[ExI] "an aboriginal human from 70,000 B.C."

[John Grigg]

Lee Corbin wrote:
>What can the government do except forcibly integrate the
>families into separate cities as far as part [apart] as possible?
>It should have been done a long time ago.

Damien replied:
<incredulous outburst in response deleted>
>>>

I grew up in Alaska and saw firsthand how indigenous cultures can get
slammed by Western colonization.  What at least some Alaskan natives went
through was "fairly mild" compared to most Indians of the continental United
States.  The harshness of much of the Alaskan climate and the distances
involved helped to protect them (at least up to a point).  And now some of
the natives reap massive profits from oil that was found to be on their land
(but this can lead sometimes to very undisciplined &
destructive spending and living).  But all Alaskan natives do get
free medical and at least partially subsidized college educations.

There was a tribe in southeastern Alaska who were very shrewd and tried to
fight the U.S. government using its legal system in an attempt to hang on to
their lands and rights.  During this many decades long struggle they sent
many of their brightest young men to attend college and law school.  A
coterie of tribal lawyers finally won a series of stunning legal victories
and secured the rights of their people.  A photograph captured the strange
schism that had formed between the three piece suit native attorneys (dozens
of them) and the common people who generally had very limited educations and
now seemed worlds away.  A common attitude in the tribe at the time was that
the young men who had worked so hard to become lawyers and fight
successfully for their people in the "white man's world" had in the end lost
what it was to be an Alaskan native of that tribe.

John Grigg
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20080323/4a4fe68c/attachment.html>