Pekka Hämäläinen (1) (1967–)

I read the first few chapters and then decided that I really don't want to hear from a white man who claims that his book "offers a broad Indigenous view of the conflict," as Hamalainen says in the introduction. Even assuming the scholarship is sound (I don't have any reason to think it isn't), people from colonizing cultures should probably refrain from speaking on behalf of those they have colonized. I wondered what Native scholars have to say about Hamalainen's work, found this: rel="nofollow" target="_top">https://www.lakotatimes.com/articles/slow-reading-finlands-version-of-lakota-his...… (plus d'informations)

Armed and Ready

History holds many subtle ironies for those of us willing to set aside our preconceptions and look at the facts for what they are.

Take the conquest of N. America by the European powers.

Before Jarod Dymond came along with his blockbuster hit "Guns, Germs, and Steel," most of us thought the Europeans came to the Americas and won over indigenous peoples with a combination of their guile and civilization over a largely empty wilderness.

Dymond said quite rightfully that the most effective tool Europeans had were their antibodies over disease that the local people didn't have. The diseases the Europeans introduced into the Americas felled the indigenous people by the millions. Small pox, yellow fever, and cholera, diseases Europeans had largely learned to live with.

Then the Europeans used their guns and steel to finish them off.

But it wasn't an empty wilderness. Even after small pox weakened the many aboriginal communities, neither guns nor the steel finished them off. In some sense, the table was frequently turned.

The conquest of N. America didn't happen quite as quickly as we are led to believe, nor is it even complete today as First Nations learn to adapt to the new social environment and rebuild their communities.

In this very educational history of the indigenous continent we are reminded that the European powers made every effort to share their technologies with indigenous people in exchange for furs. And the Indians often played the warring European powers off against each other. Quite consciously.

The European powers gave their indigenous allies guns a) because the guns yielded the highest number of furs; and b) because the guns made the indigenous peoples very useful allies in wars against their competitors.

The indigenous peoples, for their art, came to appreciate the guns. The guns gave them leverage over their competitors.

But not only guns. The European powers re-introduced the horse whom the Plains Indians put to great use.

In fact, the sharing of European technology helped indigenous people prolong their hold over the land and resources.

And the so-called "empty wilderness" was in fact peopled by empires such as what the Iroquois built in the Northeast, the Lakota in the Midwest, and the brilliant Comanche in the South and Southwest to name a few.

The means with which these communities built their communities was largely built on relationships: the bond of kin, not the bond of gold. This is one way we so grievously misunderstood the indigenous people of N. America.

It was, in fact, the practices of Eastern farmers that destroyed the land and so antagonized Indian farms. Their pigs and cows. Their fences. And their wasteful farm practices. And it was the indiscriminate logging for fuel that devastated the forests, fuel that in England was worth many fortunes.

Because land was so much cheaper than labour eastern colonists entered into the trans-Atlantic trade with a poor regard for the land. Their farm technology was backward compared to the three sisters approach used by the Indians. Squash, corn, and beans in the indigenous died was far superior to what the colonists were breeding.

When I think of the terror under which the New England colonists and later Ohio settlers lived, the power the indigenous people yielded is sobering. Yes, at first they were terrified of the knives and the tomahawks. But the guns magnified the threat.

Even without the threat posed by the imported millions of black slaves, early Americans learned to viscously hate Indians and idolize their weapons, a heritage that lingers with Americans today. Idolization of the early militias derived from the power early Americans found in taking the law into their own hands when they saw that their national government was too weak to eradicate the Indian.
If anything, it has been the indigenous appreciation of technology that made them a terrible foe and very much still in the game… (plus d'informations)