An appropriate response would be that Native Americans are still being oppressed, marginalized, having agreements violated, to this day, that they’re rightly due actual reparations and land back on that basis, but that the statute of limitations for these kind of claims, if you’re trying to devise some kind of universal ethical system to deal with them, may extend 100, 200, 300 years, for various types of claims, but not 2,000. And the population dynamics and methods of displacement and so on are not the same at all either, which have critical implications on who they would expect reparations from. The Palestinian people did not displace the ancient Jewish population - genetically it’s been shown that they’re the descendants of that population, religious identity notwithstanding. The Romans and other groups instigated that displacement. The Jewish groups in the diaspora are not solely descendants of that population either, they’ve intermingled with other populations, such as in Eastern Europe. Native Americans on the other hand have a direct claim against the people still occupying the land they inhabited, and I’d say have remained a more distinct group today, if you want to deal with the question of ethnic homogeneity (which is of questionable importance in the first place).
Picture some scenario where you were going to have some kind of hypothetical international lawsuit, assuming all things were on the table in terms of what you could dedicate for reparations, and that you’re just slapping reparations onto different ethnic groups for their historic grievances. Who would the Jewish people as a whole be looking for reparations from first? The Post-WWII migration was spurred by Nazi Germany. They were alienated of their property in Europe. Germany pays some marginal form of reparations today, but for some reason the question of their compensation has been answered by depriving a completely unrelated people of their rights. What cause of action do the Jewish people have against Palestinians? None. The Palestinians today have a cause of actions against the subset of Jewish people who participated in their ethnic cleansing and genocide. The situation is not comparable to that of European settlers vs. Native Americans at all, unless you invert it to say, the Native Americans have a cause of action against European settlers for ethnic cleansing and genocide. What you are doing is inverting it into some hypothetical situation where Native Americans have performed ethnic cleansing and genocide against white people, which they have not, not in any meaningful sense. The way you have to understand these questions is that one group has been put into a lesser position of wealth and privilege than another, and that attempts to deal out justice would have to resolve that imbalance, but only to the extent that it’s reasonable and just.
What reparations are owed to the Indigenous people of the Vietnamese highlands, perpetrated against them for centuries against the other Indigenous people of the Vietnam lowlands?
I suspect you have better answers to that question than I do. Though the more pertinent question would probably be the reparations they’re owed from the genocide perpetrated against them by the U.S.
An appropriate response would be that Native Americans are still being oppressed, marginalized, having agreements violated, to this day, that they’re rightly due actual reparations and land back on that basis, but that the statute of limitations for these kind of claims, if you’re trying to devise some kind of universal ethical system to deal with them, may extend 100, 200, 300 years, for various types of claims, but not 2,000. And the population dynamics and methods of displacement and so on are not the same at all either, which have critical implications on who they would expect reparations from. The Palestinian people did not displace the ancient Jewish population - genetically it’s been shown that they’re the descendants of that population, religious identity notwithstanding. The Romans and other groups instigated that displacement. The Jewish groups in the diaspora are not solely descendants of that population either, they’ve intermingled with other populations, such as in Eastern Europe. Native Americans on the other hand have a direct claim against the people still occupying the land they inhabited, and I’d say have remained a more distinct group today, if you want to deal with the question of ethnic homogeneity (which is of questionable importance in the first place).
Picture some scenario where you were going to have some kind of hypothetical international lawsuit, assuming all things were on the table in terms of what you could dedicate for reparations, and that you’re just slapping reparations onto different ethnic groups for their historic grievances. Who would the Jewish people as a whole be looking for reparations from first? The Post-WWII migration was spurred by Nazi Germany. They were alienated of their property in Europe. Germany pays some marginal form of reparations today, but for some reason the question of their compensation has been answered by depriving a completely unrelated people of their rights. What cause of action do the Jewish people have against Palestinians? None. The Palestinians today have a cause of actions against the subset of Jewish people who participated in their ethnic cleansing and genocide. The situation is not comparable to that of European settlers vs. Native Americans at all, unless you invert it to say, the Native Americans have a cause of action against European settlers for ethnic cleansing and genocide. What you are doing is inverting it into some hypothetical situation where Native Americans have performed ethnic cleansing and genocide against white people, which they have not, not in any meaningful sense. The way you have to understand these questions is that one group has been put into a lesser position of wealth and privilege than another, and that attempts to deal out justice would have to resolve that imbalance, but only to the extent that it’s reasonable and just.
What reparations are owed to the Indigenous people of the Vietnamese highlands, perpetrated against them for centuries against the other Indigenous people of the Vietnam lowlands?
I suspect you have better answers to that question than I do. Though the more pertinent question would probably be the reparations they’re owed from the genocide perpetrated against them by the U.S.