On Sun, 13 Dec 1998 tuisto at oz.net wrote:


[snip..]


> What Michael calls "the central myth of native fundamentalism" is taken
> very seriously by native Americans I know, who find attempts to tell them
> they came over the Bering land bridge offensive,

I witnessed a particularly contentitious class room debate
one day sparked by a presenation made by a young male student
who identified as Native American, and who claimed
the Land Bridge theory was "white Eurocentric racism"...but, was
not prepared to bring any level of sophistry to the argument.
As these things usually do in a case where there is little
data and lots of angst, it went nowhere and left the Native
kids and the nonNative kids perplexed and in some cases, angry
and upset.

Puzzled by this, I sought the counsel of a Makah friend who
was on our teaching team at the time and asked him what the
heck was going on here. He patiently explained to me that
it's politically inexpedient for "Native" peoples to believe
they came over the land bridge as that makes them immigrants
in this land the same as the rest of us...I asked him about
the anthropological/archeological data that might support
this theory and he said it doesn't matter...it will always
be dismissed as speculation because the politics of First
People require that they believe they were here first and
from the very beginning...

the young man who began that argument also postulated
that not only were "Native" peoples here first, but they
peopled the rest of the world as well..i.e., THEY went
over the land brdige headed in the opposite direction..

and so it goes.


Tom