I'm probably just ignorant, but aren't these kind of the same thing?
The upshot of both seems to be "modernity is bad, the right way for humans to live is in some vastly simpler system characterized by either sustenance farming, shepherding, and/or hunting & gathering".
Indigenous people are modern participants in the world. They're part of the same global economy and global culture as everyone else. There are no "uncontacted tribes", everyone has been in touch with their neighbors the whole time, for as long as there have been humans. Every part of the world, except Antarctica and a very small number of islands, has been inhabited by humans a very long time, with Polynesia being one of the last places humans arrived at a few thousand years ago. Humans have been in NA for at least 30,000 years, Australia for at least 40k but probably longer, in Europe and Asia for at least 50k. Even the famous North Sentinelese have had more and less contact with their neighbors over prior centuries. Their current closed borders are a modern policy decision made by a modern people choosing how to interact with other people in the modern world. "Indigenous" is defined largely in contrast with colonizers and imperialists. It is not an ideology or philosophy. It is not a belief system. The only thing that is consistent across the whole group of indigenous people is their conflict with colonizing and imperializing societies. Beyond that they do not necessarily share any beliefs, ideals, or values as each indigenous culture has it's own cultural values and beliefs, and individual members of indigenous societies in turn have their own beliefs.
Anprims, on the other hand, are dorks who are wrong about everything. It's a silly ideology of idealistic utopians who think, for whatever reason, that if their un-educated beliefs about "primitive" life were the norm something would be better. We often deride them on the grounds that their ideal society requires human population to be reduced by 90 or 95%, that it wouldn't even work, and that their view of history and the entire notion of "primitivism" is ahistorical and unscientific racist tosh.
The guy who came up with "Anarcho-Pritimivism" is an 80 year old white guy with a degree from Stanford who used to be unironic buddies with Uncle Ted
until Uncle Ted denounced him as a loser. You don't have to take people like that seriously. Frankly even referring to it as "anarchism" is a serious discredit to Anarchists and Anarchist Philosophy and it shouldn't be accorded membership. AnPrims are among many "post left movements" that aren't really movements, barely have any adherents or organization, and whose numbers are tiny.Thank you for this response, and for your other ones in this thread as well.
This passage in particular really gave me some needed perspective:
There are no "uncontacted tribes", everyone has been in touch with their neighbors the whole time, for as long as there have been humans. Every part of the world, except Antarctica and a very small number of islands, has been inhabited by humans a very long time, with Polynesia being one of the last places humans arrived at a few thousand years ago. Humans have been in NA for at least 30,000 years, Australia for at least 40k but probably longer, in Europe for at least 50k. Even the famous North Sentinelese have had more and less contact with their neighbors over prior centuries. Their current closed borders are a modern policy decision made by a modern people choosing how to interact with other people in the modern world.
(Although I didn't mention them directly, the Sentinelese definitely were one of the things I had lingering in my mind when I posted my OP, so I'm glad you said something about them)
Yeah so the North Sentinelese are a good case because they're prevented as somehow totally isolated, but Afaik there are extent government records from the mainland detailing interactions with them as far back as several hundred years, and presumably folks have been interacting with them prior to that. They obviously don't have diplomatic relations with the rest of the world, so I have no idea how they remember history, but until the British came and fucked everything up on the nearest island their closest neighbors were only ten miles away. Maybe they never talked to them, but I think that's pretty unlikely.
And, just reading the wiki page, it sounds like there have actually been plenty of, if not friendly, at least cordial contacts with folks on North Sentinel over the centuries. Like they've definitely known we're all out here for a long, long time. They've just got, you know, really strict immigration policies. I think there was one meeting where they were willing to hang out with some anthropologists, provided the anthropologists stayed in the ocean and didn't attempt to come ashore.
Like, they're people, they're protecting their land, they're asserting agency over their territory. We can't talk to them because no one from outside their community speaks their language, but they've got language just like the rest of us, they're apparently gathering iron and steel from shipwrecks to make tools, they're living their lives. Who knows, maybe some day they'll loosen up their isolationist policy and start communicating more. Cultures change all the time, often very rapidly. There's a pretty good chance their current isolationist policies are due to shit that went down during English colonialism in India.
Another thing to think about; During the high days of colonialism and Imperialism 1.0 Europeans were "making contact" all the time. But the thing is? Pretty much everyone they "made contact" with already had some European manufactured goods - knives, tools, fabric, whatever, because those people were trading with their neighbors, who were trading with their neighbors, who were trading with their neighbors, and somewhere along that line someone was trading for goods with europeans. People really like iron and steel tools. They're mostly a lot better than stone or wood tools, so when someone got access to european tools (or fabric, also highly desirable) that stuff could cross hundreds or thousands of kilometers across local trade networks long, long before white people showed up. There were even a couple of cases where Europeans "made contact" and were greated in French or English or whatever because someone from the "isolated tribe" had visited Europe or at least a European city and learned the language.
A lot of these notions about the world, they come from the way Europeans thought about things. Europeans told themselves that they were the height of civilization and that justified them conquering everyone else. But for that to be true, they had to have the best governments and the best technologies and the best culture. So they told themselves that the most important things were working iron, wearing shoes, things like that, so they could convince themselves that folks who didn't have ironworking technology or who didn't wear shoes were "primitive", less than, inferior.
And it was and remains mostly bullshit. Like, the Inca? They were building bridges and stuff out of rope, out of fiber, that Europeans just flat out could not figure out. Bridges made from plant fiber stretching between mountaintops across enormous valleys that you could ride horses across. Europe just did not have that level of prowess with fiber and rope. Folks in central America, Aztecs and Maya, folks in that region, had rubber-soled sandals and shoes when the Euros arrived. Peruvians had techniques for building earth-quake resistant stone buildings that turned out to be cannon-resistant, too. They used mortarless stone construction, but each stone had slots and protrusions that fitted in with other stones. Enormously labor intensive, but the result was a structure that could flex, it wasn't rigid, so when there was an earthquake it would flex instead of collapsing.
There's stuff like this all over, folks adapted to their region and developed technologies for taking advantage of the resources they had at hand. Ironworking didn't make it to Australia before Euros did, and wasn't independently invented in the Americas, and Euros fixated on that as proof that the people there were less than them.
You can even see it in books today. "Guns Germs and Steel?" Sure, except guns weren't really consistently better than bows and spears and hand weapons until maybe the late 1700s. Especially in low-intensity warfare and guerilla warfare, which was what a lot of the wars in North America were. The famous conquistadors didn't really win just by having some guns and breastplates, they were part of a coalition army of almost 200,000 soldiers that marched against the Aztec empire. An absolutely unbelievable amount of troops, the kind of military mobilization you could expect from China or the Steppe, but never from Europe. Like folks should be talking about the Tlaxcaltec war against the Aztecs instead of the Spanish conquest. The Spanish came out on top in the end, but they also showed up at a nearly perfect time and wouldn't have been able to pull this shit off a hundred years in either direction.
Idk, there's just tons and tons and tons of this to go through, to examine, to question. If you want a really good example happening right now, that really smashes the idea of "primitive" people, look up how folks in Brazil who live in the amazon are organizing politically to fight against illegal resource extraction companies and cattle ranches that are coming in, polluting local resources, clear cutting the forest. You see these guys wearing all their formal clothes and ornaments, "primitive savages", but these guys are 21st century indigenous political leaders operating in the Brazillian court system and government and working in coalition with indigenous rights groups all over the world. Westerners have been taught to see them as primitive because their idea of formal attire for important meetings isn't a suit and tie, because they live in a different kind of house and wear different clothes, but they're doing political organizing and fighting political battles, winning victories, getting shit done because they're modern people living in the modern world who know their shit, know how to fight, and are fighting even though the odds are mostly stacked against them.
Once you start breaking all these preconceptions, these lies that Europeans have built, it really rocks the way you view the world. Instead of seeing primitive people you start seeing sophisticated, highly capable people adapting expertly to the places where they live, building their own political and economic systems, doing just fine without a care in the world for what Europeans think of them. There are a lot of societies out there that have been engaged in revolutionary action and resistance for centuries, some with continuity from the moment the Euros invaded right to the present day, fighting like hell the whole time. It makes the world a lot bigger, a lot more colorful, a lot more strange. Keep working, comrade. We all started out as people who had a whole lot to learn.
Like, the Inca? They were building bridges and stuff out of rope, out of fiber, that Europeans just flat out could not figure out. Bridges made from plant fiber stretching between mountaintops across enormous valleys that you could ride horses across. Europe just did not have that level of prowess with fiber and rope.
One thing I love about Stellaris is that it's one of the very few 4X games (the only one I'm aware of, actually) that models this, albeit in a sci-fi context. There are certain technologies that you can't research normally and can only learn by studying pre-FTL civilizations. If you forcibly assimilate or kill those civilizations, then welp their culture is gone and the knowledge is lost forever.
This is actually a great effort post.someone copy this over to that comm if you can. Also, are you indigenous? If you're not I'd like to see what they think about this
Only Westerners refer to Indigenous as the "original anarchists."
They weren't anarchist.
Some were communal, some had governments and social administration, some had feudal farming systems, others had a rigid and complex social welfare system, etc.
Read 1491 and 1493 by Charles C. Mann.
Both books are great.
Quite complex and advanced civilizations.
They were not "primitivists."
Large cities too.
Take them with a grain of salt and remember they're pop sociology for a general audience. They're not bad, just intended for non-specialists.
Not one of the best posts I have ever seen on bear website, gotta be real
as others have already addressed the headline "no those arent the same at all" issue, I'd like to be more specific: even the indigenous movements in the cultural zeitgeist that you might be thinking of aren't advocating for primitivism.
Saying "the indigenous people of this place managed its forests better and used practices that took settlers hundreds of years to rediscover", isn't advocating for a return to the pre-columbian indigenous societies, but at bare minimum a recognition that indigenous people are experts on their land and their management practices aren't primitive but actually quite sophisticated and serve important roles in cultivating pleasant, stable ecosystems.
That's just one example but the same principles apply in other realms as well, but have often been ignored by settlers due to their chauvinism.
Similarly, demanding their sovereignty be respected during planning of infrastructure that affects them, does not mean they are against building modern infrastructure, it means they want their sovereignty to be respected.
Wild equivalence you're trying to draw there. They are not at all the same thing.
Let me put this as simply as possible: Recognize that as a settler you have no right to levy criticism towards or dictate policy to indigenous people or movements.
...You know modern Sámi reindeer herders use trucks and snow scooters, right?
Adrian Angelico is a cool guy to follow for Sami issues and indigenous issues more generally. Trans NB, opera singer, Sami and indigenous rights advocate, great social media presence (and great hair!). Used to have a good presence on Tiktok, not sure if he's still using that platform.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0hjtcbCFANU
Here's a little clip from the BBC where he talks about some of his experiences with transitioning (:norway-cool:) (we don't have a :norway-cool:) He's in an unusual spot as an opera singer - Really has to take care of his voice and he's got some interesting things to say about that.
Here's a clip of him performing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lAOw5YBEwM0
I found YouTube links in your comment. Here are links to the same videos on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
Link 1:
Link 2:
Most indigenous communities use the industrial machinery and tech they can afford. In Alaska snow mobiles, trucks, and bush planes (and one postal hovercraft) have almost entirely supplanted sled dog teams as a means of getting around. Most of the time snow machines are more reliable, they can go a lot faster, they don't have the problems that come with keeping a team of ten or twenty mutts healthy. But there's downsides, too - Dogs will start up when it's -40 and run just fine, while snow-mobiles might freeze up. Fuel and parts have to be imported and it's expensive. Folks use motor boats for whale hunting, along with guns and explosive harpoons. They've got TVs, medical clinics, a school system that always needs more teachers. There's lots of problems - Everything manufactured outside has to be flown or shipped in and that's expensive. On top of that you need cash to participate in a cash economy and there's not a lot of work that will pull in cash up in the villages. Fresh vegetables and fruit are shockingly expensive. The long winters haven't gotten any less harsh. Lots of kids feel hopeless about their prospects.
People use a lot of their built up cultural heritage, their cultural technologies, to meet their economic needs. Folks fish, hunt seals, preserve meat using old-school methods. They exploit local plant foods and other resources.
The Alaska Native Corporations bring in a fair amount of hard currency. Folks fly out to work in other parts of the state or country. There are Alaska native IT companies, tech companies, mineral extraction companies, all kinds of retail ventures, light industry, the whole gamut. People mostly get by.
Folks are working to preserve traditional knowledge, traditional technology. A dugout or kayak usually isn't as good as a motorboat, until you don't have fuel or spare parts or cash, then it's as good or better than a motorboat. You can make them with materials you can find in Alaska without being dependent on a global supply chain for fuel and parts. And even if you've got a motorboat, that doesn't mean a kayak is bad. Just mean's it's a kayak and you've got a motorboat. And I gotta emphasize - "Alaska Native" encompasses a whole lot of people from a bunch of different cultural and language groups. Aleuts down in the Aleutian chain, Tlingits and Haida in the panhandle, Inupiaq up north, Athabascans more central, and a whole lot of others. They've all got their own languages, art, history, systems of government, everything every other culture has.
There aren't any primitive technologies, there's just the right technologies for the place you're in and the resources you have available. Doesn't matter how high tech your fusion reactor is, without deuterium it's not as good as a propane lamp. Or a seal fat lamp, for that matter. High-tech cold weather gear made with the latest high-tech technical fabrics is about as good as seal skin anoraks, and a lot of those high-tech materials were made by studying how anoraks exploit the properties of seal skin to wick moisture away from the body and keep the wearer warm without using a lot of restricting insulation material, and continue to work even when they're wet.
You want to read a fascinating book, pick up "A dangerous idea, the Alaska Native Brotherhood". Indigenous Alaskans from a lot of different communities, starting back in the 20s, started building a legal case and fighting the US Government for enforced legal rights to their own land and it's mineral and other resources. Took 50 years, but they won an unprecedented settlement, the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, that gave them a lot of control over the resources of a big chunk of Alaska. It's not perfect, but most things aren't.
here's a real rough and ready explainer of the ANCSA -
https://alaskapublic.org/2021/10/14/cheat-sheet-alaska-native-claims-settlement-act-101/
It's a far cry from Anprim thought, huh?
I missed this earlier, but thanks for writing out an informative comment. I learned some stuff, thank you.
If you want to get any of this from people living it there's lots of Alaska Native social scientists and historians. Look up the University of Alaska, the museum's in Anchorage, various historical societies. Folks who actually know this stuff better than my surface level rambling are an E-mail away!
I can't speak for any indigneous people at all, but based on what I heard, North American, indigneous people, back before the US had stolen their land and committed numerous atrocities and genocides against them, had novel and complex forms of agriculture and civilization. calling them anprim for using different agricultural and productive practices would be like calling a french person an anprim for making bread differently.
When anarcho-primitivism manifests as a reverse cargo-cult it is funny.
Thanks everyone for the responses. I've learned a lot, and I'm sorry for any offense I caused.
