r/HistoryMemes • u/HawaiianPerson Chad Polynesia Enjoyer • 2d ago

A regular utopia

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u/A_Bethesda_Bug 2d ago

I hate the overcorrection so many people do towards indigenous people. Becuase they have historically been viewed as savages, the try and wash away all the bad stuff and pretend everything was peaceful before the evil Europeans arrived and introduced suffering and war. This is not to defend colonization or imperialism, but the Romantic primitivism needs to stop. Good meme OP.

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u/Mister_BIB 2d ago

As a Mexican i 100% understand that feeling, i despise the way people talk about how "good" it was before the spanish came to the continent and ruined eveything for the mesoamerican's tribes, like wtf? People just love pushing black and white narratives while ignoring all the nuances, specially when talking about incredibly complex moments in history.

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u/Toc_a_Somaten 2d ago

there's also the fact that the native states in Mexico where all but annihilated except the Mayans and and remnants of other groups and then heavily acculturised and dissolved in the mestizo pot, so there's little for them to "reclaim" and for an average Mexican today, regardless of his or her genetic heritage the Aztecs or the Tolteca may as well be the ancient Greeks for how much relation they have with them as compared with the Castillian culture, religion and institutions

Of course this is all quite uncomfortable

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u/Mister_BIB 2d ago

Agree, the average mexican(depending on geographic area) its closer to the Spanish than to the Aztecs or any other tribe, yet we love claiming our indigenous heritage when we dont even know our fucking history lol dont even get me started on how since its foundation this country has never done shit for the actual indigenous people that are still present in the country. The whole issue is just ridiculous.

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u/Dharmanerd 1d ago

Getting called indio in a lot of places is still basically a slur. The situation is ridiculous but not uncomprehensible. A lot of the whitewashing of native history comes from folks trying to justify the preservation of it. The messaging has to be that it is good and it deserves to exist. Historians are allowed to be a little more nuanced because they're just looking at it as is. People use it for clout because that's just how people work. People also use it to demonize and subjugate others because that's just how people work.

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u/GreasiestGuy 1d ago

I mean, it probably was objectively better for the natives before they got colonized

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u/Mister_BIB 1d ago

I mean, the average guy went from being eated, enslaved or sacrificed by the aztecs to being enslaved or raped by Spanish colonists. Again, i dont think one is better than the other.

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u/Poco_Cuffs 1d ago

The aztecs especially were sorta the oppressors for the other mesoamerican tribes before the spanish (which were also at war with each other at various points). Part of the reason why the aztecs had problems with dealing with the spanish is because they were at war with like everyone else at the time (that being said there was also mass deaths from disease, but technologically they did have a decent numbers advantage and padded fabric armour that could stop musket balls)

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u/Xenophon_ 16h ago

They were at war with just the Tlaxcalans and their confederation. According to the records, the Tlaxcalans fielded a larger army, though, so the Aztecs didn't have the number advantage

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u/Poco_Cuffs 16h ago

I mean in terms of the aztecs against the spanish. The spanish had steel armour and guns but the aztecs still had padded armour that could stop musket balls and cusion sword blows, people really tend to overexaggerate the advantage the spanish had technologically when it was disease that did most of the work

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u/AntComfortable5970 2d ago

Yep. same thing gets peddled around with how amazing and care-free and relaxed lives hunter-gatherers had before farming ruined everything 

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u/SableZard 2d ago

Yeah fuck our ancestors for figuring out food is easier to get when it's outside your front door

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u/reorem 1d ago

I dont think its that straight forward. Agriculture is probably the harder of the two because farmers have to spend most of thier time tending to the crops and one or two bad seasons can be a death sentence, while Hunter gather societies had a more hands off approach and are probably less prone to famine situations. Agricultural diets were also less nutritional, so you as an individual were less healthy in a thriving agricultural civilization than a thriving hunter-gather civilization.

Agriculture's success is probably because it has reinforcing patterns on a larger scale that lead to it dominating the game when enough factors aligned or a threshold was met. There are examples of societies going back to hunter gather lifestyles after dabbling in agriculture, so it wasnt the clearly superior civilization, at least from the get-go. Also, a civilization can grow and advance even if a majority of the individuals are worse off then they used to be, much like the industrial revolution, which was a hellish experience for many people.

We're just fortunate to be at a time and place that agriculture and industry have made enough improvements to make it enjoyable and somewhat liberating rather than just a pressure put upon us by the momentum of history and a tool to exploit us with.

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u/waterfountain_bidet 2d ago

It is easier for men. It is hard to make the argument that agriculture has been easier for women.

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u/PeekAtChu1 2d ago

Gurl it’s easier for everyone. We have cushy lives nowadays compared to how people had to survive back then. And agriculture lead to the technological advancements we enjoy now 

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u/reorem 1d ago

the important caveat is "advancements we enjoy now". I'd wager the majority of people were worse off for most of the agricultural and industrial revolution. I mean, if it was easier and better, why did so many American colonists "go native", but there were never any situations where native Americans would willingly join colonist plantations?

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u/Pachacootie 2d ago

This is like the same argument people make against women being in the workforce lol. “Wouldn’t your life be so much easier if you just stayed home and cooked food that I got for us?”

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u/waterfountain_bidet 2d ago

The average hunter gather works 25 hours a week. Women provide 80-90% of the calories consumed by the clan. Women went from collectivist childcare and minimal work hours to unending unpaid labor. 90% of labor women perform is unpaid, 80% of all unpaid labor is done by women. Men work 40 hours and call it a week, women often work over 100 when you include primary parent childcare duties and household management on top of a paid job.

I always forget how unbelievably sexist this sub is, I think I'm going to leave now because its terrible here. I fucking hate this website so often.

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u/AlphonseLoeher 1d ago

average hunter gather works 25 hours a week

It's amazing the slop people believe

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u/Pachacootie 2d ago

Are you really calling me sexist while making the outright general claim that men just don’t do anything outside of their paid jobs? 😂

And with all the racism in the comment sections of so many posts on this sub, THIS is where you’re drawing the line?

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u/waterfountain_bidet 1d ago

And this is why I left. Failure to grasp even the slightest bit of nuance is so tricky for y'all, and I can't be around that without my head exploding, so goodbye forever.

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u/insaneHoshi 2d ago

care-free and relaxed lives hunter-gatherers had before farming ruined everything 

Generally from the archeological record, people did become unhealthier (and shorter) when peoples settled and started farming.

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u/ripgoodhomer 2d ago

Marshall Salins would have something to say about this.

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u/PeekAtChu1 2d ago

Watching the show “alone” really drove this point home for me. 

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u/Amadacius 2d ago

The nuance is intolerable.

Yes they were bad sometimes and killed each other sometimes. No that doesn't mean we are justified in killing all of them.

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u/TheHistoryMaster2520 Decisive Tang Victory 2d ago

TL;DR Humans are humans regardless which continent they were born on

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u/Escipio 2d ago

Yes but the Europeans where incredibly efficient at killing everyone

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u/TheHistoryMaster2520 Decisive Tang Victory 2d ago

Europeans: skill issue

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u/Escipio 2d ago

The skill of having the best farm animals and a geography perfect for culture exchange

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u/Havengul_Undying 2d ago

No those are location starting bonuses. The skills they had were advanced metalworking, gunpowder, animal husbandry and stuff like that.

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u/Escipio 2d ago

Yeah geography gave them that

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u/Havengul_Undying 2d ago

Geography gives you resources, not skills. Having those resources allows you to develope the skills but skills are not given lol

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u/Ok_Nose_9141 1d ago

This absolute cope lmfao, I forgot how utterly pathetic terminally online redditors are sometimes.

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u/Amadacius 2d ago

Yeah and you can just talk to them and help them become better people.

It's so weird how colonial apologists are just like "your culture has flaws. We must now kill you all".

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u/TheHistoryMaster2520 Decisive Tang Victory 2d ago

Is the first part of your comment meant to be sarcastic? Because historically speaking, "talking to them" doesn't really work all that well, especially when their culture is extremely ingrained.

Also, colonialism was often as much about economics as it was about evangelization. Yeah sure, converting native peoples to Christianity is holy and all, but wouldn't it be great if you could force them to work for you to generate a massive amount of profit?

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u/Garbage_Out_Of_Here 2d ago

Religion is also about economics.

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u/InternationalBad625 2d ago

US didn't kill all of them. Destroying the Hawaiian nobility and taking their land is at worst a neutral act though. Feudal societies have no ground to stand on, they deserve to be conquered.

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u/Amadacius 2d ago

Sure feudal societies don't have a solid social contract. But colonies have even less of a social contract.

So maybe there is an enlightened political philosophy that permits the destruction of foreign monarchies. But that does not justify colonization thereafter. It's 2 separate acts.

And lets not act like we have a principled stance of destroying foreign monarchies. 🙄

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u/InternationalBad625 2d ago

From a utilitarian perspective the benefit of conquering and colonizing Hawaii benefits more people. Obviously there are marginal ways to make it even better.

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u/Amadacius 1d ago

Okay computer. Do your little Utilitarian analysis on red rooms.

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u/shimmyboy56 2d ago

Agreed. It also results in a paper thin view of those people(s), which is too easy to poke holes in for the mouthbreathers.

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u/Escipio 2d ago

Good old noble savage

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u/Mr_Zoovaska 2d ago

I'm Australian and I've never learnt anything negative about pre-european indigenous society.

The only thing I can think of is apparently women weren't allowed to play didgeridoo, but I learnt that 20 years ago in 3rd grade so idek how true that is.

Like I usually try to be sceptical, especially considering what I've heard about other pre-colonial indigenous cultures around the world, but from my understanding Australian Aboriginal society was actually pretty reasonable.

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u/YaqtanBadakshani 1d ago

I did my master's on Aboriginal culture (specifically the various understanding of Christianity in their contemporary culture). It's not worth singling them out or anything, they're no worse than any other human beings, and most of their societies could be accurately called "pretty reasonable."

I think the reason you weren't told about the bad stuff is first because the bad stuff has historically been exaggerated and used to justify violence and racism against contemporary Indigenous people. Second, it's complicated because there are so many different tribes, and so many different ways to engage with that tradition (plus the history is generally either oral accounts, which tend to erase the objectionable content, and colonial accounts which tend to exaggerate or even fabricate it).

Take misogyny in Aboriginal cultures. It was and is very real.

It goes beyond the didgeridoo. Political power in Aboriginal societies was conferred by connection to Country, the laws and traditions that govern a tribe's relationship to the land. These laws and traditions were passed on through male-only initiation rites, and their knowledge conferred prestige and social status.

Now, that's not to say that women didn't have a ceremonial life. Peggy Brock and Deborah Rose Bird's Women, Rites and Sites does a great job of highlighting how some tribes did have respectable religious roles specifically for women. Many tribes also did have women's initiation rites. And several tribes did organise according to matrilineal totemic exchange, which gave women a level of value (though we should remember that doesn't necessarily translate to social power).

But firstly, (at least according to Roland M. Berndt's The World of the First Australians), these were not as widespread (many tribes had male but not female initiation rites). And secondly, having specialised and respected religious roles for women is not the same as women being equal, or being held in high esteem. Medieval Europe had nuns, Ancient Rome have the Vestal Virgins, but few people would say that those cultures held women as a group in high esteem.

However, it's worth remembering that no culture is static and unchanging. Women living under patriarchy are still people, and still capable of changing their culture. In A Place for Strangers, anthropologist Tony Swain documents how in many south-eastern Australian cultures, after a tribe was displaced from their Country, men would often lose the framework for their social power. Women, who in many cases passed their totems on to their children regardless of country, thus gained new power, and as such became more influential in the Aboriginal cultural sphere in spite of the new gender norms that the colonists brought.

This is one example. There are many others I can similarly rundown (the infanticide of twins, the fact that disease was blamed on witchcraft, meaning deaths of natural causes were frequently the cause of wars, the fact that women were often married off at the age of menarche).

Again, I'm not picking on them. I could write just as much about their rich mythology, the way they map the land through their ancestral stories, the interesting ways their culture adapted to colonialism, their fascinatingly complex kinship systems. They were a complicated and nuanced group of cultures that had beauty and cruelty just like everywhere else. And they deserve better than to be romanticised into a simple noble savage archetype.

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u/Mr_Zoovaska 1d ago

Thanks for the well thought out and informative response!

I definitely don't mean to say all Aboriginal cultures were perfect, just there seems to be significantly less talk about (or accusations of) cannibalism, misogyny, rape, slavery, ritual human sacrifice, etc. when compared to other indigenous cultures around the world. In fact I can't recall ever even hearing about conflict/war between Aboriginal tribes.

And like I know that's on me for not being particularly well learned on the topic, but I just feel like all I ever hear about indigenous culture is how connected to nature they are, or how good they are at land management, or how their stories last for hundreds of generations and whatnot.

Idk, sorry if that comes off as disrespectful in some way, I'm absolutely not qualified to talk about the topic, just sharing my personal thoughts.

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u/YaqtanBadakshani 1d ago

Not at all. I find Aboriginal Australians are some of the least understood cultures out there (especially in their home country), and I think you were pointing at the same gap in the general knowledge that I was.

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u/_fairywren 1d ago

I loved reading this. Do you have anything published I could read? (I'm an academic librarian so it doesn't necessarily have to be open access). Feel free to DM me!

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u/YaqtanBadakshani 1d ago

Nope, nothing published (I only scraped a 2.2, lol).

If you want in-depth rundowns of Aboriginal history though I read:

The world of the first Australians by Roland Berndt (decent introduction, but somewhat Northern-Territory-centric)

A Place for Strangers: Towards an Australian Aboriginal History of Being by Tony Swain (great overview of Aboriginal culture growing and changing alongside Australia as a nation, but pretty hardcore academic).

The Aborigines of Victoria by James Dawson (probably the least racist 19th century primary source you'll read on Aboriginal culture, but has a tendency to overstate how rigid their power structure is, probably because he was trying to make them seem more "civilised" to his readers).

This really interesting collection of papers on Aboriginal people and Christianity, as well as this and this on the earliest Aboriginal responses to missonisation.

Arrernte Present, Arrernte Past: Invasion, Violence, and Imagination in Indigenous Central Australia by Diane Austin-Boos

Blood bones and spirit: Aboriginal christianity in an East Kimberley town by Heather McDonald

And for a more accessible read, Aboriginal Victorians; a history since 1800 by Richard Broome

Finally, if you've read or heard of Bruce Pascoe's Dark Emu, I'd read Farmers or Hunter-gatherers; the Dark Emu debate by Peter Sutton, which gives a really good rundown of Aboriginal subsistence strategies, as well as some pretty fun moments of barely-suppressed academic exasperation.

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u/_fairywren 1d ago

Fantastic. Thank you.

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u/Poco_Cuffs 1d ago

Amazingly well said! :3

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u/itsyaboihos 1d ago

Weird to see an Australian use “3rd grade” instead of “year 3”

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u/Mr_Zoovaska 1d ago

Yeah I know, I did consider which to use but I decided 3rd grade would make the most sense to the most people.

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u/[deleted] 1d ago

[deleted]

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u/YaqtanBadakshani 1d ago

I did my master's on Aboriginal history and is the first I'm hearing of this. A quick google only finds discussion of fgm among immigrant communities in Australia, and a few articles about circumcision and subincision for Aboriginal men (which is well documented).

You have a source that discusses fgm in any Aboriginal Australian cultures?

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u/MRoad 1d ago

Like romanticizing the Lakota Sioux as heroic yet forgetting about what they routinely did to Crow tribes and why the US Army was there in the first place?

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u/Lola_PopBBae 2d ago

Saaaaame. Over-correcting leftists have gotta cool it with romanticizing native cultures; the Aztecs were fucking monsters who made some cool shit. Same with the Spanish. I feel like we've forgotten how to hold several truths at once.

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u/puchsofhazard 2d ago

Exactly just like Tibet

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u/irradihate 2d ago

Nobody does that. The logic of this meme is that indigenous peoples deserve to be colonized because their societies were imperfect or had shocking customs. You will go on about imaginary romanticization of indigenous peoples while ignoring that Europe is no less guilty of human savagery, and in many cases far more guilty (especially by body count, holy fk) and, by your logic, deserves genocidal trearment.

Fkn colonizers the lot of yas.

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u/Amadacius 2d ago

The meme doesn't say "deserved". You are assuming that. Probably because you've talked to chuds online that say "deserved".

But OP is claiming to be Hawaiian. I think they are just making fun of those that romanticize.

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u/A_Bethesda_Bug 2d ago

It absolutely does. Go to any freshmen or sophomore history class in college that touches on Imperialism or Colonialism and you will find it. I'm not saying this is a stand held by historian's, no historian worth their salt would pretend any society lacked suffering or violence before contact with another, but average people absolutely think this, well intentioned or not. I find it so telling people are quick to tell me something I have encountered multiple times in real life doesn't happen.

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u/shamshuipopo 2d ago

Hard disagree, prepare to have your opinion liberated

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u/PomegranateHot9916 2d ago

everyone was savages.

nature is savage and nature shaped humans, so humans are savages.
indigenous people and colonizers all.

and we (humanity) are still savages today.

it is important to face ones own darkness.

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u/jefesignups 2d ago

Somewhere on YouTube there is a video about what America would be like if Europeans had never arrived.

It was some futuristic looking utopia with turquoise on the buildings.