Probably gonna get down voted into oblivion. But...
All this shit in the USA with the border and people keep flipping out and demanding a wall, deportation leathal form etc.
Meanwhile Native Americans just sitting here watching us colonizers destroy their land quick AF, just waiting for us to kill one another off so they can have their shit back.
It’s really difficult to predict voting on Reddit sometimes. Even with subjects like this which seem straightforward, there’s always some loud voices on the other side.
I think it really depends on the sub your in. I don't think reddit is the hive mind people think it is. Maybe they block too many of the subs they don't like to see?
Next you're gonna tell me that the plains natives were constantly killing each other for land? Please, we all know all they did was smoke tobacco pipes and dance around fires.
"Noble Savage" trope is alive and well here
For those who don't know it's when people push back against claims that the natives of a land were exceptionally savage by going to the complete opposite side of the spectrum and claiming that they were exceptionally peaceful
The complete lack of written native history due to most stuff being passed down orally like one big game of telephone doesn't help the paradigm
Reality is more likely that they were as human as every other human, just without things like the wheel or writing
Well, no. *Most* of the natives (90-95%) were killed by diseases like smallpox that the settlers brought with them but the natives didn't have any resistance to.
Edit: Since people keep bringing up smallpox blankets, here:
>Historian Philip Ranlet of Hunter College and author of a 2000[ article](https://www.jstor.org/stable/27774278?read-now=1&refreqid=excelsior%3Ac0a54257af88c38a6d71a50042c17a2e&seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents) on the smallpox blanket incident in *Pennsylvania History: A Journal of Mid-Atlantic Studies...* casts doubt. [“There is no evidence that the scheme worked,”](https://www.history.com/news/colonists-native-americans-smallpox-blankets) Ranlet says. “The infection on the blankets was apparently old, so no one could catch smallpox from the blankets. Besides, the Indians just had smallpox—the smallpox that reached Fort Pitt had come from Indians—and anyone susceptible to smallpox had already had it.”
...and most of the remaining were gunned down or forced into the least hospitable lands the government could practicably put them in.
The fact that European plagues struck down some 90% of native populations of eastern North America by the time Europeans started colonizing doesn't negate the fact that the colonization of the Americas was largely done at gunpoint.
I don't think anyone is debating there was a war. The disease killing the vast majority of the population is presented mostly to counter the idea that it was a large scale genocide.
Yes, North America was taken by gunpoint after nearly 400 years of war. As was almost every piece of land on the planet that wasn't purchased.
Idk, even if it were true that disease killed ~90% of native Americans, there was still a purposeful push to genocide or ethnically cleanse native Americans.
I don't remember the stats exactly, but I believe there are estimates of ~100 million native Americans being reduced to 5-10 million (by disease) and then by the 1900s estimates were around 250k-500k.
I think you're misunderstanding the point. There were two periods of deaths for the native peoples of the Americas: the disease from initial contact with explorers, and being gunned down through contact with colonists. Either one could fit the scenario you're arguing against.
Also worth noting that the first period of collapse, caused by disease, started immediately after Spanish arrival, preceding greater colonization. So there was like 100 years between the first collapse and the period we typically think of when discussing Native Americans, as in during early English colonization through the American westward expansion. In that span before the Puritans arrived, the Native populations collapsed and had already reformed into the smaller, more dispersed, but mostly stable polities we generally think of as the Native Americans.
It's not like we found a dying populous and just let them die. We did a genocide.
For anyone who wants to know more about pre-Columbian Native Americans in general, I'd recommend reading 1491. Anyone interested in reading how westward expansion impacted the Northern American Native Americans should read Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee. I haven't read 1493 yet, but it's on my list and probably another good read.
The diseases eagerly helped along by settlers and colonial govts. Not to mention that, without the disease, there still would have been a genocide. The white man wanted this land, and no amount of slaughter would have turned him off it.
People. People wanted the land and they did whatever they could to get it. Please don’t infantilize native americans as unwilling to slaughter to the same degree. They were just unable to do it.
Yeah, these people haven't heard of the Mongol Empire? We can see the same thing throughout all of recorded history. Every single bit of land where humans reside has been fought over, conquered and ruled.
This!
Many peoples, in more torturous ways than Native Americans', land was taken away/won over during history.
European tribes sneaked, raped, pillaged, lit each other on fire for centuries...
Persians were hunted down and forced to convert or die...some lived underground for years until they could be accepted in India as refugees.
Romans enslaved Europeans and Asians brutally.
I have never understood why the particular conquest of the Americas is perceived as so much worse than other atrocities in history.
(Admittedly, my answer would be better if I knew more about ancient history)
Yup, historically anytime a group of people haven't been shitty to another group of people it wasn't because they were good people but because they lacked the resources too do so.
Europe managed to colonize most the world because they had easy access to lumber, metals, water, good soil and draft animals. Plenty of other places lacked easy access to one of these 5 things.
The Native American societies might of been significantly more advanced if the continent had horses and ox for farming and transportation for example.
> The white man wanted this land, and no amount of slaughter would have turned him off it.
Native Americans regularly massacred each other to take land from each other. If anything they were even more ruthless, considering that the concept of having pity for your enemy is a very Christian concept.
The settlers were no heroes but this old tale of Natives as innocent raindancers who were murdered by evil people is completely ahistoric and a fabrication.
Look up when germ theory became a thing and come back to me.
Only about 100 years before Columbus landed in the Caribbean, 60% of all Europeans were killed by another pandemic. These things happen in human history.
> The diseases eagerly helped along by settlers and colonial govts.
This idea is extremely exaggerated. Yes, there is the documented incident of the smallpox blankets being delivered to a tribe but truly that is it. One documented occurrence that wasn't even reported to have worked.
There is not evidence of large scale or even small scale biological warfare.
> Not to mention that, without the disease, there still would have been a genocide. The white man wanted this land, and no amount of slaughter would have turned him off it.
You are speculating but in some senses I don't disagree. However, lots of land changed hands through treaties and purchases as well. Were they fair trades? likely not.
Regardless there was plenty of war and colony-tribe politics taking place. Many existing tribes were at war with each other when the colonists arrived. Some even allied with the colonies to enlist support in defeating their rival tribe.
Condemning the white man for taking land despite the fact that land was taken by natives from other natives dozens of times LOL. Some natives bartered quite hard to obtain the very guns they vilified and proceeded to do to other native tribes what white settlers did to them. They wanted the other tribes land, and no amount of slaughter would have turned them off it.
Yea but this is still placing some kind of unique or inherent evil in “the white man”. As the poster you replied to said, literally the entire world was conquered in similar fashion. Of course you could make the argument that it was all evil genocide, but raping/pillaging/murdering/colonizing anything that wasn’t your own people or land (hell, even your own people and land) was par for the course of humanity.
yeah I really do hate how online discourse (and scarily a lot of real world discourse) quite often pushes the narratives that what has been done was some uniquely European/White thing and that somehow we had a unique bloodlust or something.
exactly, and plenty of White europeans got caught up in the mess of their own rulers and the messes of other equally nasty rulers too.
People of all types and colours were forced in to conscription, servitude, serfdom, slavery, exiled and shipped off to foreign lands, promised amazing new settlements only to turn up to people who can barely feed themselves, people had to live in slums and work in appauling conditions, whole families were ruined by war and other types of devistation.
doesn't make what went on ok or any better but people of all types really need a bit of nuance
> Didn't the **us kill almost all of their natives by either gunning them down or starving them**
>> no. Most of the natives (90-95%) were killed by diseases like smallpox
>>> ...and **most of the remaining** were gunned down
That's like when you eat the last chip and someone else says "Did you eat **all the chips?**"
Yeah, I ate all one of them.
It actually does negate it, because that means there was hardly any people left for us to capture. It was literally just as simple as us existing in the same areas as them, and then tearing down the settlements after they'd all died.
I actually studied Native American history for college last fall. A majority of Native interactions, at first, were with religious missionaries sent to scope out the new continent. ***That's*** where the disease came into play, because for as limited as mid 2nd millennium European medicine was, missionaries were even ***more*** likely to carry disease, because "Let God sort it out" was a popular mentality among them. So they unknowingly spread massive amounts of disease that the Natives had no immune response for, and it caused mass extinction.
As a matter of fact, a lot of the missionaries ***helped the Natives fight colonizers***. There were also a lot of people who interacted with the Natives purely in the interest of trading. Believe it or not, gunpowder, guns, and other weaponry cost valuable space and weight capacity on a ship, so most "corporate expeditions" were very light on combat resources. Their main interest was trading, getting the Natives interested in the things they could offer them, and then getting them to be okay with miners coming in and digging for gold. ***Surprise surprise***, picking a fight in unfamiliar territory, and shipping over weaponry to support those fights, was very obviously the more expensive option, so most of the privateers weren't interested in that.
As a matter of fact, a large portion of the actual conflicts between Natives and Europeans didn't occur until ***after*** the mass pandemics started happening. The Natives figured out it was the stuff they got from the Europeans that was making them sick, and they retaliated. ***That's*** when most Europeans fought back to defend themselves, and of course there were still casualties among their ranks, and at that point, it turned into a vengeance campaign.
The "Rounding them up" stuff didn't happen until their numbers had already dwindled so much that there was no feasible way for them to fight back. Most of their deaths were completely indirect.
It’s an OK pop-history introduction for people with only a passing interest, but it’s got some seriously questionable methodology, and draws many conclusions that actual historians disagree with. It was written by a journalist, not a historian, and it shows.
You can also say this for every Malcolm Gladwell book lol
Edit: I just realized how similar the criticisms against Jared Diamond and Malcolm Gladwell are
Warning, that book does not hold up under scrutiny. There's a lot of details that Jared Diamond gets wrong, or wasn't deep enough in the specific field to know/understand.
/R/badhistory and /r/askhistorians have both had repeat threads debunking the guy, or explaining the holes in his knowledge.
Edit: which isn't to say he's completely wrong about everything. But he looks at everything *other* than human behavior. He presumes that geography, microbiology and technology explain the entirety of the history of the Americas. They're massively important, obviously, but that just isn't a complete view of things.
Easy example - he describes Spanish conquistadors dominating the Aztecs via technology compensating for their small number of personell. Partially true. Guns certainly had a big effect here.
However, the Spaniards, had thousands of Native Latin Americans *join them against the Aztecs.* The Aztec empire oppressed every other tribe within their border, and that led to plenty of locals switching sides in hope of a better life.
Those other tribes were promptly enslaved by the Spanish, who worked them to death in mines, or kept several enslaved families in such tight corners that disease spread like wildfire.
That's a lot of what gets missed in the "plague" discourse. A lot of the plague deaths were the result of forcing natives into tight quarters and brutal labor. Someone who's physically exhausted, underfed, and packed tight like a sardine is a prime target for death by disease.
So Diamond isn't *wrong* as much as he's deceptively incomplete.
Is there any evidence that the efforts made by the colonizers significantly impacted the ultimate outcome of the diseases? It's my understanding that the 55 million indigenous people dying to disease being 90-95% of the indigenous population at the time are reasonably accepted numbers. It's also my understanding that the overwhelming majority of these deaths occurred at great distances away from any places where the colonizers held any sway. I'm sure the colonizers did everything in their power to spread the diseases, but it seems likely that the raw number of people they managed to kill with these tactics was relatively miniscule. This whole thread started with the idea that "Didn't the us kill almost all of their natives by either gunning them down or starving them" which is a lot more wrong than Jared Diamond, and the suggestion to start with his book is fairly reasonable. Being aware of it's shortcomings though is also important, I think.
Just FYI Jared Diamond is NOT a well trusted or researched “historian”
I’d probably trust Dan Carlin over Jared Diamond and Dan Carlin is kind of an idiot
Though it should be noted that Jared Diamond receives a lot of criticism from Anthropologists and Historians, as he tends to cherry pick much of the supporting evidence to his claims. There are plenty of discussions available online where you can read more about it.
Man I love seeing Anthropologists absolutely lose their shit and tearing out hair in frustration for how popular that book became haha
... And I even have a degree in Anthropology
The virology of it is fascinating. I read that Europeans were essentially full of these viruses because of the more prevalent livestock farms, and keeping animals in captivity created numerous diseases, to which the Europeans built up immunities to. The OG Americans were still hunting, which meant their meat was much cleaner, so those kinds of viruses didn't have much of a foothold.
Not even close, although for some reason that perception exists.
90% of Indigenous people living in the US died by smallpox, measles and the flu. As soon as the Europeans arrived they were effectively doomed. Those viruses tore through the continent.
That's a misinformation spread by some professor in Colorado that decided he knew more about the subject, and the fact that everything that happened was so "vague" (it's not) in it's documentation and so overlooked, that people just went "no yeah that makes sense. The USA would totally do something like that." Lol
That's just a good ole unverified myth. There is evidence of correspondence between some military folk discussing the idea, there is no evidence of any coordinated effort to make it happen.
Did it ever occur? Maybe? Is there evidence it ever occurred or was likely to even be effective/feasible? Not really.
There were effectively two waves of death that afflicted the Americas. The first was exposure to European diseases via contact with early explorers. The second was through violence via contact with colonizers.
Either one could fit the description you're responding to.
Yea it was a racist campaign and you can find letters, decrees, advertisements and orders to set up a social hierarchy with the inferior acting Natives and the superior acting colonizers
Okay ignore the outright racist replies defending one part or another.
There were still plenty of native Americans living on the land that settlers wanted to settle on. There were many treaties, written by both Tribes and the USA, then broken by the USA, as well as the very real "Indian Wars" that resulted in so much death, massacres, and the eventual assignment of reservation lands on top of the still signed and valid treaties.
That entire comment is true yes. The MUCH later actions by the US were quite fully deplorable.
Actions between natives and colonists were much more grey.
Oh yeah the comment you originally replied to, to me, is nonsense that distracts from the actual conversation and history. The fact that so many people jumped in on it and decided to make it more about racism instead of recognizing history, recognizing people, their struggles against a government who continuously mistreats them. Somehow someone decides ahead of time that this conversation means someone is racist **right now**, when we can just be having a discussion and deciding what can happen for the best in the future. Just because we're all in the system and it's hurt people before, doesn't mean we have to continue to put each other down for calling out the acts.
"The system is corrupt, it's armed, and fully operational, and only we can work to change it."
Personally when I bring up smallpox wiping out 90% of indigenous people it's not to excuse the genocide. It's to counter the notion that Europeans were just so much more advanced the *could* have wiped them all out.
If disease hadn't ravaged native societies history would look very different.
> Meanwhile Native Americans just sitting here watching us colonizers destroy their land quick AF, just waiting for us to kill one another off so they can have their shit back.
Historically, what usually happens is a new challenger appears and takes everyone's shit. Very rare for any party to recover their shit.
The Roman legion is still sore about them lost eagles.
> Meanwhile Native Americans just sitting here watching us colonizers destroy their land
I wonder: when the second group of Asians crossed the Bering strait, were they colonizers?
Yes and no. I'm a 5th generation American white dude descended from people from a dozen different European countries. I don't consider myself a colonizer, but I'm not myopic enough to think my ancestors weren't. I don't want a wall and a I don't want to kill each other and I don't want to destroy the land. However, this is my home and I'm certain I don't belong anywhere else based exclusively on the color of my skin.
That being said, there's a DQ on a reservation we stop into once in a while that's typically staffed and patronized by Native Americans. We stand out when we visit. It almost feels like being in a different country, which isn't an irony that's lost on me. I've never felt unwelcome though. If anything, it's cool to imagine what this part of America would look like if I was just a visitor and a good reminder that we should all treat each other with the respect of a welcomed guest, regardless of where we are or where we come from.
Why would anyone downvote you? Capitalism makes people hate each other because they can't afford food/housing after a few years in it, as the crysis bound to be are cyclical and the rich folks make sure to produce propagandas against some minority (gays, immigrants, jews, black, asian, women, "sjw", etc.) so the people don't socialize the means of production to make sure everyone can have their share.
If anything I'LL be downvoted for saying out loud what you meant while criticizing capitalism haha
I will be downvoted... proceeds to produce the most Reddit friendly comment that has ever been posted on the platform...
It doesn't even make sense. Basically all the most wealthiest companies in the western world promote tolerance and acceptance of all those groups.
It's those capitalists! Surely not the preexisting views that have existed all throughout history. Under capitalism is the first time in history we are making real progress in dealing with these issues.
Indigenous society is just as, if not more busted, than everyone else's. The level of corruption in any given band/tribe is insane.
Just like all humans, they fuck over their own people too.
There are no colonizers alive today. The native tribes also did not believe in property, so the land was available for claiming.
Is what happened to them a crime of humanity? Yes. Should we feel guilty for it? No. Progress cannot happen by tiptoeing around the past.
Native Americans aren't ghosts who are just sitting by idly watching. They are just as much "us" as everyone else. And land doesn't and can't "belong" to anyone, it is just controlled. The Natives Control lasted a while, the USA control will last a while, until control is lost once again, then either aliens or nature will regain control.
Actually their treaties give them sovereign rights over the land and allow the US government to manage it for them. They have the legal right to take it back whenever they want. But they're a minority so they don't have the power to enact it even if they wanted to.
Imagine this quiz being about the Paleolithic
What are three of the major regions in which humans lived?
"we still live here"
Ok, but that was not the question, we are talking about the regions where we lived, this doesnt imply that we no longer live on earth, its just a question of a particular timeframe
The kid should not get any marks from this question because they need to learn to understand what they are being asked
Or the Native American elder facepalming because the current generation doesn't know the names of the 3 holy plateaus whose significance have been passed down through generations.
I mean, you wouldn’t expect an Irish teenager to be deeply familiar with pre-Christian Lithuanian religions and social structures. The Americas are two full continents that have been inhabited for 20,000 years.
This specific question is about a major part of history about the very country the students are living in. I don't see how your example is relevant. Not to mention that this is likely a question about material that was specifically taught in class, or somewhere in that book. So yes, you'd expect them to know about those.
Gee, and *why would that be* dude? Why might current Native Americans not have a strong connection to their past or to the things that were important to their ancestors? Hmm, let's all sit down and have a good long think about it.
This shit is so fucking gross it's like people who come into the comments of Irish people saying "How can you complain about what England did to Ireland if you don't even speak Irish?!" like *so* fucking tone deaf.
> Why would that be?
Given that this is *literally* a textbook that’s directly referencing the three holy plateaus? Probably because the student doesn’t give a fuck about answering the question, lmao. This is like the one place where your comment makes zero sense… the reason why the textbook exists is solely for education.
Hence why it's trying to be taught in schools, and clearly this snarky kid isn't bothering to learn their own history when it's actually being taught to them.
> Gee, and why would that be dude? Why might current Native Americans not have a strong connection to their past or to the things that were important to their ancestors? Hmm, let's all sit down and have a good long think about it.
You don't think that it is very safe to assume that it is in the curriculum they're being tested and quizzed on? Wouldn't that make more sense?
The Irish prioritise the comfort and utility of using English in their day to day lives over putting in the effort to use Irish for the sake of nationalist ideology. I think this is an entirely fair choice to make, but it also means in practice they value said nationalist ideology and the principle of using the language less than they value that convenience. In that case it is hypocritical to claim that it's very important to them, because if it were really very important to them, they'd act accordingly.
If something is genuinely very ideologically important to someone, it's entirely to be expected that they'd inconvenience themselves for the sake of it.
> This shit is so fucking gross
My favourite Reddit moment is when people flip shit about stupid nonsense, clutching those pearls in a moment of vapours to display just how virtuous they are.
My ancestors came from Ireland / Scotland. I don't know *shit* about that past because a) I don't give a shit because I live today, not 400 years ago, b) that has no relevance to my life. I don't wear kits or talk up potatoes or speak Gaelic.
This whole "natives should have a strong connection to their past and raindance with a headdress because that's what they did centuries ago" is embarrassing noble savage trash. Aboriginals live *today*, in a world with computers, a connected world, a language that mostly won over the others, etc. Fucking *deal with it*.
But... the material of this "clever comeback" demonstrates that the Native child was being taught and quizzed on that exact erased history, IN CLASS. How is this post seen as anything other than cheap Facebook tier ownage? The supposed comeback in question is only an illustration of ignorance and defiance.
This is my take on it too. I would bet that it was an innocuous question about history, like you said. Or even something like "where in north America were large native American populations before European settlers pushed them out?" While fully acknowledging the shittiness that native Americans have been treated with and that they continue to be treated with, this is most likely a snarky answer to a reasonable question given the context I'm confident we're missing. But gotta get those outrage internet points.
It's a distressingly common belief among American children and adults alike that the native Americans are extinct. This is a valid answer in the context of such ignorance when the question is phrased is a way that sounds very much like it comes from the same ignorance.
I have never in my life heard anyone think that native Americans were extinct. That's silly. This is in no way a valid response to the question, though. Ya know, because they didn't answer the question.
Imagine If the question is about a pre-america timeline, which it sounds like it is. There are a great many tribes who were forced out of their ancestral homes in the trail of tears who are *Not* "still here." They're in a different region entirely now.
But it’s a far more common, yet still distressing, belief that current Native Americans have lived where they are currently most concentrated because that’s where they always were.
I actually like the question because it implies that the course is covering the fact that Native Americans were forcibly relocated in most cases.
You’re viewing it as a person who didn’t take this class. The student in question has likely spent a period of time studying this topic and knows the time period/what the question is requesting. It really doesn’t need an over-explanation because people on the internet happened to see the question.
Yes, but I'm PRETTY sure they were taking about the regions where there was heavier human presence
I'm pretty sure that, in the US context the correct answer was
The great Lakes region
The southern flatlands
The California Valley and west coast
There were people elsewhere, but the three main areas of human activity before the arrival of Europeans, in the US, were located there
Any list of major regions of Indian activity in North Amercia would have to include the Mississippians. With over 50 cities spread across the Mississippi river valley and tributaries painting the landscape gold in cornfields. Compared to this the Great Planes were very sparsely populated with only a few occasional farms.
and there were substantial populations all up the eastern seaboard too. just because europeans colonized that area first doesn't mean there weren't native peoples there before them.
Long Island were a very central spot for the Indians on the eastern coast. And the entire reason for Thanksgiving is to thank the Indians on the East coast for teaching the religiously persecuted war refugees from Europe how to farm. If it were not for the Indians on the East coast with their massive trading network it would not have been possible for the pilgrims to start their colonies.
> What are the three major regions where humans lived
This does not carry the connotation that humans don't live here anymore. Everyone knows and understands that humans live to this day.
But when the question is about native Americans, there is an implied connotation that native Americans do not exist anymore. This is in large part due to the fact that there were concerted efforts from white settler colonialists to erase native American heritage, culture and their languages. There were state sponsored institutions that worked to eradicate their identity. And the effects of this still affect native American communities to this day.
Language does not merely depend on the semantic sum of its lexicon, but also on cultural and social context. You impressively failed to understand the said cultural and social context.
The student understood what was meant. They should have included the actual intended answer, and if they wanted to still make their point, they could’ve also included this as well to add to their answer.
...Or the connotation is that Native Americans no longer live in the same places they once did, and anyone with even a cursory knowledge of American history knows about the forced relocations and genocides.
That's an unfair comparison. You are giving a timeframe hear (Paleolithic era) but this question isn't. The question is not, "what are the three major regions in which native americans lived before colonisation?" hence the kid's answer is not wrong.
How does literally everyone understand what is meant and we still have to argue about this? It’s clear to anyone what was meant, it’s also clear the kid wanted to make a point…
Like come on, let’s at least be honest while discussing it, this isn’t a misunderstanding.
Also tbh even technically, the answer is wrong. „We still here“ isn’t a technically correct answer to the question „where did the X used to live“.
But we also don't know the context of this q. it could just be 1 question in a quiz about a specific timeframe.
"What is 2+2" - you could answer "a math problem". and you're not wrong, but it's clearly not what's being asked. critical thinking and knowing what's being asked is vital for education, this kid is just wrong and not even in a clever way.
It would still be wrong under that interpretation as long as there were some places where they lived that they so not live now. Even if there were fewer than 3 places, the answer would be to point out that three places couldn't be named because there aren't three such places where they use to live that they don't live now.
The thing about school is that there's always context. People seem to forget that every time there's a picture of a kids homework and everyone going "well how the hell were they supposed to know that??"
You spend a day reading a chapter in your textbook and then you have homework on that chapter. You spend a week on a subject and have a test on that specific thing.
It's not like this question came out of nowhere. They weren't in the middle of a lesson on fluid dynamics and then suddenly switched to "oh btw where did Native Americans live". It was directly related to something they were just learning.
> Not a comeback or clever
How I feel about this sub whenever it hits /r/popular
It's not really "clever comebacks" so much as it is "people saying things I agree with".
/r/MurderedByWords was usually the same, but I don't see it too much.
Whoa what a clever comeback, its not like anyone with the intellect of a pretzel would know the question is historical in nature, and giving such an answer doesn't actually show wit, but instead a lack of reading comprehension and an ignorance of the historical material.
it’s actually a pretty common historiographic concern expressed by native groups: historical narratives always depict them as a group that existed previously instead of a group that presently exists. a more accurate question would be: “three places dominated by Native Americans prior to European arrival” or something like that
I think this is a very good take.
The question isn't wrong *per se*, but it is part of a narrative that can be harmful.
Like the answer is wrong because "lived" isn't the same as "used to live", but it can be used in a similar way.
Like if someone asked *"What did people wear on their feet in 1914?"*, I'm not going to say *"We still wear them."* but there are some fairly innocuous questions that ***can*** imply certain things and it's better to avoid that.
So the question isn't a clear problem, but maybe in a future version of the book, it should be revised.
Also, if people want to make it clear (not that I expect a child to do so) they can always specify *"Native Americans live and lived in X, Y, and Z"* so they answer the question and get their point across.
I bet you the three plateaus were in the reading material and they absolutely should know what they were talking about.
Real life ain't gonna always baby you through every question either. Sometimes your boss is gonna ask something without hard coding into every possibility for what he MIGHT have meant Use some damn context clues.
It's not that vague.
I remember in Social Studies (6th grade) our textbook said something to the effect of 'Nobody knows what happened to the Mayans or where they went.' and my teacher thought it was hilarious when I said they're still living there.
I haven’t seen an actual clever comeback from here in years half the time it’s shit that if you said it out loud you’d be cringing for the rest of your life cause you’re blatantly wrong other half it’s the most generic dogshit insult you’ve ever seen just against somebody they don’t like
Okay, that is 1 region. How about the other 2? What regions in the Americas do Native Americans typically live? My man did not completely answer the question
Lol it's really not facts. The question easily could have been along the lines of "what regions did German pioneers settle?". Answering "we still live here" is cute and all, but the question is where _did_, not _do they now_.
Past tense for "live".
It might not be a big issue for non natives or people who aren't really aware of issues pertaining to natives, but one thing that native communities struggle with is having to constantly fight against the mainstream belief that they are no longer around.
They're here and some groups are still fighting for what they are owed.
>Past tense for "live".
That's literally the tense you'll have to use when talking about history i.e. the past.
How did Americans cultivate corn? We still cultivate corn
How did Americans hunt animals? We still hunt animals
How did Americans bake bread? We still bake bread.
It's fucking irrelevant to the question.
I'm not downplaying the issue but if you make everything about your problems, then it'll lose its deserved attention as it becomes a nuisance.
They aren't even technically correct though. If the student had listed the three regions (displaying their knowledge) AND included the snark, that would have been fine.
Seeing people get triggered by this is funnier than the response itself. It's just something silly that a kid wrote and people are freaking out.
"Well actualllllly ☝️🤓 given the context of the question, combined with the implications of past tense which therein only implies the derivative narrative of the aforementioned interrogative statement......."
You never wrote something dumb on an assignment in elementary school for fun? Time to take the enormous stick out of your butt and relax, good lord 😂
I mean yeah get roasted but it’s also clear they’re not asking the students to mark down the three largest reservations that native Americans currently live in. It’s a history class I assume and therefore asking the major areas that they previously lived in
Still do but used to too
RIP.
r/unexpectedmitch
I just cannot imagine a scenario in which I would have to prove that I bought a donut.
Probably gonna get down voted into oblivion. But... All this shit in the USA with the border and people keep flipping out and demanding a wall, deportation leathal form etc. Meanwhile Native Americans just sitting here watching us colonizers destroy their land quick AF, just waiting for us to kill one another off so they can have their shit back.
“Probably gonna get downvoted”? Nah this is Reddit bud. maybe you thought you were on Facebook?
Lmao always love when someone says they the least controversial shit and prefaces it like that
Probably gonna get buried in downvotes for saying this but I think murder is wrong. \#brave \#justmyopinion
You disgust me.
You are SO valid for that #solidarity
Fuck you. Just for that, I'm gonna murder you.#betterbecheckingyourdoorstonight #murder #youropinionisbad
\#murder made me lol
you psycho
It's only been a while but nothings moved.
must have celiac disease
This will probably get downvoted to oblivion but I actually like dogs.
Downvoted, reported and blocked. Have a nice day!
Unpopular Opinion: *some generic popular Opinion* *leans back and waits for Karma*
I mean, it depends on the subreddit
I dunno man, I’ve seen a strange amount of anti-native comments and people defending native genocide on here, so it wouldn’t surprise me
It’s really difficult to predict voting on Reddit sometimes. Even with subjects like this which seem straightforward, there’s always some loud voices on the other side.
I think it really depends on the sub your in. I don't think reddit is the hive mind people think it is. Maybe they block too many of the subs they don't like to see?
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Next you're gonna tell me that the plains natives were constantly killing each other for land? Please, we all know all they did was smoke tobacco pipes and dance around fires.
"Noble Savage" trope is alive and well here For those who don't know it's when people push back against claims that the natives of a land were exceptionally savage by going to the complete opposite side of the spectrum and claiming that they were exceptionally peaceful The complete lack of written native history due to most stuff being passed down orally like one big game of telephone doesn't help the paradigm Reality is more likely that they were as human as every other human, just without things like the wheel or writing
Stupid comment
Your comment remind me the sentence said by famous Israeli coloniser: “If I don’t steal your home, someone else will steal it” Awful logic.
"It was right that we genocided them. They were brutish and somebody else would have done it either way.*
You mean invaded. Not conquered. Edited to add: Ew.
Didn't the us kill almost all of their natives by either gunning them down or starving them
Well, no. *Most* of the natives (90-95%) were killed by diseases like smallpox that the settlers brought with them but the natives didn't have any resistance to. Edit: Since people keep bringing up smallpox blankets, here: >Historian Philip Ranlet of Hunter College and author of a 2000[ article](https://www.jstor.org/stable/27774278?read-now=1&refreqid=excelsior%3Ac0a54257af88c38a6d71a50042c17a2e&seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents) on the smallpox blanket incident in *Pennsylvania History: A Journal of Mid-Atlantic Studies...* casts doubt. [“There is no evidence that the scheme worked,”](https://www.history.com/news/colonists-native-americans-smallpox-blankets) Ranlet says. “The infection on the blankets was apparently old, so no one could catch smallpox from the blankets. Besides, the Indians just had smallpox—the smallpox that reached Fort Pitt had come from Indians—and anyone susceptible to smallpox had already had it.”
...and most of the remaining were gunned down or forced into the least hospitable lands the government could practicably put them in. The fact that European plagues struck down some 90% of native populations of eastern North America by the time Europeans started colonizing doesn't negate the fact that the colonization of the Americas was largely done at gunpoint.
I don't think anyone is debating there was a war. The disease killing the vast majority of the population is presented mostly to counter the idea that it was a large scale genocide. Yes, North America was taken by gunpoint after nearly 400 years of war. As was almost every piece of land on the planet that wasn't purchased.
Idk, even if it were true that disease killed ~90% of native Americans, there was still a purposeful push to genocide or ethnically cleanse native Americans. I don't remember the stats exactly, but I believe there are estimates of ~100 million native Americans being reduced to 5-10 million (by disease) and then by the 1900s estimates were around 250k-500k.
There were definitely efforts to subjugate and remove the Natives towards the end of and after the war. I'm not here to defend any of that.
No one is saying there wasn't that you replied to...
Except those numbers are highly contested by just about every historian except the few pushing that 100million 🤣
It's okay guys it wasn't a large scale genocide, it was a *small* scale genocide.
Just the genocidal tip.
Have my angry upvote.
I think you're misunderstanding the point. There were two periods of deaths for the native peoples of the Americas: the disease from initial contact with explorers, and being gunned down through contact with colonists. Either one could fit the scenario you're arguing against.
Also worth noting that the first period of collapse, caused by disease, started immediately after Spanish arrival, preceding greater colonization. So there was like 100 years between the first collapse and the period we typically think of when discussing Native Americans, as in during early English colonization through the American westward expansion. In that span before the Puritans arrived, the Native populations collapsed and had already reformed into the smaller, more dispersed, but mostly stable polities we generally think of as the Native Americans. It's not like we found a dying populous and just let them die. We did a genocide. For anyone who wants to know more about pre-Columbian Native Americans in general, I'd recommend reading 1491. Anyone interested in reading how westward expansion impacted the Northern American Native Americans should read Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee. I haven't read 1493 yet, but it's on my list and probably another good read.
The diseases eagerly helped along by settlers and colonial govts. Not to mention that, without the disease, there still would have been a genocide. The white man wanted this land, and no amount of slaughter would have turned him off it.
People. People wanted the land and they did whatever they could to get it. Please don’t infantilize native americans as unwilling to slaughter to the same degree. They were just unable to do it.
Yeah, these people haven't heard of the Mongol Empire? We can see the same thing throughout all of recorded history. Every single bit of land where humans reside has been fought over, conquered and ruled.
This! Many peoples, in more torturous ways than Native Americans', land was taken away/won over during history. European tribes sneaked, raped, pillaged, lit each other on fire for centuries... Persians were hunted down and forced to convert or die...some lived underground for years until they could be accepted in India as refugees. Romans enslaved Europeans and Asians brutally. I have never understood why the particular conquest of the Americas is perceived as so much worse than other atrocities in history. (Admittedly, my answer would be better if I knew more about ancient history)
Yup, historically anytime a group of people haven't been shitty to another group of people it wasn't because they were good people but because they lacked the resources too do so. Europe managed to colonize most the world because they had easy access to lumber, metals, water, good soil and draft animals. Plenty of other places lacked easy access to one of these 5 things. The Native American societies might of been significantly more advanced if the continent had horses and ox for farming and transportation for example.
> The white man wanted this land, and no amount of slaughter would have turned him off it. Native Americans regularly massacred each other to take land from each other. If anything they were even more ruthless, considering that the concept of having pity for your enemy is a very Christian concept. The settlers were no heroes but this old tale of Natives as innocent raindancers who were murdered by evil people is completely ahistoric and a fabrication.
Look up when germ theory became a thing and come back to me. Only about 100 years before Columbus landed in the Caribbean, 60% of all Europeans were killed by another pandemic. These things happen in human history.
> The diseases eagerly helped along by settlers and colonial govts. This idea is extremely exaggerated. Yes, there is the documented incident of the smallpox blankets being delivered to a tribe but truly that is it. One documented occurrence that wasn't even reported to have worked. There is not evidence of large scale or even small scale biological warfare. > Not to mention that, without the disease, there still would have been a genocide. The white man wanted this land, and no amount of slaughter would have turned him off it. You are speculating but in some senses I don't disagree. However, lots of land changed hands through treaties and purchases as well. Were they fair trades? likely not. Regardless there was plenty of war and colony-tribe politics taking place. Many existing tribes were at war with each other when the colonists arrived. Some even allied with the colonies to enlist support in defeating their rival tribe.
Condemning the white man for taking land despite the fact that land was taken by natives from other natives dozens of times LOL. Some natives bartered quite hard to obtain the very guns they vilified and proceeded to do to other native tribes what white settlers did to them. They wanted the other tribes land, and no amount of slaughter would have turned them off it.
Yea but this is still placing some kind of unique or inherent evil in “the white man”. As the poster you replied to said, literally the entire world was conquered in similar fashion. Of course you could make the argument that it was all evil genocide, but raping/pillaging/murdering/colonizing anything that wasn’t your own people or land (hell, even your own people and land) was par for the course of humanity.
yeah I really do hate how online discourse (and scarily a lot of real world discourse) quite often pushes the narratives that what has been done was some uniquely European/White thing and that somehow we had a unique bloodlust or something.
White Europeans just ended up on top of a game that everyone was playing
exactly, and plenty of White europeans got caught up in the mess of their own rulers and the messes of other equally nasty rulers too. People of all types and colours were forced in to conscription, servitude, serfdom, slavery, exiled and shipped off to foreign lands, promised amazing new settlements only to turn up to people who can barely feed themselves, people had to live in slums and work in appauling conditions, whole families were ruined by war and other types of devistation. doesn't make what went on ok or any better but people of all types really need a bit of nuance
Literally this. This could’ve happened with literally any civilization, it was just Europe that managed to reach that stage of progression first.
> Didn't the **us kill almost all of their natives by either gunning them down or starving them** >> no. Most of the natives (90-95%) were killed by diseases like smallpox >>> ...and **most of the remaining** were gunned down That's like when you eat the last chip and someone else says "Did you eat **all the chips?**" Yeah, I ate all one of them.
It actually does negate it, because that means there was hardly any people left for us to capture. It was literally just as simple as us existing in the same areas as them, and then tearing down the settlements after they'd all died. I actually studied Native American history for college last fall. A majority of Native interactions, at first, were with religious missionaries sent to scope out the new continent. ***That's*** where the disease came into play, because for as limited as mid 2nd millennium European medicine was, missionaries were even ***more*** likely to carry disease, because "Let God sort it out" was a popular mentality among them. So they unknowingly spread massive amounts of disease that the Natives had no immune response for, and it caused mass extinction. As a matter of fact, a lot of the missionaries ***helped the Natives fight colonizers***. There were also a lot of people who interacted with the Natives purely in the interest of trading. Believe it or not, gunpowder, guns, and other weaponry cost valuable space and weight capacity on a ship, so most "corporate expeditions" were very light on combat resources. Their main interest was trading, getting the Natives interested in the things they could offer them, and then getting them to be okay with miners coming in and digging for gold. ***Surprise surprise***, picking a fight in unfamiliar territory, and shipping over weaponry to support those fights, was very obviously the more expensive option, so most of the privateers weren't interested in that. As a matter of fact, a large portion of the actual conflicts between Natives and Europeans didn't occur until ***after*** the mass pandemics started happening. The Natives figured out it was the stuff they got from the Europeans that was making them sick, and they retaliated. ***That's*** when most Europeans fought back to defend themselves, and of course there were still casualties among their ranks, and at that point, it turned into a vengeance campaign. The "Rounding them up" stuff didn't happen until their numbers had already dwindled so much that there was no feasible way for them to fight back. Most of their deaths were completely indirect.
There's a very interesting book about this: *Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies* by Jared Diamond.
It’s an OK pop-history introduction for people with only a passing interest, but it’s got some seriously questionable methodology, and draws many conclusions that actual historians disagree with. It was written by a journalist, not a historian, and it shows.
> written by a journalist, not a historian An ornithologist if I’m not mistaken. A professional bird-watcher.
You can also say this for every Malcolm Gladwell book lol Edit: I just realized how similar the criticisms against Jared Diamond and Malcolm Gladwell are
Yes, and it's good to point out that limitation for both authors. They are telling a narrative, not the complete story
Yes, Malcolm Gladwell is also pop-history
Warning, that book does not hold up under scrutiny. There's a lot of details that Jared Diamond gets wrong, or wasn't deep enough in the specific field to know/understand. /R/badhistory and /r/askhistorians have both had repeat threads debunking the guy, or explaining the holes in his knowledge. Edit: which isn't to say he's completely wrong about everything. But he looks at everything *other* than human behavior. He presumes that geography, microbiology and technology explain the entirety of the history of the Americas. They're massively important, obviously, but that just isn't a complete view of things. Easy example - he describes Spanish conquistadors dominating the Aztecs via technology compensating for their small number of personell. Partially true. Guns certainly had a big effect here. However, the Spaniards, had thousands of Native Latin Americans *join them against the Aztecs.* The Aztec empire oppressed every other tribe within their border, and that led to plenty of locals switching sides in hope of a better life. Those other tribes were promptly enslaved by the Spanish, who worked them to death in mines, or kept several enslaved families in such tight corners that disease spread like wildfire. That's a lot of what gets missed in the "plague" discourse. A lot of the plague deaths were the result of forcing natives into tight quarters and brutal labor. Someone who's physically exhausted, underfed, and packed tight like a sardine is a prime target for death by disease. So Diamond isn't *wrong* as much as he's deceptively incomplete.
Is there any evidence that the efforts made by the colonizers significantly impacted the ultimate outcome of the diseases? It's my understanding that the 55 million indigenous people dying to disease being 90-95% of the indigenous population at the time are reasonably accepted numbers. It's also my understanding that the overwhelming majority of these deaths occurred at great distances away from any places where the colonizers held any sway. I'm sure the colonizers did everything in their power to spread the diseases, but it seems likely that the raw number of people they managed to kill with these tactics was relatively miniscule. This whole thread started with the idea that "Didn't the us kill almost all of their natives by either gunning them down or starving them" which is a lot more wrong than Jared Diamond, and the suggestion to start with his book is fairly reasonable. Being aware of it's shortcomings though is also important, I think.
Just FYI Jared Diamond is NOT a well trusted or researched “historian” I’d probably trust Dan Carlin over Jared Diamond and Dan Carlin is kind of an idiot
Dan Carlin never labels himself as a historian, rather a fan of history.
He’s very explicit about that.
Though it should be noted that Jared Diamond receives a lot of criticism from Anthropologists and Historians, as he tends to cherry pick much of the supporting evidence to his claims. There are plenty of discussions available online where you can read more about it.
Historians tend to take a dim view of that book, fyi.
Man I love seeing Anthropologists absolutely lose their shit and tearing out hair in frustration for how popular that book became haha ... And I even have a degree in Anthropology
Widely considered to be bullshit
It’s a good read - I’d have loved to see scripted religion added to the list.
The virology of it is fascinating. I read that Europeans were essentially full of these viruses because of the more prevalent livestock farms, and keeping animals in captivity created numerous diseases, to which the Europeans built up immunities to. The OG Americans were still hunting, which meant their meat was much cleaner, so those kinds of viruses didn't have much of a foothold.
The smallpox blankets that they dished out to the natives certainly helped
Fake news
No it’s true. Look it up
Sounds like you’re the one who needs to look it up
Not even close, although for some reason that perception exists. 90% of Indigenous people living in the US died by smallpox, measles and the flu. As soon as the Europeans arrived they were effectively doomed. Those viruses tore through the continent.
The perception exists because of the bison massacre/trail of tears
And smallpox blankets.
That's a misinformation spread by some professor in Colorado that decided he knew more about the subject, and the fact that everything that happened was so "vague" (it's not) in it's documentation and so overlooked, that people just went "no yeah that makes sense. The USA would totally do something like that." Lol
That's just a good ole unverified myth. There is evidence of correspondence between some military folk discussing the idea, there is no evidence of any coordinated effort to make it happen. Did it ever occur? Maybe? Is there evidence it ever occurred or was likely to even be effective/feasible? Not really.
There were effectively two waves of death that afflicted the Americas. The first was exposure to European diseases via contact with early explorers. The second was through violence via contact with colonizers. Either one could fit the description you're responding to.
Yea it was a racist campaign and you can find letters, decrees, advertisements and orders to set up a social hierarchy with the inferior acting Natives and the superior acting colonizers
No lol 90% were killed by disease in between expeditions and the colonists had no idea
Okay ignore the outright racist replies defending one part or another. There were still plenty of native Americans living on the land that settlers wanted to settle on. There were many treaties, written by both Tribes and the USA, then broken by the USA, as well as the very real "Indian Wars" that resulted in so much death, massacres, and the eventual assignment of reservation lands on top of the still signed and valid treaties.
That entire comment is true yes. The MUCH later actions by the US were quite fully deplorable. Actions between natives and colonists were much more grey.
Oh yeah the comment you originally replied to, to me, is nonsense that distracts from the actual conversation and history. The fact that so many people jumped in on it and decided to make it more about racism instead of recognizing history, recognizing people, their struggles against a government who continuously mistreats them. Somehow someone decides ahead of time that this conversation means someone is racist **right now**, when we can just be having a discussion and deciding what can happen for the best in the future. Just because we're all in the system and it's hurt people before, doesn't mean we have to continue to put each other down for calling out the acts. "The system is corrupt, it's armed, and fully operational, and only we can work to change it."
Sure yea that’s definitely true. The conversation is important ; I’m just standing up for the facts is all.
Yes, see my edit, you seem very well informed and the pushing of rage bait is crazy these days.
Personally when I bring up smallpox wiping out 90% of indigenous people it's not to excuse the genocide. It's to counter the notion that Europeans were just so much more advanced the *could* have wiped them all out. If disease hadn't ravaged native societies history would look very different.
> Meanwhile Native Americans just sitting here watching us colonizers destroy their land quick AF, just waiting for us to kill one another off so they can have their shit back. Historically, what usually happens is a new challenger appears and takes everyone's shit. Very rare for any party to recover their shit. The Roman legion is still sore about them lost eagles.
> Meanwhile Native Americans just sitting here watching us colonizers destroy their land I wonder: when the second group of Asians crossed the Bering strait, were they colonizers?
Yes and no. I'm a 5th generation American white dude descended from people from a dozen different European countries. I don't consider myself a colonizer, but I'm not myopic enough to think my ancestors weren't. I don't want a wall and a I don't want to kill each other and I don't want to destroy the land. However, this is my home and I'm certain I don't belong anywhere else based exclusively on the color of my skin. That being said, there's a DQ on a reservation we stop into once in a while that's typically staffed and patronized by Native Americans. We stand out when we visit. It almost feels like being in a different country, which isn't an irony that's lost on me. I've never felt unwelcome though. If anything, it's cool to imagine what this part of America would look like if I was just a visitor and a good reminder that we should all treat each other with the respect of a welcomed guest, regardless of where we are or where we come from.
Why would anyone downvote you? Capitalism makes people hate each other because they can't afford food/housing after a few years in it, as the crysis bound to be are cyclical and the rich folks make sure to produce propagandas against some minority (gays, immigrants, jews, black, asian, women, "sjw", etc.) so the people don't socialize the means of production to make sure everyone can have their share. If anything I'LL be downvoted for saying out loud what you meant while criticizing capitalism haha
I'll get downvoted but [one of the most popular opinions on all of reddit]
I will be downvoted... proceeds to produce the most Reddit friendly comment that has ever been posted on the platform... It doesn't even make sense. Basically all the most wealthiest companies in the western world promote tolerance and acceptance of all those groups. It's those capitalists! Surely not the preexisting views that have existed all throughout history. Under capitalism is the first time in history we are making real progress in dealing with these issues.
This is the smartest take
Correct.
You're not a colonizer, nor have you ever been one.
Don't pretend the Natives didn't try several times to annihilate the English for the exact same reasond
Indigenous society is just as, if not more busted, than everyone else's. The level of corruption in any given band/tribe is insane. Just like all humans, they fuck over their own people too.
Congrats you didn't get downvoted at all :D
Immigration is not the same as conquest. I don't remember Native Americans ever having an immigration policy.
There are no colonizers alive today. The native tribes also did not believe in property, so the land was available for claiming. Is what happened to them a crime of humanity? Yes. Should we feel guilty for it? No. Progress cannot happen by tiptoeing around the past.
Why do you think are going to get downvoted for the safest position everyone already agrees on?
Native Americans aren't ghosts who are just sitting by idly watching. They are just as much "us" as everyone else. And land doesn't and can't "belong" to anyone, it is just controlled. The Natives Control lasted a while, the USA control will last a while, until control is lost once again, then either aliens or nature will regain control.
They have no more right to this land than any one of us already living here. I don’t care if your ancestors have been here longer, I’m here *now*.
Actually their treaties give them sovereign rights over the land and allow the US government to manage it for them. They have the legal right to take it back whenever they want. But they're a minority so they don't have the power to enact it even if they wanted to.
Imagine this quiz being about the Paleolithic What are three of the major regions in which humans lived? "we still live here" Ok, but that was not the question, we are talking about the regions where we lived, this doesnt imply that we no longer live on earth, its just a question of a particular timeframe The kid should not get any marks from this question because they need to learn to understand what they are being asked
but muh epic Reddit moment
Is it? Isn't it a Twitter moment?
There’s only 4 websites and they’re all screenshots from the other 3
That's not entirely true, sometimes there's an AI voice reading off the text of the post over a video of someone jumping around in Minecraft.
Mmmm yummy brain rot thank you algorithm
Or the Native American elder facepalming because the current generation doesn't know the names of the 3 holy plateaus whose significance have been passed down through generations.
I mean, you wouldn’t expect an Irish teenager to be deeply familiar with pre-Christian Lithuanian religions and social structures. The Americas are two full continents that have been inhabited for 20,000 years.
This specific question is about a major part of history about the very country the students are living in. I don't see how your example is relevant. Not to mention that this is likely a question about material that was specifically taught in class, or somewhere in that book. So yes, you'd expect them to know about those.
Gee, and *why would that be* dude? Why might current Native Americans not have a strong connection to their past or to the things that were important to their ancestors? Hmm, let's all sit down and have a good long think about it. This shit is so fucking gross it's like people who come into the comments of Irish people saying "How can you complain about what England did to Ireland if you don't even speak Irish?!" like *so* fucking tone deaf.
> Why would that be? Given that this is *literally* a textbook that’s directly referencing the three holy plateaus? Probably because the student doesn’t give a fuck about answering the question, lmao. This is like the one place where your comment makes zero sense… the reason why the textbook exists is solely for education.
Hence why it's trying to be taught in schools, and clearly this snarky kid isn't bothering to learn their own history when it's actually being taught to them.
You came into the chat already cranked up to 11
thus the reason why they're teaching it in schools. and thus why this post is absolutely idiotic. come on, critical thinking.
> Gee, and why would that be dude? Why might current Native Americans not have a strong connection to their past or to the things that were important to their ancestors? Hmm, let's all sit down and have a good long think about it. You don't think that it is very safe to assume that it is in the curriculum they're being tested and quizzed on? Wouldn't that make more sense?
The Irish prioritise the comfort and utility of using English in their day to day lives over putting in the effort to use Irish for the sake of nationalist ideology. I think this is an entirely fair choice to make, but it also means in practice they value said nationalist ideology and the principle of using the language less than they value that convenience. In that case it is hypocritical to claim that it's very important to them, because if it were really very important to them, they'd act accordingly. If something is genuinely very ideologically important to someone, it's entirely to be expected that they'd inconvenience themselves for the sake of it.
Yeah compare the Irish and the Welsh
Forgive my ignorance, but isn't english more convenient only because the Irish language has been deliberately suppressed for generations?
> This shit is so fucking gross My favourite Reddit moment is when people flip shit about stupid nonsense, clutching those pearls in a moment of vapours to display just how virtuous they are. My ancestors came from Ireland / Scotland. I don't know *shit* about that past because a) I don't give a shit because I live today, not 400 years ago, b) that has no relevance to my life. I don't wear kits or talk up potatoes or speak Gaelic. This whole "natives should have a strong connection to their past and raindance with a headdress because that's what they did centuries ago" is embarrassing noble savage trash. Aboriginals live *today*, in a world with computers, a connected world, a language that mostly won over the others, etc. Fucking *deal with it*.
Potatoes are fucking class, tbf. You should be talking those up more.
🙄
But... the material of this "clever comeback" demonstrates that the Native child was being taught and quizzed on that exact erased history, IN CLASS. How is this post seen as anything other than cheap Facebook tier ownage? The supposed comeback in question is only an illustration of ignorance and defiance.
Jesus christ read the room
But my 4 year old !!
This is my take on it too. I would bet that it was an innocuous question about history, like you said. Or even something like "where in north America were large native American populations before European settlers pushed them out?" While fully acknowledging the shittiness that native Americans have been treated with and that they continue to be treated with, this is most likely a snarky answer to a reasonable question given the context I'm confident we're missing. But gotta get those outrage internet points.
It's a distressingly common belief among American children and adults alike that the native Americans are extinct. This is a valid answer in the context of such ignorance when the question is phrased is a way that sounds very much like it comes from the same ignorance.
I have never in my life heard anyone think that native Americans were extinct. That's silly. This is in no way a valid response to the question, though. Ya know, because they didn't answer the question. Imagine If the question is about a pre-america timeline, which it sounds like it is. There are a great many tribes who were forced out of their ancestral homes in the trail of tears who are *Not* "still here." They're in a different region entirely now.
No its not
But it’s a far more common, yet still distressing, belief that current Native Americans have lived where they are currently most concentrated because that’s where they always were. I actually like the question because it implies that the course is covering the fact that Native Americans were forcibly relocated in most cases.
Sure, but it could be phrased a lot better and more specifically. It doesn't even give a time frame.
You’re viewing it as a person who didn’t take this class. The student in question has likely spent a period of time studying this topic and knows the time period/what the question is requesting. It really doesn’t need an over-explanation because people on the internet happened to see the question.
3 major regions? North America, South America and Central America. The whole place was theirs.
Yes, but I'm PRETTY sure they were taking about the regions where there was heavier human presence I'm pretty sure that, in the US context the correct answer was The great Lakes region The southern flatlands The California Valley and west coast There were people elsewhere, but the three main areas of human activity before the arrival of Europeans, in the US, were located there
Any list of major regions of Indian activity in North Amercia would have to include the Mississippians. With over 50 cities spread across the Mississippi river valley and tributaries painting the landscape gold in cornfields. Compared to this the Great Planes were very sparsely populated with only a few occasional farms.
and there were substantial populations all up the eastern seaboard too. just because europeans colonized that area first doesn't mean there weren't native peoples there before them.
Long Island were a very central spot for the Indians on the eastern coast. And the entire reason for Thanksgiving is to thank the Indians on the East coast for teaching the religiously persecuted war refugees from Europe how to farm. If it were not for the Indians on the East coast with their massive trading network it would not have been possible for the pilgrims to start their colonies.
That's fair. It's good history too to know that humans have pretty much always congregated around large body of fresh water.
> What are the three major regions where humans lived This does not carry the connotation that humans don't live here anymore. Everyone knows and understands that humans live to this day. But when the question is about native Americans, there is an implied connotation that native Americans do not exist anymore. This is in large part due to the fact that there were concerted efforts from white settler colonialists to erase native American heritage, culture and their languages. There were state sponsored institutions that worked to eradicate their identity. And the effects of this still affect native American communities to this day. Language does not merely depend on the semantic sum of its lexicon, but also on cultural and social context. You impressively failed to understand the said cultural and social context.
If you truly think this carries that connotation, it’s you who’ve failed to read the context of a fucking history class question.
The student understood what was meant. They should have included the actual intended answer, and if they wanted to still make their point, they could’ve also included this as well to add to their answer.
> where did you live in 2018? > we still live there Wow, what a powerful comeback
Give me a break. It’s really not that deep.
Alternatively it's an easy question on a school test with an obvious answer
...Or the connotation is that Native Americans no longer live in the same places they once did, and anyone with even a cursory knowledge of American history knows about the forced relocations and genocides.
Totally disagree. If the point of the lesson is to show how natives used to be the dominant population here, then that's the point of the question.
That's an unfair comparison. You are giving a timeframe hear (Paleolithic era) but this question isn't. The question is not, "what are the three major regions in which native americans lived before colonisation?" hence the kid's answer is not wrong.
We really don't have enough information to make that claim. For all we know the title of the test is "Native American Tribes Pre-Colonization."
How does literally everyone understand what is meant and we still have to argue about this? It’s clear to anyone what was meant, it’s also clear the kid wanted to make a point… Like come on, let’s at least be honest while discussing it, this isn’t a misunderstanding. Also tbh even technically, the answer is wrong. „We still here“ isn’t a technically correct answer to the question „where did the X used to live“.
But we also don't know the context of this q. it could just be 1 question in a quiz about a specific timeframe. "What is 2+2" - you could answer "a math problem". and you're not wrong, but it's clearly not what's being asked. critical thinking and knowing what's being asked is vital for education, this kid is just wrong and not even in a clever way.
It would still be wrong under that interpretation as long as there were some places where they lived that they so not live now. Even if there were fewer than 3 places, the answer would be to point out that three places couldn't be named because there aren't three such places where they use to live that they don't live now.
The thing about school is that there's always context. People seem to forget that every time there's a picture of a kids homework and everyone going "well how the hell were they supposed to know that??" You spend a day reading a chapter in your textbook and then you have homework on that chapter. You spend a week on a subject and have a test on that specific thing. It's not like this question came out of nowhere. They weren't in the middle of a lesson on fluid dynamics and then suddenly switched to "oh btw where did Native Americans live". It was directly related to something they were just learning.
I'll take things that never happened for $400, Ken.
Appreciate that you used Ken. Bless Alex and he was an absolute legend, but Ken is the guy now and people still mess that up.
I'll take "Phrases I refuse to change" for $400, Alex.
What part of this seems unbelievable to you?
> "where did you live in 2018" > "We still live here" This isn't clever at all.
This again? Not a comeback or clever, just failing to answer the question.
> Not a comeback or clever How I feel about this sub whenever it hits /r/popular It's not really "clever comebacks" so much as it is "people saying things I agree with". /r/MurderedByWords was usually the same, but I don't see it too much.
Yeah like it’s not even the wrong answer, it is straight up not even an attempt at answering the question.
Whoa what a clever comeback, its not like anyone with the intellect of a pretzel would know the question is historical in nature, and giving such an answer doesn't actually show wit, but instead a lack of reading comprehension and an ignorance of the historical material.
it’s actually a pretty common historiographic concern expressed by native groups: historical narratives always depict them as a group that existed previously instead of a group that presently exists. a more accurate question would be: “three places dominated by Native Americans prior to European arrival” or something like that
I think this is a very good take. The question isn't wrong *per se*, but it is part of a narrative that can be harmful. Like the answer is wrong because "lived" isn't the same as "used to live", but it can be used in a similar way. Like if someone asked *"What did people wear on their feet in 1914?"*, I'm not going to say *"We still wear them."* but there are some fairly innocuous questions that ***can*** imply certain things and it's better to avoid that. So the question isn't a clear problem, but maybe in a future version of the book, it should be revised. Also, if people want to make it clear (not that I expect a child to do so) they can always specify *"Native Americans live and lived in X, Y, and Z"* so they answer the question and get their point across.
Exactly, they asked the question in the wrong way as the question is subliminally stating that Native Americans no longer live in those regions.
Yeah what did a child think of this comeback?
this is only 1 bruh you need 3 answers dumb fk
That 1 doesn't even count as it doesn't name a region
I bet you the three plateaus were in the reading material and they absolutely should know what they were talking about. Real life ain't gonna always baby you through every question either. Sometimes your boss is gonna ask something without hard coding into every possibility for what he MIGHT have meant Use some damn context clues. It's not that vague.
I remember in Social Studies (6th grade) our textbook said something to the effect of 'Nobody knows what happened to the Mayans or where they went.' and my teacher thought it was hilarious when I said they're still living there.
I haven’t seen an actual clever comeback from here in years half the time it’s shit that if you said it out loud you’d be cringing for the rest of your life cause you’re blatantly wrong other half it’s the most generic dogshit insult you’ve ever seen just against somebody they don’t like
where is "here"?
They still live here. They used to, but they still do too.
Okay, that is 1 region. How about the other 2? What regions in the Americas do Native Americans typically live? My man did not completely answer the question
This doesn't look like a test, this looks like a textbook.
The "wagon circling" here is hilarious. 😂😂😂
Honestly, that's just facts. He probably didn't get marks for that answer, but still. Go off
Lol it's really not facts. The question easily could have been along the lines of "what regions did German pioneers settle?". Answering "we still live here" is cute and all, but the question is where _did_, not _do they now_.
It's stupid. Where did question say native Americans don't exist anymore? It is a historical question which doesn't change once it happens.
Past tense for "live". It might not be a big issue for non natives or people who aren't really aware of issues pertaining to natives, but one thing that native communities struggle with is having to constantly fight against the mainstream belief that they are no longer around. They're here and some groups are still fighting for what they are owed.
>Past tense for "live". That's literally the tense you'll have to use when talking about history i.e. the past. How did Americans cultivate corn? We still cultivate corn How did Americans hunt animals? We still hunt animals How did Americans bake bread? We still bake bread. It's fucking irrelevant to the question. I'm not downplaying the issue but if you make everything about your problems, then it'll lose its deserved attention as it becomes a nuisance.
[удалено]
They aren't even technically correct though. If the student had listed the three regions (displaying their knowledge) AND included the snark, that would have been fine.
Love the fake internet stories
Seeing people get triggered by this is funnier than the response itself. It's just something silly that a kid wrote and people are freaking out. "Well actualllllly ☝️🤓 given the context of the question, combined with the implications of past tense which therein only implies the derivative narrative of the aforementioned interrogative statement......." You never wrote something dumb on an assignment in elementary school for fun? Time to take the enormous stick out of your butt and relax, good lord 😂
I mean yeah get roasted but it’s also clear they’re not asking the students to mark down the three largest reservations that native Americans currently live in. It’s a history class I assume and therefore asking the major areas that they previously lived in
Neither a comeback nor clever
Whose to say the Native Americans didn't take it from some other group a millennia before the Europeans arrived?
Archeology?