Talk:Indigenous peoples of the Americas/Archive 1

terminology

see Talk:Native Americans#Indigenous peoples of the Americas for a discussion of terminology. – ishwar  (speak) 18:26, 2005 August 8 (UTC)

Gongrasuloson!!!

Page moving and disambiguation

Please lend a hand with the disambiguation effort, as described on Talk:Native Americans. À propos page moves, shouldn't this page be at Indigenous peoples of the Americas? –Hajor 22:45, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for being bold with the move, Nat. –Hajor 12:19, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

I need help with

Native American cuisine, which I will link to from here when it is ready --Rakista 12:22, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

South American culture areas

hi. does anyone know what is the received list of culture areas in South America (assuming there is one)? I know there is that multivolume handbook from the 1950s (which I havent looked at), but I was wondering if anyone had read anything more recent. The only thing I have looked up so far is the 12 "geolinguistic regions" of Terrence Kaufman (1990, 1994), which he says are based on genetic linguistic, typological linguistic, cultural, and geographical features. I am using Kaufman's list in Category:Indigenous languages of the Americas (which you can see there). Any other competing culture area lists?

(by the way, little has been mentioned of culture areas in North America. Mesoamerica does have related articles.). peace – ishwar  (speak) 21:49, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

Curtis Photo

I was just wondering whether the photo of "A Hupa Indian, 1923" is really the best photo to use, considering that Curtis posed and dressed up Native Americans in the early 1900's, after they had already been exposed to the modernized style of living. -- MacAddct1984 06:11, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

Theory Disputations

I have added the content dealing with The Intelligent Direction Theory. I feel that it is NOT biased and should be left alone. If you feel it is biased please be a professional and speak with me about it. Jeremp 16:25, 2006 May 25 (207.239.160.135)

Whether it is biased or not does not matter. It is not the right subject matter for this article. Read the below discussion related to the House of Israel theory. The community agrees this is not the place for migration ideas. Go try to put it on Models of migration to the New World if you want it on Wikipedia, or add it as a separate article. TriNotch 06:45, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

TriNotch, thank you for your professionalism, I appreciate the suggestion. Jeremp 09:22, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Statistics on indigenous populations

This section doesn't make sense. What do those three sets of numbers by each country refer to? Ideally this kind of information should be in a table if anyone can figure out what it's referring to. -- D.M. ^(talk) 00:49, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

I presume the first figure is the %age of the total population who are indigenous, the second figure the %age of the population who are mestizos ("mixed"), and the third the total of these two %ages. Agree that tabular format would be better. --cjllw | TALK 01:48, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

Now converted to table format.--cjllw | TALK 01:06, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

Adding the indian and mestizo percentages does not seem very useful, is like adding apples and oranges. In fact, the "mestizo" column is rather questionable: in some countries (like Brazil) there are many people of partial indian descent, but they are not differentiated from the main population. Even Indians who leave their villages and adopt the mainsream Brazilian way of life are no longer viewed as indians. Are there LA countries where the mestizos are still distinguished from the "pure whites"? Jorge Stolfi 02:59, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

I agree. Additionally, look at the figures for the United States and it's no wonder that the CIA World Factbook cannot even account for "mixed" Americans (Native Indian and Caucasian) who, in My opinion, number in the millions, if not tens of millions, although most of them are categorized as White and have European surnames. The unaliable fact remains that if you have an native ancestor you wouldn't exist because of them, no matter how minute the percentage (genetically speaking).--71.131.186.12 06:27, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

On the other hand, it would be nice to show the number (not percentage) of indians per country.—The preceding unsigned comment was added by Jorge Stolfi (talk • contribs) 7 February 2006.

The article already notes the 'inexactness' of the "mixed" classification. Being a mestizo does not necessarily disbar one from identifying with indigenous heritage (it's rather up to the individual concerned, and their community), which I suppose is the intention of showing the combined percentage. Living a "mainstream way of life" also does not preclude identity as indigenous, or of indigenous heritage. Figures are not given by the original source for Brazil, and some others. I am not championing the source (CIA factbook) as wholly reliable, however- given the obvious difficulties and variations in such attempts at classification, there are other equally-valid estimates around. --cjllw | TALK 03:17, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

Mississippi River states and cities

-I've made a minor change which is nevertheless important, and I'd like to explain. Here's the line that I changed: "While many indigenous peoples of the Americas retained a nomadic or semi-nomadic lifestyle through the time of European settlement of the New World, in some regions, specifically in the Mississippi River valley of the United States, in Mexico, Central America, and the Andes of South America, they built advanced civilizations with monumental architecture and large-scale organization into cities and states."

-The problem I have with this relates to the definitions of the terms "civilization," "city," and "state." While I feel the Andean, Mexican, and Central American cultures DO fit this sentence, the Mississippi River cultures may not. With the possible exception of Cahokia, none of the settlements in the greater Mississippi River valley is the same kind of complex center of human habitation that you find in Mesoamerica. The populations involved are typically a small fraction of those found in Incan or Aztec cities, for example. The major polities along the Mississippi are most likely to be chiefdoms, not states. Also the term "civilization" is considered inappropriate to many because it implies that the "non-civilized" peoples are somehow bad or unimportant.

-Anyway, I have changed it to say that state level societies with large complex urban centers developed in Mesoamerica and the Andes, while sophisticated sedentary chiefdom polities developed in many places throughout the Americas, including the rivers valleys and coastal areas of the Eastern United States (see Mississippian culture), the Northwest Coast, Hawaii, the Southwest, etc. etc. I hope no one will object. TriNotch 23:03, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

Origins

"According to current scientific knowledge, most (if not all) of those indigenous peoples descend from hunter peoples from Siberia, who probably entered North America within the last 15,000 years..."

According to a TV documentary the first people came from Europe (now France) and brought advanced flint technology 20 000 years ago. Xx236 10:13, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

I presume that documentary was referring to the hypothesis of Solutrean contact, via some Atlantic coastal route from Europe, which has been put forward by a couple of researchers. However, with the only evidence for this being an alleged resemblance of stone tool manufacture techniques between the Solutrean and Clovis cultures, this idea remains highly speculative and has not attracted many adherents. The Beringia migration model, and timing of c.12500ka or perhaps earlier, remains the majority view.--cjllw | TALK 21:57, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

You are probably right, but as far as I understand the story the Beringia migration didn't use such stone tools, stone tools were found under Beringia layers and there are DNA results. My source is the BBC documentary. Xx236 17:55, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

There are at least 2 distinct scientific TV documentaries (one from (BBC (transcript) ) and a French one) about this. The DNA analysis showed that roughly 15% to 25% of the genetic background of eastern North American indigeneous tribes was common with some European ancestry dating several thousands years ago. They also mentions several archeological sites supporting the theory of early arrival of people from Europe. However, other scientists mention that those ancestors might have spread to Europe and migrated to America through Asia and that the lineage became extinct in Asia afterward [1] --Astator 20:10, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

See also this map constructed from mitomap.org data: [[2]] --Astator 02:49, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

Proposed merge with Sexual Victimization page

Someone has added a template to Indigenous peoples of the Americas proposing a merge with Sexual Victimization of Native American Women. Will the proposer please care to comment? Thanks and all the best, Jorge Stolfi 02:22, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

• Oppose Jorge Stolfi 02:22, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
• OPPOSE That's a very poorly written and hotly contested article. Merging it here serves neither article. In fact, if that article isn't cleaned up and NPOV-ized, it should probably be placed on the "articles to delete" debate page.--WilliamThweatt 02:52, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
• Oppose I can't improve on WilliamThweatt's reasoning --rogerd 02:59, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

• I proposed the merge. It needs to be deleted, but it has already survived one AfD last month. I thought that you could salvage a very small amount of it, and "edit out" the rest. Since there's a unilateral decision on not to merge, I'm done trying to take care of that Sexual Victimization article. It's just graffiti on the walls of Wikipedia now. I'm very sorry to have bothered you. Brian G. Crawford 01:22, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

Feature

This article has 2 features which are:

Article

The term Indians encompasses the inhabitants of the Americas before the arrival of the European explorers in the 15th century, as well as many present-day ethnic groups who identify themselves with those historical peoples. (The precise definition of the term is the topic of the Native American name controversy.)According to current scientific knowledge, most (if not all) of those indigenous peoples descend from hunter peoples from Siberia, who probably entered North America within the last 15,000 years and spread and diversified into hundreds of culturally distinct nations and tribes. While many of these indigenous peoples retained the nomadic or semi-nomadic lifestyle of their Siberian ancestors until modern times, in some regions they created large sedentary chiefdom polities, and even advanced state level societies with monumental architecture and large-scale, organized cities.

Map

Native American Language Distribution

Culture -- Gender Roles

The second and third paragraphs here (concerning homosexuals and something referrenced as "two-spirited" persons) seems to go beyond what one would consider "common knowledge" (not to mention it was obviously inserted to advance a certain cause, however politically correct that cause may be); therefore, I beleive this either needs to have a reputable source cited or be removed. Also, if reputable reliable sources can indeed be cited, this section still needs to be cleaned up. This article is about "Indigenous peoples of the Americas" in general and I don't believe that all Nations/Tribes had similar customs in treating this topic; in fact, I believe they were quite varied.--WilliamThweatt 19:22, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

Agreed. What is the reader to make of sentences such as "Most indigenous peoples had traditional gender roles"? 'Traditional' in what sense - according to Western ideals, or their own, or...? It's a valid-enough topic to be mentioned in the article, but needs to reference the actual research done in this area, as well as recognise that the scope is all of the Americas, not just a few.--cjllw | TALK 02:27, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

Actually, why is the "Gender Roles" section there? I see ambiguous, un-cited statements, appearing to refer to a particular, unidentified North American indigenous group (possibly of one of the Plains cultures), that definitely do not apply to all the many groups included as "Indigenous Peoples of the Americas." Could we take it out until the author provides some citation material from which we could mold a more scholarly article? DevinMcGevin 05:52, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

Alright, I finally took out the section on Gender Roles for the above reasons. In fact, I think that for an article on a topic as broad as "Indigenous Peoples of the Americas," a culture section should really only brief the generic subsistence/culture patterns that are applied to various geographic regions. For example, Eastern Seaboard/Woodlands, Southeast, Plains, Southwest, Pacific Northwest, Arctic, North Central American, Andean, and so on. Making claims about specific practices, including gender roles, labor divisions, clothing, tools, etc. (for example, I believe only a few indigenous groups carried their infants in backboards) belongs in articles solely dedicated to those cultures/tribes/First Nations. Thanks! DevinMcGevin 03:06, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

House of Israel Theory

Sorry to get you all so upset. I am BGrama and I am new as a contributor to Wikipedia. I hope I'm doing this talk thing right.

About the problem of the copy I submitted about the House of Israel Theory: If I'm not misinformed, Wikipedia is about ideas and information that may not necessarily match our current understanding. Quoting http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:What_Wikipedia_is_not#Wikipedia_is_not_censored, "Wikipedia may contain content that some readers consider objectionable or offensive."

In that spirit, I did not edit out the information others put on the "Indigenous Peoples Of The Americas" page out of respect for previous contributors opinions, current understanding, religion and social philosophy. I hope for the same courtesy from others.

I ask all of you to keep in mind differing points of view especially when influenced by ones own religious beliefs tend to cloud objectivity. This goes for all of us, so let’s be careful that we don’t overreact to something we may consider impossible given our own views. In the end, it is the reader that should make a decision about what he thinks is correct. All web sites are about the end-user. You and I serve him, not ourselves. According to the Wikipedia guidelines, as long as the copy is written from an objective viewpoint and is on topic it is appropriate for the page. This allows the search engines such as Google and Yahoo to find information on which the end-user has searched.

For that reason, I put the information about the House of Israel Theory on the page about the indigeunous people of America. My copy was topical and presented from an objective point of view. It is supported by as much science as any of the other theories represented. That it is believed to be true by millions of people world-wide is sufficient reason to leave the copy alone and let the reader decide. To do otherwise is a form of bigotry and mind-control.

The fact is, all the content on the page in question is labeled "Theory". All theories begin with a hope and faith that they might be true. After that, the person or people who believe it might be true look for ways that it could be true. That is the very essence of a theory.

Let us be calm about this and realize none of the content on the page comes with absolute certainty. None of the theories represented are proved by science. Were they proven by science, they would be facts and would be presented as facts. For this reason, all of the theories in question represent the “beliefs” of the contributors. As for the statement, “it is the belief of a religious group” I see William from your profile that you are a Baptist. Can you honestly say you did not remove the House of Israel theory because of your beliefs, not mine?

I am a web master by trade. Content on a web site should match the title of the page so that the people searching for that information can find it easily. All the content on the "Indigenous Peoples of the Americas” including the House of Israel theory is appropriate. If it will make you all feel better, I can place this information in a less conspicuous part of the page next time I get around to an edit.

Thanks for your future tolerance. BGrama.

BGrama, it is a pleasure to meet you. Let me be the first to welcome you to Wikipedia. I look forward to the contributions you intend to provide. You attempted to make so many points above, I'm not sure where to start.

First let me begin with what I (hopefully mis-) interpret as a personal attack concerning my objectivity. In the interest of intellectual honesty, I am open about all my biases if for no other reason than to keep myself accountable when editing. You are correct in assuming that I am a Baptist (more precisely, a Free Will Baptist). However, you are way off base in insinuating that had anything to do with my edits. In fact, were you not a new user, I would demand an apology for such an attack. I gave my reason for the edit in the talk page. (Others, by the way, have agreed and also removed your insertions).

You also mentioned something about censorship. This has nothing to do with censorship. It is the goal of Wikipedia to produce articles in an encyclopaedic style. It is the goal of (most) editors to produce the best articles possible. We have accepted policies, guidelines and conventions for doing so. Nobody has attacked your beliefs nor said that you can't write about them here on WP ("censorship"). We have merely suggested that this article is not the place to include what you wrote (which you will find is a common occurance in almost every article's talk page).

In keeping with encyclopaedic principles, we try to differentiate between scientific endeavors and religion/myth etc. For example on the Dinosaur page, we discuss scientific (archaeology, biology, etc) aspects of dinosaurs, while the views of religious groups concerning dinosaurs are at Religious perspectives on dinosaurs. Nor do we say, for example in the Linguistics article that "Christians believe the whole world spoke one language until God confused their tongues at the Tower of Babel", but we do have an article called Tower of Babel to cover this belief. As Luigizanasi states below, this particular article is not the place for creation myths or beliefs, otherwise, we would end up with a rather unwieldy article listing every belief under the sun as each tribe or nation has their own belief concerning their respective beginnings.

As for your assertion that this is a legitimate scientific Theory, you won't get very far with that argument. In scientific usage, a theory does not mean an unsubstantiated guess or hunch, as it often does in other contexts. A theory is a logically self-consistent model or framework for describing the behavior of a related set of natural or social phenomena, which originates from and/or is supported by experimental evidence (see scientific method). In this sense, a theory is a systematic and formalized expression of all previous observations made that is predictive, logical and testable. Your belief (while completely valid as a belief) fits none of these descriptions of "theory".

That is not to suggest that your input is not appreciated or valid. On the contrary, I strongly believe that the fact that millions of LDS members believe this warrants its inclusion in an article (the proper article, though). We have scores of articles on LDS organizations and beliefs, written and maintained by LDS members and leaders. I would suggest to you that if your content is not already covered there, that you address in one of those articles, or, better yet, start a "House of Israel" article. See Help:Starting a new page for info on how to do that. I would also suggest you familiarize yourself with this page as well before doing so.--WilliamThweatt 15:33, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

Does this section really belong in this article? I reverted once and it was put back in a modified form. I don't have time to address this thoroughly now, but I have deleted all the Mormon apologetics, changed "theory" to belief (this is not an accepted scientific "theory" it is the belief of a religious group) and place tags regarding formatting of citations and links.--WilliamThweatt 14:58, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

I think this section (House of Israel) belongs in a different article; perhaps an LDS article. Actually, almost all of the sections on migrations to the New World probably don't belong in this article at all, they belong in Models of migration to the New World. I would suggest removing all of it. TriNotch 16:25, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

Luigizanasi, we seem to agree- why did you remove my comment? (I have replaced it). TriNotch 02:20, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

Huh? I never realized I did it, but the edit history does not lie. My complete and unreserved apologies for inadvertently removing your comments; please be assured that I would never do that deliberately. I have no idea how it happened. Luigizanasi 04:21, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

It does not belong here. If we are to have beliefs/myths about origins, we should have those of different indigenous peoples, not those of a minor US protestant sect. And it should be in a different section. Luigizanasi 16:34, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

Hello William

Nice try at covering your religious bias. I quote you, "I have deleted all the Mormon apologetics, changed "theory" to belief." Your phrase Mormon apologetics is condescending. No more need be said about that.

I have already explained why all theory scientific or otherwise is based on belief.

Sorry, you are mistaken. Please read this page. Thank you very much for your time (I estimate a quarter of an hour or so).

In case anyone cares, I agree that the House of Israel concept belongs into Wikipedia, even though it does not belong into this article. Or wait... maybe it does belong here. Despite its purely religious origins, it is science – it is testable, for example by studying the DNA of Native Americans, and it has been tested. It has been disproven, IMHO...

That's right, science is incapable of proving anything, but nevertheless it can disprove.

David Marjanović | david.marjanovic_at_gmx.at | 00:50 CEST | 2006/4/27

I do not appreciate your substituting belief for theory as your means of deleting, not moving the content I submitted. As a matter of fact, I think it is against Wikipedia policy? As for scientic theory, as it happens, my brother is a physicist that works for Northrup Grumman. He is a team leader which developed a guidance system used by NASA and the defense department. The product he helped design started with an idea, a belief that might be true. With scientific testing the team he now leads determined their beliefs or theories were true. They created a product that was based on those beliefs or theories. I do not appreciate your patronizing me about this issue of belief vs theory in an effort to promote only the theory of migration that you deem worthy. This is not your personal blog or web page. It is an encylopedia. "Wikipedia is first and foremost an online encyclopedia, and as a means to that end, an online community. Please avoid the temptation to use Wikipedia for other purposes, or to treat it as something it is not." "An encyclopedia or encyclopaedia, also (rarely) encyclopædia,[1] is a written compendium of knowledge. A compendium is a concise yet comprehensive compilation of a body of knowledge." (See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encyclopedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compendium http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:What_Wikipedia_is_not#Wikipedia_is_not_censored )

I admit being a little put out by your insensitivity and am sorry if my tone is curt. It would help if you would reintroduce the copy you deleted and then make a notation that the information in that section is disputed.

I do agree with TriNotch. All the information on migration, including mine is probably best suited for Models of migration to the New World. I only placed my copy on the page Indigenous peoples of the Americas because that was the place I found the other information about migration to America.

FYI, I did not look for a place to promote LDS beliefs. I was researching the origins of Indigenous People of America after hearing comments made by Latino demonstrators using those terms. I did a Google search and found your article. When I saw migration theories, I fully expected to find the "House of Israel Theory" among them because although dislputed as ALL theories are, there are many scientists and scholars that give credence to the theory. When I did not see it, I assumed the writers did not know about it.

I find your "I'm a victim" attitude to be utterly flabberghasting and I'm suprised by the vehemence of your tone. First of all the phrase "Mormon apologetics" was not meant to be condescending and I don't even understand how it could be interpreted to be so. I have also used the term "Christian apologetics" to reject other attempts at POV insertions by over-zealous Christians on other articles. It is an accurate descriptive term, not an insult.

As I stated, my problem is not with your content, it is that it doesn't belong here. And you can play with semantics and definitions all you want but it won't change the fact that your ideals are beliefs not scientific theories. The only support for these ideas is that Joseph Smith wrote them in a book 150 or so years ago (by the way, that may be blunt, but it isn't meant to be condescending either, just a blunt statement of truth).

I have never written one derogatory thing about you, your beliefs or the LDS church. In fact I have taken every opportunity to say I respect your beliefs and help point you to the proper place to add your content. I think it would make a great stand-alone article. (By the way, do you think you are the first LDS to visit WP?) Go to the talk pages of the LDS articles and chat with them for a while, maybe you won't accept my reasons or sincerity because of your bias but you might from someone of your own faith.

Again, to reitterate, here are some analogies that might be helpful in your understanding of the issue.

• On the Dinosaur page, we discuss scientific (archaeology, biology, etc) aspects of dinosaurs, while the views of religious groups concerning dinosaurs are at Religious perspectives on dinosaurs.
• In the Linguistics article we don't say that "Christians believe the whole world spoke one language until God confused their tongues at the Tower of Babel", but we do have an article called Tower of Babel to cover this belief.

Now please keep your arguments logical instead of trying to make this about bias. That doesn't help your case. Any editor here will attest to both my objectivity and that of my arguments.--WilliamThweatt 21:04, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

William,

Two things. One, I am talking ONLY about the copy on this page and not religious copy found elsewhere on Wikipedia. Please don't change the subject.

Secondly, I did not make this about bias. You did. You made it about bias when you CENSORED the copy in spite of the fact with your background you know there are there are many SCIENTISTS AND SCHOLARS who believe the House of Israel Theory is true or could be true. Because of your censorship, that is not reflected in the copy relating to theories of how Native Americans came to America. You censored the copy to control the viewers experience as it relates to theories of how Native Americans came to America. That IS biased since you know other scientists and scholars disagree with you.

Please consider the following and apply it to your past action. According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship

Censorship is the control of speech and other forms of human expression, often by (but not limited to) government intervention. The ostensible motive of censorship is often to stabilize or improve the society which the government would have control over. It is most commonly applied to acts that occur in public circumstances, and most formally involves the suppression of ideas by criminalizing or regulating expression. Furthermore, discussion of censorship often includes less formal means of controlling perceptions by excluding various ideas from mass communication. What is censored may range from specific words to entire concepts and it may be influenced by value systems.

Sanitization (removal) and whitewashing are almost interchangeable terms that refer to a PARTICULAR FORM OF CENSORSHIP VIA OMISSION, WHICH SEEKS TO "CLEAN UP" THE PORTRAYAL OF PARTICULAR ISSUES AND/OR FACTS THAT ARE ALREADY KNOWN, BUT WHICH MAY BE IN CONFLICT WITH THE POINT OF VIEW OF THE CENSOR. Some may consider extreme political correctness to be related, as a socially-imposed (rather than governmentally imposed) type of restriction, which, if taken to extremes, may qualify as self-censorship. . . Most public speech depends on an organized forum such as a court or town meeting, or on technologies such as paper, the printing press, radio, television, or the internet. In each case, only a minority of people have initially had free access to the medium of public communication. Most types of censorship do not seek to ban certain ideas "in a vacuum," but rather they restrict what may be said in a particular mediums of communication. . . . Religious censorship is the means by which any material objectionable to a certain faith is removed. This often involves a dominant religion forcing limitations on less dominant ones. Alternatively, one religion may shun the works of another when they believe the content is not appropriate for their faith.

By the way, if I am a victim as a result of your censorship, so are your ethics. If your reputation is as good as you say, admitting you are wrong once in a while will not hurt it.

Again, I must ask you to make a logical argument as to why you feel this material belongs here. Your long diatribe on censorship has added nothing to the debate. I provided you reasons as to why it doesn't (that had nothing to do your faith, by the way). You have yet to make a logical refutation of the arguments.

• On the Dinosaur page, we discuss scientific (archaeology, biology, etc) aspects of dinosaurs, while the views of religious groups concerning dinosaurs are at Religious perspectives on dinosaurs.
• In the Linguistics article we don't say that "Christians believe the whole world spoke one language until God confused their tongues at the Tower of Babel", but we do have an article called Tower of Babel to cover this belief.

Also, on Wikipedia, when you make a statement such as "there are scientists who believe...", the burden of proof is on you to provide and cite credible reference to support your supposition.--WilliamThweatt 12:40, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

Again, I feel the need to reitterate that I have not attacked you or your personal beliefs as invalid. My only argument is that the content you provided doesn't belong on this particular page. If you really knew my "background", as you put it, you might find your own accusations laughable. I actually sympathize with you as I share the same dilema. For example, as a Baptist, I am a Creationist. However, I don't go to the Evolution page and try to insert my POV (no matter how tempted I am sometimes to do so), in fact, I have restrained myself from even making a single edit to that page. I realize that Creationism is a belief based on my faith in God interpretation Bible. Even though, I would venture to say that worldwide, the number of people who believe in some form of Creationism vastly outnumbers those who believe in Evolution, it would be inappropriate to insert my beliefs there. That is why we have an article called Creationism where this is described.

Also, I would like to point out for the record that I am not the one who took out the whole of what you wrote. As I have said now numerous times, the fact that over 10 million people hold to this belief makes it more than worthy of inclusion somewhere on Wikipedia. After editing your content to remove POV and make it more neutral, I left the section in the article in the hopes that it might pique a readers interest and inspire one to do more research on the proper LDS pages. It was somebody else who removed the entire section (check the edit history). In addition, I have offered two suggestions for compromise which you have not addressed, but rather made unwarranted personal attacks. I have even more suggestions for compromise that you might find satisfactory if/when you are willing to discuss the issue logically, responsibly and scholarly instead of launching attacks, screeds and tirades.--WilliamThweatt 14:46, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

William

If I have falsely accused you, I apologize. As for the person that censored the material, they were out of line. I have no intention of tracking them down and give them the scathing that you apparently received in their behalf. I'm sorry I put you through that. Perhaps the real offender is following our communication, William. If so, they know what I think of them and their methods. Enough said.

I will begin to present to you reasons I believe the House of Israel copy should be on this page or at the very least have a prominent link from this page. In the meantime, you may want to check out http://www.weaverresearch.org/index.html

I have been busy the last days and have not had the time I hoped to organize the information you requested though I have begun the process. It seems we have a disagreement about what is logical. Though I do not consider myself a scholar I find your repeated comments being logical not only insulting but also sexist. I think until we agree to be respectful, we are not going to get anywhere no matter the facts that are presented. I am beginning to suspect we are going to need to go through a dispute resolution because after I present my case I fully intend to resubmit the House of Israel Theory so that the end user has all the major theories on the same page.

It is a bit ironic that you challenge me about what to put on this web page, for in business I am a writer, a web master and a business owner. My family and I own one of the most successful web companies in the southeast. We literally make our living deciding what to put on websites and where. We have a large staff; own nearly four hundred domains and we have developed content for over seventy companies other than our own. Our sites are well represented in all the major search engines. I don’t say any of this to brag. Were we not having this disagreement, I certainly would not even bring it up. But, you have questioned my logic in knowing what goes on this web page and I want to let you know why I feel confident I know what is logical to put on a web page.

Secularism is every bit a belief system as is any religion. Like all religions Secularism relies heavily upon a few known facts and a whole lot of speculation. The secularist theories already on the indigenous people page are not proven. They are only believed. Because they are not proven but are only believed, they are called theories. The House of Israel Theory is actually better supported than the other theories on that page. I hope in time you will agree.

What do you mean by "secularism"?

Perhaps you mean atheism? I happen to agree that atheism is a belief – the absolute certainty that no deity exists. This would require proof, and science can't prove anything.

Perhaps you mean agnosticism? Agnosticism is truly the absence of a belief system. It can be summarized as "I don't know – and actually you don't know either, instead you believe".

The "secularist" hypotheses (not theories!) are indeed not proven; like everything else they can't be. Still, that's not the same thing as "they are only believed". The "secularist" hypotheses rest on evidence that everyone can see: genetics here, linguistics there, similarities between Clovis and Solutréen artifacts elsewhere. The House of Israel hypothesis rests, as far as I'm aware, only on the Book of Mormon. Now, if you are a Latter Day Saint, that's all you need; you don't need evidence, you don't need proof, you just believe it. As the Catholic Church would word it: "must be believed against all reason". If, on the other hand, you are not a Latter Day Saint, the Book of Mormon is not evidence or proof or anything at all whatsoever. It's just a book that some ordinary human being has written. In science, you see, such either-or problems never occur. Believing that the Book of Mormon is the infallible Word of God may bring you to Heaven(*), but it's not science.

(*)Just to make sure you don't misunderstand me... I'm not trying to make fun of you. I don't even know if Heaven exists in the first place.

David Marjanović | david.marjanovic_at_gmx.at | 1:22 CEST | 2006/4/27

I have thought about your dilemma about the Wikipedia evolution page and your position about the creation as a Christian. Do you realize that if true, the Book of Mormon is another witness that the universe was created by the divine design of God? In fact it collaborates the Bible on every doctrine. See: http://scriptures.lds.org/tg/contents —The preceding unsigned comment was added by BGrama (talk • contribs) 20 April 2006.

As a suggestion intended to refocus discussion on this page towards what it is meant to be used for (namely, to discuss content and improvement of the present article itself, and not to debate or uphold one's own particular views on various topics), I'd recommend that we confirm the consensus apparent from the various comments above (including BGrama's, I believe): that this present article is not the place to expand upon the "House of Israel" notion. This article already has quite a bit of work to do to cover what is a large topic, and is not primarily concerned with discussing origins- there are others which better serve that purpose. Does anyone disagree?--cjllw | TALK 09:38, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

I think, rather than trying to get consensus not to discuss this any more, that we should accept a POV fork to (eg.) House of Israel for now (with a {{Main}} templated summary sentence on this article to point people to it). That way, the subject could be discussed at length on its own talk page, and its representation on this article would carry less undue weight. — JEREMY 10:30, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

Per my comment above, I am not seeking consensus to suppress any further debate on the topic, far from it; rather, my suggestion is to direct the discussion and materials to other articles which have a focus that is more relevant. 'Indigenous peoples of the Americas' is a generalist article which overarches a number of other, more specific articles, and is not itself particularly concerned with the details of beliefs/theories re origins, contentious or not.

Nor should a POV fork be created, or even needs to be, since we already have an entire article devoted to coverage of this very issue: Archaeology and the Book of Mormon. That article is entirely suited for detailed discussion re evidence / lack of evidence, etc (in fact, most if not all of the claims in BGrama's proposed text are already documented there).

As for linking to or mentioning of this material in other articles, IMO there are two other articles better suited than this one: Models of migration to the New World, and Pre-Columbian trans-oceanic contact (the latter article contains some mention already). And instead of using {main} to point to the "House of Israel" content article(s) from this one, it would seem more appropriate for the "History" section in this present article to have pointers to the two mentioned above (since the BoM account is but one of many non-mainstream conceptions about human migrations to the Americas).--cjllw | TALK 00:21, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

Real American

Why does the phrase "Real American" redirect to this page? Unless there's something relevant in the article that a cursory search for the term missed, it seems unnecessarily combative to me.—Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.136.16.183 (talk • contribs)

Good point. I'll delete it.--Rockero 16:32, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

French Guiana/Guyana

In English, the name of the South American overseas department of France is French Guiana. That is by far the most common term found on Google, and it is also the usage here at Wikipedia. In French, the name is Guyane française, but Guyane and Guyana aren't the same and the article here is in English anyway. Perhaps you are thinking of the former British Guiana, which did change its name to Guyana when it achieved independence. Rbraunwa 18:42, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

Merging with First Nations, Aboriginal peoples in Canada, Aboriginal Land Claims68.148.165.213 15:50, 15 July 2006 (UTC) and Indigenous peoples of the Americas

These distinctions are only political, maybe it might be required to make the distinctions in the merged article, but definitely not by separating these & each of these articles. And if there are any articles along these lines please merge them.

It seems to me that the articles were separated [if they were once a single article] because the how First Nations were treated differently in US & in Canada. If that was the reason the article was broken up, then the article title is off. I should be The Treatment Of First Nations In Canada, & The Treatment of First Nations In US.

Also, First Nations Land Claims [it should also be renamed as] is a fundamental part of the history & politcal landscape of the First Nations; it just makes sense that it should merged with the article.withdrawn68.148.165.213 15:45, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

68.148.165.213 15:14, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

• Oppose: This article is long enough as it is without needing to add significant sub articles back into it. In addition, First Nations is one type of Aboriginal people in Canada, so those two articles alone should be kept separate. But that has already been discussed. [3]—The preceding unsigned comment was added by Kmsiever (talk • contribs) 16 July 2006.

First Nations is the name of the genetic similarity of these people, just like Orientals or Caucaucausins ['Europeans']. In the case your saying, that they are a people group, this is what the Canadian Government called them, but their wrong. Yes, unfortunatly, governments can be wrong.

In the case of article length, irregardless.

68.148.165.213 16:06, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

• Oppose. This article, Indigenous peoples of the Americas is about peoples from all of the Americas, not just Canada or the U.S. And as per Kmsiever above, the two Canada-specific collective articles First Nations and Aboriginal peoples in Canada have their own good reasons to exist as separate articles as well. Merging these (in any combination) is not warranted. BTW neither of the collective labels First Nations or Aboriginal peoples in Canada imply (or seek to imply) the individual peoples associated with either of these terms should not be referred to by their own specific designations as well.--cjllw | TALK 02:11, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

• Oppose The Natives from the United States article links to the Race (United States Census) article, but a general article on indigeous Americans would not link there. There must be an article for all five 2000-2010 US Census races, so there should be no merger.--Dark Tichondrias 05:28, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

• Oppose As mentioned by CJLL Wright, this entry on Indigenous peoples of the Americas concerns peoples from all of the Americas, not just Canada or the U.S.. With all due respect to Dark Tichondrias, there is no scientific validity to "races"--there is only one race of human beings! Bdean1963 09:50, 18 July 2006

I never said there existed races with "scientific validity". I said the five counted by the US government deserve their own articles. Your straw man of my argument is a logical fallacy.--Dark Tichondrias 19:11, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

Your statement on 17 July that “There must be an article for all five 2000-2010 US Census races” is interesting in terms of the ideological construction of race, yet it seems to imply an essentialist stance and as such reifies one of modernity’s greatest scourges: “scientific racism.” The US Census unfortunately is mired in a long history of biological determinism, eugenics, and the contentious politics of identity, and thus is not helpful in undermining the lived experience of de jure, let alone de facto racism.--Bdean1963 08:37, 20 July

• Oppose It is good and right that there be separate articles for Indigenous peoples of the Americas, Aboriginal peoples in Canada and Native Americans in the United States. I think the contributors have done a good job defining the scope of these articles so that they do not overlap too much.--ErinHowarth 20:15, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

Mexico

The quote

"While Mexicans are universally proud of their indigenous heritage"

Is incredibly generalizing and presuming. Not every Mexican has been consulted on how they feel about their indigenous heritage if they do indeed have any and therefore there is no way of knowing how they feel "universally". Furthermore, I have spoken to many Mexicans who deny or try to minimalize their native ancestry. While it could possibly be true that many Mexicans are proud of their ancestry there is no way of knowing with certainty therefore I do not think this should be included. --Jbluex 18:02, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

Scope and Structure

My comments here take the form of a school teacher critiquing an essay or book report. I apologize for that. I don't mean to be patronizing. I can't help it. As an under-graduate, I majored in secondary education (history). Sometimes one simply cannot escape ones training. I do love this topic, and I really hope to help improve this article. This is my critique:

• The scope and structure of this article is well-defined in the lead paragraph, but then the body of the article fails to deliver. The scope of the article claims to be all the people living in North and South American before the arrival of Columbus. This is a wonderfully broad scope. I love it. It's just the sort of starting point so many researchers (like myself) need. The lead section also does a good job describing one thing that these vast groups of people have in common: their origins. Then it refers to the different social structures that the various indigenous peoples developed.

• Instead, I think it should refer to the other things that all these people had in common: (1) their level of technology (I read Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel last year, the whole thing is utterly fascinating) and (2) their decimation at colonization.

• The body of the article gets a little bit lost in the beginning by naming the first section history instead of origins. The indigenous peoples of the Americas do not share a common history. Every attempt to tell their histories should be done in separate articles. The body of the article does do a good job of describing the dominant origin theory for these people: migration across the Bering Strait. I had no idea that there was evidence of several migrations. That's fascinating. I think the minority theories regarding origin are interesting enough to warrant a reference (links to other articles), but ridiculous enough not to warrant a summary.

• The section on colonization does not seem to be a summary of another article; although, I did find an article on the European colonization of the Americas. Surprisingly, it focuses more on the colonists than on the indigineous people. Anyway, this section should be referred to in the lead paragraph, and beefed up considerably. Currently, it refers to slavery, horses, and disease. I think it should probably start with disease. Disease desimated 80% of the population of a vast geographical area! It's one of the worst things ever to happen in the history of the world. A more extensive discussion of slavery would also be intersting, but horses had a limited impact, and really pale in comparison to disease and slavery. Horse made a big difference for the Apache, but not so much for the Quechua.

• I think the section on the 21st centrury should briefly discuss the phenomenon of segregation. It seems to me that the one thing that all the indegious peoples have in common from the Rocky Mountains to the Andes is that they continue to live apart, in segregated communities as opposed to the African minorities who are much more integrated.

• The sections on culture contains a paragraph which compares and contrasts North American music with South American music. This would be more intresting on separate pages for the Indigenous peoples of North America and the Indigenous peoples of South America. Those pages have not been written yet, but I think they should be.

• The section on statistics is completely boring. Recommend illiminating it entirely. It fails to highlight the similarites among these vast peoples and instead underlines differneces in their roles in modern nations. For example, almost no one in the Domincan Republic is indigenous while almost everyone in El Salvador is at least partly indigenous.

• The whole second half of the article titled: history and status by country is a complete betrayal of the title and it should be stricten in its entirety. People interested in a nation by nation summary can serch the category listings to find what they need.

• This is a long critique. To summarize:
  • The strngth of this article is in drawing attention to the similarities among all these peoples.
  • The similaries should be mentioned to in the lead paragraph and then each gets its own section in the body of the article.
  • The similarities are:
    • The indigenous peoples of the Americas have a similar origen (Bering Strait)
    • The indigenous peoples of the Ameicas developed similar levels of technology
    • The indigenous peoples of the Americas were very nearly annihilated by diseases brought by European colonizers
    • The indigenous peoples of the Americas in the 21st century continue to live apart from their the descendants of the European colonizers.

Thank you for your attention. I am interested in your comments.

I disagree with several of your points. First European colonization of the Americas is an article about Europeans whjo started colonies in the Americas, not an article about Native Americans. Also and more important this article needs to discuss the major differences between Native groups as much as it needs to discuss their similarities. To not discuss the differences is to miss most of the story. Rmhermen 01:40, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

(I withdraw my previous comment regarding the European colonization of the Americas.) I agree that most of the story regarding the indigenous peoples of the Americas is to be told in describing their differences since they are more different than they are similar. However, I believe that part of the story is best told in 500 other articles rather than this one article. Encyclopedic articles are strongest if they tackle their subject in small bites. This article is tackling an enourmous subject, and I propose that the most interesting bite it should take is to focus on what the indigenous peoples of the Americas have in common. There are not many things, but they are extraordinary things.--ErinHowarth 03:06, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

I would like to point out that most of the suggestions you have put forward are all based upon European POV, (Bering Strait BS Theory) instead of using First Nations in Canada, we should be using the name of the Nation (Anishinaabek, Lakota etc;)yes we are legal NATIONS, as this would be more accurate in regards to our history, rather then the history of european settlers POV (past & present).

Using 'Indigenous'

Why are they called Indigenous?

in·dig·e·nous Pronunciation (n-dj-ns) adj. 1. Originating and living or occurring naturally in an area or environment.

As it states in the article, they are neither originating or naturally occuring in North America... Humans did not develop here. Shouldn't they be called Founding Peoples of the Americas, or something to that affect? --—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 69.197.135.128 (talk • contribs) 14:32, 11 August 2006.

They didn't found the Americas either; colonial powers did. See Indigenous people for the dfefintion we use at Wikipedia. --Kmsiever 21:56, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

First, it's not called "Indigenous peoples of Anahuac" or some other equivalent name because it is not politically correct nor recognizable to use an indigenous term for America. Besides, the Americas are named after the Amerique mountains of Central America, which Columbus and Vespucci both knew about. Vespucci changed his Christian name from Albergus to Americus in the spirit of the "New World", which rapidly gained the name after the gold-laden eponymous range. It is a folk etymology to believe we are named after the first name of the discover of South America.

Second, if you want to question the indigenous label then perhaps no one is ever indigenous. However, the term does have its uses. More specifically, the indigenous people have been present on this continent far longer than 10,000 years. Most Euro-Americans have been here for far less than 500 years. That's enough time to earn the label of indigenous. Euro-Americans have led and perpetrated the greatest effort to depopulate the original inhabitants of an entire continent using force (concerted genocide), trickery (uneven application of the rule of law) and luck (germs). That will be noted in the history books, because the Native American population will never be wiped out but will always be present to point out the hypocrisy of Western "Civilization". Euro-Americans must make spiritual amends for their recent role in the history of this continent. NoraBG 12:03, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Indeed. "Aboriginal" and "native" are more correct. But "indigenous" has stuck. SamEV 19:37, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

Where are the Indigenous American editors of this article?

If this article does not have any Indigenous American editors, it is simply not neutral point of view, it is likely too biased towards the white man.

65.97.14.167 07:44, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

What solution do you propose?—Nat Krause^(Talk!) 18:42, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Thanksgiving

Could someone please clear up the section about Thanksgiving (under agriculture). It seems as though it is generalizing (or at least is very vague). 70.113.25.170 21:35, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Dear 70.113.25.170,

To the letter, the text just states that "Thanksgiving is an American (U.S.) national holiday".

Would you please explain the reasoning from which you draw your interpretation that the text "is generalizing or at least is very vague"?

Kind regards, Zack Holly Venturi 23:06, 12 December 2006 (UTC)