If Indians have no concept of property, why did they care that we took their land?

[Sky High]

are you fucking serious? wow, just unfathomable levels of ignorance, and arrogance. it's not about who owns the land for fuck sakes, it's about the genocide of a "nation/s" of people. millions, generations killed, don't you understand?. what the fuck kind of question is that.

the fact you typed out "liberated their land" probably with a straight face, is incredibly disheartening.

[jaykaywhy]

Property rights include the right to exclude others. The Europeans went on the land that the Native American tribes were on, then kicked them out. That's why they care. It isn't about "You took what is mine." It can just as easily be viewed as "You took for yourself what belongs to nobody."

Your question is a contradiction in and of itself. Assuming that its true that Native Americans have no concept of property, then it wasn't "their" land that the Europeans "liberated," as you call it.

[Theodon]

<snip>They didn't "own" the land legally but asserted practical and spiritual stewardship over it. A shaman would probably say that they lived in symbiosis with their land on a spiritual level. Then a group of people with a higher level of technology and bearing foreign diseases came to their land and forced them off it bit by bit, finally driving them to the other side of continent to eke out an existence in what was effectively a barren wasteland.

That, I believe, would be the gist of the man's argument and their view on "property" as we understand it in a legal sense.

So they were infected with diseases and forced away from their lands, then forced to try and live in a barren wasteland? But we apparently still need to get to the core reason why they are angry...

[hellosaltygoodness]

wow. just because they had no property ownership, doesn't mean they wanted to get kicked off the land they were actually living on, and that their peoples had already been living on for ten thousand years. we did take their land, you don't have to believe in property ownership to know that foreign invaders forcing whole nations of people out of where they are living and telling them they have no right to be there unless they follow the invaders' rules is still "taking their land".

[Deleted]

Well, the land where they lived was essential to them as a source of resources like food, water, raw materials etc they needed for their survival. By depraving the Native Americans of this resources by constraining them to much smaller and poorer territories the settlers pretty much threatened their existence. Also imagine that someone forcefully removes you from the place where you were raised, consider familiar and were all your fondest memories took place, I think you would be pretty pissed too.

[Deleted]

Everything needed to answer the question yourself is in the last sentence of your post. If you can't read through that again and make sense of it then I don't know what to say.

[Conspicuous Cultist]

On an aside, saying you're playing Cowboys and Native Americans don't sound all that right.

On another aside, I wonder what America would be like if we co-existed with the Native Americans and adopted some of their ways, like no land ownership.

[Flame6]

On an aside, saying you're playing Cowboys and Native Americans don't sound all that right.

On another aside, I wonder what America would be like if we co-existed with the Native Americans and adopted some of their ways, like no land ownership.

We'd all be mexican / french.

[Sky High]

We'd all be mexican / french.

spanish, we'd all be speaking spanish. cuz sadly if it wasn't the british that colonized america it would have been the spanish, hell they were well on the way to doing that.

[Deleted]

when you stick them on reservations. property starts to mean something I guess.

Tie that in with the genocide of 23 million native Americans and lots of things that maybe possibly didn't matter before start to have meaning.

[Tock20]

I understand them being slightly upset that the event happened, but to carry a grudge about something that happened generations ago is not helpful. I agree with others posted, they were probably more upset that it was claimed when it should be used by all. Though they did claim territories by tribe, so not too much different than what the "white people" did, just on a smaller scale.

[Hyve]

Despite their lack of "Property Concept" if someone comes along, rapes your wife and children, spreads diseases into your people, and forces you from the lands you've been in for hundreds of years, then tears up the local environment for their own selfish gain, you might care.

Do not forget how horrific the American-Indian War(s) really where. The sheer numbers and atrocities committed makes the Holocaust look tame, yet Americans are quick to ignore that aspect.

[Aucald]

So they were infected with diseases and forced away from their lands, then forced to try and live in a barren wasteland? But we apparently still need to get to the core reason why they are angry...

I'm assuming the OP on this was some kind of weird trolling attempt, but I had a weird "The More You Know" kind of moment and decided to expound on it a bit.

[XDurionX]

What a stupid question, the europeans took the very foundation of their existence. It´s not about owning something, it´s about bereaving them of the ability to hunt and cultivate fields, cast them out from their homes.

[Flame6]

spanish, we'd all be speaking spanish. cuz sadly if it wasn't the british that colonized america it would have been the spanish, hell they were well on the way to doing that.

I was only thinking Mexican because I was listening the radio about how most most of the south west was mexico and all the american immigrated and things got hostile IE The Alamo.

[Darsithis]

I think it goes without saying that many Native Americans are upset that Americans liberated their land

This sums up exactly why I'm going to close this thread.