As a Canadian with a PhD in history who has taught Canadian history for many years, thank you for writing this. Though I have great respect for many aspects of Native American cultures, far too few know about the actual bloody history of war (of often genocidal nature), kidnapping, torture and cannibalism between different groups, particularly of the Iroquois Confederation in the 17th century. I’ll be saving and sharing this.
Magisterial writing. This should be sent to every educator and government bureaucrat in the country.
I have long thought that there is a direct relationship between the hysteria emanating from our managerial elite and efforts by the Native Grievance Industrial Complex to "decolonize" and gaslight this country as much as possible, in parallel with the legacy population decreasing literally by the month as millions of Indians keep pouring in. It's almost as if they know the clock is ticking, and that over time, their message will fall on deaf ears as the Justins and Caitlins of Canada are replaced by the Amarpreets and Gurjeets who aren't going to give a flying fuck about "white settlers" and ghost graves, and whose preoccupation of working as Tim Hortons slaves while living ten to a house in Brampton override everything else.
And so these Indigenous capos and their useful idiots in the state sector figure they better cash their chips as fast as they can. And the legacy of what was, for a time, a pretty damn good country becomes the very thing buried in the ground that they are seeking.
Very enlightening thank you Fortissax! I live in Australia where much the same struggle sessions and “welcome to country” pollute everyday life and sometimes even church. I only know superficially that colonists supposedly went systematically across the continent massacring the indigenous but haven’t really dug deep. I attended an online international medical conference where much of the content was proudly in the Māori language, leaving me flummoxed. What’s the point of a gathering if many people can’t understand what is being said? It’s purely performative, it’s divisive and I am absolutely done with it. Furthermore, I consider the “welcome” ceremonies anything but welcoming and also frank ancestor worship which is idolatry ⚔️
the same iroquois who contributed to the american constitution, lol. i admire a lot aboit the native cultures and the treatment of the plains indians by drunks and psychopaths like Grant and Sherman are shameful. but they were also some mean mofos.
It's an incredible blindspot in popular understanding of Canadian history.
Where I live, the popular understanding of the tribes we mention in the land acknowledgements (the Blackfoot) would be that they have been here for thousands of years. In truth, they maybe settled here in the 1600s, or after the first European settlement in Quebec. They were forced out their traditional lands by the aggression of the Iroquois, and beat Europeans to the Great Plains by a few hundred years at most.
Never once growing up or studying history in University did I learn this aspect of Canadian or Native history; it was only this past year that it came up in my own reading. It shatters the myth that has been told to acknowledge that the native peoples have been displacing, enslaving and genociding each other for thousands of years before Europeans arrived.
Not Canadian, but I recommend 'Empire of the Summer Moon', about the Comanche and their bloody rule of the plains... and their eventual pacification by the US Cavalry.
Oh, they were vicious motherfuckers, weren't they? They favoured roasting their enemies alive on a spit. And the Pueblo Indians today don't like being referred to as the Anasazi - they rebranded themselves after it turns out their ancestors likely committed cannibalism.
"Despite all of this, to this day not a single body or legitimate unmarked grave has been found on the former grounds of this residential school, or indeed many others, as is now widely recognized by Canadian media, anthropologists, and archaeologists. Attempts to excavate, provide conclusive evidence of the allegations, and get to the bottom of it once and for all have been consistently stymied by demands for "cultural sensitivity" towards indigenous burial practices."
I was shocked and outraged when I learned the truth behind this story... and that was like 4 years ago! How has reality still not seeped into enough folks' minds?
The good news is that instances like these discredit the power structure. They might induce guilt or compliance in the short term but once people discover they've been lied to they leave the matrix... and they don't return.
It’s times like this when I am grateful that the US school system is so fractured. I never had to worry about struggle sessions of land acknowledgements. I know some parts of the US have the same practices, but I can successfully avoid them.
You write alot like Adam Shoalts. He has a great book titled A HISTORY OF CANADA IN TEN MAPS. He doenst water down history either. Well done. Great read. Thank you so much for your work that is very much so needed at this time.
"However, there seems to be no historical record of rape among indigenous peoples". I find this very difficult to believe. Esp as in North America, women were, as they have always been, the spoils of war and they were taken captive, given out to various warriors, and I imagine they felt pretty raped. I don't know if Indigenous warriors ever raped as part of war, but there was definitely rape in other Indigenous cultures around the world. It seems pretty incongruous that men who had refined torture to a high art form (quite similarly to their European enemies) would think nothing of forcing themselves on women.
How sure are we that the Indigenous here didn't commit, you know, throw her on the ground and have your way with her rape?
I meant specifically that the Iroquois, or in general the tribes of the northeastern woodlands did not seem to rape as a wartime practice. Not that they didn't rape at all.
Thank you for writing this! I was researching Indigenous barbarism last year for an article I was writing for U.S. Thanksgiving and I couldn't find too much about genocide. I had Lawrence Keeley's War Before Civilization book, but couldn't find any other books that seemed to focus much on the *real* history of pre-contact North America. I Googled a lot but the algos insisted on showing me articles about how brutal the Europeans had been to them.
So, that said, are there any reliable historical books on just what the Europeans *did* do to them? I mean, we should still talk and think about it, but stop giving the Indigenous a Get Out Of Genocide Free card.
Weirdly, I didn't grow up thinking the Indigenous were hippie fluffybunny crystal weenies, maybe because I went to school in the US and started out in Florida, a state not famous for its good relations with people who don't keep the sunblock companies in business. I seem to recall a mixed story of conquistadors and explorers in which both were violent against the others, but the 'Indians' as we read about them were pretty awful and tortured the Spanish horribly. I mean, even to a little kid, although I didn't really think about it in the wider context, it's pretty clear that war and violence were no new introductions to the Indians as they had already developed and refined their torture techniques to a high art form.
Can anyone recommend good books that tell a more balanced story of what happened in the early centuries of Canada and the US? One that shows both the warts and the virtues of both the Indigenous and the Europeans?
Thank you for publishing this. I’ve always been interested in the initial North American Indian conflicts. I recall my H.S. ROTC instructor touching upon some of this (more as an example of small unit tactics/ guerrilla warfare. Vietnam was still ongoing).
As a Canadian with a PhD in history who has taught Canadian history for many years, thank you for writing this. Though I have great respect for many aspects of Native American cultures, far too few know about the actual bloody history of war (of often genocidal nature), kidnapping, torture and cannibalism between different groups, particularly of the Iroquois Confederation in the 17th century. I’ll be saving and sharing this.
Magisterial writing. This should be sent to every educator and government bureaucrat in the country.
I have long thought that there is a direct relationship between the hysteria emanating from our managerial elite and efforts by the Native Grievance Industrial Complex to "decolonize" and gaslight this country as much as possible, in parallel with the legacy population decreasing literally by the month as millions of Indians keep pouring in. It's almost as if they know the clock is ticking, and that over time, their message will fall on deaf ears as the Justins and Caitlins of Canada are replaced by the Amarpreets and Gurjeets who aren't going to give a flying fuck about "white settlers" and ghost graves, and whose preoccupation of working as Tim Hortons slaves while living ten to a house in Brampton override everything else.
And so these Indigenous capos and their useful idiots in the state sector figure they better cash their chips as fast as they can. And the legacy of what was, for a time, a pretty damn good country becomes the very thing buried in the ground that they are seeking.
Very enlightening thank you Fortissax! I live in Australia where much the same struggle sessions and “welcome to country” pollute everyday life and sometimes even church. I only know superficially that colonists supposedly went systematically across the continent massacring the indigenous but haven’t really dug deep. I attended an online international medical conference where much of the content was proudly in the Māori language, leaving me flummoxed. What’s the point of a gathering if many people can’t understand what is being said? It’s purely performative, it’s divisive and I am absolutely done with it. Furthermore, I consider the “welcome” ceremonies anything but welcoming and also frank ancestor worship which is idolatry ⚔️
Thanks for raising awareness about cannibalism, torture, and human sacrifice among northern tribes like the Iroquois.
These details of precolumbian morality often only focus on the Aztec and the Maya.
the same iroquois who contributed to the american constitution, lol. i admire a lot aboit the native cultures and the treatment of the plains indians by drunks and psychopaths like Grant and Sherman are shameful. but they were also some mean mofos.
It's an incredible blindspot in popular understanding of Canadian history.
Where I live, the popular understanding of the tribes we mention in the land acknowledgements (the Blackfoot) would be that they have been here for thousands of years. In truth, they maybe settled here in the 1600s, or after the first European settlement in Quebec. They were forced out their traditional lands by the aggression of the Iroquois, and beat Europeans to the Great Plains by a few hundred years at most.
Never once growing up or studying history in University did I learn this aspect of Canadian or Native history; it was only this past year that it came up in my own reading. It shatters the myth that has been told to acknowledge that the native peoples have been displacing, enslaving and genociding each other for thousands of years before Europeans arrived.
A solid gold Banger! Knew some of the basics but thanks for diving in to the records and providing the detail.
Not Canadian, but I recommend 'Empire of the Summer Moon', about the Comanche and their bloody rule of the plains... and their eventual pacification by the US Cavalry.
Oh, they were vicious motherfuckers, weren't they? They favoured roasting their enemies alive on a spit. And the Pueblo Indians today don't like being referred to as the Anasazi - they rebranded themselves after it turns out their ancestors likely committed cannibalism.
"Despite all of this, to this day not a single body or legitimate unmarked grave has been found on the former grounds of this residential school, or indeed many others, as is now widely recognized by Canadian media, anthropologists, and archaeologists. Attempts to excavate, provide conclusive evidence of the allegations, and get to the bottom of it once and for all have been consistently stymied by demands for "cultural sensitivity" towards indigenous burial practices."
I was shocked and outraged when I learned the truth behind this story... and that was like 4 years ago! How has reality still not seeped into enough folks' minds?
The good news is that instances like these discredit the power structure. They might induce guilt or compliance in the short term but once people discover they've been lied to they leave the matrix... and they don't return.
It’s times like this when I am grateful that the US school system is so fractured. I never had to worry about struggle sessions of land acknowledgements. I know some parts of the US have the same practices, but I can successfully avoid them.
I sat through a land acknowledgment at my daughter’s school two weeks ago. This was a public elementary school in Seattle.
Looks like Canadian Managerial Elite is building an "ingroup" against the "outgroup".
You write alot like Adam Shoalts. He has a great book titled A HISTORY OF CANADA IN TEN MAPS. He doenst water down history either. Well done. Great read. Thank you so much for your work that is very much so needed at this time.
Excellent piece of historical analysis. Thank you. I love this stuff.
Here's some more interesting work being done that is related to indigenous Americans:
https://answersingenesis.org/videos/weve-been-missing-a-huge-part-of-the-native-americans-history/
"However, there seems to be no historical record of rape among indigenous peoples". I find this very difficult to believe. Esp as in North America, women were, as they have always been, the spoils of war and they were taken captive, given out to various warriors, and I imagine they felt pretty raped. I don't know if Indigenous warriors ever raped as part of war, but there was definitely rape in other Indigenous cultures around the world. It seems pretty incongruous that men who had refined torture to a high art form (quite similarly to their European enemies) would think nothing of forcing themselves on women.
How sure are we that the Indigenous here didn't commit, you know, throw her on the ground and have your way with her rape?
Hey there,
I meant specifically that the Iroquois, or in general the tribes of the northeastern woodlands did not seem to rape as a wartime practice. Not that they didn't rape at all.
Thank you for writing this! I was researching Indigenous barbarism last year for an article I was writing for U.S. Thanksgiving and I couldn't find too much about genocide. I had Lawrence Keeley's War Before Civilization book, but couldn't find any other books that seemed to focus much on the *real* history of pre-contact North America. I Googled a lot but the algos insisted on showing me articles about how brutal the Europeans had been to them.
So, that said, are there any reliable historical books on just what the Europeans *did* do to them? I mean, we should still talk and think about it, but stop giving the Indigenous a Get Out Of Genocide Free card.
Weirdly, I didn't grow up thinking the Indigenous were hippie fluffybunny crystal weenies, maybe because I went to school in the US and started out in Florida, a state not famous for its good relations with people who don't keep the sunblock companies in business. I seem to recall a mixed story of conquistadors and explorers in which both were violent against the others, but the 'Indians' as we read about them were pretty awful and tortured the Spanish horribly. I mean, even to a little kid, although I didn't really think about it in the wider context, it's pretty clear that war and violence were no new introductions to the Indians as they had already developed and refined their torture techniques to a high art form.
Can anyone recommend good books that tell a more balanced story of what happened in the early centuries of Canada and the US? One that shows both the warts and the virtues of both the Indigenous and the Europeans?
Great essay! I’m saving this one for my archives.
Thank you for publishing this. I’ve always been interested in the initial North American Indian conflicts. I recall my H.S. ROTC instructor touching upon some of this (more as an example of small unit tactics/ guerrilla warfare. Vietnam was still ongoing).