Post politically charged comedy here, but be respectful!
late edit: DISCLAIMER: The pictured map is not actually a representation of the territories before colonisation. It's a hypothetical map of what countries there might have been had the continent not been colonised, thus all the names and borders are fictional and have never existed.
For good actual maps, check out native-land.ca.
This map has some really weird boundaries that totally don't match reality. Here's a more accurate map: https://native-land.ca/
That is a well designed map. Kudos to the creator.
It even has a filter for language distribution over geography!
That makes me so happy and sad at the same time.
Yeah the map is shit but I appreciate someone pointing this out right now while there is a peak in awareness of the struggle of colonized people.
It's unfortunate that people only start talking about it when something like what is happening in Palestine breaks news for being so especially horrifying.
The fact is that this shit is going on right in our own back yard and has been for centuries and we should absolutely have solidarity with Palestine and their fight against the genocidal Zionist entity but we must also recognize that we have an important responsibility to fight against the bigger genocidal settler colonial entity that enables them and that is the US.
Bookmarked, this is amazing
Also, the Anasazi died out centuries before Europeans arrived.
Unless I'm remembering middle school wrong, the map seems shy a few hundred tribes.
I also don't recall there being lines
If you see the lines as approximations, I'm fine with it. There were no borders in the sense that nation states have them today of cause.
i mean a trivial solution to this is to just use colours with a soft gradient at the edges, you have a rough outline but it's clear that there is no hard border
Sure. It's a weird concept seeing these ancient people organized with modern standards in a map like this. I'm sure it would have seemed bizarre to them too.
Now show me a map of their power grid. Or wealth inequality. Etc
You want a GDP map of pre-contact America?
But seriously: don't call them ancient. That compares them to the ancient people of the old world which they are not. They have a unique history. Call them pre-contact or pre-colonialism or pre-Columbus or something next time
And many more tribes and communities were outright murdered by colonizers before they could even be documented. There are plenty of tribes that are just lost to time or we know nearly nothing about because they have no surviving members.
Indigenous peoples also don't necessarily view tribes, nations, etc as rigid categories where you're either one or the other, no exceptions. That in fact is the European view where you can only be part of one empire and where every empire seeks to capture as much land and resources for themselves as possible. You'll notice that the native-land.ca map has tons of overlapping territories.
I think this map tries to apply European notions of borders and nation states where they don't really apply.
It's also wildly inaccurate as it's a fictional map of an uncolonized America in 2015
Are there any other white North Americans here that grew up in mild reverence of your alleged mixed Native American heritage, and then find out later (through DNA tests or what have you) that there isn't even the slightest trace of native in your bloodline, and all of your relatives (who have Cherokee art in their house and shit) have all been terribly misled by some weird family rumor for decades?
Like, I suppose the silver lining here is that it's probably a good thing to have more white people out there who respect and are sympathetic toward the plight of native genocide, but holy fuck, boys.. It doesn't seem as though anyone in the family has an explanation for it. Every last person just grew up accepting that our Grandmother/Great Grandmother/Family Matriarch was half Cherokee.
It's my understanding that this is a common thing in Appalachia, and while my family is from the Great Lakes, my Great Grandparents fled Kentucky during or shortly after the Harlan County strikes, so I imagine the rumor began all the way back then. Though this rumor only gets weirder for those familiar with the miner strikers when you note my (confirmed) descendency from one of the primary villains of that period, who was most certainly not of Cherokee blood. But who am I to say whether or not he engaged in coitus and/or matrimony with someone believed to have been.
It's conceivable that someone could have been accepted into a tribe and grew up believing themselves to be Native American, but the whole confirmed-descent-from-primary-villain thing really blows that hypothesis out of the water.
That is exactly what happened to me. I didn't find out until I took a 23 and me test. I didn't believe the results, took the Ancestry.com test, got the exact same results. Had some interesting conversations with family after that, but basically, no one is willing to accept it's been a lie the whole time.
So there's a lot to unpack here but I'll give it a try:
Elizabeth Warren
Not to say she gets to claim tribal membership, but her DNA test corroborated her family story. I never understood why she got so much shit for that.
Wait, it actually did? I thought the whole issue was that she "lied" about it to get special treatment in admissions for schooling.
So these asshats going on about "Pocahontas warren" aren't even correct? They're just mocking how DNA transfer happens over generations? That would absolutely be on brand, mock someone for your own ignorance...
Yes, though it didn’t “prove” ancestry to the high standards required for tribal membership, which requires linking one’s ancestry back through specific names using official genealogical records. She is estimated to be 1/32 Cherokee ancestry, exactly in line with her family stories, and the same as the current chief of one of the Cherokee nations. But, to be clear, we should also be respectful of the Cherokee nation’s political sovereignty in determining membership.
Hah, that's wild. My dad has an incredible amount of genealogy research (he's the kind that will go to city halls in bumfuck middle of nowhere) and the instance of Cherokee in our family traces back to late 1800s. I believe it would be my great, great, great grandmother. Her family were survivors of the 1830-1850 genocide (aka the trail of tears), and she was born a while after in Oaklahoma. Her information was recorded because she married a Christian man, under pressure from her parents according to letters found. My grandmother is a member of the tribe in Oaklahoma, for all the good that it does as she never actually did anything with them.
This map is nonsense and implies rigid European borders. It ignored the hundreds of independent tribes on the continent. Comparing illegal immigration with colonizing is stupid too. Also the map implies native people never conquered each other or colonized others land which to be clear, is not justifying later European colonization, but we shouldn't play into the noble savage trope.
Yes, colonizing is much, much worse than "illegal immigration," which is a term conceived by colonists.
Choctaw nation would like a word
That was one of two that jumped out as absent for me. Seminole was the other.
Haida Gwaii is the name of the island, not the nation. And the Salish are coastal. Totally wrong. :/
My wife is Ojibwe and her tribe illegally migrated several hundred miles west about one generation before Europeans arrived, taking land that belonged to other natives.
I'm not sure about some of this, like Anasazi were not contemporaneous with the other tribes listed.
Looks like a fictional alternative timeline map.
If I'm not mistaken, the name too means "Ancient Enemies" in Navaho.
Why do you have the Aztec Empire extended into the Chihuahua Desert? That's Chichimeca territory. Why are the Tarascans removed from the map?
Why is Haida Gwaii covering half of BC when the island they're from isn't even on the map?
They penciled in "Olmec Kingdom". That's like me going over to a map of Greece and writing Mycenae.
I'm glad they colonizers brought some large bodies of fresh water with them at least.
For anyone interested in advancing this cause I can't recommend enough to look into Chunka Luta Network.
https://www.instagram.com/chunkalutanetwork/reel/Cy3nmU-uMMz/
The path to liberation lies in these decolonial struggles, the fight that indigenous people have been putting up against the US imperial project is inextricable from the fight to liberate the people of Palestine. The only way for any of us to be free, ALL of us must be free. That means that there is no fighting against Zionism without also fighting against the US settler colonial project that enables it.
Every small donation literally saves lives as temperatures are dropping fast and Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota is one of the poorest places in the country. Average life expectancy among men is ~52, and for women ~54. We are securing gas money for collecting firewood, warm clothes and winter supplies, food, and eventually building new housing and a community center.
It is hard to get direct aid to people in Palestine right now but you can fight the genocidal settler colonial project in your back yard by helping us build dual power and save lives.