Aboriginal Civil Disobedience

[Jarhyn]

This issue of the definition of a native seems to be a derail for the purpose of distracting from the issue of the OP.

I don't think so.

I see the point as an illustration of the problems created by trying to right old wrongs by blaming the current members of some group or demographic.

And trying to make two wrongs equal a right.

Tom

Nobody is being blamed for killing people here. Or at least I don't see that being the case. People are being blamed, and rightly, for not taking responsibility to clean up after the killing has been long done. It is the resistance to answer "what happened", and largely because "what happened" is really bad. But that resistance is also bad.

 

[Gospel]

Canada doesn't have statutes of limitations sir.

So?
I doubt that is really true. Are modern people expecting to right every wrong(by modern standards) ever done on the real estate now known as Canada? Even the ones done by "First Nations"? I doubt it.

Humans have been butchering each other for thousands of years.

Edit: BTW, this is not about individuals, it's about the Catholic Church & the Canadian goverment.

Yeah, it is about individuals. The individuals who used and valued those buildings. It's not like burning a century old church building inconveniences the RCC or the Canadian government. It's about destroying the day-to-day life of modern individuals, many of whom are First Nation.

Tom

Those innocent parties (or as you put it modern people) are members of the Catholic Church or visited a Catholic church for whatever reasons. I don't see how what you're saying corresponds with what I said because now the Catholic Church & the Canadian Government has an issue on their hands. Who else is going to do something about the churches being burned down? The individuals? They'll either reach out to the Canadian government or the Church (it's their only two options). Like wtf is going on around here?

 

[Toni]

So what is the appropriate way to respond to the discovery of the remains of young children on the church grounds of churches affiliated with these residential schools? How should living persons whose family members were sent to such schools and then seemingly disappeared react? What course of action should they take?

Does the church affiliated with these residential schools have any responsibility, moral or legal or otherwise? What course of action should these churches take?

 

[Gospel]

Bomberman did a very good rundown of suggestions for what the Catholic Church's options are. None of it IMO will come to pass. I wonder how the Canadian Law applies to the situation, and what legal recourse is available to the catholic church for the damages. I know for certain the person(s) responsible for the fires will be arrested and tried per Canadian law that's for sure. But what will the Canadian Government do about the graves? Justin Trudeau doesn't seem interested in that side of this issue as all he's denounced was the arson.

 

[TomC]

What course of action should these churches take?

Since arson seems to be the method most approved by the posters in this thread,

Maybe the Catholics should go torch something valuable and irreplaceable to the Native community. Buildings, forests, whatever, let's just burn stuff.

Tom

 

[Gospel]

What course of action should these churches take?

Since arson seems to be the method most approved by the posters in this thread,

Maybe the Catholics should go torch something valuable and irreplaceable to the Native community. Buildings, forests, whatever, let's just burn stuff.

Tom

Wow, Way to take us back to old arguments already addressed. Do you remember who you're talking to? Do you remember I said arson is bad? The post you are replying to even said the person(s) responsible for the burnings will be held accountable under Canadian law. Why ignore everything I said and regurgitate the same nonsense that has nothing to do with me? Maybe you intended that response for someone else? If so I suggest quoting that post and replying to that user.

 

[TomC]

Why ignore everything I said and regurgitate the same nonsense that has nothing to do with me? Maybe you intended that response for someone else?

Yes.
I was responding to, and quoted, someone else.
Tom

 

[laughing dog]

What course of action should these churches take?

Since arson seems to be the method most approved by the posters in this thread,

Maybe the Catholics should go torch something valuable and irreplaceable to the Native community. Buildings, forests, whatever, let's just burn stuff.

Tom

Wow, those are incredibly moronic straw men.

 

[Gospel]

Why ignore everything I said and regurgitate the same nonsense that has nothing to do with me? Maybe you intended that response for someone else?

Yes.
I was responding to, and quoted, someone else.
Tom

Oh snap. You sure were. lol My mistake sir.

 

[Angra Mainyu]

You're incapable of doing so if you were obligated. Why ask such a stupid question.

First, if you were obligated, you would be capable of doing so.

Second, the question is not stupid, and the reason I ask it is because an accusation has been made, and the answer is relevant to it.

 

[TomC]

What course of action should these churches take?

Since arson seems to be the method most approved by the posters in this thread,

Maybe the Catholics should go torch something valuable and irreplaceable to the Native community. Buildings, forests, whatever, let's just burn stuff.

Tom

Wow, those are incredibly moronic straw men.

I'm posting in a thread where the OP asserted

I can't find a reason to not condone the violence.

and generally was agreed with.
Tom

 

[Toni]

What course of action should these churches take?

Since arson seems to be the method most approved by the posters in this thread,

Maybe the Catholics should go torch something valuable and irreplaceable to the Native community. Buildings, forests, whatever, let's just burn stuff.

Tom

I think that kidnapping, forcibly converting their children to Catholicism, keeping them in conditions that left them underfed, malnourished, lacking basic access to medical care or hygiene, physically, emotionally and sexually abusing them, forcing abortions, and then burying them in shallow unmarked graves more than adequately covers a couple of unoccupied burned buildings. But then, I value human life, even if it is only indigenous.

So far, no one that I can recollect has approved of burning down any buildings in this thread.

Are you unwilling to address my question seriously?

 

[Angra Mainyu]

No, most Americans aren't Native Americans. Most Americans are native born. That capital 'N' denotes an important distinction.

B20 beat me to it, but just to reply to you: going by the use of 'Native American' as a proper noun, the vast majority of Americans are native Americans but not Native Americans. But then, 'Native American' is a misnomer. Nearly all Americans are native, but calling a group 'Native Americans' suggests very strongly that somehow the others aren't native. That is because while, in general, compound proper nouns (or names of objects) do not necessarily inherit their meaning from their individual components, in this case the use of the adjective 'Native' in 'Native Americans', while part of a proper noun, is also meant to be descriptive. It is meant to identify a property of some Americans, which distinguishes them from other Americans.

What makes you think that?

What makes you think the Eyak, Tlingit, Haida, Tsimshian, Inupiaq, Yup’ik, Cup’ik , Alutiiq, Unangax, Tanana, Gwich'in, Hwt'ana, Koyukon, etc. aren't continuations of the same Nations that formed millennia ago?

Bomb#20 provided a better reply than I could.

I would also like to add that even if you do not have any of the evidence he brought up, general facts about human history are such that one should deem it very improbable that all or most of the groups one finds at a given time in a territory that has been inhabited for thousands of years are the continuation of the original inhabitants: Look at history of most of the world. A group of people live in some place X. Eventually their descendants get invaded by another group. They are either driven away, killed off, or the men mostly get killed, the women raped. Something remains of their culture in some of those cases, but much of it is gone - certainly their social structure is gone, their ceremonies, etc., and much of their language if not all of it. Then the same thing repeats itself over and over, over centuries.

At the very least, even if there weren't enough information to say that a group is not the continuation of some original culture by their descendants, one should not have the belief that they are such continuation.

ETA: I would like to add one thing: even if a present-day group G1 can be traced back to some ancient group G2 in that they are their descendants or predominantly so, the culture of G2 may well be gone. And all other things equal, that is more likely as time goes by. Take, purely for example, England in 1900 vs. the group of ancestors that left Africa tens of thousands of years ago. Even if the culture of the former causally comes from that of the latter, the culture of those early ancestors is long gone - at least, it is in 1900 England.

So, that gives another way in which a culture is gone: it changes over a very long period, and the resulting culture is vastly different and has little to do with the old culture, other than a causal connection - of course, some cultures change more slowly than others, and the temporal distance under consideration in Canada is much less than in the example above, but this is a factor to be considered in addition to the rest.

And anyway, they were here when Captain Cook, George Vancouver, and the men on the Bering Expedition 'discovered' Alaska, so they were here first.

That is not first. That is last before Captain Cook, etc.

I think I am guilty. Because I knew about the child abuse scandal that rocked the Catholic Church in the early 2000s. I learned about the Magdalene Laundries in Ireland when that story broke. I know why an original oil painting by a famous Alaskan artist depicting Native children learning from priests among others, was removed from display at the University of Alaska library. And I know that, for all our joking about it, parochial school students like me really did fear the nuns. We understood just how much power they had and just how willing they were to beat us into submission.

Sorry to hear you were in that tough spot, but that does not tell me what you are guilty of. What do you think you had an obligation to do, and why?
I mean, you know about many serious crimes committed by many people, because you read them on the news. But do you think you are obligated to intervene every time? If not, why this time? From what you tell me, you didn't seem to be in a position to stop any crimes.

And yet despite knowing what I knew, until now I never really thought about what it must have been like for a young child to be forced into a residential school far from home, to have no contact with their parents or siblings except for sending the occasional letter about how wonderful school was (or be punished for being honest), beaten for speaking the language or singing the songs their parents lovingly taught them, given crappy food. even worse than what was served in the cafeteria at my old school, and frightened into silence when their friends and classmates disappeared or were found dead in the dorms.

But I do not see why you would have an obligation to do that. Again, one reads of many serious crimes all the time. I do not see any good reason to believe one has a moral obligation think about all of that.

 

[Angra Mainyu]

At any rate, I'd much rather talk about the next step of this discussion, the one that happens after "we agree there is a bad, done by the Catholic church": "what happens when people do a bad and refuse to own up to it and make things right, and they are complicit with government?"

Who is the Catholic Church?

The kidnappings and murders were very immoral actions done by some members of the RCC in the past, and by some members of the Canadian government in the past.

Who is refusing to own up their own actions? Surely not Francis. Then who is the RCC?

People are being blamed, and rightly, for not taking responsibility to clean up after the killing has been long done.

And by 'taking responsibility' you mean...?

It is the resistance to answer "what happened", and largely because "what happened" is really bad. But that resistance is also bad.

Could you be more specific, please? Who specifically is behaving immorally, and what should he do?

 

[ZiprHead]

Sorry to hear you were in that tough spot, but that does not tell me what you are guilty of. What do you think you had an obligation to do, and why?

I mean, you know about many serious crimes committed by many people, because you read them on the news. But do you think you are obligated to intervene every time? If not, why this time? From what you tell me, you didn't seem to be in a position to stop any crimes.

But I do not see why you would have an obligation to do that. Again, one reads of many serious crimes all the time. I do not see any good reason to believe one has a moral obligation think about all of that.

Captain Kirk: Thank you, Mr. Spock. You're logic is again impeccable.

Doctor McCoy: Why you unfeeling green-blooded bastard!

 

[laughing dog]

Wow, those are incredibly moronic straw men.

I'm posting in a thread where the OP asserted

I can't find a reason to not condone the violence.

and generally was agreed with.
Tom

You realize that not condoning the violence is not the same as approving of the violence. So, my observation still rings true.

And yes, generally, people did agree that while they did not condone the violence, they understood where it is was coming from.

Spend some time actually reading what people write before responding. If you don't understand the response, ask a question, instead of generating straw men like "hating Catholics" or "Since arson seems to be the method most approved by the posters in this threadaaaaa'.

 

[Angra Mainyu]

Sorry to hear you were in that tough spot, but that does not tell me what you are guilty of. What do you think you had an obligation to do, and why?

I mean, you know about many serious crimes committed by many people, because you read them on the news. But do you think you are obligated to intervene every time? If not, why this time? From what you tell me, you didn't seem to be in a position to stop any crimes.

But I do not see why you would have an obligation to do that. Again, one reads of many serious crimes all the time. I do not see any good reason to believe one has a moral obligation think about all of that.

Captain Kirk: Thank you, Mr. Spock. You're logic is again impeccable.

Doctor McCoy: Why you unfeeling green-blooded bastard!

Actually, most humans do not think about the conditions of all of the victims of all serious crimes they learned about in the newspapers, tv, websites, etc. - and certainly not to the extent Arctish was suggesting.

ETA: Even so, I did think about the conditions of these victims of kidnapping and murder. But I do not see a general obligation to do that - and to the extent mentioned bu Arctish - with all of the victims one knows about, so I was asking about his particular situation. Maybe there is some salient connection in his case that makes it obligatory, but even if that is so, it would be a particular case, so the more general 'we' blaming would not be proper.

 

[Arctish]

B20 beat me to it, but just to reply to you: going by the use of 'Native American' as a proper noun, the vast majority of Americans are native Americans but not Native Americans.

Correct.

The vast majority were born in the US or one of its territories, i.e. native Americans. Only some are Native Americans.

But then, 'Native American' is a misnomer. Nearly all Americans are native, but calling a group 'Native Americans' suggests very strongly that somehow the others aren't native.

Incorrect.

You might not know this but in American culture a person often indicates the ethnic origins of their family or of groups of citizens, especially when there's some sort of festival or celebration involved. We speak of Irish Americans on St. Patrick's Day, or Portuguese Americans during the Blessing of the Fleet in Gloucester, or Asian Americans when the Chinese New Year is celebrated, or Italian Americans when we're in the North End of Boston looking for a nice bowl of Pasta Fazool. And we speak of Native Americans when the discussion turns to things that involve or primarily affect them.

YMMV but it's commonplace here.

That is because while, in general, compound proper nouns (or names of objects) do not necessarily inherit their meaning from their individual components, in this case the use of the adjective 'Native' in 'Native Americans', while part of a proper noun, is Also meant to be descriptive. It is meant to identify a property of some Americans, which distinguishes them from other Americans.

Correct. And in Alaska, that distinction affects important things like membership in health coalitions and subsistence fishing and hunting, which is why we don't conflate 'native' and 'Native'.

Bomb#20 provided a better reply than I could.

I would also like to add that even if you do not have any of the evidence he brought up, general facts about human history are such that one should deem it very improbable that all or most of the groups one finds at a given time in a territory that has been inhabited for thousands of years are the continuation of the original inhabitants: Look at history of most of the world. A group of people live in some place X. Eventually their descendants get invaded by another group. They are either driven away, killed off, or the men mostly get killed, the women raped. Something remains of their culture in some of those cases, but much of it is gone - certainly their social structure is gone, their ceremonies, etc., and much of their language if not all of it. Then the same thing repeats itself over and over, over centuries.

At the very least, even if there weren't enough information to say that a group is not the continuation of some original culture by their descendants, one should not have the belief that they are such continuation.

I agree it is more sensible to withhold making sweeping statements about it, but I will point out that the kind of mass killing you're talking about requires large, well organized groups of hostile invaders, and the places we're talking about don't have the resources to support them. Not only that, the weather here is a significant factor and so is the terrain. It's not like the balmy Mediterranean where Alexander the Great was rampaging along the road system. Plus there's no evidence of that kind of mass slaughter in the oral traditions or archeological sites, so it's really not likely.

ETA: I would like to add one thing: even if a present-day group G1 can be traced back to some ancient group G2 in that they are their descendants or predominantly so, the culture of G2 may well be gone. And all other things equal, that is more likely as time goes by. Take, purely for example, England in 1900 vs. the group of ancestors that left Africa tens of thousands of years ago. Even if the culture of the former causally comes from that of the latter, the culture of those early ancestors is long gone - at least, it is in 1900 England.

So, that gives another way in which a culture is gone: it changes over a very long period, and the resulting culture is vastly different and has little to do with the old culture, other than a causal connection - of course, some cultures change more slowly than others, and the temporal distance under consideration in Canada is much less than in the example above, but this is a factor to be considered in addition to the rest.

And anyway, they were here when Captain Cook, George Vancouver, and the men on the Bering Expedition 'discovered' Alaska, so they were here first.

That is not first. That is last before Captain Cook, etc.

I think I am guilty. Because I knew about the child abuse scandal that rocked the Catholic Church in the early 2000s. I learned about the Magdalene Laundries in Ireland when that story broke. I know why an original oil painting by a famous Alaskan artist depicting Native children learning from priests among others, was removed from display at the University of Alaska library. And I know that, for all our joking about it, parochial school students like me really did fear the nuns. We understood just how much power they had and just how willing they were to beat us into submission.

Sorry to hear you were in that tough spot, but that does not tell me what you are guilty of. What do you think you had an obligation to do, and why?
I mean, you know about many serious crimes committed by many people, because you read them on the news. But do you think you are obligated to intervene every time? If not, why this time? From what you tell me, you didn't seem to be in a position to stop any crimes.

“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”

Ever hear of this concept?

At the very least I have a moral obligation as a human being and self-identified Humanist to learn how to recognize the legal and cultural mechanisms that allows some people to mistreat others and to work to eliminate them.

And yet despite knowing what I knew, until now I never really thought about what it must have been like for a young child to be forced into a residential school far from home, to have no contact with their parents or siblings except for sending the occasional letter about how wonderful school was (or be punished for being honest), beaten for speaking the language or singing the songs their parents lovingly taught them, given crappy food. even worse than what was served in the cafeteria at my old school, and frightened into silence when their friends and classmates disappeared or were found dead in the dorms.

But I do not see why you would have an obligation to do that. Again, one reads of many serious crimes all the time. I do not see any good reason to believe one has a moral obligation think about all of that.

That says more about you than it does about anyone else.

You don't see any good reason to believe one has a moral obligation think about child abuse, ethnic cleansing, genocide, or the abuse of government powers against the helpless when the evidence of it becomes unavoidably obvious.

 

[Arctish]

I've been meaning to post this link, so here goes:

[YOUTUBE]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vSkJRXl2DDQ[/YOUTUBE]

Molly of Denali is a children's show that features an Alaska Native as the lead character Molly, and a variety of friends and neighbors in the fictional Alaska town of Qyah. The show teaches information gathering and sorting as well as giving a more authentic presentation of Native culture and Alaska life than those so-called 'reality' shows.

This episode, Grandpa's Drum, was the very first in the series. It deals with issue of the residential schools in a way that is honest but not brutally so. It's a thoughtful introduction to the topic and IMO a very good example of the initial steps we need to take as a society to address the harm people suffered. We need to first admit it happened. Then we need to ensure it doesn't happen again.

 

[Rhea]

This thread continues to be absolutely fascinating.

The context: Someone burns down two catholic churches on indigenous lands, presumably in anger over the more than one thousand five hundred bodies of children found buried in unmarked graves on the properties of Ctholic schools. So that’s the setting - the mood.

This mood affects different people very very differently, apparently. I’ve already mentioned some of those different affects in a previous post (#418) but the topic that is so interesting right now (juxtaposed against one thousand five hundred bodies of children found buried in unmarked graves on the properties of Catholic schools.) is this idea that there is no Catholic church, there is no “they” there. The catholic church has never done anything wrong because there is no “they.” Never done anything wrong. Like the inquisition, for example. Not a thing that “the Catholic Church” has to acknowledge as a thing that “the church” did, because you can’t name the specific person and/or that person is dead.

One realizes, of course, that “the church,” then, does nothing good, either. And the outcry from Catholics about this statement would be significant.

So we may have to admit that they think there is a catholic church when the church does good. They wish to gain reputation and authority and power from it.

Which I mentioned before. They, Catholics, behave as if there is “a church” and they refer to it as the basis for their identity, and the mandate for their position in the world. They, Catholics, refer to the institution of the church as something that “does good.” And so whoever they mean when they accept that mantle of goodness, is the same they when they have to accept the mantle of shame when works done by the same “they” are monstrous.

You can argue all you want that I am wrong to think of “the church” as an entity that should feel shame with a leader who should feel responsibility. But the Catholics - nearly all of them, think of “the church” as an entity that should feel responsible and glorious and a leader who should feel pride.

So I think it is not your call, but theirs.