Website that shows what Indigenous land you live on

[Flowerfaeiry]

https://native-land.ca/

You can plug in a zip code or look for your spot on the map. 
 

Especially relevant for those in North America. I feel more respect for the land I am on with this information and it reminds me of the history that has taken place here.

[mandyjw]

❤

Wow, that's a fantastic map! 

[Yarco]

Why is it only the most recent conquests of history we're asked to feel guilty about?

All of human civilization is a constant story of one group taking land from another. The English are just the most recent people to inhabit England, the Germans are just the most recent people to inhabit Germany. We don't say oh those poor Romans or Ottomans or Prussians, we should respect this land that was formerly theirs or consider giving it back to them.

Native tribes were warring and taking land from each other long before Europeans got to North America. Why should we feel bad about taking their land just because we were most recent and more effective at it?

When people do those "land acknowledgement ceremonies" it almost seems like a slap in the face to Natives to me... it's like "Yeah, we acknowledge this is your land and we're on it. You're not getting it back though."

If you respect the native history so much, why not sell everything you own that you've gained as a result of inhabiting this land and give it back to Natives, then move back to Europe or wherever your ancestral homeland is. Or try to get our Western government to give the entire country back to Natives and let them govern us?

Like what is the solution? How many more generations of guilt and reparations before it's acceptable for us to move on and forget it? Or are white people expected to be perpetually ashamed of themselves forever?

[Space Lizard]

 

8 hours ago, Yarco said:

If you respect the native history so much, why not sell everything you own that you've gained as a result of inhabiting this land and give it back to Natives, then move back to Europe or wherever your ancestral homeland is.

Because signalling your virtue costs so much less than sacrificing something. It's the same reason billionaires give piles of money to activist groups while evading taxes and treating their employees like dirt--it costs them relatively little and makes them look like good guys. It's all about performative virtue signalling--American society is sick with it at the moment, from top to bottom.

Edited November 28, 2021 by Space Lizard

[TheAlchemist]

1 hour ago, Yarco said:

Why is it only the most recent conquests of history we're asked to feel guilty about?

All of human civilization is a constant story of one group taking land from another. The English are just the most recent people to inhabit England, the Germans are just the most recent people to inhabit Germany. We don't say oh those poor Romans or Ottomans or Prussians, we should respect this land that was formerly theirs or consider giving it back to them.

Native tribes were warring and taking land from each other long before Europeans got to North America. Why should we feel bad about taking their land just because we were most recent and more effective at it?

When people do those "land acknowledgement ceremonies" it almost seems like a slap in the face to Natives to me... it's like "Yeah, we acknowledge this is your land and we're on it. You're not getting it back though."

If you respect the native history so much, why not sell everything you own that you've gained as a result of inhabiting this land and give it back to Natives, then move back to Europe or wherever your ancestral homeland is. Or try to get our Western government to give the entire country back to Natives and let them govern us?

Like what is the solution? How many more generations of guilt and reparations before it's acceptable for us to move on and forget it? Or are white people expected to be perpetually ashamed of themselves forever?

I don't think there's any need to feel guilt or shame in relation to these things. Some people seem to think that those are the only feelings that can motivate people in situations like this, but that is not the case. There can be a deeply positive motivation that comes from a empathetic and loving place. 

I think the core of this movement of hearing out indigenous perpectives is coming more so from a place of compassion and care than guilt and shame. You are right, past wrongdoings are not fixed by neverending loathing in shame and self-hate. The only hope of "fixing" it is hearing out the oppressed, trying to understand them, finding the truth of past events, and doing the best to reconscile some of the damage. If you look into truth & reconsciliation commissions that have been set up around the world, it's interesting to see that the oppressed commonly don't want to just somehow even out the playing field and get back at the oppressors. Often they just want to be finally heard, respected and listened to as humans, after decades and sometimes even centuries of dehumanization and humiliation from the ones in power. 

Edited November 27, 2021 by TheAlchemist

[mandyjw]

@Yarco For me it's about respecting the land itself, the Natives had a connection that we lost in our deep need to own it. It's not that we stole the land they owned, the problem that could be repaired is the idea of ownership. I think that the way we interact with land will evolve as we do. Spirit of place is an incredible thing and it's that connection that really transforms, more than documentaries, guilt and preaching inconvenient truths. The Natives had that wisdom and connection in many cases, and there's much to be learned from history as we move forward, together. 

[Flowerfaeiry]

@Yarco It’s not about guilt at all. I’m fact, guilt is one of the things we must overcome in order to do the work of decolonization. 
 

If you are feeling guilt that is normal. I’ve hated myself for being white many times. But that does nothing to help. In fact it just puts the attention back on myself, when this is not about me.

6 hours ago, Yarco said:

If you respect the native history so much, why not sell everything you own that you've gained as a result of inhabiting this land and give it back to Natives, then move back to Europe or wherever your ancestral homeland is. Or try to get our Western government to give the entire country back to Natives and let them govern us?

Because neither of these things would help. 

[Scholar]

It is interesting how human centric these perspectives are. In the eyes of the native animals outside of africa, all humans were invaders, including those we call native to the land. And unlike humans, we do not respect the true natives whatsoever. We do not give them rights to their lands, let alone rights to their lifes, because we do not care about them.

 

We are selfish even in our compassion.

 

 

[Flowerfaeiry]

On 11/28/2021 at 5:31 PM, Scholar said:

It is interesting how human centric these perspectives are. In the eyes of the native animals outside of africa, all humans were invaders, including those we call native to the land. And unlike humans, we do not respect the true natives whatsoever. We do not give them rights to their lands, let alone rights to their lifes, because we do not care about them.

Native Americans were very respectful of animals and their spirits. Part of decolonization is about giving them back the rights to their lands as well.

[silene]

How long do you need to live somewhere to become a native, indigenous? 

Edited November 30, 2021 by silene

[Flowerfaeiry]

@silene I don’t know. Is this question pointing to the fact that indigenous tribes were once not indigenous and as such justifying the violence of colonial settlers?

[silene]

@Flowerfaeiry  Nothing like that, violence is only justified in self-defence. The map appears to be drawn from a perspective of lands colonised by Europeans during a particular historical period.  It implies the 'settler' communities don't yet feel themselves native to their own country after 500 years or so, and I'm musing aloud around the implied sense of alienation and detachment from the land. 

I'm English and have only traced our family tree back to the 17th C so have no idea where we came from before that. I can't call myself Anglo-Saxon, Viking, Celtic, Caucasian etc unless perhaps I go for DNA testing but what would that do as our old tribes were long ago absorbed into other identities (apart from the Scottish lol). But even with only 400 years of history I can say I feel native. Probably I would without that too.  What about all the other more recent immigrants and their descendants here, I'm curious to explore how native and rooted they feel as well. 

I'm also sympathetic to earlier replies in this thread about violence and guilt. Eg if a native tribe has claims to a territory, they'd need to demonstrate that they settled there peacefully rather than conquering an earlier tribe. We can't have different moral values for different peoples, or can we? What if we discovered that many of the long-time tribes are also guilty of imperialism like the Europeans? 

A case in point could be the Zulus in South Africa. We know about the European invasion and colonisation there, the Zulu wars of the late 19th C etc. But when I was learning about this, my book went further back into the history of the Zulu tribe, which revealed that a couple of centuries before the European imperialism, the Zulus started off as a small tribe who went to war and conquered their neighbours with their famous buffalo horn tactics, absorbing the defeated tribes into their empire and identity. Then the British came along from much further away to invade, does that make a moral difference? 

Edited December 1, 2021 by silene

[Flowerfaeiry]

15 hours ago, silene said:

The map appears to be drawn from a perspective of lands colonised by Europeans during a particular historical period.  

Yes.

15 hours ago, silene said:

But when I was learning about this, my book went further back into the history of the Zulu tribe, which revealed that a couple of centuries before the European imperialism, the Zulus started off as a small tribe who went to war and conquered their neighbours with their famous buffalo horn tactics, absorbing the defeated tribes into their empire and identity. Then the British came along from much further away to invade, does that make a moral difference? 

I am now enlightened as I did not know this, however none of that changes what we are going through today as a byproduct of the colonization that this map is referring to. 

For the sake of this conversation: let's say what happened with the Zulus had as big of an affect on their neighbors as the European colonizers did...then subjectively morally speaking: no, it's the same.

But we aren't in the Zulu tribe. People across the globe need to reconnect with the land NOW. 

[silene]

Yes, we are where we are and can't go back to the pre-colonial era. My takeaways from this are: 

We need to focus on building better societies for the current generations alive now, equal rights and opportunities. We need good international laws to delineate what the national & tribal boundaries are, with an enforcement by the international community which isn't just the super powers steamrollering with their biased version of peace keeping. 

Historical stories still need telling and researching. Bearing in mind that there's no unbiased history, so we also need educating in meta-history, the skill of reading between the lines and making biases explicit. 

People are all a mixture of good and bad in any culture, relative to their power and technology. So if I have any guilt, it's for being an unenlightened human in general rather than for having any particular ancestry. But that's completely unhelpful.

This is all highly idealistic of course! Looking at the hotspots of trouble nowadays, like the middle east, creating fair society is not only a tough challenge, but requires much spiritual development, and can't be imposed from without except as a sticking plaster over the systemic problems. 

[Flowerfaeiry]

I just posted this as a reminder <3