Doreen Barrie seems to actually believe this bullshit:
Indigenous people believe that they are part of a web of life, and are no more important than animals, plants or land forms. In their view, humans and the rest of nature are inter-connected and inter-related, not just metaphorically, but literally. Consequently, they treat water, plants and the soil with respect, utilizing what they need without exhausting supplies. The notion that these are resources placed on the planet exclusively for their use is an alien concept.
If injuns really care about water so much why can't they drink any of theirs?
As we've noted many a time before, if you go to any reserve you'll find the worst casual disregard for the environment this side of the old Soviet bloc. Just for fun, I took a quick peek of the Indian Reserve down in Hobemma and surprise surprise a look at Samson Ave (the main road in Hobemma, right next to Highway 2A) shows endless trash everywhere. Trash in front of the school, trash in front of the Lucky Dollar Foods, trash in front of "business park", trash in the regular parks, trash everywhere. Is this them treating their plants and soil with respect?
Perhaps it would have surprised them to know that these “uneducated” people had developed a sophisticated political system that would later be the inspiration for American federalism.
It would have certainly surprised anybody to "know" this because it's complete bullshit long since debunked. The closest to this anybody has found was Benjamin Franklin's line that:
A voluntary Union entered into by the Colonies themselves, I think, would be preferable to one impos’d by Parliament; for it would be perhaps not much more difficult to procure, and more easy to alter and improve, as Circumstances should require, and Experience direct. It would be a very strange Thing, if six Nations of ignorant Savages should be capable of forming a Scheme for such an Union, and be able to execute it in such a Manner, as that it has subsisted Ages, and appears indissoluble; and yet that a like Union should be impracticable for ten or a Dozen English Colonies
The comparison Franklin made was "if jackpine savages can form a political union surely we can as well", with literally no inference that he intended it to be the same system. If the United States were really formed like the Iroquois there would be no Bill of Rights, no Supreme Court, no elected houses of representation, and the role of President would be selected by the mother of the previous President. If by "inspiration" Doreen means "as an example of something that even inferior cultures could achieve" then yes, yes, it was an "inspiration".
Perhaps the greatest gulf between Indigenous and Settler thinking relates to private property.You mean the thing that separates successful advanced societies from failed ones? Yes, I agree, it's a gulf. Possibly the greatest single reason that white European societies evolved to the point where they became and remain superior to every other society on the planet.
The land owns them and while they use its bounty, no one has exclusive rights to it as it is part of their cultural heritage. It is a collective benefit that is shared with others in the community and they have obligations to ensure its health. It is treated with respect.These beliefs did not preclude conflict over land. Prior to the arrival of Europeans on the continent in the late 15th century, warfare was frequent among Indigenous groups over territory.
Wait hold on a second, I though that the land is "part of their cultural heritage". Doesn't that automatically preclude conflict over other land that by definition can't be part of their cultural heritage? I mean, I know this is bullshit from an external perspective (last fall I wrote about how none of Canada's Injun bands actually are from the land they claim) the same as the garbage pictures above, but it's not even internally consistent.
In their decision-making processes, Aboriginal communities take into account not just the immediate impact of those decisions, but also how they will affect the Seventh Generation.Oh really? Is that why they insist on being given free money from whitey even though it turns their already stagnant dependency culture into an even more stagnant dependency culture? Is that why they refuse to relocate from the Mackenzie flood plains?
Indigenous people in Canada have long suffered from poor quality water and scarce supplies on some reserves, problems they did not experience in the pre-colonial era. Admittedly, at that time, supplies were abundant and populations were sparse, so neither quantity nor quality was an issue. However, one could argue that their cultural pre-disposition to husband resources would ensure such problems would not arise. So what role could Indigenous views on the environment play in addressing the problems we are currently experiencing?
They could dig a well.
They could fucking dig a goddamned well like every white person in rural Canada used to and often continues to do, if they weren't so uselessly fucking incompetent at any civilized thing they whine for but aren't willing to do themselves.
That's their "problem" solved. As for "our" problems, they don't exist. They are purely fantastical nonsense with no factual basis. Involving Injuns on this file will only exasperate the current problem.
David Groenfeldt, an American anthropologist, explains that traditional water management has “a future…not only a past”. He points to the ubiquity of the spiritual/cultural view of rivers as live beings and sacred places among Indigenous societies. He also observes that it is difficult to grasp the idea of rivers as living spiritual entities because this “has no cognitive niche” in Western thought. In New Zealand, a river has been recognized as a legal person with rights. An Indigenous group, the Whanganui Iwi, have been appointed its guardian (the human face of the river) entrusted with ensuring its health.Seeing how in Canada Red Indians continue to be violent savages who commit vicious crimes against actual humans, I shudder to think what they'll do to rivers. Will they murder a dozen of them in a single Saskatchewan afternoon? Will they commit heinous armed robberies against them requiring the river to shoot them in self-defense? Will they accidentally kill the river one night when they get too drunk to know where they are? Will the river suffer the same fate as all the "missing and murdered indigenous women" and be savagely slaughtered by their husbands and fathers?
If cultural climate change is to come about, we need to work shoulder-to-shoulder with Indigenous people to address the problems that all of us face.
None of the problems we face can be solved by "cultural climate change" but if we adopt it we'll get a billion other problems we don't currently have. Once Red Indians join the 21st century (that's A.D., not B.C.) then they can work shoulder to shoulder with us.
Until then, they stay out of my way.
