Movies about Native Americans

 

I would add the Irish hunger holocaust...

 

Originally posted by Carcharodon ... Always there are some kind of revisionists there trying to diminishe or defend the crimes, many times using arguments like: "but those people themselves also did bad things like this and this and this". And one can hear arguments like "oh the Spaniards were not worst, the British, or the French or the Yanks were even worse (or the other way around)."

 

With respect to Spaniards, the point is own history books describe them as barbarians; specially in the first times of the invasion and particularly in the Caribbean. But that shouldn't blind us to the fact the Spanish rule lasted 300 years, and in all that period there were positive and negative events. On the possitive side, the Spaniards were the only group that vaccinated natives (unlike Americans who gave natives blankets with smallpox ), also, Spaniards promoted the education of Indians, the intermarriage, and gave them the status of free human beings. Of course there were lot of injustices and crimes; but at least Spaniards tried to do it better.

With respect to Natives, they were just human beings, defending theirs lands and at war. They commited a lot of crimes as well against colones, and before Columbus the Americas wasn't a paradise either. That said, the legitimate owners of the Americas were the Indigenous people; and that is it.

 

 

 

 

 

That's quite a coflation presented in a rather unsubtle attempt at throwing me into the "Holocaust Denier" school. Shame on you Carcharodon given that most Swedes were quite comfy with that attitude just a short time back. Respect history and cease all of this phony moralizing. After all, the Apaches made a life-style of pillaging and plundering their sedentary neighbors be they Amerinds or Mexican villagers. It is a fact in their history, just as it was fact that the Caribs victimized their Arawak neighbors, or that this latter group was not too concerned over the fate of the Taino. Turning the ghosts of the pasts into contemporary monsters does little to explain that past and often generates myths justifying the prejudices of a comfortable present. Ascribe motives of a suspicious type to people who invert the documents of history, I never have and could produce legajos of data on why your stance is a blatant mischaracterization. The redress of abuse and abusive conditions moved hand in hand with the expansion of the Spanish colonial empire almost from the beginning. Not that there were none who wished advantage by demaning the Amerind, but even at the start this approach was challenged as documented by Bartolome de las Casas. You wish to paint with too broad a brush and look for devils regardless of the intellectual violence committed.

 

Try to find a counterpart to Garcilaso de la Vega, el Inca within the cultural milieu of other European states contemporary to the Spanish imperial experience. His cultural pride produced one of the great documents on the Amerindian experience.

 

Originally posted by Carcharodon ... And again we have the same reasoning: because the Apaches did this or this, or the Caribs made that or that, or the Arawaks did so and so, then the opression against them is in some way okey?

Of course it is not. The invasion and extermination doesn't have any justification. No matter those pretty beautiful (and hypocrital) "thanksgivings"-style celebration may some people believe the invasion was great.

 
 

Originally posted by Carcharodon ... And the stereotyped representations of indigenous peoples in many movies, is that also okey?

My stereotype is that most movie makers are a bunch of idiots that make products for people with the same intellectual level