NBC News contributing “journalist” Simon Moya-Smith, 39, who is also a lecturer at the University of Colorado at Denver, recently put out the following tweet:
“Before white people came to this land, there were no jails, no homelessness, no laws against homosexuality or abortion. For thousands of years, Indigenous peoples emphasized health, housing, freedom to love who you love and the fact that we need Mother Earth. She doesn’t need us.”
Before white people came to this land, there were no jails, no homelessness, no laws against homosexuality or abortion. For thousands of years, Indigenous peoples emphasized health, housing, freedom to love who you love and the fact that we need Mother Earth. She doesn’t need us. — Simon Moya-Smith (@SimonMoyaSmith) March 4, 2023
Simon Moya-Smith (Twitter icon)
This is an example of what we call “fake news.”
There may have been a dearth of jails, but prisoners of war could be captured, tortured, enslaved, or killed. Some tribes had “Blood Laws,” which referred to the widespread practice, particularly in the southeast, of revenge killing. Under this system, when someone killed a member of a particular clan, people from the offending clan had to kill one of their own to balance things out. (I’m guessing there was much debate about whom to sacrifice, not least amongst those who were in consideration.)
Some tribes were nomadic, but others lived in tepees. Tepees were made of animal skins and/or blankets wrapped around wooden poles and were typically about 10 feet in diameter. No doubt, a man’s tepee was his castle.