Should "Native" Americans have to give some of their land to the aborignies?

Question

The first humans to settle on both American continents were descendants of the Aborignies that live in Australia. Cave paintings, telling the exact same myths and stories as the aborignie 'dream time' are found all over both American continents, predating the arival of the native Americans (over a land bridge from northern china.)

There are even a handfull of people (two, of mixed aborignal-British descent) living on a small island just south of Argentina who belong to a tribe of Aboriginal people, who's history tells of them coming across, settling all over the land, and then being wiped out by the eventual invaders, all except this tribe which escaped.

Is this any different to what the white settlers did when they arrived on the continent?

And if it is not, whey don't the descendants of the aboriginies deserve some land back?

Answer 1

People should treat Native Americans with more respect.

Answer 2

Well, if there are any still in America, who never "left" (none from Australia who are going to outlandishly claim that their ancestors were there are immigrated to another country), then yeah, I say they deserve their land back.

Answer 3

Obviously there is no way to give land back to those that lost it in war without more war.  If they find that a particular aborigine is alive and had his land taken by a living native American, then maybe he has a case.  Compensation inevitably leads to "welfare" that inevitably has horrible consequences to those it was intended to help.

Answer 4

My understanding of most native land disputes is not over where land was taken by european settlers, but over legal disputes, where land was promised to them for services, and was not given.

In Canada, the British and French governments made promises of land to natives for various reasons (most prominent would be in defense against the american invasion of 1812); most of those promises were ignored...

So there is often much debate over what compensation should be given...

Answer 5

While it is popular in the avocational realm to talk about early migrations and where the earliest Americans might have come from, the professional archaeologist has the difficult job of actually proving this kind of thing by the rigorous standards of academia and the scientific method. These standards exist for some very good reasons, the first that comes to my mind being the avoidance of some of the embarrassingly racist and totally unsubstantiated theories that spawned and multiplied during the course of the 19th and 20th Centuries (essentially wild guesses). Race of the noble Mound Builders, anyone?

I am a professional archaeologist, and I've spent the last few years of my life working in the field and the libraries researching what will potentially become my life's work, which just happens to be North American archaeology. So when I say that I disagree with your initial premise, I say that because there isn't sufficient evidence to make that claim, and that I'm one of the guys out there looking for just that kind of evidence.

It's a fact that some of the imagery we see in Mesoarmerican art is very similar to the kind of art we see in ancient China, and other places. This could be because these people recently shared a common culture. An alternative theory is that the plants they use to enter a trance-state (what you might call dreamtime if your talking about Aborigines) contain the same class of toxins that would often generate the same type of hallucinatory imagery. This is, in fact, the case.

The other evidence presented, the accounts of travel to America from Australia, simply can't be verified. The only verification you can present comes from the fact that you take at face value the idea that Aborigines were here before the Native Americans. Simply put, the story as you tell it could mean anything. It could be a literal story about settling on another landmass, it could be metaphorical, or it could be an outright fabrication, a tall tale, or any other number of myth types that exist in abundance in every human culture. Stories like this are a starting point or a bolstering side point for research, and they are generally not good for confirmation. Strictly speaking, migration stories like this one are common. Very common. Evidence to support these kinds of stories isn't always immediately forthcoming.

I have no problem with alternative theories about the origins of humans in the Americas. I'd like to personally investigate every single one of them. I absolutely love this work. But I also understand the need for rigorous review of work done in this field, because a lot of c**p has been published, a lot of it about standard theories, even. Once you get a clear view, you see that the best evidence supports a Beringia crossing, and that the Clovis people are the earliest known humans in the Americas (with a pre-Clovis occupation highly likely, but not confirmed). This evidence does not say no one came over here before that, and it doesn't say that they could or couldn't have been Aborigines. But it certainly doesn't say that they were.

No one "really" believed the Vikings were here before Columbus until we dug up one of their houses. Maybe that will happen with the Aborigines, maybe it won't. Believe me, I'll be the first to accept good evidence for it.

So to answer your question: No. They hardly have any of their own land to give away, anyway.

Answer 6

Have a star.

The native Americans are the fourth wave of colonists that continent has seen.

http://mathildasanthropologyblog.wordpre...

Australoids (40k ago plus)

Jomon and Cro Magnons (over 20K ago)

Then the Mongoloids about 12k ago.

There were Australoids in Baja Calafornia called the Pericues. We have the Aborigines come over and plant a flag.

In Capivara park in Brazil, there's signs of genocide, the Australoids bones are deepest, then a few mixed, then all Mongoloid/Indian. The cave paintings there show a vicious war.

http://mathildasanthropologyblog.wordpre...

http://mathildasanthropologyblog.wordpre...

It's not any different to what the last wave of (European)settlers did. Some North American tribes have oral traditions recounting how they wiped out the people who were there before.

http://mathildasanthropologyblog.wordpre...

Answer 7

Exactly.  We can all play that game, and no culture is innocent.  If we could find some Neanderthals perhaps we could give Europe back to them.  The Franks were an invading Germanic Tribe conquering parts of Gaul.  Let's kick out all Frenchmen of Frankish extraction and leave what is now France to the Gauls.  Oh, wait, most of the Gauls were actually of mixed Roman and Celtic extraction because J.C. (Julius Caesar, of course) conquered Gaul.  Of course, the first order of business should be to get rid of all those Angles, Saxons, Danes and Jutes cluttering up the British Isles, then if we could just find come Icenii to give Britain back to...

I agree with Marsha and just gave her a thumbs up.  I hope my answer doesn't imply otherwise.  I think we should all treat each other with respect.  But the kinds of restitution Jammil is addressing are truly impossible to sort out at some point.  The questions becomes who gets to decide who gets what, and who has the most legitimate, most recent grievance, and I don't want to hand that kind of authority over to anyone.

Answer 8

LOL Nice!

Answer 9

So now people are going to start saying it's the aborigines of Australia who were the first?

What is wrong with you people, why is there such issue with "allowing" the Native people here to be the ones who were and still are the original people here? I don't get it.

Given their own looks, I'm surprised you aren't instead demanding to the aborigines of Australia that they don't belong there and that they came from Africa or something.

Answer 10

Anyone who is, or were born in America, be they Black, White, Yellow,Jew, Muslim, or Christian whatever your descendency, you are a native American. JB.

Answer 11

I agree LOL NICE.  You know very well any race of human kind will not get their ancestral land back.

Think about your heritage and find out what happened in history either be tragic or eventful times.  Every race of human kind has one.  Don't just single out a race.

Answer 12

The Native American reservation system wasn't created as a compensation for anything white settlers had done to their people.  it was so they'd have a place they knew they could continue their traditional ways of life.  Today it's kind of ridiculous if you ask me.  We should end the system entirely and compensate them free college and good primary educations so they can have well paying jobs instead of either building casinos or living in uninhabited deserts selling cigarettes duty free.  The Aborigines live in Australia so I don't think it would make much sense for them to try and carry on traditional live over here.  If anything Australia should compensate them for the loss of all best lands near rivers and along the water in new south wales.