And wait, didn't most of those native tribes *want* to live in primitive, squalid conditions? Wasn't that the way of life they were fighting to defend? Against assimilation into a technologically progressive democracy? And didn't they get part of what they wanted in the end? Those miserable reservations are a compromise. All their inhabitants really lost was an illusion of freedom. And they passed up the opportunity to taste the real thing. Their choice.

The ones who moved on... don't count, because they don't think of themselves as native Americans anymore. They're just people. Individual human beings living in a free and prosperous society, who just happen to be descended from a particular class of primitive people (Native Americans) instead of another class of primitive people (Indo-Europeans) Or more likely, descended from both classes. But that sort of distinction only means something to a racist.

At least by ignoring these people, the Native American whiners implicitly acknowledge that it's about culture, not race. But culture is a choice. It's not who you are, it's what you choose to be. Or to settle for being. In a free society, we can choose our actions. But on planet Earth, we are never free to choose the consequences of our actions. In other words, you can have it either way you want, but you can't have it both ways. Those on the reservations made their choice to live there instead of joining the larger society. At least those of adult age have. They deserve the same consideration as those who choose to live in a hippie commune or a Kool-Aid cult compound. If it works for them, leave them to it. If it doesn't, let them deal with it.

I have a suspicion that more chose to move on than to cling to the past. But even assuming this is true, hard data are unlikely to be available in any tidy, easy-to-correctly-interpret package, because they've all been defined away into rhetorical nonexistence. The census had - shamefully - the concept of racial distinctions back then, as well as ethnic distinctions, but [link|http://www.umsystem.edu/shs/nativeam.html|not] this particular one.

Okay, Georgia treated the Cherokees shamefully. But that was the South, and the South will not rise again. You can consider that score settled. And even if it weren't, all the participants on both sides have been in their graves for quite a while now.

Meanwhile, in Syria, the Kurds say they *want* democracy and a more civilized, settled way of life. It's their oppressors that are forcing them to live lives that are nasty, brutish and short. The Baathist regime isn't interested in putting them on reservations and then leaving them to their own devices. It's interested in either ruling them or exterminating them. It was the same in Saddam's Iraq. But there the Kurds managed to create their own reservation by force. Wherein they enjoyed a quality and length of life *better* than they would have had otherwise. Even without the casino resorts. But they still had to fight to maintain it. Frankly, our Indian tribes have it soft.

I don't care about the Kurds because they're Kurds. I care about the Kurds because they want democracy, civilization, and the privilege of breathing, and there are thugs trying to deny them all these things. The ethnicity is beside the point. As it should be.

Kurds in Syria == American Indians? Only if black == white.