There’s no way humans didn’t have human problems. This seems like an extension of the “good ol’ days” that views the past with rose tinted glasses. There absolutely would have been theft, murder, laziness, have-nots…whatever. People are people.
Yeah, in a big way. The European colonists committing genocide on the Native Americans does not have to have the Native Americans as inhuman angels to be a massive atrocity and grievous wrong, and trying to take the position that the Native American societies were is nothing more than a xenophilic form of cultural conservatism and chauvinism.
Native American peoples were people, like any other, with human problems common to any society, unlike what this quote implies. They do not have a ‘magic’ history for outsiders to aspire to become ‘as good as’, they do not have the secrets to the elimination of the dastardly social ills of ‘civilization’. They’re people. They’re people who deserved better than the atrocious treatment that they got, but the ‘Noble Savage’ stereotype is no more humanizing or acceptable than the ‘Ecological Indian’ stereotype.
There’s no way humans didn’t have human problems. This seems like an extension of the “good ol’ days” that views the past with rose tinted glasses. There absolutely would have been theft, murder, laziness, have-nots…whatever. People are people.
Ninja edit: found this.
https://scholarworks.alaska.edu/bitstream/handle/11122/9753/8729.02.conn.1991.punishment-precolonial-indigenous.ch.pdf?sequence=5&isAllowed=y
Banishment, execution, murder, and theft among other things were absolutely a thing.
Good thing we’ve sacrificed that relative utopia to solve all those problems, eh?
I would go so far as to say this is some classic “noble savage” bullshit that only serves to dehumanize people.
Yeah, in a big way. The European colonists committing genocide on the Native Americans does not have to have the Native Americans as inhuman angels to be a massive atrocity and grievous wrong, and trying to take the position that the Native American societies were is nothing more than a xenophilic form of cultural conservatism and chauvinism.
Native American peoples were people, like any other, with human problems common to any society, unlike what this quote implies. They do not have a ‘magic’ history for outsiders to aspire to become ‘as good as’, they do not have the secrets to the elimination of the dastardly social ills of ‘civilization’. They’re people. They’re people who deserved better than the atrocious treatment that they got, but the ‘Noble Savage’ stereotype is no more humanizing or acceptable than the ‘Ecological Indian’ stereotype.