This is MY America!
 

Who can truly say this?

The original Americans were obviously Native Americans. Next, the Spanish arrived with African slaves. The slaves revolted and the Spanish left. The Africans stayed, making them the first non-native Americans. Next, the Spanish came back to stay, making them the second non-native Americans. Spanish and Native peoples mixed, making Hispanic peoples the third non-native Americans. Next, the Dutch made settlements here, as the fourth non-native Americans. Many years later, the British came and established settlements, as the fifth non-native Americans.

If you want to get technical, the Native-Americans (and to a lesser degree: Africans, Spanish, Hispanic, Dutch) should be the ones asking whether British descendants should be allowed to stay and work here. It's especially ridiculous to people living in Texas, which is technically a part of Mexico.

History is written by the victors; and revisionist history by the victors descendants. Eurocentricism is so pervasive, it's transparent.

i don't
no it's not

just abt every country on the planet has it's boundaries decided thru conflict

first thing that I want to say is that I AM NOT here to sell anyone anything. I think that it is quite RUDE that my previous membership was cancelled for absolutely no reason whatsoever. It just said, "sell it somewhere else." Another user asked me if I joined the cellar to get more traffic into my Haiti group, I said, "No, but if people want to join that is ok also." Maybe I don't fit into the "click" that they want in here.

:rant:

I was the one who asked you that last week, but never saw your response anywhere. There was none in the thread where I asked that question.

Your post today about the Yoko One CD looked a lot to me like SPAM, so I don't blame the moderators for banning you.

Welcome to the Cellar. What are your interests, besides promoting tourism to Haiti and also promoting CDs?

I designed this thread as a shit-magnet, but I didn't know the Thread Drift would set in so quick!

The irony is: Haiti. The native people of Haiti were the first people to be enslaved and wiped out by . . . who else? Our hero: Christopher Columbus! He was so effective at sucking the life and wealth out of this "new land" that his methods became the industry standard. The same methods that were later to be admired and emulated by . . . guess who? Hitler! There, I've done it! I've invoked Hitler!

Soon this thread will collapse upon itself and drag us all into a hellish netherworld...

i dont know what this previous drama is about, but regarding your post:

The Vikings were here well before anyone, they planted the grapes at Marthas Vineyard. :vikingsmi:

The Vikings didn't settle permanently here.

They lacked the pandemic biological advantage of more disease-ridden Europeans, as the Vikings came through the decontamination zone of frigid lands where nasty microbes cannot survive outside the human body. Incidentally, the same reason the Natives had no resistance to Europeans sicknesses, they had come through the decontamination zone of the Bering Strait, and peopled a continent with no resistance to common bugs.

Flint, there are some historians who contend the Vikings left more here than a few outbuildings. Farley Mowat, love him or hate him, in The Farfarers sets up a convincing argument that Viking blood lines are spread all over the North Atlantic along with Albans, Celts and Picts. Some Paleo-Inuit sites have skulls that are more Euro than Inuit.

It's an interesting topic. Essentially I agree with your point about history being rewritten by the victors, probably many times over.

I don't think any of us can claim a birthright of this land. The Seminoles in my state are rather like the Zulu in that they did not exist before, what, 1800 or later. Some will tell you that Seminoles are Creek descendants with black runaway slaves and white deserters mixed in. I don't think it matters much anymore. It might have been a point of distinction at one time, but they are what they are now, not 150 years ago.

Two of my grandparents were the Canadian born children of Irish immigrants fleeing the potato famines. I may have an interest in the history and the culture, but it's not personal at this remove. If Mowat and others are right, I must have Alban, Norse, and Pict mixed in with the Celt. And descended from a sea faring country that was visited by other cultures, I probably could claim some Moorish blood as well.

lizzymahoney is my nom, not my heraldic shield.

Looking at it that way, I should have said the Vikings were first genetically assimilated, followed by the Africans slaves of the Spanish and shortly thereafter by the Spanish themselves. The French got in there somewhere, as well. But it was the Spanish who managed to implant their culture more effectively; the French (and presumably the Vikings as well) sort of melted into the Native pot. Along the way, there were plenty of isolated tri-racial communities (and not-so-isolated as you mentioned), and the very idea of a "frontier line" ignores the cultural engagement zone. Also, the reason British didn't get in the mix more often was that the colonies enacted harsh draconian policies to prevent their own people from defecting.

Blah blah blah we all get the point. The persecution of "aliens" we're undertaking now is tragically ironic. Hispanic people pre-date us on this continent by hundreds of years, and carry in them the blood of the original Americans. It won't change a thing, but that's the facts.

Say it ain't so Flint, say it ain't so.

So what? Lineage is not the point. Who cares who anyone's ancestors are?
ILLEGAL aliens are the point and making them abide by the rules is hardly persecution.

I'm so tired of that lame arguement about heritage and this and that. Look at now. Look at the present. Who cares where we originated. This is where we are now. Our kids have to deal with this illegals and their disease and their scrounging, and their sucking our nation dry of money. Don't you care about you and your family now? If you want to live like a person in a third-world nation, go to one and quit biching about things that happened long before anyone you know or care about was alive. NOW is what matters.

It would be simple to cast aside the past, wherever it makes us feel uncomfortable; but you can't understand where you are, or where you are going, without first understanding where you came from. It's something that is worth thinking about.

As long as you don't ask me or my family to ever pay reparations, or apologize for slavery, or blame me for the plight of every historically oppressed person in the US, I'm cool with it.

I'm not asking you to do anything, apologize for anything, or feel guilty about anything that had fuck all to do with you personally. I don't even have any suggestions as to what conclusions you should draw from any of this. All I'm saying is: you gotta start from a place of honesty, in order to move forward with integrity. That's all. White-washing the past with a contrived American "creation myth" about the noble Pilgrims doesn't help anybody.