I had a discussion on the net recently contrasting the states of American and Russian "indigenous" peoples a while ago in which my interlocutor claimed that the Russian ethnic republics were the equivalent of the Indian reservations in the US, which I had problems swallowing, given that the native peoples are 30-60% of the population in most of the former and they sometimes cover huge areas.
--- jthorn65 at sbcglobal.net wrote:
> Certainly there is a collective sense of Indianness
> regardless of tribe for all Native Americans. There
> is an
> unfortunate tendency for some tribes, but not all,
> to think of themselves as their tribe first and
> Native
> American second. It isn't something that is obvious
> to society at large however. Solidarity tends to be
> regional with Great Lakes tribes feeling they have a
> common interest and Southwestern tribes feeling the
> same but there is not much communication between the
> regions.
>
> Right now there is a rather scary civil liberties
> lawsuit that brings this problem home for native
> Americans. I
> don't know how it's going to wash out but I'm afraid
> it will not work out for the best and will undermine
> tribal
> sovereignty in the end.
>
> John Thornton
>
Nu, zayats, pogodi!
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