im haudenosaunee
i dont know what the rest of what you are saying means
Discussion
Cool,
Sorry I'll try to explain my thoughts better.
It seemed to me that Europeans had a very hierarchal system that treated people as resources to be used to get more power. More people = a more powerful kingdom, expand the kingdom take over more land, extract all the resources from that land make more people so on. It always seemed shitty to me.
It seemed to me to live in balance with nature a people had to be aware if they where growing the population too much by having too many kids as a group. If they got too big they'd have to upset the balance by taking too much from the land.
From what I've read there was really well designed and curated food systems in place on the continent and possibly not any over hunting or destructive agricultural practices that where common place in Europe. Like The UK used to be pretty much a giant forest and that got ruined fast. No deforestation, no hunting certain species to extinction, no destroying soil to the point of famine. It makes me think a peoples with that for site and awareness might also be aware of whether or not they should be expanding their population or letting it naturally diminish based on how everything else is going.
Sorry if this doesn't make sense.
ok. i gotta drive home from the hospital & then i'll write ya back. about an hour. 💜
ok i stopped a rest.stop to answer your question cos there is a lot of traffic at the bridge & i didnt want to sit in it.
ok, so, to me, this kind of thinking is so overbroad as to be really hard to address.
'human population management' as a term strikes me as really unwell.
like the premise & the thinking is way too far out to even begin to say anything.
like, first of all, what do you mean by europeans & during what time period cos even that is so overbroad as to be really hard to address. if i had to i'd just be like: no that's wrong about europeans
reeling it all the way in to not even the haudenosaunee but specifically a single mohawk village in the 1600s.. these villages lasted in a single location for about 30 years before they depleted immediate surrounding resources & moved to another location to give that land time to rest & recover. to understand these villages in the simplest most concise terms i can manage: imagine 3 large families having a family reunion bbq permanently like that is what life is. like you just live with a whole bunch of people you are deeply related to. like every single person is your sibling or aunt or grandma or uncle. like the level of drama but also how nice it is but also deeply annoying like if anything is even slightly wrong everyone knows you so well they are like: what's wrong & you can't be like: nothing w/o them making fun of you for withholding what is clearly wrong.
if you wanna listen/watch a contemporary haud/mohawk guy cos you are interested in general, karhiio john kane is a good place to start!
Thank you! I will.
an interesting thought experiment would then be: compare & contrast how you imagine that 1600s mohawk village differs from a town in 1600s scotland up in the highlands cos werent they living with all their relatives all up in eachother's business, too?
& idk then can research that if you want
Yeah I think that would be a good idea. I sort of make the comparison but without much research with the colonial American farm family. But it would be really interesting to see what that was like.
I can see how this thinking could look overbroad and yes I should be more specific about "Europeans" I mean the Christian religion that came to dominate the land area we call Europe. For a little more context on that thinking.
The first Nations where on this continent long before and while Europe was becoming heavily Christian. It seems to me that the First Nations through their more prevalent cultural ways of thinking and practices where less destructive to their environment than the Christian Europeans to theirs. Maybe it's just that there was way more land here to spread people out. But I suspect it has more to do with different culture and religion than just space.
In terms of "human population management" I agree that can certainly sound unwell. A non gross way to say it might be. A peoples that are individually and collectively sensitive to their surroundings and caring enough to think about whether bringing another life into the fold would be a burden or a welcome addition to their immediate world. Both a burden to that new person and the environment. I think women being treated equally or far more equally and having a culture of birth control would play a large role in that.
To contrast that. I grew up homeschooled and not taught any religion. So I grew up being like "what are these different religions into?" We interacted with a lot of Christian's that where a bit extra. Like I heard parents refer to having a lot of kids as having "a full quiver". Meaning a full quiver of gods arrows. They were not violent but they where literally referring to their kids as weapons for god. Also these where very patriarchal Christians. Growing up I didn't know what that word meant so we just called them sexist. Like one time we tried out a new homeschool group where we met in a church. They separated the kids into boys and girls. My brother and I played basketball and dodgeball and shit in the gym for the 4 hour group. In the car ride back we asked our sister what she did. She said they taught the girls to fold laundry and sew and shit. As a kid I was like wow that's fucked up. We didn't go back.
Describing a Mohawk village in the 1600's sounds a bit like how a large farm family in early colonial America might be. Except they'd most likely be Christian and pumping out as many kids as possible. I'm in eastern Pennsylvania and there are lots of little clusters of stone farm houses that are like within 100 yards of each other. But they didn't move they stayed and kept degrading the land. Living in small villages and being all up in each others businesses seems like a pretty common thing of those times.
Sorry if this was too long, I'd like to be more concise but it's hard.