This sounds very much like "racism of low expectations". "These people" are just as self-sufficient as any other group of modern people of similar socioeconomic background. It's been 100+ years since they were mistreated in any serious fashion.

I come from eastern Europe and 150 years ago most of my ancestors were serfs, only a rung or two above chattel slaves on the ladder of human condition. If someone seriously suggested that well, what do you expect of these poor chaps, serfdom and all, I think I'd get quite upset.

Just food for thought about how both your phrasing and implications of what you're saying might seem to people who aren't from your background.

History is not fair but your actions yesterday determine your life today and your actions today determine your future. It is extremely damaging to sustain this culture of of course your life is shit because of what happened hundreds of years ago, nothing you can do

https://www.npr.org/2022/02/18/1081872135/native-americans-p...

Or the US government's uranium mining on Navajo land continuing to poison people today: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium_mining_and_the_Navajo_...

For example, these populations have to be spread across massive ranges of completely worthless land, making infrastructure extremely inefficient even in scenarios where they have the financial means to invest in it whatsoever (which is also rare for all the same reasons^)

They gave that as an example in response to the claim that the abuse of natives is historical and not actively happening. While it is not directly damage done to the occupants of Pine Ridge, it does demonstrate that the sort of injustices that destroy native communities are still occurring.

You cannot really compare the successful genocide natives in NA to being poor in Europe.

50 years ago a lot of their descendants in the Eastern Bloc countries were probably still in that condition or in the USSR factory worker equivalent.

I think that many just don't know how widespread, deeply ingrained and recent much of this was - they think there was slavery, a bit of racism hanging around and then (in the USA at least) the civil rights act sorted things out and made everything equal. And that's really similar in nature to the comment you replied to - people have picked up a simplified and wrong version of history of Warsaw Pact countries and they're just a bit ignorant of the truth.

In the USSR, peasants were essentially serfs. They only got internal passports in the 1960s and 1970s, and without those they could not leave the village without permission. They worked for a state collective farm, most of their pay came in just counting the "labour-days" they contributed - a totally self-containbed, essentially prison-like economic system.

So yes, I agree, I originally brought up serfs as being something from 150 years ago, but it was more like 50-60 years ago.

It's not quite life-on-the-reservation out there, but it's not far from it.

They were never any good, and as soon as the planned economy stopped pouring money and work/busy-work into those areas, they all went straight to shit.

I live in Denver, with a very large Native population, and many still remember being taken from their families and being forced to speak English, while the rest of the country experience the affluence boom of the suburbs and such. Acknowledging that recent history isn’t controversial in those communities.

This is just patently untrue. Land is still being stolen, programs to help Indigenous people are still being cut. I dont think people realize how close our history actually is. There were still nearly 10,000 children in Native American residential schools as of 2007. The height of them ended in the 70s, which is barely 50 years away. Thats quite literally the parents of modern day teenagers and young adults.

These schools have absolutely decimated the population and culture of indigenous people.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Indian_boarding_schoo....

The last residential school (Where native children would be kidnapped into, to have the Indian, quite literally, beaten out of them) in Canada closed in 1998.

Some people seem to think that the bigotry of low expectations is "social justice".

It’s not bigotry. Even if you want to ignore the centuries of active destruction of their families, the infrastructure gap is huge. Take a look at, say, the difference between Japan and Vietnam. Both got absolutely leveled by the US. One of them had infrastructure rebuilt by the US and investment in local enterprise by the US government. One is a rich country. One is a very poor country that’s only recently rising up… because other people are coming in and helping build infrastructure and providing jobs for a people who were crushed and isolated from the world for decades.

There’s a wealth and basic life standard gap that is impossible to bootstrap. Any successful place built from “nothing” got there through getting outside investment in some form, or through centuries of time left to grow through their own means. Plus their lands continue to be exploited. When oil or water or something is used by an outside company, instead of letting them have it and enriching the people on the land, eminent domain is exercised or companies buy it from the gov for pennies.

There are many poor communities across the country, in all races and creeds. The past can't be rewritten- focusing on "you are poor because X happened in the past" is just telling someone there is no reason for hope.

The way out involves both external and internal forces; external in the sense of support for development of infrastructure and economic activity, internal in the sense of a willingness and belief of capability of change. Many tribes who have successful casinos don't see significant improvements depending on their payout structure, because simply giving money to people with no financial literacy is a recipe for loss.

This is true for all communities facing poverty.

Casinos are a way tribes found to generate wealth as an exception to state laws. It’s one of the very few possible “true” bootstrapping examples. But no healthy community is dominated by casinos.

USA southern border is over-run with poor people trying to get in. I wonder what is different for these folks?

You seem to view the world as if any of these problems are unique to America.

I'm not saying "bad things only happen to native Americans." I'm saying "the American campaign of genocide against native Americans only happened to native Americans."

At this point you seem to be willfully ignoring the numerous modern day examples of injustices perpetrated on these people. This is not some long-gone history. As mentioned in other threads, governments kidnapped native children as recently as the 1970s. They showed up to houses, stole children, shipped those children to boarding schools to be raped, tortured, and killed en masse - optimistically to be brainwashed out of their culture. Governments are continuing to wrestle natural resources from tribes as recently as today. Right now. Across the entire country.

I know you're saying that countries can't develop themselves without external support, but I'm not convinced that a richer country = better quality of life for people which is an assumption you made.

I chose those examples because I’ve worked in each, but hours worked and birth rates really aren’t too relevant here. Vietnam was a nice country, but be honest: you wouldn’t want to live there making an average wage if you had a choice of living in a typical US or Japanese town with decent infrastructure and average wages.

I don't know that people who live there say "I'll never amount to anything", I don't think any of us participating in this conversation live there; probably none of us are natives. So we're not talking about what they say about themselves, we're talking about what we say about them.

If not the legacy of expropriation, displacement, and cultural destruction... the usual explanation is that there is just something wrong with these people as people, something wrong, something pathological with their culture. I don't see how that is in any way useful, or somehow more respectful of "agency".

Up until the 70s, children were still being forcibly sent to prison-like boarding schools.

https://archleague.org/article/cheyenne-river-reservation-bo...

I don't think there is anything wrong with Oglala culture. "Social justice" would be restoration of sovreignty, reparations (a massive "marshall plan" level of physical and human infrastructure investment), an apology and general cultural recognition, etc. While a very different situation, New Zealand's reparative policies toward the Maori can provide some models.

People with limited resources don't devote them to mitigating once in a lifetime risks. Their everyday life is constrained: buy a more reliable car vs. save for a child's education. Eat healthier food vs. visit the doctor.

These Native Americans live in a vulnerable location that provides little land-based wealth, isolates them from population centers & thus opportunity, and exposes them to environmental threat.

If you can't see how that impacts their opportunity to "amount to anything," I suggest relocating. Become their neighbors and report back in 10 years whether you think this had any deleterious impact on what your career has amounted to.

Now climate change in winter makes wheel loaders not function properly and people are too cold?

The moment something of value is found on native land, even today, it’s taken from them.

They get enough to live not enough to thrive. The federal government provided healthcare, for example, but funds it in such a way that they run out of operating funds in month 10 or 11 of the annual budget.

Like most people in this sort situation, the malaise takes over. Alcohol and drug abuse is rampant. Opportunity is nil. Breaking out of the cycle is very difficult and requires an individual to have the right combination of luck, street smarts, ability and ability to walk away that is hard to find.

The person you're replying to explained why: We did it to them on purpose to wipe them out.

"we"? I wouldn't be so presumptuous.

So “we” got our trains, oil and highways, and turned the Great Plains into one of the great breadbaskets of the world, at least for awhile. Unfortunately the depletion of the aquifers will leave those same plains a desert from an agricultural perspective in many of our lifetimes. Maybe when that land is worthless to society again the Sioux will get it back.

Consider it as a thought experiment - something that's been popping in my head lately:

under what sort of ideal conditions would have the native civilizations and peoples of Americas been left unmolested by anyone? An entire continent left in isolation while the more technologically advanced societies reached the way station of 'universal human rights'?

[typically don't mention downvotes but a difficult question does not merit it. If you so strongly disagree, discuss it.]

https://www.international.ucla.edu/apc/centralasia/article/1...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuban_Nogai_Uprising

https://fountainmagazine.com/1993/issue-2-april-june-1993/th...

(The Chinese are in the clear imo, so I parenthesized them.)

Just to be clear, even today in 21st you will note there are many global actors that deny the very notion of a "universal human rights". I'm not European myself and definitely not defending what happened. But it seems to me that what happened is an (inevitable) accident of history: two worlds that evolved in effective isolation for thousands of years. And I wonder: which of the relatively advanced societies would have left them in peace so they could catch up and integrate as you propose?

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The point you raise touches directly on the essence of my original comment (which should have been clearer):

When we think of the value-system matrix of the 3 co-evolving continents of Europe, Africa, and Asia, the core commonality that is specially distinct from the value-system matrix that evolved in Americas is in regards to notions of property and nature 'husbandry'.

Any vanguard explorers from the Eurasian civilisational matrix would bring with them the entirely alien notions of property and systemic cultivation of nature, and that would inevitably result in a confrontation of value systems, in which the technologically superior side would dominate.