Civilization

https://www.canada.ca/en/department-national-defence/services/military-history/history-heritage/popular-books/aboriginal-people-canadian-military/warfare-pre-columbian-north-america.html

"As early as the year 1000, for example, Huron, Neutral, Petun and Iroquois villages were increasingly fortified by a timber palisade that could be nearly 10 metres in height, sometimes villages built a second or even third ring to protect them against attacks by enemy nations."

I was going to say. First Nations did not have some amazing peaceful utopia. They killed each other for resources too.
- Almost as if they were human, doing human things

There’s no way humans didn’t have human problems. This seems like an extension of the “good ol’ days” that views the past with rose tinted glasses. There absolutely would have been theft, murder, laziness, have-nots…whatever. People are people.

Ninja edit: found this.

https://scholarworks.alaska.edu/bitstream/handle/11122/9753/8729.02.conn.1991.punishment-precolonial-indigenous.ch.pdf?sequence=5&isAllowed=y

Banishment, execution, murder, and theft among other things were absolutely a thing.

I would go so far as to say this is some classic “noble savage” bullshit that only serves to dehumanize people.
- Yeah, in a big way. The European colonists committing genocide on the Native Americans does not have to have the Native Americans as inhuman angels to be a massive atrocity and grievous wrong, and trying to take the position that the Native American societies were is nothing more than a xenophilic form of cultural conservatism and chauvinism.
  Native American peoples were people, like any other, with human problems common to any society, unlike what this quote implies. They do not have a 'magic' history for outsiders to aspire to become 'as good as', they do not have the secrets to the elimination of the dastardly social ills of 'civilization'. They're people. They're people who deserved better than the atrocious treatment that they got, but the 'Noble Savage' stereotype is no more humanizing or acceptable than the 'Ecological Indian' stereotype.
Were there not many different tribes? It stands to reason that there could well have been a range of different lifestyles too. Including that described above.
My point being that other recorded experiences with native americans do not invalidate this rosy reminiscence.
It is in no way a workable solution to the modern maladies of this fractious over-crowded planet but it does help to have a range of idealised utopias to draw from in our discussions of how to proceed.
- Ok. An unsourced meme is not historical fact. It’s disturbing that it’s even taken as valid with no corroborating information, you arguing as if it were true, and using opinion to manufacture “proof” such a “different tribes” and “lifestyles”. There’s plenty of made up bullshit floating around on the internet in pic/text format, why is this one granted any more believability? Do you have a legitimate source indicating any such “utopias” or do you just want to keep making things up?
- My point being that other recorded experiences with native americans do not invalidate this rosy reminiscence.
  I'd actually point to the excepts from Columbus's own journals, catalogued in Howard Zinn's "A People's History of the United States" to identify a number of native tribes he initially encountered who were practically childlike in their innocence.
  The Caribbean island peoples were documented in sharp contrast to more imperial mainlanders as extraordinarily passive, initially quite friendly, and devoid of the more rigid hierarchies and institutions common in those more technologically advanced societies.
  The only bit that doesn't really fit is the horses, which hadn't arrived from Europe yet
Good thing we've sacrificed that relative utopia to solve all those problems, eh?

Kinda weird that everyone had a horse. Considering there where no horses in the Americas before colonialism.

There were. They just happened to have died out. So, ancient native Americans, potentially horse-knowledgeable, and then they died out 10000 or so years ago.
Which is an even weirder and more fun fact, an addendum fact.
- There were no horses in America, there were evolutionary ancestors of horses that would not be able to fulfill any horse role.
  Just like zebras are not horses and wolves not dogs. They would obviously not be owned by Native Americans nor would the Native Americans have a remarkable body of knowledge about them (like they developed with actual horses).
  Horses were bred to be big and strong enough in Central Asia.
- We also learned about horses in America from the book of Mormon. They were also around approximately 2 - 3,000 years ago before all the good light skinned believers died out. Along with their horses...
  Weird less fun non fact addendum to the weird fun addendum fact.
Wooaaahh?? TIL
- As the other comment pointed out, horses used to be found in the America's, but had since gone extinct before Europeans reintroduced them.
Colonialism didn't happen over night, but many generations.

The number of people that want to quote native Americans and talk about how native Americans were screwed over by the white man and how terrible it is all the things that have been done to them divided by the people in that group who are willing to give up their property and their lives and move back to their ancestral homes is the same as any number divided by 0.

And I'm saying this as a Lakota man.

You don't want to actually do anything about the problem with native americans.

You just want to feel Superior to other people.

But don't get off of your high horse because I'm sure the fall will kill you.

Are you sure about that? Because I'm pretty much for decolonisation
- You can start by getting a passport and looking into emigrating away from the United States.
  Edit: well, I guess people don't like it when I'm flippant, and do like it when db0 condescends to a minority. Good show.
My OpInIoN mAtTeRs MoRe CaUsE iM a lAkOtA mAn.
- This is a logical fallacy called "ad hominem", you're attempting to tear me down as a human being rather than address the salient parts of my argument, and that's because you don't actually have a good answer to my argument so you're just being a dick head.
  In this case, me being a native American indicates at least some small portion of the native American viewpoint on a topic that was brought up about native Americans.
  Had it not been relevant I would not have mentioned it.
If I had money to own land, I'd return it to the appropriate tribe. I'm actively decolonizing my life and support the return of all federal land to tribes along with reparations. Don't put words in my mouth
- good for you oh savior
A number divided by zero equals infinity.
Except if it's zero then (so 0/0) it is either undefined or any number IIRC.
- If you plot out any number divided by x, as x approaches 0 the answer goes towards Infinity, yes.
  When it reaches zero it ceases to be a number.
  Every number divided by 0 is "undefined", and it is not undefined because we can't describe it, it is undefined because it does not exist, because you cannot divide things by 0.
- No. The standard field (that is, a ring where both operations are abelian groups) on the complex numbers doesn't have a multiplicative inverse of 0; rings can't have a multiplicative inverse for the additive identity. You can create an algebra with a ring as a sub-algebra with such, but it will no longer be a ring. My preferred method is to impose such an algebra on the one-point compactification of the Complex Numbers, where the single added point is denoted as "Ω".
  I started this project when I was 12, and when I could show that the results were self-consistent this was what I had settled on:
  let z be a complex number that is not otherwise specified by the following equations. Note: the complex numbers contain the Real numbers, and so the following equations apply to the them as well.
  0Ω=Ω0=1
  z+Ω=Ω+z=zΩ=Ωz=Ω=ΩΩ
  Ω-Ω=0. Ω-Ω=Ω+(-Ω)=Ω+(-1Ω)=Ω+Ω=0
  The algebra described above is not associative. That is to say, (AB)C does not always equal A(BC).
First off it is incredible people are using the downvote button as an "I disagree" button even here. Vile fucking people.
Most efficient way to solve the issue of reparations to descendants of slaves and indians is poverty alleviation programs and land reform, they are disproportionately affected by these things. No more rich men owning forests, even if they do it through "conservation" nonprofits. No more wealth hoarding by white americans who inherited expensive housing from the era of redlining.
Also minority groups need special political representation in a democracy otherwise it is just wolves voting to have the sheep for dinner.
This is what they fight tooth and nail because they know who would win from evening the scales.
White political power is based on hoarding property, money, gerrymandering and preventing campaign finance reform.

This feels very "noble savage."

You think so?
I read it as a native american highlighting good points of an already functioning model of civilisation before white men brought them, figuratively and literally, all the misery and disease of their own
- It was a knee-jerk reaction. I looked up the quote, and it was made by John Fire Lame Deer. The reason it sounds "noble savage" to me is because, as you say, it's highlighting only the good points of his peoples' history. They fought and killed one another just like all people have. On the other hand, it's not his responsibility to describe every good and bad thing in said history and there's no doubt they had a way of life that was working that the colonialists destroyed. I guess one very cold comfort is that the colonialists have continued their destructive way of life to the point that they will be destroyed as well.

Native Americans weren't/aren't some monolithic people. Back then they no doubt had a lot of different ideas on measuring a man's worth.
That's how it works in civilized society too...
- Really? You go to work and your boss says "hey, I've noticed you haven't killed enough members of our corporate rival this year"?

This perpetuates an inaccurate stereotype, and separately, it makes no sense. Downvoted.

Imagine being able to successfully convince yourself that the existence of defences, and conflict, between neighbouring indigenous nations, is equivalent, to the point of nullifying, sailing around the globe genociding and enslaving its population as you go, for profit.

White supremacy is a hell of a drug.

The OP paints native culture as Utopian, when even some cursory historical knowledge of the Aztecs and Incas would refute.
But its upsetting to think three centuries of ruthless pogroms and genocidal wars can be so easily justified by announcing "Native life wasn't perfect".
White supremacy is a hell of a drug.
The White Man's Burden
No one is claiming that, people are pointing out the image is wrong

Way too many motherfuckers want other to Google for them and are a bit too eager to cry "fake" or "noble savage".

I'm not arguing that life was perfect and that native Americans had perfectly working anarchism, I'm just quoting one such person. Get over yourselves.

- You might be interested in this paper by Yvette Running Horse Collin, a doctor in indigenous studies: https://scholarworks.alaska.edu/handle/11122/7592
  Chosen excerpt:
  Although historians generally claim that the Indians of the Southeast first acquired horses in the 1690s from the Spanish, there is written Spanish record of the Southeastern Indians having been seen with horses as early as 1521 in what is now Georgia and the Carolinas. This is particularly interesting as it would have been impossible for the first horses that the Spanish brought to the mainland (what is now Mexico) in 1519 to have escaped unnoticed, “make it” to the Georgia and Carolinas area, and have multiplied in two years’ time.

lmao this is pure bullshit, like boomer on facebook, HRC lib bullshit

Omg, I recently started playing an retired MMO on some emulated servers and this was totally the vibe. With no economy or large influx of new players all your old stuff just piles up and you keep it, hoping someone will someday show up who can use it. Things had value but not in the sense you could even start an economy. For me, I loved getting end game weapons, which are an absolute grind, then gifting them. I had a few but it was always more satisfying to give them away.

I was also told the most profound thing while playing. Someone said, "you're hogging yourself." Since I really like playing solo. I still haven't reconciled it. Like I don't want to hog myself but at the same time it doesn't seem like others want to play with me. I try to be inviting but I guess the only thing I don't really do is make myself vulnerable. Like truly vulnerable. I'm scared to though.

Based and anarchypilled

Do we know who said this?

John Fire Lame Deer

All of this was false but

You were exiled or executed so there was no need for jails

Now you can apply this to the rest

A barter system != giving things away

Actually they didn't even have words for exile or execution, it was literally kumbaya as fuck 24/7 until the British showed up

Who's the quote from @db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com ?

John Fire Lame Deer
- Thanks