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Last updated on June 15th, 2017 at 11:24 am
Reuters reports:
The Navajo Nation, the largest Indian reservation, has backed a bill to ban gay marriage, although the tribal president is still deciding whether to oppose the measure, his spokesman said on Monday.
George Hardeen, spokesman for Navajo Nation President Joe Shirley Jr., said the tribal council backed the measure 63-0 last week despite Shirley’s past opposition to such a ban.
Those bigoted Injuns! But it isn’t their fault, as Reuters explains:
Historians says Native Americans once tolerated gays in their community but turned against them after the European arrival to North America changed social attitudes.
- Because Europeans are gay?Posted by noir on 04/28 at 02:33 AM • permalink
- Nice to know the Navajo are so well-off now that they can deal with such important issues. I would have thought high infant mortality, poor education, high rate of alcoholism and violence, etc, might be a bigger source of concern for them.
“Screw all that. What about them homosexuals marrying!”
Poor Navajo kids. The house is burning down, and their leaders are dusting the mantlepiece.
Posted by Kyle Schuant on 04/28 at 02:34 AM • permalink
- Historians says Native Americans once tolerated gays in their community but turned against them after the European arrival to North America changed social attitudes.
Ahahahaha, that’s the worst piece of pseudo-history I’ve ever seen.
Besides, at the time of European colonisation of the Americas, Britain was ruled by James I – who was most likely batting for the other side.
(Or more likely, both sides)
Posted by Quentin George on 04/28 at 02:48 AM • permalink
- Well, nevermind if they should worry about this subject in the first place…I find it pretty interesting the their President is apparently so out of step with the rest of the reservation that he’s the only one opposing the measure. Doesn’t want to offend the local Tom Daschle-type who could cut off subsidies and disinvite him from City Hall festivities, I suppose?
- Quentin, James I died in 1625. The first recorded cricket match was in 1646. How could he bat for both sides?
Joe Vialls has assured me that his “official” death date is mere government coverup, and that James played in the first cricket match incognito.Take that!
Posted by Quentin George on 04/28 at 03:50 AM • permalink
- Historians says Native Americans once tolerated gays in their community but turned against them after the European arrival to North America changed social attitudes.
Are these ‘historians’ from the same stable as the ones who fabricated Aboriginal history?
Posted by DropDeadUgly on 04/28 at 03:50 AM • permalink
Nice to know the Navajo are so well-off now that they can deal with such important issues. I would have thought high infant mortality, poor education, high rate of alcoholism and violence, etc, might be a bigger source of concern for them.
Gosh, Kyle, are you seeing your dreams of moving in with some handsome Native American crashing and burning? And your comment displays the usual patronizing ignorance concerning American Indians that white people have. While they have a lot of problems with alcoholism, poverty, and so on, just like all the other Indian tribes in North America, the Navajo are among the more successful of the tribes. Here’s a brief history.
In any case, perhaps it’s a waste of time for them or anyone else to be paying attention to the silly gay marriage kerfuffle, but that’s none of anyone’s business but their own. It’s just another indication of what Concerned Lefties can’t seem to grasp: that their beloved “freethinking” brown people oppressed by the White Man’s soul-crushing conservatism are actually much more conservative than Europeans and European-descended Americans, Australians, and so on, despite the outright lie that Reuters printed.
Posted by Andrea Harris, Administrator on 04/28 at 07:13 AM • permalink
- Re #11
Craig, indigenous means someone living in the country they were born.
So if you were born in Oz, you automatically become indigenous.
But indigenous is also used as a simile for Aboriginal by the illeducated lefties, so my totally Caucasian sibling born here, also becomes Aboriginal ?
Think there is some very confused logic in defining who is native or not.
- That’s a bit harsh, Andrea. All I said was, I reckon they might have better things to worry about. But, you know, this is what governments can be like. While the Prussians were shelling Paris in 1871, the Communard debated religion in schools; while the Russians were pounding their way into Germany in February 1945, Hitler and Goebbels discussed income tax reform. Saddam was also looking into income tax reform as the allied armies were entering the outskirts of Baghdad.
Those are extreme examples, but they demonstrate the point – governments often find it hard to focus on the important stuff. (Democratic governments (like the Navajo) do this, too; I just don’t mention their examples because the dictators’ examples are clearer:))
[AH]In any case, perhaps it’s a waste of time for them or anyone else to be paying attention to the silly gay marriage kerfuffle, but that’s none of anyone’s business but their own.
That’s true, it’s their own business. But hey, the story was posted here for us to discuss, so we’re discussing it, yeah? I’m not saying I’m hiring a band of mercenaries to run off and stage a coup d’etat in the Navajo Nation. I’m just discussing it. They can do what they want, I’ve neither the power, nor the wish, to stop them. I’m just saying, it seems a bit daft.
[AH]It’s just another indication of what Concerned Lefties can’t seem to grasp: that their beloved “freethinking�? brown people oppressed by the White Man’s soul-crushing conservatism are actually much more conservative than Europeans and European-descended Americans, Australians, and so on, despite the outright lie that Reuters printed.
I’m well aware of the consveratism, racism and sexism of native people across the world. I still remember with amusement a blonde-haired, blue-eyed “koori” at university telling me that before the white man came, “kooris had no rape, or violence against women.” That was Evil White Man Stuff. Presumably some of the mission schools gave the blackfellah blokes lessons in raping and beating their women.
And Reuters didn’t print a lie. Many historians do say that Europeans made natives all nasty to each-other, and before Europeans came it was a paradise; many historians are stupid. Reuters was just paraphrasing others; it’s just a pity they chose to paraphrase idiots.
Posted by Kyle Schuant on 04/28 at 08:03 AM • permalink
- I’m a historian by the way, I played both Age of Empires 1 and 2 through to the end. Not an expert though, as I never picked up the expansion pack for AoE2.Posted by Aging Gamer on 04/28 at 08:51 AM • permalink
And Reuters didn’t print a lie.
Er. Yes they did. You just said they did, when you next wrote “Many historians do say that Europeans made natives all nasty to each-other, and before Europeans came it was a paradise; many historians are stupid.” Repeating someone else’s lies is lying.
Posted by Andrea Harris, Administrator on 04/28 at 08:55 AM • permalink
- PS: the pretty word “paraphrase” doesn’t absolve people of lying either. I could “paraphrase” someone else’s notion that the moon is made of green cheese; does that mean I’m not saying something that is untrue?Posted by Andrea Harris, Administrator on 04/28 at 08:57 AM • permalink
- everyone know’s it Bleu cheese.Posted by Mr. Bingley on 04/28 at 09:03 AM • permalink
- and i have no idea why the hell i used a “‘“ in knows.
damn fingers.
Posted by Mr. Bingley on 04/28 at 09:04 AM • permalink
- “Native American” makes even less sense when you consider the name has its roots in the Italian cartographer’s name Amerigo Vespucci.
So “America” couldn’t have been what the natives were calling this land in 1492.
Unless their wondrous natural talents also included prophecy.
Posted by Rittenhouse on 04/28 at 09:25 AM • permalink
- Indians who assimilate do fine. The noble residents of the reservations tend to be the losers, turned into comedy by being resentful as well. Often there is an Indian leader who serves as a buffoon for the media, and everybody pretends he’s important.
If they’d sell off the reservations and distribute the proceeds, they’d be the wealthiest Americans alive. But then the Indian leaders don’t have their exaulted status any longer. They’re just be Americans.
The assimilated Indians more or less decided not to play this game.
There used to be solemn Indian ceremonies in the Boy Scouts, where boys learned that grownups are essentially crazy people
- The Native Americans used to tolerate nancy boys just fine, as they walked around crying over litter, telling each other to call it “maize” and chanting about “Mazola corn-goodness” (except in the Land ‘o’ Lakes). Lisping Castilian Eurotrash nancy boys with muskets were another matter…Posted by richard mcenroe on 04/28 at 10:21 AM • permalink
Nice to know the Navajo are so well-off now that they can deal with such important issues.
Oh, thank God a Principled White Man came by to tell the poor, befuddled Brown Folk what they should be thinking…
I would have thought high infant mortality, poor education, high rate of alcoholism and violence, etc, might be a bigger source of concern for them.
Hey, if it doesn’t bother the English, the French or the Californians, why should the Navajo be any different? Or can we demand they send a relief mission to Maquarie Fields?
Posted by richard mcenroe on 04/28 at 10:55 AM • permalink
- Strictly speaking, there are no “native Americans.” Those we think of as American Indians would be better classified as Siberian Americans. Except for the early inhabitants of the Olduvai Gorge, everyone else on the planet is an immigrant or the descendant of immigrants.Posted by Bruce Lagasse on 04/28 at 01:31 PM • permalink
- Here’s what Dictionary.com says about aboriginal… Having existed in a region from the beginning… but they don’t define what they mean by the “beginning.”
Merriam-Webster Online does one better … being the first or earliest known of its kind present in a region. Although they don’t define who does the knowing.
What both definitions imply and what aborigines and American indians complain about, rightly I think, is that when western civilization took note of them is when they began to officially exist.
- Ahahahaha, that’s the worst piece of pseudo-history I’ve ever seen.
You clearly haven’t had the misfortune to read Black, Red, & Deadly. Goddess help me, I paid good money for that book. It’s now propping up a wobbly table, so it wasn’t a complete waste.
- Well, that explains all the feathers.Posted by tachyonshuggy on 04/28 at 03:35 PM • permalink
- And of course, they treat “Native Americans” as one single culture.
For Chrissake, there are twenty different tribes in my state alone, and they are ALL DIFFERENT. They had wars over major cultural differences from time to time. (As opposed to the run of the mill wars over territory.) Some tribes treated homosexuality as normal Way Back When. Some would have nailed you to a tree if they’d caught you at it.
- I live in the ancestral homelands of the Iroquois Confederacy and if any of these guys were gay, they were absolutely dead butch about it. The societies were/are matrilineal but they are not “mama’s boys” by any stretch.
The Iroquois Nations could and still can teach any Spaniard a thing or two about machismo.
The French & British were in awe of them. If it hadn’t been for gunpowder, disease, and whiskey; the Euros would’ve been stopped cold.
I’ve never heard of a ‘gay culture’ among them but who knows? I sure wouldn’t have the balls to ask them.
- “Native American�? makes even less sense when you consider the name has its roots in the Italian cartographer’s name Amerigo Vespucci.
I believe they’re now referred to as “native injun”.
Posted by wronwright on 04/28 at 09:56 PM • permalink
