The Americas Cherokee Nation annouces nomination of Congressional Representative
Comrade Clod
Gay Space Communist
It would also demonstrate that the US is a reliable actor that can be trusted to respect its obligations.
Which given the current leaderships actions definitely wouldn't hurt.
D
Deleted member 1
Guest
The indigenous peoples of the Americas absolutely have a right to redress according to their treaties. Simply because you have power does not mean you have a moral right to use it. Indeed, it is a wiser person who does not use the power they have simply on whim, but conserves it, for power is always based partially on respect, else your own people turn against you.
The rights of indigenous Americans by treaties are absolutely equivalent to medieval fueros and directly related to an agreement between people and their sovereign. Indigenous Americans absolutely have a right to be treated differently under law by agreements in their favour according to concessions we made to obtain their land for our aggrandisement. We have an absolute obligation to uphold these even centuries after the fact. Supporting the Carlists and the indigenous Americans stem from the same moral principle.
Your laws and ballot box will forever be subject to the whim of the majority. In American law property rights have much better protection, deeds passing even through the revolution. Let the people who know the land best manage it.
I don't see it as in the interests of the USA at all to re-hash this business when it ended up so well for them. They got an entire rich continent with little serious resistance. That continent is now populated and dominated by the descendants of those who carried out the conquest with the almost invariably mixed blood descendants of the native population now a tiny scattered minority. The breaking of the treaties just like the signing was carried out by generations now dead and the present US population which is one nation and one people are the beneficiaries of this historical set of circumstances.
I see no concrete benefits to indulging this feeling on some peoples part to suddenly honour long broken treaties all of a sudden. It just seems like symbolic feel good notions that won't accomplish anything really vital or needed and in fact may just open up an avenue for a dogs breakfast of past grievances renewed in a costly fashion in the courts and legislatures.
I can't speak for Americans on this matter but my country likewise was created on a continent taken from the previous native population and I feel no remorse at all for the end result. I'm quite happy with it actually and have no inclination to apologise for it or feel like I owe them anything for that conquest. We were sensible enough never to sign a treaty of course but if we had and had subsequently broken them during our continental landgrab a hundred or more years previously... well, shit happens. Might happen to us one day too if we're not careful.
I see no concrete benefits to indulging this feeling on some peoples part to suddenly honour long broken treaties all of a sudden. It just seems like symbolic feel good notions that won't accomplish anything really vital or needed and in fact may just open up an avenue for a dogs breakfast of past grievances renewed in a costly fashion in the courts and legislatures.
I can't speak for Americans on this matter but my country likewise was created on a continent taken from the previous native population and I feel no remorse at all for the end result. I'm quite happy with it actually and have no inclination to apologise for it or feel like I owe them anything for that conquest. We were sensible enough never to sign a treaty of course but if we had and had subsequently broken them during our continental landgrab a hundred or more years previously... well, shit happens. Might happen to us one day too if we're not careful.
D
Deleted member 1
Guest
I don't see it as in the interests of the USA at all to re-hash this business when it ended up so well for them. They got an entire rich continent with little serious resistance. That continent is now populated and dominated by the descendants of those who carried out the conquest with the almost invariably mixed blood descendants of the native population now a tiny scattered minority. The breaking of the treaties just like the signing was carried out by generations now dead and the present US population which is one nation and one people are the beneficiaries of this historical set of circumstances.
I see no concrete benefits to indulging this feeling on some peoples part to suddenly honour long broken treaties all of a sudden. It just seems like symbolic feel good notions that won't accomplish anything really vital or needed and in fact may just open up an avenue for a dogs breakfast of past grievances renewed in a costly fashion in the courts and legislatures.
I can't speak for Americans on this matter but my country likewise was created on a continent taken from the previous native population and I feel no remorse at all for the end result. I'm quite happy with it actually and have no inclination to apologise for it or feel like I owe them anything for that conquest. We were sensible enough never to sign a treaty of course but if we had and had subsequently broken them during our continental landgrab a hundred or more years previously... well, shit happens. Might happen to us one day too if we're not careful.
You may say that, but I cannot help but feel your attitude is coloured by the fact Australia never signed a treaty. I feel a bitter shame that we did, and then broke them. Those treaties are in the fabric of our country and our constitution, provided for in their own explicit article thereof, and govern the relationship with those whose knowledge built great civilisations in this land before us and our cities in some cases built on the bones of their’s, their agricultural schema (maize) completely dominating our own and even our food and customs irrevocably influenced by their’s, indeed the constitution itself based on the Haudenosaunee Great Law of Peace.
A demand to uphold traditions privileges is at the very essence of traditionalism.
Edgeplay_cgo
Well-known member
Why should they be a voting member? States have representatives. Territories , and apparently other entities, have Delegates who don't vote.
Edgeplay_cgo
Well-known member
I don't see it as in the interests of the USA at all to re-hash this business when it ended up so well for them. They got an entire rich continent with little serious resistance. That continent is now populated and dominated by the descendants of those who carried out the conquest with the almost invariably mixed blood descendants of the native population now a tiny scattered minority. The breaking of the treaties just like the signing was carried out by generations now dead and the present US population which is one nation and one people are the beneficiaries of this historical set of circumstances.
I see no concrete benefits to indulging this feeling on some peoples part to suddenly honour long broken treaties all of a sudden. It just seems like symbolic feel good notions that won't accomplish anything really vital or needed and in fact may just open up an avenue for a dogs breakfast of past grievances renewed in a costly fashion in the courts and legislatures.
I can't speak for Americans on this matter but my country likewise was created on a continent taken from the previous native population and I feel no remorse at all for the end result. I'm quite happy with it actually and have no inclination to apologise for it or feel like I owe them anything for that conquest. We were sensible enough never to sign a treaty of course but if we had and had subsequently broken them during our continental landgrab a hundred or more years previously... well, shit happens. Might happen to us one day too if we're not careful.
Treaties are the Law of the Land, second only to The Constitution. The fact that a law was not enforced does not abrogate the law.
Edgeplay_cgo
Well-known member
The other Nations had not been guaranteed a Delegate, nor a Representative, by treaty. Different nations, different deals.
MementoMori
Well-known member
Eh... I disagree with the concept of the reservations in the first place. Your people/country was conquered centuries ago, get over it. It simply create a division of nationality where none should have existed in the first place. These tribal "nations" only exist due to the kindness of the American government and would collapse almost immediately if monetary support is stopped. If they want to be independent countries go ahead, try. As it is right now they're simply a parasite that contributes nothing.
D
Deleted member 1
Guest
It's not clear from the text of the treaties whether or not the delegate was intended to be voting or non-voting. However, several entities in the western world (like two universities in Ireland) still allow for multiple voting for being a member of said entity, and I think it is a relatively small privilege. The constitution may contradict it, depending on whether or not a treaty can permit changes to the nature of representation of the House. It gets more complicated when you consider that the States claim control of the land of the tribe -- so does that mean they can be voting delegates because they are representing part of a state, and the treaty simply provides for special additional representation?
The easiest thing, least likely to cause any problems for the two Tribes, is to just send non-voting delegates. There would be a complicated court case otherwise, and especially in the modern day their prospects for victory would be small. But I would consider it a small measure of redress for the failure to actually incorporate the State of Sequoyah.
D
Deleted member 1
Guest
They were secured their sovereign liberty in a sacred treaty with this Republic. There is a very real division of nationality, just as the Navarrese secured their fueros from the Spanish Crown when they were conquered by the Kings of Spain in the early 16th century. It is about more than "kindness", it is about recognising moral right, and in this case as in many others, protracted guerrilla warfare could have seriously threatened the whole of the expansion into the southern.
They are also not "parasites" who contribute nothing to our country. They have provided countless brave warriors, honourable soldiers, diligent civil servants, and respected scientists and doctors. In many cases their land and their effort has been critical to national defence, like the Navaho Uranium mines. More to the point, however, it is very disrespectful to suggest they are parasites when their economic development was intentionally suppressed by the failure to obey the treaties in the first place.
These treaties were signed on the understanding that in capitalism, under common law, you have an obligation to come to an agreement to pay someone for takings. If the government came to seize your home and land, certainly you would have that right as well. Our own advantage was in avoiding every single tribe, some of them much, much more populous (especially since the major population declines happened on the reservation to disease, not before), to be incentivised to fight as hard as the Modoc did. That is something that has demographic consequences even today, one of your answers may owe their life to this treaty and the fact that the Cherokee didn't choose to fight like Captain Jack did:
MementoMori
Well-known member
Unless my ancestors somehow traveled halfway around the world did things to the Indians, and then traveled back, there's zero chance that any of my ancestors are responsible for the Indians. And "sins of the father" really? And no I refuse to consider any of the reservations as nations, obstacles is the word I prefer. What these people are asking for are special treatments, special considerations that no other Americans can have because of arbitrary percentage of their dna are not Indian.
D
Deleted member 1
Guest
You bought onto the deal when your ancestors were naturalised as American citizens, then. Same difference.
This isn't about sin, it's about honouring your word, as fundamentally important for nations as people. Why do you bring up sin? Do you have a guilty conscience? I didn't bring up sin, that, Sir, was up to you.
Obstacles to what? Even if half of the land owned by the federal government was returned to the indigenous peoples of the United States, there would not be a single whit of negative impact. Look at the Alaska Native Corporations for a good example of that. They're players in our modern economy.
That has nothing to do with it. What has everything to do with it is that their ancestors negotiated with our government, often quite shrewdly, to secure privileges for their descendants in exchange for massive land cessions. You are literally advocating for the law of the gun: Changing a business transaction's agreed terms under the threat of force because you find them inconvenient. That's robbery. Why do you think the courts find for the tribes so often, why do you think conservative Justice Gorsuch did in a case precisely like this for the Yakima nation? Because our courts respect private property rights and don't at all like the fact that the terms of the deal under which vast areas of land were ceded is getting changed arbitrarily at the point of a gun.
prinCZess
Warrior, Writer, Performer, Perv
I would like to point out that victims of conquest was not always the method by which Indian nations or bands engaged with the United States--A goodly number negotiated in good faith, cooperated with the US against common enemies, and were given promises of recompense and special distinction for themselves and their descendants in exchange for that cooperation and negotiation (and/or ongoing cooperation when the Feds first started reorganizing things into the beginnings of the present shit-show).
That the US then had a bad habit of reneging on the deals made, as with the Cherokee here, is not an endorsement or excuse for doing so.
I would also just like to note this is an absurdly simplistic representation of the problems 'Indian country' has in the US and the fricken' smorgasbord of relationships some 500 different tribes have with a government that has long been plagued by unresponsiveness, a great deal of ignorance and misrepresentation alongside of bureaucratic BS the likes of which are storied monuments to incompetence, and in many cases a failure to abide by the standards it set for itself (or new standards which have active secondary effects that promote incompetence, ignorance and misrepresentation, and general shittiness for the individuals ostensibly 'served' by that government).
I was actually unaware the US treaty with the Cherokee offered them a representative, and I'd be down for them being a full-on voting member. But there'd be a raftload of problems that'd come with that--not least of which from the other tribal nations in general because of perceived favoritism (even if it's century+ old favoritism). This is, honestly, one of those topics where there are ideological 'answers' on both ends trying to correct the problems, but those answers have astounding problems of their own in either direction that have just been compounded by the US sketchy history of abiding by its treaties, the running shitshow the BIA and US-Native relations have been since...Grant, at least, and the running conflict(s) in 'Indian Country' over ideological and practical matters of governance, citizenship, life and tradition.
Simple answers all the way around the spectrum are great for being catchy, seductive, and ignoring whole swathes of history, practical reality, and unintended consequences that people's favorite pet ideals would cause (or, in the case of the current system, already HAS caused).
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MementoMori
Well-known member
This just seems like an unnecessary minefield to wade through, opening a can of worms if you will. The de facto for the last two centuries would seem to be a good reason not to change anything. Haaaaa I don't really give a damn anymore put it through congress or ask the president to take care of it. As it seems that we cannot agree to anything, we simply have to agree to disagree.
D
Deleted member 1
Guest
To me the can of worms is the failure of morality by the government in refusing to honour the treaty, which sullies the good name of the Republic and opens the government to mistrust. You cannot perform actions in a vacuum.
Lanmandragon
Well-known member
Yeah you can actually it's called dual citizenship.