November 17, 2008: Indians

[footfootfoot]

As for the lack of smiles in everyone depicted in old photographs, regardless of their culture, it has nothing to do with the general cheeriness of the people being photographed, it has to do with the limitations of the film back then. The exposures were extremely long, people had to sit absolutley still for upwards of a minute at times. You cannot hold a smile that long with out it looking like a horrific grimace.

Try it if you can get your digital cameras on a tripod in a darkish room and you can set a 30 second exposure.

And as for "the Indians" living in harmony with nature that idea is fairly simplistic mainly because it presupposes that "the Indians" were a homogeneous group who all shared the same culture. I'm sure there were a few Indians who didn't finish all the food on their plate, and who didn't mind torching an enemy's camp even if it meant that all the resources that went into making that camp were destroyed.

But when has a lack of facts and personal experience ever stopped anyone from expressing their opinion on the internet?

[Shawnee123]

Absolutely Native Americans warred with each other, killed critters, and other unpleasant things.

My problem was with Coign looking at these pictures and commenting that it is a romanticization of a culture that was savage. He used "they" referring to NAs as if they were a homogenous group. A homogenous group of land-rapers and savages.

Another side of the culture is the respect for nature, as a whole, the awe of their gods (i.e. nature), loyalty to the tribe and family, and an inner peace with the ways of life and death.

When I look at these pictures, of course I romaticize the Native Americans. As a societal victim of genocide, they don't get the kind of press that African Americans, or Jews, or Rwandans, but I can bet the fear of the unfathomable concept that someone wants to wipe out you and your loved ones and your entire way of life were comparable.

My grandpa once said he never felt closer to God than when he was on the lake, fishing and thinking. I tend to feel that I got a lot of traits from him, and that his traits came from his ancestors.

Romanticize away. Give this culture some respect, it is no less a deserving object of this diversity thing you hear about in every seminar, lecture, class, and whatever other venues you can think of. It's a deeply beautiful culture.

As a society we have not cared for a long time, we have swept the issue under the rug because it is hard to look at and is so easily dismissed due to the current culture of the Native Americans, living on reservations or trying to assimilate: a calm demeanor, an attitude of seeming defeat that arises from an inner strength I think most of us couldn't understand. And we don't like to ever look like the "bad guys."

Though everyone is entitled to their opinion, I don't know that it would be met with such complacency had Doign walked into a thread about slavery and said something that amounts to the slaves being bastards and getting what they deserved.

Can't we just appreciate the beauty?

[glatt]

Originally Posted by Shawnee123

slaves being bastards

Well, technically speaking, a bastard is an illegitimate child, and many of the slave owners would father children with the female slaves, resulting in illegitimate slave children.[/Cliff Clavin]