> With respect to what to term "european society" it is important to
> remember that when talking about early contact, we are talking about
> the Spanish, the French, the Dutch, the English, the Swedes...
>
> ...The point of my rambling is that there was NO one group on either
> side, no EUROPEAN SOCIETY (singular) and no INDIAN (singular)...
>
> Newspeak has already occurred when particulars are reduced to
> generalizations. What we need to be discussing is who's purposes
> are served by radical conflations leading to stereotyping. When we
> perpetuate the lie we are complicit.
The history of how things got to be the way they are can be looked at
with as much precision and discernment at one might care to or be able
to bring to the task. Doubtless it is possible to find considerable
variations in the policies of individual European peoples and their
governments in dealing with particular Indian nations. Still, can't
we identify some common elements which distinguish European cultures
and their way of doing things from those of the indigenous societies
of the Americas without complete loss of meaning?
As it happens, though, I'm not sure the real question we've been
debating has as much to do with early contact as it does with the
present day situation. However it came about, we have national
governments in places like Canada and the United States, and we can
identify laws and policies and programs and practices which have
certain identifiable effects upon given groups of people, which can
be talked about in statistical terms with some real meaning. For
certain purposes, getting down to particulars can just obscure the
broad patterns, I think. In common parlance, this effect is called
the error of "losing sight of the forest for all the trees."
Gary
--
Gary S. Trujillo gst@gnosys.svle.ma.us
Somerville, Massachusetts {wjh12,bu.edu,spdcc,ima,cdp}!gnosys!gst