This is MY America!

[Flint]

Originally Posted by Flint

The 10 to 20 million people living in an advanced, complex North American society before the "settlers" arrived to "tame the wilderness" ...

Originally Posted by jinx

But they weren't the first, so why do they have any more right to claim this land than the european settlers? Your argument is not about who was first, just who was here before the british???

The Native Americans weren't here first??? Be it 12K, 19K, or as much as 40+K years ago; via land voyage across the Bering Strait, or skipping along the extreme Northern coastline in small boat voyages, people got here somehow. They were here, and well-established in a complex, advanced culture of 10s of millions (as opposed to a nomadic scattering of primitive savages) when the Europeans began to arrive circa 1500.

It's not "my argument" - it's what happened. I mention the British specifically because they mark the beginning of the "creation myth" of America.