[PaulDavisThe1st]

"in some way" makes it all sound a bit abstract.

The impact of disease on the Americas was arguably numerically larger than actual colonization, and the initial wave (say, 1492-1520) probably wasn't very intentional. So yeah, that particular experience doesn't give anyone "more authority or importance today".

But colonization, first by the Spanish and later by northern Europeans, was literally a war whose goal was frequently the complete annihilation of the population already in the Americas. It was a brutal, vicious war (that in a number of senses continues to the present day), and suffering through that does, under most western-ish moral philosophies, give you some status that you otherwise would not have.

[throwaway894345]

Welcome to history and prehistory. Brutality was common and limited only by power imbalances between the conqueror and the conquered. The remarkable thing about the European conquests was that the power difference had become tremendous after tens of millennia of isolation, which allowed the Europeans to visit unprecedented brutality on the native peoples. It wasn’t that the Europeans were uniquely evil, but uniquely powerful relative to those they conquered.

> suffering through that does, under most western-ish moral philosophies, give you some status that you otherwise would not have.

This is an interesting point, but I don’t think the common belief is “indigenous have moral title to the land due to great suffering”, but rather due to “they were the first people in the land at recorded history” so in our collective psyche we errantly assume they must’ve been the first there ever. I deed, if it were merely “suffering” then surely their disease experience alone would suffice? These are at least the reasons I’ve commonly heard, including from people in this thread.

[iammisc]

And so what? Disease kills people. What exactly are we to do about it. Your ancestors being more susceptible to some disease doesn't make you special.

[PaulDavisThe1st]

What I wrote:

> The impact of disease [ ... ] So yeah, that particular experience doesn't give anyone "more authority or importance today".

What we could do is read a little more carefully, just for starters.