anti american sentiments

[jerseydevil]

Originally posted by Draken

The New World empires were different - they were about acquisition and settlement. True enough, Britain, France and Spain started this trend in North America, but it accelerated AFTER the formation of the USA as a separate nation.

Yes, the Europeans left a mess in Africa and the Middle East when they dismantled their empires. The New World empires were never dismantled though - sure they called themselves republics and broke ties with Europe, but I'm not sure how much solace that was to the indigenous populations. Certainly the USA is a multicultural society - of peoples originating in the Old World. Not very many indigenous Americans though, are there?

So while European involvement DID cause many of the problems in the developing world...at least when they left the indigenous peoples were still there to HAVE problems!

Acquisiton of land occurred again - long before the US was a country. True - one of the reasons why the US signed the Declaration of Independence was becuase England was preventing American's from expanding westward. But America always intended to expand to the Pacific Ocean. Many of the original colonies actually had their western border stated as extending to the Pacific Ocean even though they had no idea where that was (New York, Pennsylvania, the Carolinas) That's why on many of the colonial maps - their western borders do not exist. After we expanded westward - we stopped. Alaska was bought from Russia. But we didn't use any of our land aquisitions as a prison island like Australia was used as. Have you looked at the devastation that England caused to the native population there and Australia is still part of the UK? Another country that makes up part of the UK is Canada and they expanded westward - just like the US. If you're saying that the United States took over more land in it's history than England did or any of the other colonial powers - then that is an ignorant statement.

You are wrong in the number of Indians that live here - and since I have a friend who is 100% Mohawk anf I go up to Six Nation Indian Reserve a lot and she comes down here - I think I know a bit more about the Indian people than you do and what the majority of their true feelings are.

Most Indians were killled by colonialists through the spread of foreign deseases, such as smallpox that they had no defense against. Yes the trail of tears, etc was wrong during the 1800's. I never denied that we hadn't made mistakes in our past. But I don't know why you think that the Indians were wiped out.

New Jersey had actually bought ALL of it's land from the Indians - it was one of the requirements in our charter - that all land must be purchased fairly from the Indians. The Lenapes moved westward and now I think most of them live in Montana or Arizona. But contrary to your feelings there are a lot of Indians still around and my best friend is Indian and lives on Six Nation Indian Reserve in Canada. Her grandfather was also the first elected chief of Six Nations too. Her mother lives in Buffalo. I also have friends that are part Indian too.

Indians are spread all over this country. The Chinook Indians in Oregon and Washington, The Cree, the Mohawks all still exist here throughout the US. Some live on the Indian Reserves - a lot live within the the "general" population of America. Many have married into other ethnicities - just like much of America has. Just because their blood line may be watered down - they're still part Indian.

Also - of course their percentage is small - currently there are 31 million Americans living here that weren't even born in the United States. They immigrated here from around the world - just like most of the American population. And only a small percentage comes from Europe now.