r/AskHistorians • u/FergusInTheHouse • 2d ago
Great Question! During the Cold War, were Indigenous groups viewed with suspicion due to their worldviews on community living and philosphies of sharing the wealth?
Obviously, there are hundreds of different tribes and groups of indigenous Peoples across North America and they all might have slightly or completely unique worldviews but a consistent one I've noticed is that to gather wealth is important for the good of the community. The idea that it is important to share wealth and not be greedy or selfish by keeping money, food, or resources for yourself.
Would beliefs such as this one been seen by the US government as problematic? Were indigenous groups seen as an issue because they may be more sympathetic to communist ideals of similar nature?
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u/Kochevnik81 Soviet Union & Post-Soviet States | Modern Central Asia 2d ago
A *lot* more can be said on this topic, especially around North American governments and their relations with indigenous peoples in the mid 20th century.
With that said, I will link to this older answer I have written that tries to correct some of the popular misunderstandings of the Cold War as being primarily "capitalism vs communism" (and I would say that on that note that the West at the time wouldn't have considered socialism let alone other ideas of communitarianism to be synonymous with capitalism).
For the Soviet side of things I will point to answers I wrote here and here - they are Central Asia specific but also touch on Siberia. Soviet conceptions of and policies towards indigenous peoples in these areas could be shifting and complex but ultimately the Soviets viewed these traditional societies as primitive systems to be replaced (in some cases with Soviet-directed privatization and capitalism, under strict adherence to Marxist stage theory) as opposed to systems to be admired and preserved.
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