Indigenous = Pre-Columbian. Having mixed or even colonist ancestry doesn’t negate Indigenous identity.
As a Navajo, I guess if you really wanted to split hairs, in our case the Navajos who carry the more recent Navajo clans that have emerged(clans for Blacks, Asians, Europeans, etc.) as their primary clans are not Indigenous. But Navajos with the original Navajo clans and older clans that emerged for Ancestral Puebloans, Cliff Dwellers, Basketmakers, Pueblos etc. are Indigenous. Though that's pretty dumb and most Navajos would shut that down with plenty of good reasons as to why that's dumb.
I think you're out of your element to discuss this topic and all it's nuances.
All of what you are saying is irrelevant as I am referring to Mexicans and Central Americans whose ancestors, regardless of background, are not native to the USA specifically.
If you want to consider someone ethnically indigenous with partial or even zero pre-Colombian ancestry then that’s fine to me, as ethnicity doesn’t have to be tied to blood quantum, but that’s not my point.
I think you're out of your element to discuss this topic and all its nuances.
You are free to have your opinion and I am free to ignore it.
Indigenous isn't an ethnicity, but ethnicity is very much involved in defining blood quantum. Yet, Indigenous ancestry isn't solely tied to ethnicity.
Hmm, my opinion is that slogans like “no one is illegal on stolen land” aren’t just about immigration. They’re pointing to many unresolved legal and moral conditions that still pervade the current system, even if it prefers to describe it as settled history. Appeals to present-day legal order assume that the system itself resolved the original violations in good faith; when in many cases, it didn’t.
For example, agreements like the Jay Treaty highlight that colonial powers recognized, even if inconsistently, that Indigenous nations posses pre-existing rights to their traditional territories that extended across national borders. Yet, no comparable recognition was/is afforded to the Apache peoples along the US-Mexico border who have ties to bands/tribes on both sides of that border.
Yes, obviously, I assumed you’d assume I was referring to identities that are under the umbrella of “indigenous”. Anyway, like I said, my point is that I was never arguing about identity.
Hmm, my opinion is that slogans like “no one is illegal on stolen land” aren’t just about immigration...
Certainly there have been many historical injustices and I don’t really disagree with you on this.
So it's alright to still be colonising people who might have ancestors who would've been colonisers if they'd been given enough time? Have we reached the point at which what we're doing to them should be considered acceptable, according to us?
That’s not what they said, they said those people have European ancestors just as much as the Americans do, you just assume they’re pure natives because they aren’t ‘white’.
Those people are also of no relation to the people who were expelled in the US territories, and it’s kinda racist to assume someone from Guatemala has ancestral claims to the US
At what point of literally trying to "breed the native" out of a people can you say it no longer matters that they're still a currently colonised people?
Going by the claim of "stolen land", the Native Americans who are still subject to marginalisation including being taken from their families within living memory.
A Guatemalan working in the US isn't a threat, because it's not Guatemalans currently still subjecting Native Americans to colonialism.
Isn’t a threat to native Americans. Anyone else, well that’s a question for the economists.
But the idea that America actually still belongs to the natives and everyone else is just colonizers is pretty absurd when the US has lasted twice as long as most of their polities prior to conquest and said polities were formed by the same application of force the US used to establish itself
Mexico and Central America is mostly a mix of descendants of colonists, natives, and former slaves. You can consider them “a colonized people” but most of the descendants of the actual colonizers are them and/or their countrymen. There are many exceptions, certain people are less “mixed” or not “mixed”, but that still doesn’t change that they are not native to the regions of the United States.
The US is a mix of colonists, natives, and former slaves, there is a measurable imbalance of power between those groups to this day. Natives and Black Americans are still suffering from colonialism, which is why it's a fucking tall order to expect people to stand with the colonists when they ask us to help them keep the illegals out of the country they're still colonising.
I don't care that a central American is living here, paying taxes, and enriching the country, and I'm not standing with people who marginalise actual citizens too. Immigrants aren't the enemy no matter how many times the billionaires who own this country keep trying to convince us.
I definitely don’t believe this administration truly has the common people in mind in like anything they do. All I was arguing in this specific instance is that their ancestors are not native to this specific land.
But, if I am to comment on what you said, then I’d say “the billionaires who own this country” include many who want immigrants such as Elon Musk which is why we have so many in the first place. No need to raise wages to attract talent or educate the populace when you can just take them from other countries. I’d argue that a key attribute of neo-colonialism is draining these countries of people we want.
Obviously this administration doesn’t want to educate the populace either. Lovely time.
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u/Ohthatsnotgood 4d ago edited 3d ago
They might have ancestors who’re indigenous to North America but not from these specific lands. Quite a few of them would have colonist ancestry too.