- cross-posted to:
- indigenous@lemmygrad.ml
- cross-posted to:
- indigenous@lemmygrad.ml
After the revolution (or even before if possible), we should immediately create autonomous regions (ARs) based on the traditional territory of all native groups. This will include but not be limited to current reservations, even if those reservations are located outside of their traditional homeland (such as those in Oklahoma).
These ARs will be able to make their own laws that apply to everyone in their territory, including non-natives. They will have their own elected governments, control of their natural resources, and have their own official languages. The current US Congress will be abolished and replaced by a Council of the Union (elected based on population) and a Council of Nationalities. Both will have to approve all national laws by a majority vote. Large native nations will have 8 representatives, medium-sized ones will have 3, and small ones will have one. There will also be a large number of representatives for the New Afrikan and Chicano nations and a smaller number for other oppressed nationalities within the former USA such as Arabs and Asians.
All ARs will be able to declare independence by a majority vote from all adults of their native nation, including members living outside the AR or abroad. They will also be able to merge with other ARs if they choose to do so. Overseas colonies such as Guam, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, and others will immediately become independent after the revolution (besides "American" Samoa which will go straight back to Samoa) and may choose to stay independent or join with each other or other countries.
EDIT: I FAILED TO ACCOUNT FOR ANGLO-CANADIAN IMMIGRANTS IN THIS COMMENT, AND HOW IMMIGRATION RATES VARY HIGHLY BY REGION. MY ESTIMATES ARE WAY OFF!
That's, like, the point I'm trying to make, though? That they don't really have a connection right now, but that they could try to *re-*establish a connection. Most white Americans are going to have heritage from multiple countries, so which country/countries they'd try to reconnect to is kind of up to them, frankly.
That "200-400 years" number is really dubious, too.
According to Gallup — and this relates to the US as a whole — only 58% of whites are "third-generation Americans or more". So, just over two in five white Americans have at least one grandparent or parent who were foreign born, or for that matter were foreign born themselves. And then of the whites who are "third-generation or more", it's anybody's guess as to exactly how many are specifically third-generation Americans, and how many are fourth generation, and how many are fifth generation, et cetera.
So... Let's guess!
We notice in that Gallup poll, that with each generation you go back, the likelihood of having at least one ancestor who was foreign-born in that generation more than doubles: 4% of whites are immigrants, 10% have (an) immigrant parent(s), 27% have (an) immigrant grandparent(s).
And this makes sense, if we assume that any given person has a roughly equal chance of being foreign born, and that each generation has twice as many ancestors as the previous... This is of course not actually the case, because for each generation of Americans, there's a different likelihood of being foreign-born: the period with the highest immigration to the US was 1850-1920, so people in those generations are in fact particularly likely to be immigrants, floating between 10-15% irrespective of race.
(And not all generations have exactly as many different ancestors, either, because "roll tide", but let's just not touch that one, OK?)
Anyways, if we assume a one in ten chance of a person being an immigrant, that would mean that, what, three-fifths of 3+ generation Americans have at least one foreign-born great-grandparent. Of the remaining two-fifths of 3+ generation Americans, nine in ten have at least one foreign-born great-great-grandparent. My own anecdotal experience confirms this, but my own anecdotal experience isn't worth much, anyways.
As a reminder: your great-great-grandparents are your grandparents' grandparents. This might sound kinda "duh", but this means that if you met all of your grandparents, and they met all of theirs, that you would only have one degree of separation from your great-great-grandparents. This is probably not actually the case for most people — I myself never met my paternal grandmother, and I only ever met one of my great-grandparents — but it's still worth highlighting to show just how recently all of this really is.
Your great-great-grandparents' generation would've likely been born in the latter half of the 19th century, so not exactly "200-400 years ago". Most of a white American's great-great-grandparents would've been born in the USA, granted, and I'm sure your average white American could trace a lineage back to the Yankees of the Thirteen Colonies... But what we're looking for is any given white person's closest familial connection to another country. And what we've found is that for the vast majority of American whites, they're only zero-to-one degrees of separation from an immigrant ancestor.
Compounding this: assimilation of immigrant communities was not instantaneous, but often took several generations. For instance, my maternal grandfather, born in the early 1930s, was part of the first generation on the American side of my family who grew up not speaking Norwegian. He would share stories with me of his parents speaking in Norwegian as a code to keep him and his siblings from understanding, in fact. And he would've grown up in the 1930s and '40s. He died in the coronavirus pandemic. "200-400 years ago" my ass, that wasn't even 100 years ago!
Having a single great+ grandparent being foreign born doesn't mean you have any sort of connection to their culture when the rest of your family has been here for a while.
No, we're looking for a cultural connection. If 93.75% of your great-grandparents were born in America, that last 6.25% is likely not going to have much of an affect on your culture.
Hell, my mother is a Portuguese immigrant and my connection to her culture is sadly lacking, and I've been to Portugal many times. You think people will have a connection with the culture of a single ancestor they never met from a country they've never been to?
Cool, and how much connection to Norwegian culture do you have exactly? Do you think it would be no big deal to uproot your entire life and move to Norway, where you don't even speak the language? Do you think it would be any easier than moving to any other European country? Do you think it would be much easier than moving to a non-European country?
You're basically doing race science. "Well you're 6.25% Italian so off to Italy you go." What about people who claim to be some percent Native? What about people who actually are some small percent Native, but have no connection to Native culture?
The solution to centuries of genocide, ethnic cleansing, and ethnostates is not more ethnic cleansing and ethnostates.
I was born in and live in Norway and speak the language natively. My mother was the one who chose to uproot her entire life to move to Norway and learn the language and learn the culture, ultimately due to ancestors who she had never met (i.e. she was introduced to my dad through Usenet because of genealogical research which required a translator). And we are both currently helping my cousin in Montana learn Norwegian as well!
I am not telling people with some tiny fraction of Italian in them to move to Italy on the basis of some bizarre blood quantum. That's obviously wrong, I never even mentioned moving people anywhere in any comment.
I am not demanding that my cousin move to Norway, and if he had chosen to learn German or Irish instead, I would've encouraged him just as much, triply so if he'd chosen to learn all of these languages. How he chooses to engage with his family history is up to him, but what matters is that he does it at all. That's my point: I do not see it as a "foreign" usurpation of Norwegian culture that my cousin is learning my native language, even though his Norwegian is still stilted and broken, and even though he's only "one-fourth Norwegian"; rather, what he is doing is reversing the assimilationism, and that, I think, is something to praise. He is re-establishing a connection. He is making his home more diverse.
Why shouldn't those with Native heritage but no connection to the culture, learn that culture, if it is done with respect? Why shouldn't you learn Portuguese culture if you find it "sad" how lacking your connection is? Literally what is stopping you? You can literally talk to your mom about it, and why shouldn't you!
I didn't say anything you think I did. Of course it's good to learn more about your family's culture. Although in both our cases it's a lot closer than it is for most Americans. My cousins on my dad's side learning about English, Irish, and Scottish culture wouldn't really be learning about their family, they'd just be learning about other cultures that theirs split from many generations ago. Like I quipped earlier, it's like white Americans pretending they're Irish on St. Patrick's Day because they're of distant Irish descent.
But none of that is a justification for thinking white Americans should go back to Europe so Native Americans can establish an ethnostate.
I think you've forgotten what this post, and my original reply to it, is about.
Honestly I think we're both just completely lost and not understanding what the other is trying to get at, at all, and we would frankly probably completely agree with each other if we were just not so completely and utterly bewildered at what the other person is trying to say... Like, I don't actually know what you're referring to when you say "anything you think I did"?
Alright, so, to clarify, I have since the very beginning been trying to say, that I do not support the creation of a Native American ethnostate, nor the deportation or killing or forced assimilation of whites. Rather, I believe that all the people who currently live on Turtle Island, regardless of appearance or family history, could live in harmony with the same consciousness and interests; but that to achieve this, the concept of whiteness has to be deconstructed and abolished, and that this deconstruction and abolition of whiteness, is achieved by whites engaging with their family history, which is something that I think most people could get on board with really without question.
So the point of divergence between us seems to be that I believe that the vast majority of white Americans actually do have foreign-born heritage about as far back as my cousin has, and so could, if they chose, do the same stuff that my cousin does. I believe that there is a genuine difference between that whole commercialized "kiss me, I'm Irish" stuff, and, like, actually studying Irish American history, and that Turtle Island would be better off if more people chose the latter.
More than anything, though — and I honestly neglected to mention this, even though it is possibly the most important point — is that even a few people now choosing to engage with their heritage in this sort of meaningful way (probably because they have a much more direct connection to it, like we do!), could create a positive feedback loop that gradually disseminates throughout society over future generations, as every learner becomes a teacher.
So, your cousins do not actually need to LARP as Scots!
Bad wording probably. Maybe “I didn't say anything you think I said” would have been better.
You never mentioned how far back he has, but there’s two ways I could interpret that.
* Of course this is regional. Obviously someone in New York City or at least the Northeast is a lot more likely to have closer immigrant ancestors, and ethnic enclaves established by those ancestors (e.g. Little Italy) enabled that culture to stick around. Whereas in the South (excluding Texas and Florida), families have been here for many generations and never really had those kinds of ethnic enclaves.
Having been into family trees, the closest immigrant ancestor on my father’s side that I know of is my 8th great-grandfather, born in Ireland in 1655. Obviously there could be closer, but if I don’t know about them even being into family trees, then they’ve had no affect on me culturally and are as foreign to me as any other European from their time.
Holy Hell that is... pretty far back, yeah.
Re the cousin: He wouldn't have personally met any ancestors who spoke Norwegian, those would be three generations back, and his actual Norwegian-born ancestors would be about four or five generations back; but our grandpa grew up in an ethnic enclave right as the Norwegian language was dying out, as said. So this influenced my aunt to sort of promote a token "Norwegian-ness" on her kids (this is upheld in other cousin families, too: one of my cousins is named after my grandpa's hometown, itself named after its Norwegian-born founder). I also absolutely believe that my mother moving to Norway would've influenced my aunt's promotion of Norwegian-ness on her kids, all of whom were born after me; and that my cousin knowing me and visiting Norway on several occasions would've also influenced his interest in the language.
So... Not exactly an average American's experience, no, although I stand by that your average white American will have some foreign-born ancestor within four generations back... Although, as you say, this varies regionally by quite a bit, because nobody wants to move to the South, apparently.
I mean, there was still that point about how every learner can become a teacher, but...