How much do you know about the history of Indigenous people under Canadian rule?

So how long do you think Indigenous people have lived in the "Americas"? Three thousand years? Three hundred thousand years? What we've been taught may have less to do with the actual history and more to do with the bias of the people who have written that history. 

https://thetyee.ca/Analysis/2022/05/24/Conservatism-In-Archeology/

The argument and supporting data is, at best, crap.

Posted by: switch

The argument and supporting data is, at best, crap.

for which argument? and why?

Pretty much all the arguments.

The assertion that the whole scientific community is in on some conspiracy is crap.  Read up on the older archeological sites he lists but different explain.  The evidence for hominids is very weak at all of them, whereas there is a lot of very good evidence for the timeline and age of humans in North Americ, both archeological and genetic.  Thousands of years is much more than enough to explain the cultures that existed.

Posted by: switch

Pretty much all the arguments.

The assertion that the whole scientific community is in on some conspiracy is crap.  Read up on the older archeological sites he lists but different explain.  The evidence for hominids is very weak at all of them, whereas there is a lot of very good evidence for the timeline and age of humans in North Americ, both archeological and genetic.  Thousands of years is much more than enough to explain the cultures that existed.

While I have not followed that particular discussion for quite a few years now (thanks to no longer being a student of history, but actually having to work fulltime), I disagree with your very first statement on the bias in history and archaeology.

Posted by: syncro

So how long do you think Indigenous people have lived in the "Americas"? Three thousand years? Three hundred thousand years? What we've been taught may have less to do with the actual history and more to do with the bias of the people who have written that history. 

https://thetyee.ca/Analysis/2022/05/24/Conservatism-In-Archeology/

There is always bias in history to some extent. Hell just in that article alone I spotted some lacking of info. However that is because of digging further into history have enough to spot it. Reality all the science centuries ago was influenced by religion aka Christianity. We all know how that worked out. Christianity and it's various branches labels all non believers Pagan's, Infidels, and/or Savages. Makes it so much easier to view others as lesser people and therefore dumb and in need of help.

Posted by: syncro

So how long do you think Indigenous people have lived in the "Americas"? Three thousand years? Three hundred thousand years? What we've been taught may have less to do with the actual history and more to do with the bias of the people who have written that history.

https://thetyee.ca/Analysis/2022/05/24/Conservatism-In-Archeology/

We don't know for sure. We know the timeline keeps getting pushed back and there is plenty of evidence of people across North and South America after the ice started to recede so it is 15.000 years at minimum, but I also think claiming the people of thousands of years ago as your own just because they lived in the same place is ridiculous. For Canada, it is pretty straightforward. Canada was covered in a sheet of ice for the entire last ice age so we basically know most of them arrived 10k to 15K years ago. In some areas, the genetics check out as well. Kennewick Man was controversial when he was discovered because they thought it was the skeleton of a white guy until they realized he was 9000 years old. DNA confirmed that he is indigenous to North America and related to the current people of the Americas. The 'but' here is that he would have been very different and if he could stand up and talk he would probably wonder why all these strange people were claiming to be his relatives and why they were burying him. He lived twice as far back in time as the building of the pyramids.

I have no doubt bias in archeology has led to all kinds of incorrect assumptions when it comes to the peopling of the Americas, but I don't think it was all racism and settler arrogance. Archeologists have the task of taking a handful of puzzle pieces from a 10 million-piece puzzle and trying to figure out what the big picture is. The problem is that the pieces they do have are not random. They are only from the specific areas that they can access, that have a good climate to preserve the findings, and that are inhabited enough for someone to make that first discovery. So we know a fair bit of the people that lived in dry climates and nothing about the people that lived on the ancient coastline currently under the ocean. If the theories are based on the available evidence it only stands to reason that they can only get pushed back in time as we discover and confirm older sites.

Of course, bias goes both ways and this article oozes "white man bad" vibes. It refers to Diffusion Theory and Thor Heyerdahl as proof of racism when Diffusion (white people must have brought knowledge to the Aztecs) was never an accepted theory and Thor Heyerdahl was just a dude obsessed with Polynesians. He didn't even have a college degree. They also make the claim that archeologists had ulterior motives because the less time the indigenous people had been here the less right they had to the land and they could justify colonization. HAHA. Please! Knowing how old Africa was didn't stop white men from taking land and doing what they want. No sources, just accusations aimed at nobody in particular. Not exactly stellar journalism.

Or how about this?

Steeves argues, on good evidence, that Indigenous peoples are not just recent Asian immigrants, but peoples long and deeply entangled in what we call the Americas. Both they and their lands transformed one another thousands of years before the Europeans belatedly stumbled in. In that sense, they have indeed been here “forever.”

On good evidence? Forever? isn't this just the racism of low expectations to say "Sure, forever seems like the right word to use here. Why use numbers?" All of it is so bad. "Europeans belatedly stumbled in"??? The guy that wrote this is a contributing editor? His white guilt made this article painful to read. I could go on.

As for Steeves, I feel like she is using the term "indigenous science" to elevate scant evidence and stories and make them hard evidence. They are not. There is only one science.

So how long do you think Indigenous people have lived in the "Americas"?

I think the vast majority of the indigenous people living today are descendants of the people that migrated from Beringia as the last ice age collapsed. Of these people, I think a smaller wave started the migration south along the west coast by boat (15 or 16K BP). It makes sense because as the sea level rose the coastal people of Beringia would have been the first ones displaced and probably travelled by boat. The West Coast was freed up from the ice thousands of years before the ice-free corridor was viable so they had a good route. Once the corridor in the middle of North America opened the remaining people left and that migration was much much bigger. This is the Clovis people. The timing is pretty much bang on and there are older Clovis points in Yukon/Alaska which was ice-free during the ice age. Something wiped them out a few thousand years later, but they were experiencing some next-level climate change at the time.

I also strongly suspect another small migration across the Pacific to South America occurred thousands of years earlier. There are strange DNA markers in a few isolated Amazon groups relating them to Austronesian people. Polynesians made 90% of that trip in just a few thousand years so it's doable. This could explain some of the older sites that are 20K+ years old before the Clovis people overtook the western hemisphere.

For anything more than 40K or 50K, the story is much more complicated. As Steeves points out, animals migrated between the Americas and Asia many times over hundreds of thousands of years, so why not people? The same process of ice retreat and the sinking of Beringia happens after every ice age, so the same thing could have gone down 100,000 years ago. I think this is indigenous bias at work here though if Steeves is trying to claim this could be her ancestors. Not only does the DNA already disagree, but there also were other humans back then and Neanderthals and Denisovans are probably more likely to have made that journey than Homo Sapiens. We have evidence of their presence in Siberia 100K years ago, but evidence for Sapiens only goes back about 30K.

Anyway, this took me too long and I have to make dinner.

EDIT: Since this post wasn't quite long enough how about more? :) I just wanted to add that I am critical of the fields of archeology and anthropology and although I downplayed this article, general racism surely played a role in many of their conclusions, especially if we start going back to the early days, I just don't think it is playing a factor in our current dating of the migration to the Americas since it is almost all based on carbon dating. Both fields are highly interpretive and prone to getting things wrong and I think a lot of them are too enthralled in their own work to acknowledge it. They also have their own celebrities that go unchallenged. This is why the Clovis First theory was so sticky.

I think that First Nations have kinda set themselves up by making so much of being first. We may very well find out that there were many migrations and DNA might prove that the Clovis migration wiped out the people already living here. Then what? Second Nations? I find it highly improbable the Americas were not a big mess of people moving around and displacing one another with diseases, war, and sex since it was a new mostly (probably) unclaimed land. I also don't understand why we assume Beringia had one cultural group and didn't contain several different cultures. It was 4 million square miles that is now lost to the ocean during the LGM. That is twice the size of Western Europe where we know that people were constantly wiping each other out before settling into nations. The first settlers in Britain after the ice receded were black early Europeans and almost the entire population was replaced 4500 years ago.  That means the people that built Stonehenge are not closely related to today's Brits.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatchewan/star-blanket-cree-nation-announcement-1.6710662

Thought of sharing this.

For those who watched Gino Odjick play with the Canucks. His jersey number 29 was chosen specifically. It was the ID number his father was given at the Residential School.

Posted by: switch

Pretty much all the arguments.

The assertion that the whole scientific community is in on some conspiracy is crap.  Read up on the older archeological sites he lists but different explain.  The evidence for hominids is very weak at all of them, whereas there is a lot of very good evidence for the timeline and age of humans in North Americ, both archeological and genetic.  Thousands of years is much more than enough to explain the cultures that existed.

Tell me you read the article with a notable amount of negative bias without telling me you read the article with a notable amount of negative bais. You're basically arguing against something that the article (book) didn't really claim to begin with. 

From the article: "She doesn’t argue that they make an open-and-shut case for very early humans in the Western Hemisphere. But given the implications of those dates, they certainly deserve more research."

A few of your other previous comments share the same dismissive and somewhat abusive tone, which in this case is somewhat ironic with your statement that they are asserting the whole scientific community is in on some conspiracy crap. That's not the point there, the point is that Western Europeans have made a habit of diminishing the history and culture of other peoples in a bid to hold themselves up as superior while they subjugate them.

Posted by: syncro

That's not the point there, the point is that Western Europeans have made a habit of diminishing the history and culture of other peoples in a bid to hold themselves up as superior while they subjugate them.

To a point yes. However it doesn't take much effort to research that it is really those who have power like the leaders of Christianity and the various branches to diminish other groups. Saying Western Europeans dismisses activities done by those in positions of power against others at the same time as other events. In the end it becomes the oppression Olympics which doesn't help any group.

Posted by: Endurimil

To a point yes. However it doesn't take much effort to research that it is really those who have power like the leaders of Christianity and the various branches to diminish other groups. Saying Western Europeans dismisses activities done by those in positions of power against others at the same time as other events. In the end it becomes the oppression Olympics which doesn't help any group.

This isn't the oppression olympics, the thread is about what Indigenous peoples have dealt with since the arrival of Europeans and the establishments of the various governments under the identity of Canada. That history is fairly well known by some people and is gradually becoming better know by all people in Canada. If this knowledge makes some people uncomfortable then that's good as much of it is ugly and learning about it helps people to see and hopefully understand what needs to change. 

By saying "to a point yes" you are helping to absolve the people that came here of their responsibility that the people of Canada continue to bear in a number of respects. There's no point in making an argument between church and state at the time of colonization, they both had roles to play. Western Europeans is a catch-all for colonizers at a time when church as state were interlinked. Western Europeans not only brought themselves here but their systems of ideology and religion as well.

Posted by: chupacabra

We don't know for sure. We know the timeline keeps getting pushed back and there is plenty of evidence of people across North and South America after the ice started to recede so it is 15.000 years at minimum, but I also think claiming the people of thousands of years ago as your own just because they lived in the same place is ridiculous. For Canada, it is pretty straightforward. Canada was covered in a sheet of ice for the entire last ice age so we basically know most of them arrived 10k to 15K years ago.

There's a lot to respond to with your post but I'm going to keep it simple and respond to just two parts for now. For some time it has been speculated that the West Coast may not have been entirely covered in ice. There is also strong evidence (fact) that our current coast line is probably not the one that existed many millenia ago due to subduction earthquakes.

But the critical part of your post is the part where you say you think "claiming the people of thousands of years ago as your own just because they lived in the same place is ridiculous". This idea may seem ridiculous to you but it cuts to the heart of the difference in worldviews between Indigenous and Western peoples. Indigenous people view their connections to the land, previous generations and future generations vastly differently. For them, the connection to the people from thousands of years ago is about far more than just geography, it is about identity, culture, spirituality and family. I think that until Canadians come to understand that, the concept of reconciliation can't truly happen. We need to understand who they are as a people, not just as people that have take up a specific place we have set for them in our history.

Article about an ice free corridor on the west coast:

https://hakaimagazine.com/news/northwestern-vancouver-island-likely-escaped-the-ice-age/

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277379122000191

Posted by: syncro

There's a lot to respond to with your post but I'm going to keep it simple and respond to just two parts for now. For some time it has been speculated that the West Coast may not have been entirely covered in ice. There is also strong evidence (fact) that our current coast line is probably not the one that existed many millenia ago due to subduction earthquakes.

But the critical part of your post is the part where you say you think "claiming the people of thousands of years ago as your own just because they lived in the same place is ridiculous". This idea may seem ridiculous to you but it cuts to the heart of the difference in worldviews between Indigenous and Western peoples. Indigenous people view their connections to the land, previous generations and future generations vastly differently. For them, the connection to the people from thousands of years ago is about far more than just geography, it is about identity, culture, spirituality and family. I think that until Canadians come to understand that, the concept of reconciliation can't truly happen. We need to understand who they are as a people, not just as people that have take up a specific place we have set for them in our history.

Article about an ice-free corridor on the west coast:

https://hakaimagazine.com/news/northwestern-vancouver-island-likely-escaped-the-ice-age/

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277379122000191

The coastline may have been open earlier than previously thought, this is currently being debated.  I put that date around 15k to 16k BP which is much earlier than the previous theories.  There was still a lot of ice between Beringia and Vancouver Island though, so I would think it would have been small numbers of people.

For them, the connection to the people from thousands of years ago is about far more than just geography, it is about identity, culture, spirituality and family.

I get that Syncro, but that is part of their religious belief system and is not designed to answer the question of who these people from the deep past really were (ie - archeology).  Our cultural identity is always changing and often completely upended and if we are not seeking to use all available evidence to write that story we are not doing real science.  I can understand what their beliefs are and how they might differ from mine, but I am not going to accept them as my own.  We can speculate all we want but we know from DNA that almost all of the genetic makeup of the indigenous populations in both N and S America is from Beringia and we also know that this group split from other Asians about 20K years ago.  There is nothing wrong with this story and it aligns with a lot of oral history as well.   

Steeves says this on her site:

To accept that Indigenous peoples have been in the Western Hemisphere for over 100,000 years is to put them on equal footing with other areas of the so-called Old World.

Equal footing?  With just Europe apparently?  She sees this longer version of indigenous history as proof of ownership and she calls the migration from Beringia "recent Asian immigrants" and she thinks we just need to accept it.  From what we know so far the "recent Asian immigrants" may not have been the first, but they were the most by far.  Their DNA and almost certainly their culture overran anyone living on the land before them and it is most likely the basis for all of their cultures and beliefs.  

For them, the connection to the people from thousands of years ago is about far more than just geography, it is about identity, culture, spirituality and family. I think that until Canadians come to understand that, the concept of reconciliation can't truly happen. We need to understand who they are as a people, not just as people that have take up a specific place we have set for them in our history.

I think you need to understand that I am more than capable of understanding who they say they are, but I don't indulge in superstition over proof regardless of where it comes from.  I am an atheist.  Accept my worldview goddamit!  :)

I want to know how humans got to the Americas and what their stories are.  If indigenous archeologists are not interested in this story and prefer to just say that they are simply a part of the land they are welcome to it, but that is not science. I have a hard time listening to someone that disparages the entire field as hobbled by racism and then uses her own cultural bias as the antidote.  

What would you have me do?  I think I understand all of this clearly, but I am not going to blow smoke up anyone's ass out of "respect".

We need to understand who they are as a people, not just as people that have take up a specific place we have set for them in our history.

I would argue that it is the First Nations themselves that have defined themselves by the land they live on.  I see them as people that formed over generations to become who they are.