John Lame Deer

[Margot]

Look up buffalo runs where they would drive hundreds of buffalo off a cliff just to get one and leaving the others to rot

They almost brought the beaver populations to extinction with their slaughter of them to trade for guns. White culture had to step in to save the beavers

Look at the way they clears forests which was simply to burn it all down creating massive wildfires and killing thousands of animals

How many Buffalo did White trash murder between the Civil War and 1900?

 

[Dutch Uncle]

It would be naive to think any culture is saintly and virtuous.

The indigenous people had insights the Europeans could have learned from. And vice versa.

The injustice was the way the indigenous natural rights to land and liberty were generally ignored. Colonization was going to happen. It just didn't have to happen the way it did.

That's the story of mankind. The Bible is full of that stuff. History is rife with the powerful dominating the weak by killing them or enslaving them. The Romans were the best at it in the West for over 400 years, about 1500 years if you count the Eastern Empire in Constantinople. The Brits weren't much "kindler and gentler" with their 400+ year empire.

Those who think only the US is guilty of slavery and brutally putting down indigenous cultures are wearing blinders.

 

[ThatOwlWoman]

I think most of us are way to quick to pat ourselves on the back and announce how much smarter we are than people who lived 500 years ago.

Sure we know how to type on keyboards, use smartphones, know how to download apps.

I don't necessarily see that as a kind of innate wisdom or intelligence.

Using a smart phone is a skill, a skill only. But so was making clovis points which are purportedly hard to make.

Certainly the Indians who built Poverty Point, Cohokia, Teotihuacan had substantial skills in surveying, engineering , astronomy, irrigation.

Good points. Disparaging our ancestors as stupid, primitive dumbasses doesn't make us -- their descendants -- sound like we are all that bright, eh?

I did not invent anything that enhances my 21st century life. I'm clever enough to use the tools in my modern environment. But park me in AD 1200 America in the spot where I live now, and I probably wouldn't last long. And I know more about navigation by the environment, foraging foods and how to find water and shelter, and about herbal medicines than the average modern American.

Comparing cultures and equating them with intelligence is not intelligent.

 

[Cypress]

in my case, once I decide something is wrong I give it no further attention....

So when high school science teachers offered to teach you about Nicholas Copernicus, Issac Newton and Charles Darwin, you got up and walked out of the class. Technically speaking, the theories of Copernicus, Newton, and Darwin were fundamentally incorrect on some levels.

The late 20th century and 21st century move towards animal rights and humane treatment of domestic livestock didn't come from Protestantism. I believe it came from an awareness of animals as emotional and sentient life forms requiring a minimum level of respect. That probably came from to some extent from opening our minds to the indigenous peoples perspective on animals and the natural world.

 

[Cypress]

That's the story of mankind. The Bible is full of that stuff. History is rife with the powerful dominating the weak by killing them or enslaving them. The Romans were the best at it in the West for over 400 years, about 1500 years if you count the Eastern Empire in Constantinople. The Brits weren't much "kindler and gentler" with their 400+ year empire.

Those who think only the US is guilty of slavery and brutally putting down indigenous cultures are wearing blinders.

True, but the thing is even back then some Europeans knew that the way colonization was unfolding was wrong. In Spanish America, some of the Dominican and Franciscan friars petitioned the king of Spain to reign in the abuses of Spanish settlers towards the indigenous. In North America, Roger Williams was insisting that indigenous be treated fairly and receive fair compensation for land settlers took.

So people knew what the right thing to do was, even if it didn't ultimately get acted on.

 

[PostmodernProphet]

So when high school science teachers offered to teach you about Nicholas Copernicus, Issac Newton and Charles Darwin, you got up and walked out of the class. Technically speaking, the theories of Copernicus, Newton, and Darwin were fundamentally incorrect on some levels.

I'm not aware that my teachers taught me anything that those folks were wrong about......perhaps you remember my classes better than I do.......and perhaps you are just lying so you won't look stupid......

 

[Cypress]

Good points. Disparaging our ancestors as stupid, primitive dumbasses doesn't make us -- their descendants -- sound like we are all that bright, eh?

I did not invent anything that enhances my 21st century life. I'm clever enough to use the tools in my modern environment. But park me in AD 1200 America in the spot where I live now, and I probably wouldn't last long. And I know more about navigation by the environment, foraging foods and how to find water and shelter, and about herbal medicines than the average modern American.

Comparing cultures and equating them with intelligence is not intelligent.

Well put

 

[Cypress]

I'm not aware that my teachers taught me anything that those folks were wrong about......perhaps you remember my classes better than I do.......and perhaps you are just lying so you won't look stupid......

Copernicus incorrectly concluded that planetary orbits were circular.

Newton made a bad assumption that time and space were uniform and static. Newtonian mechanics just doesn't work under relativistic conditions.

Darwin had good was a keen observer, but since he didn't know about genetics he was really just flailing around about what the mechanism was that caused descent with modification.

 

[Tinkerpeach]

How many Buffalo did White trash murder between the Civil War and 1900?

The question was about what the Indians did, not what the white man did

 

[Tinkerpeach]

Just one, Tink? Now who is learning their history from movies? LOL

Wow, Tink. I didn't know the Native American tribes traded guns until the white man showed up to teach them that was wrong. Sounds like Democrats.

Why would Native Americans clear forests with fire? Is this for their vast crops of corn, cotton and wheat in between buffalo hunts?

Many tribes had agriculture especially in the Midwest and east coast

Their main crops, called the three sisters, were corn, beans and squash

And once the colonists showed up they prized beaver fur for clothing, especially in Britain so they sent traders to negotiate with the Indians and provide them with guns in exchange for pelts

I would suggest you look up the beaver wars which saw various tribes fighting to control the fur trade

You really are ignoring of history aren’t you?

 

[Taichiliberal]

Indigenous American philosopher John Lame Deer, a medicine man of the Lakota Sioux, shares insights with some of the other critics of modernity, such as Tolstoy and Nietzsche.

Modern Western culture draws a clear line between the biological world of plants and animals and the nonbiological world of minerals. But for Lame Deer, this line is dangerous because the biological world depends on the nonbiological one. To call rocks and minerals "dead" gives a kind of implicit permission to commodify that world and despoil it. Further, domestication has changed animals from creatures with beauty and integrity to artificial things that can live only on feed lots or in cages-things that are symbolic of exactly what might be uncomfortable for us. Ultimately, we no longer even think of ourselves as biological animals who live in an ecosystem but in terms of our functions in an economic order. We thus imprison ourselves and are complicit in our own imprisonment.

The end of this path of rejecting the symbolic and the natural, of fetishizing commodities, and of denying that we are biological animals is a completely ersatz life, a life that's a stand-in for a real life. For Lame Deer, the nature of modernity is to turn us into spectators, not even of our own lives but of other people's lives. We become prisoners looking at televisions that give us views into other people's cells.

The symbol of the Native American is the circle, which not only resembles and describes the character of nature but is also a representational symbol. In the repetition of circles in the universe-the planets, the stars, the rainbow- Lame Deer sees "symbols and reality at the same time, expressing the harmony of life and nature." But we end up living in a world that's square, not a world that's circular; a world that's a prison, not a world that's organic. That's not a world that any of us would choose to live in, despite the fact that every day, in every action, we make choices that entail the necessity of just such a world.

In contrast, the symbol of non-Native Americans is the square, seen in houses, office buildings, and walls. Our world, too, is full of symbols, but they are the wrong symbols-symbols of separation. The truly meaningful life is the organic life, the life that is in unity with nature and represented by the circle. What's wrong with modernity is not that it fails to be meaningful but that it means the wrong things.


-Source Credit: Professor Jay L. Garfield, Smith College

Bravo!

 

[Taichiliberal]

It’s simply the truth.

Having a doctorate doesn’t change that.

They were barely advancing as societies which is why the Europeans were so easily able to steamroll over them.

They had almost no advancement in technology, their medical practices revolved around mysticism and their ability to produce agricultural was at a bare minimum.

Since they were established before the civilizations in South America they should have been far ahead of people like the Aztec or Mayans but they weren’t

Make sure to bring that up to your professors

And yet there were NATIONS of various tribal people inhabiting America....people who lived WITH the land....people WHO DID NOT POLLUTE THE LAND TO THE POINT OF BEING UNINHABITABLE. They had no need for guns. They understood balance. There was no need for "technology" beyond what they had, as they PROSPERED. Who knows what might have developed if not for the intervention of the Europeans. And those tribes that had agriculture did so only as needed to supplement fish & game.

Perfect? By no means, as there was warfare between nations & tribes. But there were no weapons of mass destruction (explosives, canons, guns).

Your "superior" Europeans came over the seas bringing disease, introducing concepts that disrupted the ecology and ruined the landscape. Later, the need for oil further poisoned the land. They also brought over their version of tribal warfare, further disrupting a part of the world that was doing okay without them.

To compare South America to North America in culture and development as some sort of equal status race is the folly of the ignorant and biased.

You might want to visit a college and talk to a professor before you blather on in your prideful stupidity.

 

[Taichiliberal]

Look up buffalo runs where they would drive hundreds of buffalo off a cliff just to get one and leaving the others to rot

They almost brought the beaver populations to extinction with their slaughter of them to trade for guns. White culture had to step in to save the beavers

Look at the way they clears forests which was simply to burn it all down creating massive wildfires and killing thousands of animals

Where do you get this stuff?

Think, you blithering bumpkin, THINK! How would NATIONS of people survive using buffalo for hides, food, etc. if they were periodically killing hundreds as you say? Remember toodles, the native people were here for a millennium before your ancestors showed up on the shores. By your "logic", the buffalo would have been near extinction, and a lifestyle that included them would not exist.

As for the beaver, BY YOUR OWN ADMISSION they were almost made extinct "to trade for guns". Guns came in with the Europeans, you idiot! The beaver pelt trade has been long a part of the history, mythology and legacy of the "pioneers" and "frontiersmen" that you and I grew up with in literature and movies (i.e., Daniel Boone, Davey Crocket). So the "white man" CAUSED THAT PROBLEM....how big of them to then realize what they've done and make changes to "save the beavers". Of course, native folk had to abide by the new laws forced on them by the folk with the guns. Go figure.

Oh, and you might want to provide some documentation to back your claim that native nations started rampaging forest fires that killed off the vary ecology they needed to live.

Seriously, are you this fucking stupid or are you really just a paid troll to keep the advertisers happy?

 

[Tinkerpeach]

And yet there were NATIONS of various tribal people inhabiting America....people who lived WITH the land....people WHO DID NOT POLLUTE THE LAND TO THE POINT OF BEING UNINHABITABLE. They had no need for guns. They understood balance. There was no need for "technology" beyond what they had, as they PROSPERED. Who knows what might have developed if not for the intervention of the Europeans. And those tribes that had agriculture did so only as needed to supplement fish & game.

Perfect? By no means, as there was warfare between nations & tribes. But there were no weapons of mass destruction (explosives, canons, guns).

Your "superior" Europeans came over the seas bringing disease, introducing concepts that disrupted the ecology and ruined the landscape. Later, the need for oil further poisoned the land. They also brought over their version of tribal warfare, further disrupting a part of the world that was doing okay without them.

To compare South America to North America in culture and development as some sort of equal status race is the folly of the ignorant and biased.

You might want to visit a college and talk to a professor before you blather on in your prideful stupidity.

The early tribes were responsible for wiping out the majority of mega fauna from North America

They clear cut forests with fire leaf idling to soil erosion and destroying life in huge parts of major rivers

You need to look at the real history of native Americans, not just the woke version

Hell the Iroquois and Mohawk tribes practiced cannibalism

 

[PostmodernProphet]

Copernicus incorrectly concluded that planetary orbits were circular.

Newton made a bad assumption that time and space were uniform and static. Newtonian mechanics just doesn't work under relativistic conditions.

Darwin had good was a keen observer, but since he didn't know about genetics he was really just flailing around about what the mechanism was that caused descent with modification.

you'll need to prove to me that my teachers taught me those things were true......doesn't sound familiar.......

 

[Dutch Uncle]

True, but the thing is even back then some Europeans knew that the way colonization was unfolding was wrong. In Spanish America, some of the Dominican and Franciscan friars petitioned the king of Spain to reign in the abuses of Spanish settlers towards the indigenous. In North America, Roger Williams was insisting that indigenous be treated fairly and receive fair compensation for land settlers took.

So people knew what the right thing to do was, even if it didn't ultimately get acted on.

Thomas Jefferson recognized that slavery was wrong, but still kept and banged his slaves. The difference between an ideal and a reality.

The modern world was built on ideals but most people are motivated out of self-interest, the reality. Good government protects people from each other. The fact cities can't control gangs shows the flaws in our society. Mostly it's a matter of resources and lack thereof for an affordable price. I doubt we'll be able to have a true meritocracy without unlimited energy and the ability to convert matter into whatever we need.

Even then,without advances in mental healthcare, we'll still have the problem of mentally ill people killing others.

 

[IBDaMann]

Shows how little you know, RACIST! skank.

This shows how cowardly and stupid you are. You waste bandwidth to hurl inaccurate slurs without adding any value whatsoever to the discussion.

 

[ThatOwlWoman]

So when high school science teachers offered to teach you about Nicholas Copernicus, Issac Newton and Charles Darwin, you got up and walked out of the class. Technically speaking, the theories of Copernicus, Newton, and Darwin were fundamentally incorrect on some levels.

The late 20th century and 21st century move towards animal rights and humane treatment of domestic livestock didn't come from Protestantism. I believe it came from an awareness of animals as emotional and sentient life forms requiring a minimum level of respect. That probably came from to some extent from opening our minds to the indigenous peoples perspective on animals and the natural world.

Great observation. Remember the "hippies" of the 60s and 70s? They often dressed as pseudo-natives with braids, beads, headbands, etc. and adopted many of the spiritual ideation of indigenous Americans. The EPA and other laws protecting wildlife and domestic animals stemmed from that, at least in part, I believe.

 

[ThatOwlWoman]

The question was about what the Indians did, not what the white man did

No, there was no question, dearie. You baldly stated that "Indians" were stupid, and committed various environmental atrocities, without a shred of credible evidence. All you've done so far is proven that you are a willfully-ignorant bigot, and quite possibly a white supremacist. Good going!

 

[ThatOwlWoman]

Many tribes had agriculture especially in the Midwest and east coast

Their main crops, called the three sisters, were corn, beans and squash

And once the colonists showed up they prized beaver fur for clothing, especially in Britain so they sent traders to negotiate with the Indians and provide them with guns in exchange for pelts

I would suggest you look up the beaver wars which saw various tribes fighting to control the fur trade

You really are ignoring of history aren’t you?

Actually, any ignorance here is yours. You are correct that the fur trade went too far and nearly exterminated not just beaver, but otter, mink, ermine, fox. The French contributed heavily to the wanton trapping. You're probably aware that the French hailed from Europe and were not indigenous, although we can't ascertain anything about your woeful mental database. You've also no doubt heard of the Hudson Bay Company? Again, Europeans.

Next item of bigotry I can dispel for you?