system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
CMV: The Native Americans should have been treated as a conquered people and forced to assimilate.

The history of the world is one violent conquest after another. The entire world. Yes. Even the NAs conquering each other. Over land. They as separate groups had all the same conflicts as people in the west. I'll fight any attempts at romanticizing history here.

Letting them maintain some illusion of independence was a mistake that has lead to the situation they are in now. They could have instead assimilated into society- yes they would have started at the bottom rung of the ladder, maybe even have been enslaved, but if we look at the progress the descendants of slaves have made- they're better off than the NAs on reservations. I would argue that the large amounts of money the NAs get each year proves that reservations are never going to work. 

The US has a section of the population with the lowest life expectancy in the entire Western Hemisphere. The Pine Ridge Reservation has the lowest life expectancy on our entire half of the world at 47 for men and 52 for women. Drop out rates are 70% in school. My family tries to send propane and winter clothes up there because a shocking number of the families don't have running water, sewage, or electricity. They heat with wood which is on the scarce side. 

Many other reservations aren't any better off. They've made no progress as communities and, from my time working with the reservations, I feel they probably won't. There is no amount of social help they can get at this point that will help them. Even now their best bet is to assimilate into cities and start at the bottom because there is no way to fix the reservations.

Edit: Someone is going through and downvoting my every comment. I would rather have a discussion, please. 

Edit: I want to clarify, My argument isn't necessarily what we should or shouldn't do now but that not conquering and assimilating them was a mistake. I am going to reply to other kinds of arguments just because they give me interesting things to think about but that isn't the point of this CMV

This was mostly brought to mind because the Thanksgiving Wars have started on my Facebook- mostly by people who have no idea what is happening in the world today much less hundreds of years ago.
gpt
One thing not a lot of people realize it that in many cases, Native American tribes did it themselves and were worse for it.

Look at the Cherokee, whom the eastern bands quickly became "white" in the face of europeans.  At one point, they had more churches per capita than the newly founded states had, they had rifles, and they wore european clothing.  Then they were stripped of their possessions and sent to the desert.

This is a very touchy subject for me, but this is worth a conversation.  The idea of a "conquered people" didn't apply.  The Native Americans were not conquered; they were exterminated.  Look at moving into a house with an insect problem.  You claim it's your house now, not the insects, and you start killing them all.  Obviously, they flee or die.  When you see them on the porch, you don't care, they are outside.  But inside... death.

That's how the US viewed the native population.  They were considered a pest.  At the same time, you don't expect to train insects to be a part of your household, do you?  Of course not, insect culture is FAR different (though not as different as you'd think) from human culture.

Another point, is almost all of what european culture stands for spit in the face of native american culture.  It was a completely different system, and one arguably better for their context (medicine was free, they'd hunt all day, fuck all night, and didn't have to pay taxes...).  There is no way they would willingly accept white culture.  This leads to your only plausible option; slavery.

I notice how you are quick to defend saying "you aren't talking about splitting up families" but that is exactly what slavery entails in US history.  The kids are sold off and the parents are put to work.  That's how it worked in America.  So what you would really be saying is a "special kind of slavery" which didn't exist at the time.

Additionally, one could say that they are just as assimilated as African Americans.  There is a pretty big difference in "white culture" and "black culture" in america, and often times when you visit an area that is almost entirely african american, things are different from an area that is almost entirely white.

Reservations are awful.  Why?  It's not because the people lack a culture.  It's because they lack the freedom to pursue a culture.  If instead of reservations they were given those lands as a 100% independant nation, you would see a VAST difference.  But they aren't.  They are dependent on federal aid and bound by US laws and systems.