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MarsTheGodofWar  ·  4214 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: European History Told As Many Narrate Native American History

I'm white, my step-father is a very prominent native American speaker and activist. He's always had it ingrained in his head that Europeans were dirty medieval war mongerers and that Britain was this black, desolate industrial-revolution like place, and that his people suffered a unique and savage injustice when conquered.

Last summer he went to England (hesitantly) for the first time and visited the British museum. Driving through the british countryside and seeing how beautiful it was completely surprised him. Seeing how much nature and farmland there was did too. It was also the first time he learnt about British culture. Learning that the British had also been conquered by the Romans, then the Saxons, then the Normans, then were attempted to be invaded again by Spain, France, and Germany. Was a blow to his beliefs that what happened to the Native Americans was some sort of bizarre event. Everyone's been conquered many times over.

I actually liked this, because it puts in perspective that the Europeans were just like the North American Native Americans before mass agriculture and metal works and animal domestication came into play, and not some sort of savage alien race. As it often feels is implied by people from the left.