Billie Eilish joined Bad Bunny in speaking out against ICE during her acceptance speech at the Grammy Awards, slamming the organization after winning song of the year for “Wildflower.”
The singer was bleeped as she said “fuck ICE,” giving strong commentary during the speech. “Thank you so much. I can’t believe this. Everyone else in this category is so amazing. I love you so much,” she said, standing next to her brother Finneas. “I feel so honored every time I get to be in this room. As grateful as I feel, I honestly don’t feel like I need to say anything but that no one is illegal on stolen land. And, yeah, it’s just really hard to know what to say and what to do right now, and I feel really hopeful in this room, and I feel like we just need to keep fighting and speaking up and protesting, and our voices really do matter, and the people matter, and fuck ICE. That’s all I’m going to say. Sorry. Thank you so much.”
It’s nice to see the media allowing people to criticize the government again. Sure fuck ice was bleeped but it’s still getting out. The more outspoken the people are the more the media can’t ignore it and must show it. Especially famous people speaking out since they always have an outlet to the masses.
Sure fuck ice was bleeped but it’s still getting out.
The Grammys are broadcast on CBS. Broadcast TV has to follow FCC rules about profanity. Not bleeping fuck would mean pretty hefty fines, and IIRC those increase based on viewership. Cable and streaming services don’t have to follow those same rules.
There are clips that are not bleeped, including the clip on the official Grammy Youtube channel, because that was only done for the broadcast version.
Honestly, in an award ceremony, they would probably get more attention if they bleeped out all the comments and not just the cuss words. It’s probably the reason CBS is no longer going to host the Grammys after such a long time.
Oh, you can bet the Grammys doesn’t want to be on CBS any longer, and CBS doesn’t want them any longer. They’ll be replaced by the Conservative of the Year Award, or some such dumb shit.
She seems like a decent person.
She is correct and very cool of her to say so.
f-f-f-f-f-ucking BASED, Every word she said was like it came out of my own mouth, I love the little bastard
That’s a really great, quotable line. She’s got a way with words, almost like she’s an award-winning lyricist.
Good. Fuck ICE indeed!
Popular music was the anti-Fox News back in the day, but it dead now.
Nice to see the echoes tho.
Edit: not sure what people are taking away from this but just to clarify, I liked the popular music that was anti-Fox news and appreciate the current popular musicians doing what they do. It’s just that the music industry - suspect in the best of times - finally succeeded in killing itself and what we have now is some American Idol game show / hype influencer Frankenstein that’s both worse and not popular.
The effect of which is that “Fox News” stands alone.
Most art is that way, because art of any relative depth takes you into consideration and therefore probable empathy, and thus not a Republican.
You’re right. I honestly rather see celebrities in the streets in solidarity with the people, freezing and standing up to ICE. They are condemning ICE in their fancy clothes. It’s just them sucking their own dicks. Everyone hates ICE. It’s not bringing attention to anything. The shootings are doing that.
Don’t downplay the importance of influence. That was a large audience and using the platform to at least say something encourages others to start being comfortable saying the same thing. Most people aren’t the protestors in Minneapolis, including most of us here. By opening the door to outward criticism, people that follow these artists and listen to them are being given further permission, internally, to voice the same opposition.
No, it’s not as brave as standing face to face with tyranny in the streets, but both fronts are worth fighting on.
While I do agree, they should’ve been screaming the message earlier. With more passion. Not “um, ICE sucks. Fuck em. They bad.” They can do both. It’s just most of them are too comfortable in their mansions to go the next step and practice what they preach.
I’m a nobody, but earlier last year I became a community leader and helped organize protests in my red city. Imagine what they can do if they are shoulder to shoulder with the people.
“They didn’t do it on my schedule, so fuck them.”
What an immature take.
Yes, let’s keep putting hope in celebrities. That’s really helped us so far.
I didn’t say anything about putting hope in celebrities, but shitting on them for spreading a message you agree with is really dumb.
If you have influence, you also have the responsibility to make sure your voice reaches as many people as possible. Screaming this message earlier is a good way of lowering your chances of getting access to a mic at the Grammy at a moment where most people are listening.
Everyone was clapping. Everyone agreed. Everyone already knows the situation. They know it’s now safe to speak against ICE so it won’t hurt their bottom dollar.
People with influence should use that influence for the betterment of everyone.
Positive outcomes as a result self aggrandizing really shouldn’t be a problem. Quit with the “it’s not perfect so they should do nothing” rhetoric, it self destructive.
No, not everyone hates ICE, unfortunately. Here on lemmy sure. But this was an opportunity to get a message out to the Fox listeners, the trumptards, the people who have not heard, or don’t believe what’s actually going on.
At this point, nothing will change their mind until ICE is knocking down their front door or shooting someone they care about.
As pessimistic as I naturally am, I actually don’t believe that. The trump administrative lies all the time, Fox News lies and spins an incredible amount, there are constant lies on Xitter. I think they do this because they have to. They know that if the truth was more unavoidable, they’d face much more backlash from the typical trump backers. I’m sure plenty of Trumpers wouldn’t care, but I think there’s a significant group of trump supporters who are only so because they’re stuck in the right wing echo chambers.
celebrities aren’t normal people. they don’t want to be around you. they just want your money. and they will say what they think will get them money.
the only solidarity they have with is other wealthy people who have the same struggles as they do about wanting to use their private jets.
I don’t think that’s true across the board.
sorry, do the majority of celebs fly commercial and show up to protests?
or do they just say crap at award shows to score points with little zero inconvenience or consequence to themselves?
or do they just say crap […] score points with little zero inconvenience or consequence to themselves?
You just described the vast majority of people.
i’m not disputing that. most people are armchair activists at best.
and frankly, being an activist requires a certain mentality that most people don’t possess. it requires shutting off rational parts of your brain and giving yourself over to a belief. I gave up on activism myself because many activists are violent psychos and I want nothing to do with people like that. Everything is ‘peace and love’ until you mildly disagree with them, then you their enemy they must destroy. They are often the opposite of what they claim to be, and while some are cool, many are only in it for the feeling of moral superiority and ‘community’ they get from shitting one ‘bad people’ and lauding themselves as ‘good people’.
Like I had people threaten me for not being pro bike lane enough, because apparently if I go to a bike lane rally, but I don’t think cars are evil and car drivers are evil, I’m evil. I can’t just be generally supportive of bike lanes, i have to be part of some crazy extremist agenda where own a car makes you hate gay people or something.
OK, but I think the point a lot of commenters were making is Billie Eilish’s anti-ICE statement was likely genuine. She might be a slackivist, but it seemed like you attributed her statement to just a grift trying to get kudos and this attitude is applied to every progressive celebrity. I always find this perspective unnecessarily pessimistic.
I know being a celebrity basically gives you a mental illness, but I’m pretty sure celebrities authentically believe things. If they were in it purely for a grift, they’d start appealing to rightwingers given how much more money they’d be making that way.
More specifically, FUCK YOU KRISTI.
I applaud the sentiment, but that honor is held by Stephen “PeeWee Himmler” Miller.
Noem wishes she could aspire to being as nasty an asshole as he is.
If the inner circle she is the one doing the most direct damage
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True, but still some land is significantly more stolen than others.
Like what
Name a culture which hasn’t stolen land or had slaves
Inuit
Nope.
What? This is getting confusing.
Yes probably all cultures had slaves or stole land at some point in time. (This is true, depending on whether you see cultures as fixed in time: are current day Egyptians of the same culture as ancient Egyptians? When does culture “restart”? Who decides this?)
Let me ask you: is there no difference between let’s say a Native American claiming his land was stolen (hundreds of years ago and his people massacred, and he’s now a second rank citizen on his own land), and for instance a white European claiming his land was stolen (by the Romans? During WW2? I would not know what he means honestly, especially because he is now part of a nation state, a first class citizen).
Yes all land was stolen. But this is not an absolute. You wouldn’t agree the Native American had his land quite a bit more relatively stolen?
My point is you can’t invalidate the claim of native peoples just by going “meh, so what? All land was technically stolen at some point”. Some people can make a more legitimate claim their land was stolen than others.
and how do you rank the ‘stolen-ness’ of land?
is squatting stealing land?
Can’t really rank it, it’s a subjective statement. My gut tells me there’s a difference between for instance a Native American stating his land is stolen and a, just an example, white European stating his land is stolen.
My gut thinks there IS a way to rank these statements, even though it’s technically true all land was stolen at some point and the whole nation state fairy tale is completely arbitrary.
That’s just my gut though, it doesn’t agree with genocide
I can rank it, but it would depend on the context and the evidence involved.
I used to work professional in land policy. Land ownership is ultimately about the legal system and who posses the ‘deed’ to the land. Governments are the ones who control this ultimately. They can create, take, and steal land via the law. And different government define land and the rights to land, differently. In China you can’t own land, you only lease it. In America, you own the land and everything underneath it to the earth’s core. Other countries have different laws and definitions.
Proof of theft requires proof of previous ownership, as a starting point. To prove that land was stolen you’d have to prove original ownership, and the series of events that lead to it’s loss of ownership and their illegality or illegitimacy. the further back you go the messier it gets. land records from the past 50 years are quite clear. land records from 200+ years ago, not so much. It’s basically impossible to prove any of it if say, the town or municipality in dispute, had it’s records destroyed in a fire or somesuch, perhaps even maliciously.
Plenty of Europeans have land-conflicts that go back centuries and involve murder. There are also conflicts amongst indigenous people’s over land right and land use and tribal recognition. It’s vastly more complex than ‘hey white people give us our land back because your ancestors stole it from our ancestors’. My ancestors arrived in America in the 1910/20s, personally, and never left the area of the original 16th century colonies, many of which were established with peaceful agreements of the natives and were not stolen at all.
Oh and there are also all sorts of laws about default ownership. My sister owns a home where their neighbor build a fence about 2 feet into their property line. If my sister doesn’t force the neighbor to move the fence 2 feet back, then in 10 years legally, their neighbor now owns the land. Is that theft? Legally, it isn’t. She can ask the neighbor to move it, and he hasn’t. She has to now threaten to sue them and have the courts legally force the neighbor to move the fence. If he can legally drag it on for 8 more years, he gets the land. The law involved in is a state law. It doesn’t apply in my state. My state requires neighbors to co-own fences along property lines, which hers doesn’t. Hence why their neighbor built this fence without properly surveying and realizing it wasn’t on his property.
The general term of this is ‘adverse possession’ and also applies to squatters and other things. In my state if you squat on someone else’s land for 20 years, you own it. The owner also evict you other than via the legal system. If some bum moves into my cabin, I can’t change the locks on it to keep him out either. I have to go get a court order to evict him.
“No-one is illegal on stolen land” is a staunchly pro-immigration, anti-colonial, and anti-borders statement made by people in anarchist-adjacent circles. You’re arguing about laws and legal processes that people with this sentiment hate and seek to abolish. Everything you’ve stated here is correct, but in this context it doesn’t matter, isn’t it pedantic?
If you want to feel your deep profound anarchist liberation feelings, go right ahead.
I’m not an anarchist and I’m don’t care about idealistic sentimentality. I care about reality, and yes, if your world view is that ‘reality is bad and must be abolished’ then yeah, I suppose you’d be pretty annoyed at someone who was pointing out that reality to you.
I’m not an anarchist, something that was obvious from how I spoke about them like an outsider, but this is such a disingenuous comment I’m gonna ignore that bit.
You do not care about reality – this is made obvious from your belief that property laws are some sort of sane and natural order, instead of being hackneyed together by generations of rich landowners with their own short-sighted, trite, and nonsensical goals. The violence committed by these freaks for more oil or sharecropping land or some other garbage is actually the opposite of normal humanity, unless you live somewhere where your neighbors shoot each other because they were bored and wanted a second house.
You see, within civilization, humans generally share spaces. There are no borders in the household or passport stations in the farmers’ market. Anarchism is the belief that this can be expanded all the way to the international level; the comparatively simpler idea expressed by this celebrity is that there shouldn’t be a military dedicated to attacking random people who are just trying to live in society because they’re “illegal”, especially considering this society is already built on attacking random people and the attackers, by their own definitions, are actually already here illegally. The fact that this simple slogan pisses you off is a genuinely fascinating concept and makes me think you aren’t too happy to abide by the social contract.
So how does that make “illegal” immigration a bad thing? Or are you violently agreeing?
Yes no more borders
You can’t meaningfully own something that existed before you and will continue to exist after you.
The concept of private property, especially in regards to land ownership is spurious to ridiculous.
Now your breath you own. Your spoken words you own. Thoughts, too. They will all die with you and can’t exist without you. Though, ownership here isn’t implying originality of any kind. You can own thoughts that you did not originate. That’s how cults spread.
Think of an apple trying to claim ownership of the apple tree from which it hangs.
So philosophically, I agree with you, but how would the logistics of land use work without something similar to ownership?
Like, how would you decide who gets to live where?
everyone would magically self determine that and there wouldn’t be any conflict because there would be endless abundance and we would all be endlessly happy forever.
the earth being a finite resource over which there is inevitable conflict is a social construct of our minds, clearly.
who gets to live where in reality, is a determination of systems of government and law. in some systems land is entirely own by the state and the state grants people temporary rights of use. essentially, a lease from the government.
and private property purists will argue without unless government guarantees land ownership and rights in perpetuity, that government can’t be legitimate and they also typically see taxation of land as a form of injustice.
That’s a good question with endless possible answers.
I can’t speak for everyone. But I like the idea of egalitarian intentional communities, as a demsoc. No representatives or charismatic leaders. Smaller communities with direct democracy I think would be ideal. A place where you know everyone’s name and vice versa.
You can’t guarantee what apple you’ll get from its seed though…
In the 1800s in USA, people were simply traveling around freely by horse, discovering new places, and if they found a place they liked by a lake or river by a beautiful waterfall or a place with great agricultural potential, they would just plant themselves there and build a house without having to ask permission from anyone. Later in the 1800s the government swooped in and decided the government owned everything and made all those people pay the government for the rest of their life to live anywhere 😠
They discovered shit. The land was already discovered and inhabited by people.
Well yeah that too. Indigenous people didn’t have to pay anyone to live anywhere either.
all “owned” land is
Wtf why removed by moderator, what a joke censorship platform is this
Kurt Cobain making a come back?
I’d like her head intact. Me might need it
this comment section is heavy on the “socially liberal, fiscally conservative” vibes
I’m pretty left leaning but the whole “stolen land” narrative will never land with the common person. It certainly doesn’t with me.
I cannot be asked to be held responsible about the actions of people well over 200 years ago. I was born here.
Arguing that someone “stole the land” and thus it’s yours is how you get places like Israel.
That doesn’t sound left-leaning. It’s not about you. It’s not about holding you responsible. That’s a talking point straight out of the conservative victimhood playbook.
And yet that’s what is always implied by these statements. “someone 200 years ago made a choice so you deal with it”
No, fuck that.
Do you have an opinion on DEI?
Sure: it’s a good idea to improve diversity. Can’t think of any reasons not to.
I do think that corporations get it wrong, and it doesn’t make sense to pick a less qualified candidate just to meet some arbitrary requirements.
DEI tends to encourage the hiring of diverse people because they have been historically underrepresented due to past policies and systemic injustices. One could argue DEI is people making choices due to the behavior of people from previous generations. It seems at odds to support that and not acknowledge some concept of debt owed to people wronged by society in the past.
Also, DEI is not about lowering standards. It’s a pretty common dog whistle to suggest that corpos pick less qualified candidates because of DEI. I’m not suggesting you intended it that way, but going forward it’s good to keep that in mind.
No one’s asking you to take responsibility, just to face reality.
Make a list of land that wasn’t taken from someone else. I’ll wait.
That’s not the point you think it is… It weakens your argument, essentially admitting that no one has the credibility to say the land of a nation is for any particular type of person from any specific place… The Earth belongs to no one, we simply divvy up and take ownership over the responsibility to govern maintain and preserve it, but this entitlement some cling to about god given rights to land is delusion, pure and simple.
Also you’re conflating things; saying “no one is illegal on stolen land” is not the same as saying “since it’s stolen it’s mine”… no one is saying that.
You seem to be trying to argue that might equals right, when the rest of the left is fighting to maintain (or further establish) a rules based society, which is the opposite of might equals right and all that Stephen Miller bullshit.
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Island nations?
Amazon jungle tribals area
Greenland (yet)That’s what first comes to mind.
Maybe you should rephrase your point?
Oh, sorry friend. You can’t prove to me that the people living there didn’t steal their current living space from another community member.
It’s just a stupid concept. You can’t look at any piece of written human history that doesn’t involve conquering land from others.
What’s the cutoff for something being stolen? The immediate area around where I live? A city? Does it matter if the people who came before had a concept of nations or borders?
My point is: immigration policy in the USA is clearly broken for a plethora of ways that don’t involve using some weird idea that a country’s land is stolen. The average person is likely going to look at that part of the claim and latch on to it, contemplating how dumb the idea is. We should probably use arguments that make some sense when trying to convince undecided people to take a logical stance.
You can’t look at any piece of written human history that doesn’t involve conquering land from others
You can, if the land was free of people before you.
I agree. This kind of rhetoric doesn’t really help. I guess I get what she’s going for here, but…trying to get people, en masse, to reject the very notion of someone being here illegally is going to take a lot.
I personally find the over-emphasis on the restriction of the movement of people, while money can slosh all around the world with hardly any friction rather absurd, but I also realize that’s not a widely-held view.
I personally find the over-emphasis on the restriction of the movement of people, while money can slosh all around the world with hardly any friction rather absurd
Um, it’s not the movement of all people that’s restricted; it’s the movement of poor people. If you’re rich enough, you can basically go wherever you want whenever you want.
Oh, of course, but that’s the case with nearly all of the people that I think you are talking about (the billionaires and the centimillionaires) - the rules and grind everyone else has are not really problems for them. But their money can circle the globe even easier than they can…
I mean now they can literally buy a Trump gold visa or whatever.
Stealing land and arguing everyone does it is how you get places like piSSrael and seppoland.
Terminally online alert. The fuck is seppoland?
“B-b-but the “holy land” was stolen from us first!” - Israel
You do understand that same narrative is what they use to justify “taking it back”, right? They’re not there illegally bro, the land was stolen from them.
seppo is rhyming slang for “yank” - “septic tank”. It’s just how australians talk and I thought it was funny.
I also understand this is the reason settlers use https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/5/4/if-i-dont-steal-your-home-someone-else-will-jewish-settler-says
edit: also you really oughtta readsettlers.org
I cannot have more respect for a person than I have for Billie.
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The main contention for calling land stolen is if the people settling it displaced other people to do so. It’s possible to settle land without displacing its current inhabitants, and I wouldn’t consider that stealing.
Okay, rephrase… where do people live now where no one was displaced?
(all land has original owners that were displaced)
I reject the premise that there must be some magical land where people have lived undisturbed since the beginning of time for you to even consider that it’s possible to peacefully coexist. There are plenty of places and times where people have settled an inhabited area and did not displace the natives, but no land where no one was displaced for all of human history, and that’s an unreasonable thing to demand I give an example of.
I don’t need a magical land where people lived undisturbed since the beginning of time to consider it’s possible to peacefully coexist.
Of course it’s POSSIBLE.
It’s just rare and temporary
I disagree that it’s rare. In fact, peaceful coexistence is the norm and violent displacement is the anomaly. It only seems like that’s not the case because peace is delicate and unmentionable (what’s there to say in history books about nothing happening?) while violence is sudden and has permanent consequences. A peace lasting centuries can be ended by a single violent event, and that single event will be written about in greater detail than the centuries of peace that preceded it. Our perception of human nature is also skewed by the fact that we’re currently living in a global order dominated by violent settler-colonial factions who have created a system of extraction based fundamentally on theft.
Where has there been peace lasting centuries? Seriously.
Our waves of violence are practically generational , we get brief breaks in between the horrors.
If there are exceptions I am not familiar. Certainly never a century of peace, to my knowledge, or even close
I am not familiar with the history of all of the Earth, I would certainly be interested in any centuries long peace anywhere.
Just picking a random region of the world and looking at Wikipedia’s list of conflicts in Asia, you can try counting the years in the gaps between conflicts and comparing them to the duration of the conflicts themselves. I would bet good money that the average duration of periods of peace in any given region is greater than the average duration of conflicts, and that cumulatively years spent peacefully coexisting far exceed the years spent in conflict.
Notice also that the bias towards violence being mentionable and peace being less so is evident in the fact that I had to do this by finding a list of conflicts rather than a list of peaceful periods.
they don’t.
the ‘stolen land’ argument derives from some idealized utopia that doesn’t and never existed. its similar to the ‘noble savage’ myth that if ‘society’ didn’t exist we’d live in paradise because human beings in their ‘natural state’ are angelic and pure and the world would be abundant and perfectly happy.
and nobody who uses it is going to give way their land they own ‘back’. Billie Eilish has multiple properties and none of them are being donated to indigenous people. If you confronted her about that she’d probably call you an asshole and tell you it’s not her responsibility and that some other rich white person should do it, but not them! it was those bad evil people who they are not one of!
It is quintessential virtue signalling. You argue from an ideal that is far fetched that the very same ideal is not one you’d hold yourself accountable too because that would be ‘crazy’ to do so.
to really give back ‘stolen land’ the us government would have to basically displace it’s entire population to unhabited parts of the country where nobody could really live. the reason the natives were ‘displaced’ is because they lived in the places that were desirable to live in and the settlers wanted the land. most of the world’s land mass is not easily inhabitable or agriculturally productive, so humans fight over the parts that are.
and that’s also why nobody fought for land claims in antarctic or the artic, because there was no point. but with global warming possible making it more habitable, we are starting to see polar powers prep for military conflict over it.
it’s also why if you buy 1000 acres in northern california for a few million, because nobody wants that land, and the same price gets you like 400 sq ft apartment in manhatten.
I invite you to listen to the people who have, for hundreds of years, been kidnapped, raped, beaten, tortured, killed, poisoned, humiliated, dehumanized, robbed, genocide, persecuted, and as of now are incarcerated at levels 10x that of any other group.
https://ndncollective.org/landback/
https://davidsuzuki.org/what-you-can-do/what-is-land-back/
In some cases, land is directly returned to Indigenous people when private landowners, municipalities, or governments give the land back to Indigenous tribes. This may take the form of a simple transaction within the colonial real estate framework. In other cases, the transfer of ownership of the land may not be feasible. Co-management of public lands has emerged as a means for Indigenous voices to be consulted concerning the stewardship and use of ancestral lands.
if billie eilish wants to buy up a bunch of land and give it back to people, that’s her business. why doesn’t she do that personally, rather than lecturing people at the grammies? leading my example is a lot more powerful than lecturing from a bully pulpit.
she certain has the money and power to make a difference in this regard. but i don’t think she is talking about this particular issue, so much as grandstanding about being anti ICE for scoring some political points.
why doesn’t she do that personally, rather than lecturing people at the grammies?
To let dipshits like you come out of their woodwork to endorse atrocities of their ancestors.
Thanks for your service.
Though I bet when you have to face even a slightest inconvenience with immigrants, you become the victims of the century.
right, my 1850s ancestor who was a substance farmer in Italy totally stole the land from the native americans…
the ‘stolen land’ argument derives from some idealized utopia that doesn’t and never existed
It comes from specific treaties with Indigenous American nations that the U.S. government broke, their land was stolen. Not to mention countless incidents of rightful landowners, post-colonization, being killed or driven off their land because European Americans wanted it; their land was also stolen.
It is frankly so bold to claim that there isn’t a history of systemic land theft from Indigenous Americans, often literally at the behest of the government, that I would encourage anyone making such an absurd claim to read a history book.
Here are some good starting points:
https://openstax.org/books/us-history/pages/10-4-indian-removal
https://openstax.org/books/us-history/pages/17-4-the-assault-on-american-indian-life-and-culture
I never claimed that. I claimed there is no utopian state of original land ownership. Indigenous tribes also killed murdered and persecuted each other over their land. But they had no written history of this at least that one be legally viable today. Indigenous tribes allied themselves with settlers to expand their own power and footprint at the expense of other tribes and settler groups. Especially during the French and Indian war. There were also Indians who raped and murder settlers, King’s Philips war was full of Indian atrocities on the settlers, but is rarely talked about in modern times because it doesn’t fit the narrative of ‘white man bad, native American good’. FWIW https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Philip’s_War. Frankly the only reason I am aware of it personally, was because I grew up in the area where the war happened and did a history day project on it in high school. Most history text books don’t cover it and it’s not a popular topic because of how fraught and messy the whole affair was.
It’s true the USA government had a written history of land agreements, and the violation of those agreements often violated their own ideals and laws. But typically the law was re-written to justify this. It’s true that with such written records you have some frame of reference, but which ‘state’ was the original one of land ownership you wish to revert to? the ones from 1780, or the some point in the 1800s, or what? There is some arbitrary point at which you must pick, and there will be winners and losers based on that.
The popular narrative today is that indigenous people’s were purely victims of evil colonial settlers. But the truth is far more complex and excludes the inconvenient truth that such people’s were not always peaceful collectivist nature lovers that the mass-media and modern Americans crudely seem to think they are.
Many tribes, to this day, viciously fight in the courts for land and tribal right status, and often larger more powerful tribes seek to deny them these rights. Legally, only certain tribes are recognized by the federal government… usually the largest and most powerful… and use that power to discriminate and deny other tribes recognition, rights, and status.
Again, if you want to fight and donate for these causes. Please go right ahead. You can choose with tribe you support based on which one you think suffered the most. But there is no utopian final endpoint of ‘justice’ at which things will be settled. Land theft and land rights are a perpetual issue. I worked in land policy for 5 years, and while I didn’t work on tribal land policy specifically, the complexities and legality of land ownership and use go far deeper than some convenient catchphrase. And they are largely disputed and governed by the court system, so there isn’t much anyone can directly do unless they are a part of the legal system or able to fund lawyers.
The average person can’t afford a lawyer for themselves, let alone for someone else. But I’m sure Billie could fund lots of tribal buybacks and court cases.
“I want to live in most expensive city in the USA, and I want it to smell like urine, I want to smell urine everywhere I go every second of every day”
I don’t get it. I’m not saying it should be illegal or anything, but… yeah.
I live in one of the most expensive zip codes in the world. It doesn’t smell like urine other than on the subway elevator, which i never use.
I live here because it’s fucking amazing living here, but no place is perfect. The people generally suck balls, but I love being able to walk to a restaurant with my dog and not having to drive a car unless i want to do so. I’m sure living in 1000 acres in northern California has it’s benefits, but I’m not equipped or interested in such a lifestyle. Maybe if I was a prepper I would be.
You’re not incorrect, but the bigger issue is how was the native population treated after having their place stripped from them. It wouldn’t take much for governments to recognise and attempt reconciliation for the idea of stolen land to become less prominent. This is true everywhere, not just in NA.
This is happening right now in SA, and for the same reasons now that we used centuries ago (we need money!).
Who will stand up for the tribes, or for that matter the jungles they live in? Nobody
All we’ve learned since slavery days is a change in semantics with occasional apologies.
The one exception being that island of “hostile” (i.e. wise) natives in the Indian ocean. Our one tiny exception to the rule.
I wish we could learn more about them without ruining it all. Sorry for tangent
So just make them slaves? Cool. 😎
That you don’t even consider coexistence before immediately jumping to slavery as the only alternative says a lot about you.
Not really. But jump to conclusions all you like. It was just an historically popular option. I don’t support slavery.
You don’t seem to understand the history you’re referencing. Slavery and mass displacement / ethnic cleansing aren’t mutually exclusive, they are mutually interdependent. Empires engaging in settler-colonialism didn’t choose one or the other, they did both, always. Even if they outlawed slavery domestically, they still participated in the trade internationally or in their colonies. Settler-colonial empires still engage in slavery to this day, they’re just better at hiding and justifying it. See: the US prison system and abuse of migrant workers, and the kafala system in the middle east (called the “binding system” in Israel until it was de jure abolished in 2006, but de facto continues to this day in a sort of legal gray area). These days the word slavery makes people squeamish, so we call it things like human trafficking, prison labor, migrant labor, and all sorts of other more polite euphemisms to lull us into the false notion that slavery is a thing of the past - or at the least relegated to a tiny secretive black market.
Look at that moral lecture/history lesson you gave me over a joke that whooshed over your head.
You weren’t ‘correcting history.’ You were correcting something you hallucinated
You can go somewhere and start living there, that’s perfectly good.
If you torture the people there to death and say nobody is allowed to live here besides you, then it becomes “stolen land.”
Colonization and conquest are unethical compared to immigration is what I am trying to say.
What you just described as stolen land is historically the way people claimed ownership of lands by conquering them by killing the people there or telling them to get the fuck out, or another great option is make them slaves.
And the historical method was unethical and backwards.
I grew up in Turkey where people extensively talked about how Ottoman empire was great for conquering so much meanwhile the Kurdish population is treated inhumane to this day.
Conquest is Barbaric and was murder even back then. It’s just a mix of “history is written by the victors” and “time makes people forget” that we don’t judge all countries for colonization.
Someone that wants to take over ‘your land’ and kill you or enslave you probably doesn’t really give a fuck about ethics. Especially cuz they’ll probably consider your kin subhuman.
Can you pray to ethics? Are there ‘acts of ethics’ that are going to save you?
There is no country on Earth that isn’t here or there without colonization, wars, and abundant ‘crimes against humanity.’
And much more than just crimes against humanity! There is no country on Earth that isn’t here without helping to kill +90% of the fucking wildlife and wild habitat on this planet.
Anyway back to the first paragraph I made. You’re never going to convince those type of people that will burn you and rape you and enslave you that they should listen to your ethics and they should obey your laws and then your Justice will rain (reign) supreme all over the land with rainbows in the sky and the bears and the lions are hugging the piggies and the bunnies.
I don’t think it’s ethical either, we agree on that!
But I do think being a “colonizer” is practically everyone in the last few millennia, excepting the Sentinel Island natives perhaps and other very rare exceptions to the rule.
The Japanese were colonizers of Japan (supplanting the prior native population), Americans were colonizers of North America, Aztecs were colonizers of South America, English were colonizers of the UK, Romans were colonizers of Italy and most of Europe and North Africa, and so on forever
Based on your comment alone, I urge you to look deeper into history before you make statements like that.
If you need a place to start, read or listen to the book called: The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee by David Treuer
This book tells exactly how this land was stolen from the Native population.
To your point, many lands have indeed been stolen. Just because it has happened many times throughout history doesn’t erase its meaning.
I’m not claiming that the land wasn’t stolen by “us”, but I’ve looked even deeper into history than you, and know that the exact same land that they lived on was stolen from another population. Repeatedly. It was far from a war-free utopia before “our” arrival.
‘Us’ and ‘our’ being pronouns to represent the colonizers of most modern countries, not meant to include you or I specifically.
I’m native. My ancestors were very brutal, not as brutal as the Spaniards, but still.
I’m also Spaniard, womp womp
p.s. thank you for book recommendation I am interested! Currently reading about Incans/Aztecs/Mayans etc., just finished Popal Vuh and recommend it
It’s all basically boils down to ‘my God (or other authority) says we own this land.’
Land is never really owned so it can’t really be stolen. It can be conquered, though. You can have dominion over it. It’s not really ownership, though. Ownership is more of an abstraction(contracts, deeds, bureaucracy and legalese) - it’s not a real thing, it’s an idea. I’m not sure people can own ideas, either… I think more so the ideas own them.
I wonder how much longer Americans will have dominion of America?
five years, tops
I personally think Trump will be a great catalyst for a socialist resurgence and will perhaps make America greater and more united than it has ever been.
I think he is the canary in the coal mine and could never be elected in an actual functioning “democracy/republic”; the mere fact that he is in office means we’re just in the beginning stages of an absolute shit show heavily influenced (perhaps controlled completely) by the heritage foundation/council of foreign relations and their financial backers (it’s actually a pretty fascinating rabbit hole)
I 100% hope that you are right and I am wrong. Maybe we could even get union membership over 10%, CRAZY
Yes. If you want to deport innocent people. move to the Pacific garbage patch.
well there’s this promising landmass of opportunity, just there up north…
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Me when I can’t see past the literal letters on the screen
