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It's easy to forget them. Every country on the globe has an indigenous people. The countries that don't have them either killed them all in the middle ages or a
by foobar_ 6y ago
It's easy to forget them. Every country on the globe has an indigenous people. The countries that don't have them either killed them all in the middle ages or assimilated them completely. Apart from them there are swathes of illegal immigrant workers that are completely ignored and other socially excluded people.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocide_of_indigenous_peoples https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocide_of_indigenous_peoples
- whymauri 6y agoYup, there's an entire field within metahistory concerning how entire peoples are essentially erased from historical records due to conquest and/or genocide. It's a formalization of the famous addage, "history books are written by the winners." Hayden White's metahistorical perspectives on how "narratives" shape history were really eye opening for me.
- sterlind 6y agoI think we should fight to preserve what cultures, people and languages we have left. The Ainu language is nearly extinct, and it represents an entirely separate language family from Japanese for example. Anthropology (especially linguistics too) is a jigsaw puzzle for which we're losing pieces every day. Plus it feels right to try to save them.
- whymauri 6y ago100% agree - my mom's family is Wayuu and we speak a dying language. I didn't grow up in the same ancestral lands my grandmother did, but I do try to retain my very basic grasp of the language. And I will encourage my kids to learn the basics. It's too sad to think of the finality of culture, but this is the least I can do. I think it's great that some Ainu are relearning the language - it's such a strong cultural bond.
- sterlind 6y agoIt's really good that you encourage your kids to learn! Languages carry so much culture, so assimilation programs in the US and Canada focused on breaking the teaching cycle of native languages to force cultural assimilation. I'm white but I work with a Coast Salish language that the tribes are trying to bring back from extinction. Indian children were forced into boarding schools and beaten if they didn't speak English, so a generation grew up without learning and the last L1 speaker died a decade ago. So much was lost, but linguists and elders wrote down enough that revival is possible. It will take hard work and determination for entire tribes though, so it may never recover except in ceremonial usage.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- tathougies 6y agoI don't. As a member of a small ethnic group myself, I really don't understand why. Whatever it was that we had to give to the world has been given. None of us have been treated cruelly for being of a certain race (for the most part). We just chose to move away, marry others (because we're not race purists, like many 'indigineous' activists, I suppose?), raise our children, and be happy. Not every society has produced things of equal value, and it's not particularly offensive to notice that.
- diffrinse 6y agoThere are no languages we know of related to Japanese
- Mediterraneo10 6y agoThis is not quite true. That some extinct languages of the Korean peninsula were related to Japanese on the basis of toponymy, is now nearly universally agreed on among linguists, whether they accept the Altaic hypothesis (or the recent "Transeurasian" rebranding of it) or reject the Altaic hypothesis.
- diffrinse 6y agoDid I really have to say no living languages?
- Mediterraneo10 6y agoThe work on Korean toponymy is recent enough (and still ongoing) that it is missing in many older standard references for the history of Japanese. So, in a discussion like this, if a person mentions that the Japonic family is a language isolate, then it is helpful to add for readers less familiar with this subject that it isn’t completely isolated.
- foobar_ 6y agoI've been watching Meerkat Manor recently. More than monkeys I feel we resemble meerkats. It was exactly like watching people. At the bottom of it, it boils down to family vs family, which is tribe vs tribe in larger units fighting over rights to exploit a territory.
- barry-cotter 6y agoHistory is written by those who care enough to write history. For over a 100 years historiography of the US Civil War was dominated by Southerners and there are plenty of other examples of political losers being most influential in historical memory. Machiavelli ensured Cesar Borgia will live forever by his writing and both of them lost. Sima Qian was castrated. https://scholars-stage.blogspot.com/2016/11/history-is-written-by-losers.html?m=1 https://scholars-stage.blogspot.com/2016/11/history-is-writt... > To restate Sima Qian’s experience in less emotional terms: because he was principled enough to contradict the emperor in the presence of his court, Sima Qian was sentenced to castration. This was a death sentence—any self-respecting man of his day would commit suicide before submitting to the procedure. Everyone expected Sima Qian to do so. But in the end Sima Qian decided to accept the punishment and live the rest of his life in shame, because if he did not he would never finish the history he had started. > Not every historian has the balls to a challenge despot face-to-face. For despotic Wudi was—the castration of Sima Qian was hardly the most despotic thing Wudi would do before his reign ended. It is but one episode in a string of terrors, one paint-stroke in a portrait of tyranny. > But who painted the portrait? None other than the grand historian Sima Qian. We remember Wudi as Sima Qian chose to depict him. Had Wudi realized the influence his court astronomer would have on future generations, he might have treated him differently. But Wudi realized none of this. Sima Qian was published brutally and embarrassed publicly. He was a loser. > But in the end, the loser got his revenge.
- cttet 6y ago“But in the end, the loser got his revenge.” It may be just survivorship bias, since all the "losers" that are really "lost" in history are nowhere to be found. In the story of your reference, Wudi did not choose to destroy the work of Sima Qian, which he can do easily if he want to, and happened a lot in Chinese history https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burning_of_books_and_burying_of_scholars https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burning_of_books_and_burying_o.... Sima Qian may be just a lucky guy enough to get his work passed on and that's all.
- microcolonel 6y agoNot every country, look at the UK. I guess you can define indigenous people in a way anywhere that makes what you said true, but it's been a long while in a lot of places.
- yongjik 6y agoWell, the Picts were a distinct group in Scotland that were assimilated around 10th century. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Picts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Picts
- notadog 6y agoEven in the case of the UK, there are the crofters in Scotland. While not officially recognized by the Scottish government as an indigenous group, they have long been campaigning for it. See https://www.stand.ie/crofters-scotlands-indigenous-heritage/ https://www.stand.ie/crofters-scotlands-indigenous-heritage/, https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-britain/crofters-fight-for-rights-of-indigenous-people-811791.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-britain/crofters-..., http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/highlands_and_islands/6493015.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/highlands_and_is..., and http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/highlands_and_islands/7258432.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/highlands_and_is...
- joe_the_user 6y agoWell, I think there are two different things. One would be marginalized groups sharing common culture and deserving of recognition and protection, the other would an ethnicity having previous occupied an area and also having the qualities of the first group. It seems like the Crofters are in the first group.
- foobar_ 6y agoGaelic language mate. It's not recognised as a language in the UK.
- microcolonel 6y ago
- camgunz 6y agoI had a similar thought while I was vacationing in Iceland of all places, so I googled it and I think there were no people on Iceland when it was settled. I'd be surprised if "every country" has this dynamic, but I do agree it's a lot more widespread than people would like to admit.
- AmericanChopper 6y agoBut the Icelandic settlers were eventually colonised by Norway. Those settlers may have originally come from the same geographical region that eventually turned into the kingdom of Norway, and subsequently colonised Iceland. But the only topics you could debate there is how much time has passed, and how different the groups are considered to be. After all, there’s reasonably strong evidence to support the theory that both the Icelandic settlers and the Norwegian colonialists originally migrated from Africa. Would the colonization Iceland in the 13th century be considered a significantly different event if the colonizing was being done by the Mongol Empire instead of the Kingdom of Norway? Because the only difference between those two states/empires would be an arbitrary judgement about how different they are, and the amount of time that had passed since they diverged from their shared origin. The history of all nations and peoples revolves around claiming land, and then fighting over it. Even the act of founding a country carries many of the same sins as conquest or colonization. When a country is founded, a person or group of people decides that they are the ruler of everybody within some particular boundaries on the map. The only difference between that and conquest is whether or not those people had an established ruler.
- camgunz 6y agoThere are important differences. Iceland was originally settled mainly by Norwegians and there was no violent takeover. Compared to a theoretical Mongol conquest, where the invaders would be very ethically and culturally different, and legendarily brutal, I think there really is no comparison. And indeed I think we shouldn’t trivialize those differences; colonialism has devastated cultures across the globe, and we should acknowledge that, instead of making some vague “well that’s the story of humanity” defense.
- joe_the_user 6y agoEvery country on the globe has an indigenous people. Nearly every area in the globe was occupied by an earlier group before it was occupied by the present occupying group. Many areas had wave after wave of occupying group, some eliminating the previous group, some merging with the previous group. The people now "Greek" have little relationship to the ancient Greeks, the Mid East is mess, India has fabric of different groups, China was conquered by multiple waves of "barbarians", etc. Many of these conquests and settlement processes have unspeakably cruel. European process stand out for being the largest and most recent but not necessarily otherwise. The cause for hope is that just hearing all this, most people want something better.
- mobilefriendly 6y agoMost recent? China is destroying traditional Tibet (which it invaded) through mass migration of ethnic Han.
- thaumasiotes 6y agoWell, it would like to. The Han suffer from altitude-related health problems and die at much, much higher rates than the Tibetans.
- pm90 6y agoWait is this really true? Fascinating if it is. It seemed a little weird that China would want to “settle” Tibet considering that the most economically prosperous regions of the Country are on the Coastal regions. What are the incentives to abandon your home and move to a strange land?
- magicsmoke 6y ago1. Tibet is high ground. Source of China's rivers and a security nightmare if someone ever puts artillery up there. 2. Nationalistic pride. A lot of modern China's identity is tied up with using the perceived territories of the old Qing empire as a baseline measure for the country's standing in the world. Tibet was part of the Qing empire (disregarding how pre-modern empires controlled territory in arrangements that gave local rulers much more leeway than modern nations) so not having Tibet as part of modern China would be seen as a major defeat. Try asking a Chinese national to explain why the PRC fought to keep Tibet but not Mongolia despite both being part of the old Qing empire and watch the mental gymnastics.
- waffle_ss 6y ago> The countries that don't have them either killed them all in the middle ages or assimilated them completely It's also the case that indigenous people killed each other off. For example, the Māori genocided the pacifist Moriori and the Comanche came very close to doing so with the Apache.
- mc32 6y agoWhat do you mean by pacifist? Did they not have a culture or preparedness for conflict or did they actually have a pacifist philosophy that would prevent them from entering conflict to defend themselves?
- msla 6y ago> Every country on the globe has an indigenous people. The countries that don't have them either killed them all in the middle ages or assimilated them completely. Depending on how you define "country" the Pitcairn Islands are an exception: > The earliest known settlers of the Pitcairn Islands were Polynesians who appear to have lived on Pitcairn and Henderson, and on Mangareva Island 540 kilometres (340 mi) to the northwest, for several centuries. They traded goods and formed social ties among the three islands despite the long canoe voyages between them, which helped the small populations on each island survive despite their limited resources. Eventually, important natural resources were exhausted, inter-island trade broke down and a period of civil war began on Mangareva, causing the small human populations on Henderson and Pitcairn to be cut off and eventually become extinct. > Although archaeologists believe that Polynesians were living on Pitcairn as late as the 15th century,[citation needed] the islands were uninhabited when they were rediscovered by Europeans. The Polynesians were there, but they died off before the Europeans came. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pitcairn_Islands https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pitcairn_Islands
- ekianjo 6y ago> Every country on the globe has an indigenous people. And in most cases every "indigenous people" have actually replaced other indigenous people that were there before but for which we have no recorded history.
- Bayart 6y agoMost people are indigenous to their own country, insofar as indigenous is "occupying the area beyond the scope of recorded history".
- nomad543 6y agoExcept that in the case of Ainu, they are not indigenous to Japan, the indigenous people of Japan is the Jomon and they were already in Hokkaido centuries before the Ainu existed. The more common accepted theory according to recent DNA studies is that the Ainu are actually Siberians who mixed with Jomon and also mainland Japanese. Saying that the Ainu are indigenous to Hokkaido is a common misconception of Western scholars, they somehow insist in this historical error.