Growing evidence shows that the first Americans came from Europ
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There is also growing evidence that just about everybody came to the Americas long before the 15th Century, starting with the Jomon in Japan 16,000 or more years ago.
The whole thing about so-called native Americans claims today is based on their insistance that they were created here - this is a political and legal argument.
This last is why they demand no studies of early remains: if those remains prove not to be related to them, then their whole argument falls and along with that all their ‘special’ rights, rights which no other US citizen has or can share in:
exemption from Federal Income Tax, unrestricted commercial hunting and fishing, unregulated casinos, tax free sales of tobacco, unrestricted fireworks sales, BIA subsistance checks, and so on.
A typical Makah male (in the PNW) for example, could fish for sockeye salmon (when the season was closed for every one else) catch seveal thousand pounds, come in sell to the buyer for $1.25 lb, turn around and pull his halibut longline, sell those hundreds of pounds for $2.50lb, tieup, go collect his BIA check, his SS check, his timber check, his welfare check and food stamps. Visit Aunt Petunia for his share of the million dollar sale of their yearly family whale hunt.
When he gets home, take all the money and stuff it into a dresser filled with $100 bills, take some and go get drunk, stoned or both for the rest of the month.
But remember he is a poor downtrodden Treaty indian, so the tribe needs to lobby for more money.
But at least give Indians credit for knowing that the key to maintaining the cash flow is to restrict numbers by definition. If you can't prove x% of tribal blood in a given tribe, you are out of luck like me. Even if the sum total of d% of tribe A, e% of tribe B and f% of tribe C exceeds the x%.
It is a glorious little scam. Most tribes will allow some reciprocity, but usually only when it is necessary to maintain some political clout or tribal recognition.
The "Hispanic" definition, on the other hand, works to pump up numbers and political clout, even through the bloodline may be totally different. Thus, "Hispanic" can take in both Berber and Basque (as long they lived in Spain at one time) as well as Argentinians of Italian descent, Puerto Ricans of African descent and Hondurans of Toltec descent.
If Native Americans tried to broaden our definition on a similar scale, the whole scam would collapse as there would be fewer goodies to go around. Just for fun, you should read up on the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina sometime. They've been trying unsuccessfully for years to get tribal recognition. Not so they can tap into a cornucopia of government goodies. Most of them are entrepreneurial and conservative and just want to be able to use these treaties to tell the government to shove off.