Was it morally justified to colonise America?

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tuffsmurf said:
Today there are som 70 million native americans in North and South America combined
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And most likely there are FAR more than that. There are MANY people who have native American blood who (1) don’t know it or (2) don’t “claim it” on the census because while they know they have native blood, they know nothing about the native culture.

I’m one of those who don’t claim my native ancestry. I am fairly certain that I have Taino Indian blood, but I have no idea what percentage of my Mother’s blood is Taino. I’ve considered taking a 23andMe and/or Ancestry DNA test, but I’m not even sure if those tests can distinguish between Taino blood and other natives of the old Spanish Empire.

Regardless, I don’t claim it because I know nothing about the culture. I also don’t claim to be hispanic, even though my mother grew up in Puerto Rico and all her ancestors were Puerto Rican going pretty far back. I don’t claim to be Hispanic because my mother never taught me to speak Spanish. So how can I call myself (straight faced) a Hispanic when I can’t speak Spanish? I also, ever grew up with any Puerto Rican festivals, etc. The only Puerto Rican culture I was exposed to as a child was a love for the Catholic Church, a love of the Blessed Mother, & SOME Puerto Rican food.
 
It’s not just that the Indians didn’t play nice (they didn’t) but it’s more complex than that IMHO. It comes down IMHO to a distinct aspect of Christian culture, namely, forgiveness, not present in other cultures.

The North American Indians had no concept of that. But neither did the Aztecs or for that matter other non-Christian cultures which came into contact with Christian cultures and which were ultimately overshadowed by them.

The same is true even in recent history, i.e. Japan in WWII had no concept of forgiveness toward its enemies.

Some might see the hand of God in that - i.e. Christians who are taught to forgive eventually “defeat” those who lack forgiveness.
 
AlNg said:
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phil19034:
I don’t claim to be Hispanic because my mother never taught me to speak Spanish. So how can I call myself (straight faced) a Hispanic when I can’t speak Spanish?
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¿No habla español pero lo entiende?
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No, not really. Puerto Ricans (or at least the ones in my mom’s family) speak way to fast for me to understand. Puerto Ricans also have a different accent than my Spanish teachers had.

I barely remember much from Spanish III in high school and Spanish 1, 2 in college.

So, no, I really don’t understand much.

But I can read it thanks to Google Translate. 😉

Additionally (the thing that always ticks me off) is that no one will ever translate for me their conversations. So I can sit there for an hour + without anyone repeating what was said in English. I kept telling my mom for years, if she would repeat what was said in English, it would help me to understand what they were saying and eventually learn. But nope. 43 years later and they still will never translate for me.

They all keep saying to me “you need to learn Spanish.”
And, I’m always thinking, “well, none of you are ever willing to help me learn. There is only so much I can learn from products like Rosetta Stone.”

:roll_eyes:
 
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Can you try taping a conversation (with their permission) and later on replay try to understand it?
 
This is an irrelevant question because it happened long, long ago.

Like other long past injustices, how am I, living in the 21st Century, rationally responsible for the actions of humans I am not in league with and to whom I am not even genetically related? Am I also responsible for some social injustice that occurred when the Great Wall of China was being constructed IN CHINA?

Your question originates with the wrongheaded, fuzzy, collective moral guilt over the long, long past being taught in universities (now called “higher education”). You are being trained to feel CURRENTLY GUILTY over something that happened hundreds of years ago. This is done so that you can be manipulated politically in the present.

As a Catholic, I have free will and am fully responsible for my own actions. You are learning irrational shame about America from people who TODAY hate our republic and want to destroy it TODAY. They may not be Catholic, and they may not even believe in your God or any god except themselves. Always ask yourself: "Whose opinion is it, anyway?" This is vital to developing your own critical thinking skills.

Your mistake is to watch television shows that claim to inform you objectively. There is no such thing as OBJECTIVE HISTORY. History always is seen from a current perspective. You live TODAY. You can’t see back to Pocahontas and draw clear conclusions of your own. You are watching PROPAGANDA which has a current political agenda.

Exactly WHERE is your country (currently, where you live) “devastated by English imperialism and colonialism?” This sounds like BRAINWASHING or INDOCTRINATION.

The European colonists wrote the best governmental design the world has ever seen (not perfect, but the best for this fallen world). That government is incredibly liberal, compared to what the aristocrats of Europe were doing. It offers you many, many, many rights and freedoms which your enemies are eager to terminate. As a Catholic, I’d point to your FREEDOM OF RELIGION, which is nonexistent in many other countries, as is FREEDOM OF SPEECH.

Shun destructive propaganda, engage in critical thinking, and live in the present…not in somebody else’s opinions of the past.
 
This the best post I’ve seen on any subject in the last 5 years on this board. Thank you!
 
No one can deny the atrocities that were inflicted on the Natives during colonization in the Americas. But what the media has done is paint a very vague picture of events that only tells half a story.

There was plenty of brutality even within indigenous tribes that was thankfully eradicated by the Christian presence of European colonists. Before Columbus arrived in the New World, as many as 84,000 men, women, and children had been sacrificed at the re-consecration of the Great Pyramid of Tenochtitlan. Many of their pagan practices involved violence, death, and in some tribes, even cannibalism. But instead of acknowledging the faults on both sides, our media has transformed this issue into a good vs evil argument in which white Europeans are portrayed as the villains.

No one is saying that European settlers did everything perfectly. But I think what we are now doing in society - apologizing for events that took place hundreds of years ago - is detrimental. History cannot be changed or erased; in fact, it shouldn’t be. It’s there for us so that we can learn from past mistakes and hopefully never repeat them again.

That’s just my two cents. I do not see anything constructive that can come from arguing over men who died 500 years ago.
 
phil19034 said:
Additionally (the thing that always ticks me off) is that no one will ever translate for me their conversations.
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Reminds me of something. I have told this before, so bear with me if you have seen me say it. Among other things, I close loans for banks. It can get a little old sometimes when Hispanic borrowers sit there and converse among themselves in Spanish. It’s disconcerting too, because they might be telling each other things that are wrong, but if I don’t know it, I can’t correct it.

Anyway, this banker who is LCMS Lutheran and I talked about that one time, and I suggested this. I only know one thing in German. I read it in a poem. He is in a Lutheran choir that sings Christmas carols in German. I told him when the next group started that, I would turn to him and say my one sentence in German. He would respond with something out of a German carol.

That stopped the Spanish cold. I dont think people realize, a lot of the time, that it’s inconsiderate to carry on in a language that not everyone in the group understands. But that German business was a shocker.
 
I’d like to de-politicize the issue.

Settling in a new land is not a moral issue. Polynesians settled uninhabited islands stretching from New Zealand to Hawaii.

The motive is for settlement is.

After the reformation, the English encouraged Protestant Scots to settle in Ireland. The idea was to outnumber the native Irish Catholic population. Oliver Cromwell, a staunch Puritan, invaded Ireland. Cromwell may have believed he was carrying out God’s will. But his refusal to abide by the rules of war and his determination to destroy the Irish are immoral.

Interestingly, in the U.K., Cromwell is 10th most admired Briton.

The Irish see him as a genocidal monster.
 
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What you describe: people conversing in another language right in front of you - is unbelievably rude.

I know someone who was on a New York City subway when some German tourists got on and began to mock him to one another in German. After a few minutes he got up for his stop. Before he exited, he asked them in perfect German, “could you please tell me what time it is?” They all turned white and didn’t answer. As he exited he smiled and said “no? I’ll let you know when I find out” and he walked out.
 
The more people fixate on confessing and repenting the sins of people in the past - people other than themselves - the less they confess and repent their own sins. The obsession with alleged sin in the past seemed to begin in the late 1960s, the same time Confession began fading away for most people.
 
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Catholic Answers has recently produced a podcast video on the topic too:

www.catholic.com

Villain Columbus?

Is it time to give up on Columbus? In the light of modern scholarship, should we view Columbus with suspicion? Take a look at the real man...
www.catholic.com www.catholic.com
 
Unfortuantely, violence was something that occured during colonisation. That is just one side of the story. People do not truly convert through the sword. Our Lady of Guadelupe was likely responsible for the true conversions of indigenous Mexicans. I also doubt that many the thousands of Aztecs who were to be sacrificed under the Aztec Empire would have been satisfied with their religion.

The Jesuit Reductions of Paraguay are also known to be a good example of missionary activity. They provided education, health care, and also abolished the death penalty. Today, more Paraguayans speak the indigenous language of Guaraní than Spanish.
 
IYE said:
People do not truly convert through the sword. Our Lady of Guadelupe was likely responsible for the true conversions of indigenous Mexicans.
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Latin Americans remained Catholic long after those lands became independent of Spain and Portugal. In the US most Native Americans are Christian to this day.

I have seen no evidence that any significant number of them oppose the memory of Columbus today.
 
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