this post was submitted on 28 Jun 2024
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I've always thought of America as a teenager - we're sophomoric, rebellious, and self- centered. We don't have the history of most other countries. Our settlement and the beginnings of our government are really not long ago and most of us are just a few generations deep. I'm thankful for my life here and appreciate the struggles my family endured to make life better for the next generation.
Careful with the idea that you're a young country with limited history. Your indigenous peoples may view the matter (rightfully) quite differently.
In Australia we actually changed the lyrics to our national anthem a few years back. It did say "...we are young and free". Which is a bit of a 'fuck you' to the people who have lived on and cared for the land for upwards of 50,000 years. So it's now "we are one and free".
I'm not chastising you, just prompting you to think about things differently.
Not sure I share that viewpoint for the US, the history of the indigenous is the story of the people, not the nation.
And the US has many more populations that have great history, from EU and Africa.
But the beginning of its history is founded on the gathering and interaction of all those different cultures.
So for me saying the country is young doesn't quite have the same connotations of erasure from colonialist, it mostly makes me think of how current the melting pot of all those different cultures are.
I still agree we shouldn't diminish the importance of indigenous people in it.
Arguably, many people groups indigenous to what is now the US (and often times into Canada and Mexico as well) were each their own countries and sometimes joined into confederacies (for example the Iroquois Confederacy and some others). I do think indigenous voices frequently get lost (and that does need fixing), but I don't know if there's value in representing them as a single unit as though they were a single nation before. Many groups came over at different times, migrated around, etc. They're not even all in the same macro language families (and may have come from separate peopling events, but that's a whole other can of worms).
It's important to remember that what was before is not now.
Saying it's all the same is disrespectful to what was taken
You're past your teenage years; Australia and New Zealand are younger. America is more like someone in their 20s fucking up their life with party drugs. You might make it, you might not. Either way it seems right now you need a hard reset.
Yet, half the country seems to be choosing to go back to Trump. There's no cure for stupid.