Timelies all!

Sorry that you've had so much stress over this, Consuela.

when did goodstuff get redesigned?

Couple days ago. The conversation wasn't here? Everything is mushed together in my head. I suppose tech is a perfectly appropriate place for it to happen.

Okay, naptime.

It was in tech. I don't feel overly tied to the new version, but I did want the number of notes on there, and couldn't figure out how to do it with the flowers. I think I can swap out the background image, if anyone has ideas.

ION, the Homer is eating! So that's something.

So, I was listening to This american life (the most recent episode about Minnesota and Native Americans) and it is fucking depressing.

My question is: is there any point in the history of the U.S. in which Native Americans were treated honorably? Because damn our history is fucked up. The letter from Thomas Jefferson killed me.

is there any point in the history of the U.S. in which Native Americans were treated honorably?

Maybe in the early colonial days, but I think the prevailing thought was "We're stronger than you, conquering nations get all the marbles, too bad you're the losers." The occupants of a conquered lands were pretty much always trampled on, no matter their color.

Maybe in the early colonial days,

No, not an exception. Christopher Columbus forward to today.

I could give a Washington State example up in Bellingham.

Pretty much the Native Americans were thought of as non-people. The Americas were a great empty wilderness ripe for the taking. A land without a people for a people without a land.

is there any point in the history of the U.S. in which Native Americans were treated honorably?

Hmm. I would say there are moments when Congress or the courts or some other entity tried to do right by the Tribes, but was stymied by the inexorability of oppression.

There is The Marshall Trilogy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Trilogy#The_Marshall_Trilogy.2C_1823-1832), which affirmed tribal sovereignty on their own land, but the rulings were generally ignored by the locals. The end result of Cherokee v. Georgia, which was decided in favor of the Cherokee, was The Trail of Tears.

The General Allotment Act, aka the Dawes Act, attempted to provide Indians the werewithal to be self-supporting and independent--by ignoring their culture and history, and turning them into farmers in the European mode. The end result of this well-intentioned condescension was the loss of hundreds of millions of acres of Indian land to fraudsters and thieves.

In the 1950s, Congress decided that the best thing for Indians would be to just assimilate into "American" society--so they just revoked the official status of a number of tribes, sold the land, and paid out all their trust assets. As a result, many of the tribal members ended up broke and unemployed and homeless, since they didn't have any experience in managing the lump-sum payments they received.

Indian law in the US is ridiculously complex and generally tragic--it's a litany of malice interspersed with good intentions gone badly awry.

Pretty much the Native Americans were thought of as non-people. The Americas were a great empty wilderness ripe for the taking. A land without a people for a people without a land.

That was explicit for Australia. The British colonisers didn't recognise within the Aboriginal people's societies any notion of land ownership or leaders with the authority to sign treaties, so the land was declared to be terra nullius - without an owner. This was overturned by the High Court in 1992, which oerturned the terra nullius assumption and recognised native title under particular conditions.

The British colonisers didn't recognise within the Aboriginal people's societies any notion of land ownership or leaders with the authority to sign treaties, so the land was declared to be terra nullius - without an owner. This was overturned by the High Court in 1992, which oerturned the terra nullius assumption and recognised native title under particular conditions.

Wow, such a difference from New Zealand, where there were formal treaties signed between the Crown and the Maori. I mean, sure, the Maori still got shafted, but they retained a lot more sovereignty than the Australian natives, and culturally have a great deal of influence on New Zealand.