| > Why do we give special status to “the earliest known people to inhabit a land”? Because generally speaking the later arrivals view the earlier people as subhuman and engage in horrific acts of violence against them. So it's not really that "earliest known people = special." It's more that displacing, dominating, or eradicating a people ought generally be frowned upon, and that's what has happened to many (most? all?) indigenous peoples in places like the Americas, Australia, etc. I don't have any answers for you about how to test for membership, and you're absolutely right that this particular aspect of the issue is fraught. I'm not an expert but I believe that in the United States at least this question is left to the tribes themselves. ("The courts have consistently recognized that in the absence of express legislation by Congress to the contrary, an Indian tribe has complete authority to determine all questions of its own membership."[0]) That seems reasonable on its face at least, but it does have the unfortunate side effect of recreating the issue one level up: the United States government decides who is and isn't a tribe, and that's just as fraught. These aren't straightforward issues, you're right, and they deserve a candid and in-depth treatment. But let's not get too far from the fundamental point, which is that it's pretty awful to show up on the shores of a continent where a bunch of people live and then destroy them and/or their way of life. 0. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK233104/ |
Many changes in people groups with respect to territory are simply migrations. Is there any evidence that violent conquest is the norm and migrations are the exceptions? My amateur understanding of history and archeology is that migrations are the norm and conquest is the exception (although posing this as a binary is itself misleading because violence is a matter of degrees). Moreover, lots of people who aren't considered indigenous have been brutally conquered, but we don't afford them special status (e.g., virtually any people which has been conquered by virtually any empire).
I certainly agree that many indigenous peoples in history have been brutally conquered, but considering they aren't the only ones and many of them haven't been brutally conquered, it seems like a crumby proxy.
> These aren't straightforward issues, you're right, and they deserve a candid and in-depth treatment. But let's not get too far from the fundamental point, which is that it's pretty awful to show up on the shores of a continent where a bunch of people live and then destroy them and/or their way of life.
Fully agree (who wouldn't? is this even controversial?), but I don't understand the "indigenous is a useful proxy for peoples who have suffered" argument.