END-

(Related: http://youtu.be/nN1kp1ggWyM)

HAPPY THANKSGIVING! -G

Not sure what your point is

Settlers/Immigrants: Sure... get thee to a desert.

Possibly a reference to the $24 purchase of Manhattan from a tribe that had no claim to it? (or whatever the story is)

Perhaps its a statement about how the Native Americans did not have a concept of land worth and so would sell themselves short when selling their land.

Goliath is referring to the belief that Native Americans didn't have a concept of land ownership what-so-ever. Westerners see the earth as belonging to man, whereas (supposedly) Indians believed that people belonged to the earth, as a child to it's mother.

I don't really know how true this was. I'm not saying that it wasn't, just that the more I learn about history, the less I trust romantic notions like this. However, I do know for certain that, among the Navajo, land is supposed to be owned communally. This isn't how it actually works out in the 21st century, but it's still an ideal.

(RANT!)
Flynn, Native Americans didn't understand ownership of land. Hell... We still don't. So, we'll disappear one day, and that is fine (if that happens). Things change. And, Native American "doctrine" is riddled with this "ideal". - I find that the book Ishmael by Daniel Quinn dialogs this (modern) topic well.

How long did Native Americans exist on this ('North American') land? Or any other "natives" on any other land? Their "unscientific" methods certainly kept them alive for however long they've existed. It's just something to wonder, something I wonder about.

My original post is quite useless and nostalgic. It's essentially a dead theory for our time, but "the truth", meaning the intrinsic value of things will reveal itself again for certain.

People today are learning how to cultivate their own vegetables, herbs, and fruits. It's "hip" to do so. 100 years ago here in America virtually everyone had some sort of garden, people would share and trade their "fruits". People today are "late" in their understanding that the Earth is our Mother, and that we should look after it, live in harmony with it. It's taken so much destruction and building for some to figure out that we're one with our environment (mother/father however you see it). Then comes the compartmentalization...

Well, we can destroy a certain part of the Earth and it won't affect "us", well... Simply because of "natural law" a certain part of the Earth is destroyed by a group of people because they have "interest" in that part, a near by part, or a polar opposite part. So, they, in a sense, are tied to it. Through investment, through a goal, and through victimized survivors retribution. What dumbfounds me about my "hypothesis" in this paragraph is, why not invest in making ones own land and people an inspiration of balanced technology and humanitarianism? Instead of spreading ourselves so thin in all aspects as to achieve dominance?

We have what I call an "Acquisition Mind" here, currently, and it's spread through a large part of the "civilized" world. It's apparent even in common conversation "I tapped that" when referring to a woman (bitch). "Did you win?", "How much did you get?", "How big is your d*ck?", "How far can you push yourself in athletics? Did you break any records?", "How are your stocks doing?" etc. etc. We are a measuring culture. And, not all cultures are that way with each other, they don't have to be that way. And, for those who understand this, life is incredibly frustrating, watching everything happen how it's happening, as it's happening, and the vast majority following suit based on iconic and symbolic "dictatorship".

So acquire points, acquire friends, acquire land, acquire space, acquire credits, but the funny thing is that task is endless without morphing into a whole new, and perhaps even contradictory task. I think "progress" is more subtle than our current society says it is. Lastly, we're writing to each other in cyberspace, which is on the platform of a program, and we live via a program, between lawful and unlawful, and then there are the laws that trump them all which are so subtle that we can pretend our man-made laws are as strong as "natures" laws.

The laws we live by are arbitrary. Illustrated by, it's against the law to drive the wrong direction on a One Way street, yet cops do it routinely. It's against the law to drive on the sidewalk, yet squad cars do it. It's against the law to kill someone with a firearm on the street, yet it's legal to kill someone on the street if they're upholding the law. WTF.
(END RANT)

I think you idealize it a bit too far. Read some of the diaries and other accounts. Most Native tribes wanted to find some kind of balance between western technology and their native culture lifestyle. They did not live in some kind of utopic Eden. They lived very rough and brutal lives. We often think about how rough infant mortality rates were for Europeans in the past, but Natives lived in even harsher conditions. They did not have access to as many domesticated crops. They did not have reliable trade routes connecting all the cultures together. There seem to have been periods when that was the case, but those cultures collapsed. They did not have some new age medical insight as people claim today. They were not somehow racially in-tune with nature. If a bad weather struck, they starved to death too. This happened so frequently that most of these cultures developed werewolf-like myths surrounding cannibalism which people were apt to do in dire circumstances. They lived closer to the edge than we do. I don't think many people would choose to live that way today.

Also, I am not so sure you can state they held no concept of land ownership. I think it is more accurate to state they held a different concept of land ownership.

Isn't it also a theory that what the Settlers/Immigrants encountered in North America was a post apocalyptic society? The remnants of a collapsed culture.
viewtopic.php?f=3&t=20797

Virtually everyone..... sure, except people who lived in cities. You know, those existed a 100 years ago, too. In fact, they existed in the ancient world too, where Roman citizens got their food supplied from outside by farms, herders, etc.

And you may not know this, but many people cannot afford a home with a garden. This applies to now, but most certainly to ancient, medieval, industrial and modern times too. Cheaper to buy off someone else's garden or plantation, because those people have made that their jobs. One person cultivating 1000 salads for multiple people, or a 1000 cultivating 1 each for individual consumption... I prefer the first.

I'm not a religious person, so that whole humanization of nature quite frankly doesn't resonate with me. Some of the conclusions they come to are fair enough, but "one with our environment" is just another way to say: "Don't shit upstream, when you, your family and your community, drinks the water downstream". That humanity could be out of balance with nature, is one of the most ridiculous idea that ever put forward, though. You can't be. Any animal that hunts another animal to extinction is living isn't "unbalancing" anything. And polluting the land we live of, isn't making Mother cry, it means you destroyed yet another source of food.



And inspiration to who, to what? Balanced technology... as in less hard industrial polluting technology, I assume, would at the moment be the polar opposite of humanitarianism. Green tech is ridiculously expensive. It is indulgence papers for the rich and out of touch elites. Telling a poor family: "You need to save the Earth, your Mother, by switching to this hyper energy-conservating fridge, and switch to electricity from an solar array", ignores the simple fact that the poor family cannot afford that.

Also, as Doc points out, ownership doesn't equal private property. It does in a Western mindset. Those sweet, harmonious, Gaiaist, Native Americans waged wars on other sweet, harmonious Native Americans. Was that all religious wars, some guy insulting some other guy? Or did some guy from a rival tribe hunt the animals on the first tribe's territory? Ownership comes in many forms.

I'm pretty sure you'll all appreciate this anthropologist talking about the Piraha tribe in Brazil: Excerpt of Daniel Everett on the Piraha tribe: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNajfMZGnuo

And for those of you who enjoy listening to lectures while doing dishes:
Full - Daniel Everett: Endangered Languages and Lost Knowledge http://fora.tv/2009/03/20/Daniel_Everet ... _Knowledge



"I think you idealize it a bit too far. Read some of the diaries and other accounts. Most Native tribes wanted to find some kind of balance between western technology and their native culture lifestyle."

Dr. Strangelove, this makes the most sense, to find a better balance between western technology and our environment. For that reason, I seldom drive my car, and have taken up commuting via bicycle for some time now. - And, yes peoples lives are brutal at one point or another, for any peoples. But tribesmen/natives are/were incredibly in tune with their environment. - Lastly I remember a Dan Carlin podcast (don't remember the csshow#) in-which he mentioned a family living in a homeless shelter, that if you gave them the option to move to a remote part of the world, where they were assured food, and a nice environment that they wouldn't take it, they'd rather stay in the homeless shelter.

And PjornB, People today are learning how to cultivate their own vegetables, herbs, and fruits. It's "hip" to do so. 100 years ago here in America virtually everyone had some sort of garden, people would share and trade their "fruits". People today are "late" in their understanding that the Earth is our Mother, and that we should look after it, live in harmony with it. It's taken so much destruction and building for some to figure out that we're one with our environment (mother/father however you see it). Then comes the compartmentalization...


Virtually everyone..... sure, except people who lived in cities. You know, those existed a 100 years ago, too. In fact, they existed in the ancient world too, where Roman citizens got their food supplied from outside by farms, herders, etc.

And you may not know this, but many people cannot afford a home with a garden. This applies to now, but most certainly to ancient, medieval, industrial and modern times too. Cheaper to buy off someone else's garden or plantation, because those people have made that their jobs. One person cultivating 1000 salads for multiple people, or a 1000 cultivating 1 each for individual consumption... I prefer the first.

The place where I live now, in The South, the homes here have fluctuated between being owned by black or white people, seldom both at the same time, matter of fact it's still segregated. Nonetheless, people who've lived here for their whole lives, or two generations have shown me that many people had a garden on their property.

PjornB And inspiration to who, to what? Balanced technology... as in less hard industrial polluting technology, I assume, would at the moment be the polar opposite of humanitarianism. Green tech is ridiculously expensive. It is indulgence papers for the rich and out of touch elites. Telling a poor family: "You need to save the Earth, your Mother, by switching to this hyper energy-conservating fridge, and switch to electricity from an solar array", ignores the simple fact that the poor family cannot afford that.

Also, as Doc points out, ownership doesn't equal private property. It does in a Western mindset. Those sweet, harmonious, Gaiaist, Native Americans waged wars on other sweet, harmonious Native Americans. Was that all religious wars, some guy insulting some other guy? Or did some guy from a rival tribe hunt the animals on the first tribe's territory? Ownership comes in many forms.

Balanced technology... Not so much... I think it has it's place in the world, but I think altering ones own life. As I mentioned to Señor eStrangelove, I moved to a part of town where I can commute via bicycle. I do have a car, but I seldom use it. I average about 10miles of errand running/pleasure trips a day. - So, land ownership is true to one degree or another, if we're talking about degrees of land ownership that is. And, Natives fought with one another, everyone fights with one another at some point, even husband and wife. But, there is a difference between fighting because something is threatening you, and going off to fight a war with people you've never even encountered (http://youtu.be/l8rQNdBmPek) because you are ordered to do so by some rich guy with cuff-links and fancy shoes.

No i think they did have concept of land ownership, alot of the conflicts that were fought during the later years of the Indian wars were fought over land ownership, however as their trading system was behind the Europeans they had a bad sense of how much their land was worth,and so would sell themselves short

Dead On Doc.
The Native Americans ability to survive in a harsh environment with little more than stone age technology is amazing. However, they were just human too. We shouldn't attach mystical qualities to them.