There was not much in the way of civilization there 150 years ago. There were indigenous, sure.

How is a self sufficient society with its own language not a civilization?

Maybe you meant to say "We didn't leave much of that civilization"

I mean they didn't have much in the way of writing, architecture, science, or organization. They were thousands of years behind the more advanced civilizations.

Native Americans wrote in an alphabet of their design, organized societies (sometimes at a large scale e.g. Cahokia), they clearly built structures of their own architected design, and they had science depending on your strictness in evaluating its definition.

I am disheartened by your comment.

All of that is pretty cool, but it's nothing compared to what the Greeks accomplished over 2000 years earlier. Or the Romans, or the Chinese, or the Egyptians, or the Incas, etc. The Native Americans were downright primitive by comparison with other civilizations. Especially on the prairies of Canada where they were basically hunter-gatherers living in small bands. I am likewise disheartened by your wilful ignorance of the truth.

"the Egyptians did it bigger" is a far cry from your original claim that there was "not much in the way of civilization" there at all.

I see it the same way. Semi nomadic bands of a couple hundred people without permanent structures is "not much in the way of civilization".

This is the fundamental difference in our views. I believe that the permanence of cultural output is arbitrary to the value of the culture, especially to those who participate in that culture.

Culture != Civilization. Culture is a term used to denote the manifestation of the manner in which we think, behave and act. Civilization refers to the process through which a region or society, outstretches an advanced stage of human development and organization.

I think we've been having disjoint discussions.