"We are the only species who pay to live on this planet. Why?"

[Zorra]

31. No, they did not pay for it.

They lived on it freely, and yes, sometimes were displaced by another group. Sometimes they were not. No different from modern societies in that respect.

But they didn't pay for it. And, from what I understand from what I've been told, and from what I've studied, they never wanted to pay for it, preferring to live free, rather than have to pay lawyers and cops to maintain their liberty and way of life.

" The white man has plenty of land," said Smohalla. " I knew an Indian who went to Washington, and he passed for days through good uncultivated land east of the Rockies. And I am told that beyond the great sea some men have big tracts fenced in just to keep a few deer and grouse. Nobody interferes with these men. Yet white men come from these very countries, and say the Indian must not keep his land because he hunts over it instead of plowing it. I know a man on the lower Columbia, who for years has had a big piece of bottom land that is neither plowed up or grazed over, but no one disturbs him, because he is a white man. I will not plow my land, but if I did, it would not protect me. Joseph's people had good fields and gardens, but they were driven away. I have no pity for them. They had no business to plant fields like white men. Many Indians are trying to live like white men, but it will do them no good. They cut off their hair and wear white men's clothes, and some of them learn to sing out of a book.

"But Smohalla," said I, "the country is all filling up with white people and their herds. The game is nearly all gone. Would it not be better for your young Indians to learn the white man's work ?"

"My young men shall never work," said he with a wave of the hand, including numerous imaginary Indians, as well as the two seated near by. " Men who work cannot dream, and wisdom comes to us in dreams."

"We simply take the gifts that are freely offered. We no more harm the earth than would an infant's fingers harm its mother's breast. But the white man tears up large tracts of land, runs deep ditches, cuts down forests, and changes the whole face of the earth. You know very well this is not right. Every honest man,'" said he, looking at me searchingly, "knows in his heart that this is all wrong. But the white men are so greedy they do not consider these things."

http://www.nevadaobserver.com/Reading%20Room%20Documents/smohalla_1891.htm

There are many other examples of this type of thought that have been expressed by American Indians over time. It does not appear that they considered paying lawyers and cops superior to their traditional way of life, during which they had to pay no one for their existence, according to their own words.

It seems that it is often very difficult for folks who were born and raised in Judeo-Christian European based cultures to comprehend tribal cultures, and vice versa. History books are written by the winners, and most written histories of the pre-Columbian tribal peoples of the America's have been written from the highly subjective perspective of academics from Judeo-Christian Euro cultures who had no significant basis to actually be able to understand the tribal cultures they wrote about.

I usually prefer to believe the actual words and thoughts of the tribal folks rather than rely on the interpretations and judgments of these ideas made by academics from a completely different culture.

Again, to this day, it is still very difficult for many American Indians to fully understand Judeo-Christian Euro culture, and I think it is even more difficult for folks from J-C Euro cultures to understand the mind of the American Indian.

Anyway, if the 1% wants your land and property, there's nothing at all that you can you do to stop them from taking it. The people of Iraq and Afghanistan know this very well from recent experience. Calling lawyers and cops in order to help them retain their property doesn't work, because lawyers and cops are the ones that are killing them for their land and resources.

"No property rights is nice if you're strong. Pretty awful if you're weak."

In the overall scheme of things, almost everyone, except for the 1% is "weak" under the very limited boundaries forcibly instilled into the general collective consciousness of artificially created consumer cultures that exist under the dictates and domination of the 1%..