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Posted on 03/08/2005 3:53:07 PM PST by Stoat
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Speaking of myths - Is there a Ward Churchill wing?
later
This author describes a phenoma similar to how some still view the few remaining huntergathering tribes (in places like Brazil and Indonesia etc..). Unfortunately, their idealistic perceptions are often far from the truth.
This only relates indirectly, but perhaps some might find it interesting. On the effects of Welfare on Native Americans:
http://www.neoperspectives.com/NativeAmericans.htm
Here ya go:
1. ____________________________
2. ____________________________
3. ____________________________
4. ____________________________
I am an optimist.
As a curious aside, since indians never had a written language or a number system, how did they "put this all together"?
"Speaking of myths - Is there a Ward Churchill wing?"
Yeah, third door to the right, second stall.
Over the christmas break, I had the opportunity to visit The National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI). It is located in the Imperial Capitol right on The Mall. The architecture is notable in its curvilinearity; there isn't a straight line inside or out. NMAI is able to accomodate a gazillion folks, which reflects its watered down post-modern presentation of so-called Native American life. Consistent with this po-mo approach, there is not a map or time-line in the building. A large wall presentation titled WE ARE THE EVIDENCE, lists the several tribes inhabiting North America in pre-Columbian days. The names are jumbled (more po-mo) and in no particular order, either geographically or size-wise. The NMAI has few descriptions under its sparse collection. For instance, 1,100 arrowheads are displayed without any indication of which tribes produced which arrowheads; like the tribal names, they are a jumble of finely crafted stonework and obsidian. Interpretation takes precedence over artifacts at the NMAI. If you thought you might like to attend, save yourself some time and go right to the Brickskeller for a Belgian ale.
why is that relevant?
"May I see a list of the names of the 100% indians who conceived, planned, designed, computed the structural design for, built the machines which put together this building?"
1. Chief Running Water
As of the arrival of Europeans in the Americas, out of the hundreds of groups of natives living here, only a handful were still (or had even ever been) civilized. The remainder were still stuck in , or had fallen back into, the stone, or at best, bronze ages. It is not a fault of their genes - it was simply the harsh reality of being too few on too large a land area and without the benefit of all the cultural changes that had swept across South Asia, North Africa and Europe a few thousand years ago, culminating in the Romano-Hellenic secular and Judeo-Christian religious underpinnings of Western Civilization. As for the few groups that were actually nation states, by the time the Euros encountered them, they were well past their peaks and were essentially failed states. The arrival of Europeans was the best thing that could ever happen to the Americas. The Europeans saved the Americas from slipping further into what would likely have been at least 1000 years of the darkest ages ever experienced by the fragments of a former civilization. History is most unfair - and, is always right.
Guess you never heard of a Cherokee named Sequoia? I think there's a park named after him.
Bear with me for a second here, if you will. Let's for a moment assume that alien life forms exist and at some future date they make peaceful contact with us.
As a result of that contact they provide to us a cheap, reliable, safe and efficient source of power, which weens us from the tit of hydrocarbon dependency. The down side is that a disease, carried by and unknown (or not harmful) to the aliens, wipes out 70% of the population, before immunities or a cure is discovered.
Would you then say that the arrival of the aliens was the best thing that ever happened to us?
The Kiowas also had a written language.
Interesting that this writer missed out on the existence of the Hirshorn Gallery, which doesn't look all that European, as well as the squirrels running free among the trees, again, a rarity in Europe except in zoos and special zoological gardens, but a common, ordinary American experience.
The writer might be correct regarding all the other stuff he said, but the second you show that you prefer for the Mall to look "European" you lose my attention.
It is indeed a jumbled mess.
As I sort of foresaw when they were building the thing they'd have to try to cover a zillion tribes and they all get jumbled together, and they do in fact use about half the museum for assorted creation myths, that all sort of run together so I can't remember which tribe believes a Giant Owl farted out the sun and the clouds and which tribe believes the earth is balanced on the back of a giant Prairie Dog...
Well using ETs is not quite the same as the case in the Americas. One thing that's always been inevitable on earth is that those who explore overtake those who don't. In the big picture, even with all the small pox and syphyllis deaths, I still stand by my statement. Even in the most advanced remnents, in Mexico and Central America, they were cutting out the hearts of young girls to appease the gods, as recently as the arrival of the Euros. Where was what remained of civilization headed in the Americas? What would the Americas looked like circa 2005, if the Euros had never arrived, or, even if they had, had left the Americas alone? Think about it.
What the Indians didn't do is invent paper, therefore whatever they wrote was rare, or very expensive. Until the Moslems passed on concept of paper to the Christians in Spain, European writing was likewise rare and very expensive.
It is almost always an error to view today's state of any population a true reflection of where they were 500 or 1000, or more years ago.
The Maya had both.
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