"Lewis and Clark were military officers serving American empire and manifest destiny and they were the vanguard of American policies that ultimately robbed the indigenous peoples of nearly everything they possessed."

That is among the longest and most stupid sentences that I have ever read.

It's funny, I have always heard that the Indians had the "enlightened" belief that no one could own Mother Earth, therefore what possible property and commercial rights is the author claiming? Nor was I aware that Jefferson had a plan to exterminate the Indian tribes.

Jefferson didn't have an explicit plan to that effect, nor other white europeans, but if he had given it some thought that is probably the conclusion he would have come to.

But don't worry pro-immigrationist are quickly proceeding to undo all the hard work early Americans spent exterminating Indians, since it is their plan to allow Indians to return via Mexico. You could call it the New Montezuma's Revenge.

Orrin/jd:

You are close. The argument is that, because the aboriginals did not "believe" in nasty old individual property rights, they owned everything and still do. It kind of like my saying that, because I don't believe in marriage, everybody elses wife is just as much mine as theirs.

I will go to my grave uncertain as to whether aboriginal peoples exist to shame us for our excesses or to warn us of our fate if we don't stay the course.

Karl--

Isn't that statement so self-evidently true as to be trivial?

Of course you could also look at this from the point of view that even after 25,000 years the indigenous people of North America were still in the Stone Age, and Europeans, being pre-Industrial Age people, would be able to take whatever they wanted from the less advanced. This is the way of the world throughout all of history. This is just the way it is.

ADDENDA: Why don't the Celtic peoples lay claim to their right for the lands in Western and Central Europe? They were there first you know. And while we're at it, the Boers in South Africa settled an area only used for hunting by native tribes in Africa. It was after a civilization was set up that the African tribes moved in.

"Robert J. Miller is associate professor of Lewis & Clark Law School in Portland."

What do you suppose this means, if anything?

Can the Hopi get their land back from teh Navajo

What about the pygmies from the Bantu

Uncle:

He didn't get tenure?

If it wasn't Lewis and Clark, it would have been somebody else in a year or decade or five decades. You can't freeze time.

Orrin's original declaration that "the property had no value and there were no rights" seems uncharacteristically absurd. While he may be correct in the limited context of the written law and opposing armies of barristers, surely he understands (1) that many precolumbiam peoples recognized territoriality at the tribal and familial levels, and (2) that both value and rights were not only implicit in this recognition, but culturally sanctioned ... often violently.

Orrin must have meant something which I have failed to grasp.

Not only that, but one of the Upper Left Washington's tribal casinos-- the Tulalip, has just had to lay off over 200 workers due to a lack of suckers and chumps (or more likely,a saturated market). Another example of the whiteman not giving the Noble Native American his due.

Raoul -

Tobacco, cocaine and gambing are the Indians' revenge. Morality play as jiu jitsu.