I understand the concept Affirmative Action, is this what we are talking about?
You can't decimate a group based on ethnicity and then ask why they deserve special treatment for their ethnicity. Further, they're not even getting special treatment- they are having the sovereignty and jurisdiction our _own system_ assigned them validated and reaffirmed after having it unlawfully stolen from them.
You can argue that a tribal government should adopt open, non-ethnocentric policies, but that is their decision to make, not ours.
So let's focus first on the second category. Imagine that some people from elsewhere showed up, rounded up you and all your relatives and everybody else living within a 400 mile radius, killed 80% of them, then marched the rest to a patch of land you'd never seen before and said "you'll be living here now, it's yours in perpetuity". Then a hundred or more years go by, and the descendants of those people say to your descendants "Well, actually, that land we said was yours isn't really yours, and so the problems with resources, jobs, social order, purpose and meaning you folks have had for a while are going to get worse".
And then someone shows up and says "why should these particular ethnic groups get treated differently from any other?"
If you then turn your attention to the self-created reservations, the story is a bit different. Now imagine that some newcomers show up in your part of the world. They seem ready to fight, and you've heard stories from people who have travelled east over the mountains that they are brutal nasty SOBs. The newcomers say that they are ready to strike a deal, so you decide that this makes more sense. You tell them that they are welcome to come and live in this area, but that you want a treaty that recognizes that you will reserve areas for your own people, along with certain distributed rights like fishing. The newcomers sign the deal, apparently quite happy with it. 200 years later, your descendants realize that the treaty rights are no longer recognized, and that the newcomers have changed everything so much with their logging, mining and dams that even the original terms of the treaty don't much sense any more.
And then someone shows up and wonders why your people should treated any differently from anyone else.
It's difficult to come to an objective conclusion because so much of what's believed and reported about native culture is often done through appropriate by the descendents of European settlers, rather than the natives themselves, and a lot of mythologizing, fetishizing and stereotyping has taken place over the years as a result. One should at least be wary of sweeping "just so" truisms about historically oppressed people.
Anecdotally, I was able to find some evidence to the contrary[0], and I would expect the actual truth to vary according to tribe.
[0]https://daily.jstor.org/yes-americans-owned-land-before-colu...
[1]https://mises.org/wire/did-indians-understand-concept-privat...
Given your points, is there a more correct way to define the lands once inhabited by Native peoples?
I think there's a pretty obvious difference between referring to land in historical North America as "Native land" and calling it "White land." And the specific label doesn't matter much, you could say "European land" or "colonized land" and the point remains unchanged.
Your comment seems like the standard appeal to "colorblindness," as if one group of people can invade or otherwise oppress another group, actively set up a vastly unequal distribution of resources and freedoms, and then claim that the only way forward is to deliberately ignore the history and even the existence of the different groups. But of course, to ignore those now is to explicitly support the status quo, and the status quo is still dominated by the historical unequal distribution of resources and freedoms between the groups.
Preventing racial discrimination (a good thing) should not lead into encouraging racial division, but unfortunately our well meaning desire to be equitable often causes that to happen.
Fryberg, S. A., & Stephens, N. M. (2010). When the world is colorblind, American Indians are invisible. Psychological Inquiry, 21, 115-119. doi: 10.1080/1047840X.2010.483847
PDF: https://www.nicolemstephens.com/uploads/3/9/5/9/39596235/34_...
Of course that's definitely not the only way forward. You can fix unequal distributions of resources by, well, redistributing the resources, which requires acknowledging the existence of different groups and the history of how those groups have distributed resources among themselves. And note that acknowledging the existence of a social construct that distinguishes people into different groups does not imply condoning that social construct.
It's not that radical. If a thief steals my car, the way forward is to recognize who is the thief and who is the victim, and to redistribute the resources accordingly. That does not "simply encourage further division and entrenchment between thieves and victims of theft," or if it does, I think that's okay. We don't say "hey, I'm blind to the differences between thieves and victims, we're all just human beings."
Nothing about my argument relies on racial language or philosophy, any more than my argument for returning stolen property relies on "'thief'-like language or philosophy." My argument for remediation is simply that the injustice occurred, and I think our society should attempt to correct this past injustice just like other past injustices.
It does because you're relying on racial identity to determine who pays and who receives rather than who stole and who was stolen from. The matter of who did what to whom is "settled" in the sense that all parties are dead.
> I don't hope for cosmic justice, I think justice is up to us humans.
What is your solution to the "stolen land" problem?
I am by no means an expert, but I think the recent SC case is probably the right approach. I don't see why the US government should not be held to the treaties they signed - I mean, the court still relies on law settled centuries ago.
And if the gov't can't hold up their end, then restitution is reasonable. However, I wouldn't restitute based on today's value just because the tribal land is Manhattan now. But it would seem fair to make them whole based on if the treaty had been fairly followed.
I did not say or imply this.
But... the US taking its treaty obligations with native peoples as seriously as it does with other nations would be a good start.
The situation is at the very least complex and will likely require a "morally impure" solution.
Yes, it would be messy and complex. International relations already are, why would intranational relations be different?
Well... aside from letting go of past injustices and instead focusing on some better future. Which isn't really a solution at all since it relies on the permanent good will of all future generations.
> Well... aside from letting go of past injustices and instead focusing on some better future.
This is a false dichotomy. I'm not suggesting attempting to change the past, of course. I am proposing we try to improve things in the future and allow ourselves to be informed by the past.
People in wheelchairs are on the other hand affected by the presence or absence of wheelchair ramps.
Or the Standing Rock reservation, or ...
That's an issue of personal choices more than anything else.
If the Natives had integrated a few generations ago they would be far better off today.
Broader historical context plays part in what defines your parents' personalities and ability to raise children in the first place. You're trying so very hard to abstract it away in order to solve this problem but many of us know this won't work.
There are plenty of high quality, _critical_ comments and discussion to be made on this submission and broader subject - why eschew that in favor of flamebait?
edit: You've since edited your comment, but I still think it could be substantially improved if you want an interesting (and provoking!) discussion.
In fact I think the comment in question is a strait forward and honest opinion that is just missing the usual euphemisms and massaging that usually accompany such controversial topics.
And I also think that questioning whether tribal pseudo sub-states should exist is completely relevant to a discussion about tribal reservations.
I hate to detail so much from the article content. I strongly disagree with the flagging of that comment. Accusing a nation of being a racist ethno-state is completely on topic, even if controversial. And we regularly see the same accusations levied at America or Israel (I would not want those removed either). I fear a double standard is developing.