Native Peoples Adrift in the Modern World

Repost from the old site. Note: This post has been accused, as usual, of racism. See here for my position statement on racism. Recent news articles on the disgusting degeneration of many Polynesians in New Zealand into US Black-style gangbangers seems to be the case with many “indigenous peoples” in the world today. They just do not seem to be cut out for modern, Western, high-tech society. In most cases, Whites came into their lands and either invaded and conquered them or merely colonized them, and took away their old way of life, which, limited as it may have been, was at least working for them. A description of the Micronesians of Saipan from the interesting Saipan Sucks website (my notes) is instructive. Note this is just one American expat’s point of view, and does not represent my feelings about Micronesians, but instead represents those of the author of Saipan Sucks. I know nothing of Micronesians; I have only met one in my life, and he was just fine.

There is a very high rate of sexual molestation on Saipan, along with a very high rates of women having several kids, all by different men, and men fathering children by different women and never bothering to support any of them. The locals basically refuse to work in any sort of productive occupations, and family-based corruption in politics is endemic. School performance is abysmal. Spousal abuse is common. There is more incest and cousin marriage on Saipan than anywhere in the US. The police hardly bother to investigate any homicide cases, apparently since they are too incompetent to complete an investigation. The locals are profoundly racist against all Americans – especially White Americans. The wealthy Micronesians on Saipan are almost all notorious thieves who stole every nickel they made. Theft and lying in all of the Mariana Islands is endemic, and the stealing is so bad that locals actually resort to bolting their furniture to the floor. Micronesians feel they are racially superior to everyone, especially Filipinos, who are the most talented and hardest working people on the islands, as they are in much of that part of Asia. Interestingly, the Filipino IQ of 89 is the same as the Micronesian IQ of 87. The suggestion is that the Micronesian IQ of 87 plays little or no role in much of the pathology above.

Although I have never been to Micronesia, I assume that this description is representative of the behaviors of far too many native Saipanese. Why do I think this? Because I have seen this same pattern here in the US with Native Americans and the Black and Hispanic underclasses. This panoply of attitudes and pathologies is not limited to the Micronesians, but is common amongst many native peoples in our world, based on my observation. These people used to hold traditional occupations at which they functioned well. Now, they can no longer do these jobs, and they are either not able to do or are not interested in doing modern work. The following set of pathologies (in whole or in part) seems to be common amongst far too many indigenous peoples today: Unwilling or unable for work in the modern economy, they become chronically unemployed, and are often regarded by others as lazy people who refuse to work, collect every welfare program they can, spend days sitting around doing nothing, and often drink to excess, or nowadays, take drugs. When they do work, their working style is often seen as irresponsible or lackadaisical. They often do not do well in school, in part because many of them are not even used to being inside four walls, since they are used to spending much of their time outdoors. In their traditional life, there was no formal schooling, just learning by observation. The family structure has typically been badly broken up for whatever reason, and child abuse of various forms is common. Women have kids by various different men and do not bother to marry any of them. Men for their part have children by various women and then refuse to support any of the kids. Politics is characterized by a tribal, clan-based, often vicious and immoral scheme of ultra-corruption. Police and government officials are often lazy and incompetent. Things like roads in Congo and water treatments plants in Saipan either never get built, as in Saipan where the natives apparently can’t figure out how to build one, or don’t get repaired, as in Congo where 9 Bilingual programs founder when students are said to be literate in neither English nor their native language. Crime spirals out of control as traditional village-based law enforcement systems are no longer operative, and impoverished and often unemployed natives are often confronted with mass wealth, waved right in their face. Virulent anti-White or anti-East Indian racism takes hold due to resentment that these groups may have a higher standard of living, or may have settled or colonized their land in the past, along the painful realities of their own culture’s failure to succeed in the modern world combined with their observation of the others’ great success in negotiating that same modernity. Indigenous people, selected via repeated famine to survive on very little food, are hit like a ton of bricks with the Western high-calorie, high-salt, high-fat diet, which they are not physiologically adapted for. The result is mass obesity, diabetes, hypertension, at least with some groups – Micronesians, Melanesians, Aborigines, Polynesians and North American Native Americans in particular. The set of pathologies above is quite evident in many indigenous cultures, including Native Americans in the US and Canada, some Native Americans in South America (Amazon tribes in particular), native Siberians in Russia, Inuit in Canada, Alaska and Russia, Sub-Saharan African Blacks, Negritos in the Andaman Islands and the Philippines, Aborigines in Australia, Micronesians, Polynesians and urban Melanesians in New Guinea. Some suggest that IQ may be a factor in this situation. These groups have the following average IQ’s (world average is also included):

Siberian Natives: 102.5 (est.)*
Inuit (Eskimo):   94
World Average:    92
Amerindians:      89
Polynesians:      88, but varies**
New Guinea:       86
Micronesians:     86
African Blacks:   70
Aborigines:       65

*Native Siberian IQ is not known, but Mongolian IQ is 102.5, and Siberians may be similar. **Some Polynesian groups have higher IQ’s. The New Zealand Maori IQ is 93, the Cook Islands Maori IQ is 92 and the Samoan IQ is 90.5 The first two are right at the world average IQ, and the Samoan IQ is close to the average. Interestingly, the first two islands were settled later in the Polynesian expansion. Siberian difficulties in adapting to modern life cannot be explained by IQ, nor can the problems of the Maori or the the Inuit. Average Polynesian, Micronesian, Amerindian and New Guinea IQ’s are not remarkably low, being only 3 points below the world average. Many countries that seem to function quite well with the modern world, such as Cuba, Iran and many Arab and Latin American countries, have average IQ’s in the 86-88 range, but most of these peoples have been living in a more modern way for quite some time now. Few could be considered “indigenous peoples”. It is true that the IQ’s of Aborigines and African Blacks are quite low. In short, IQ is not sufficient to explain the problems that each of the groups above have in adaptation to our modern world. In New Guinea, people living traditional lives in the mountains seem to do well, while the capital of Port Moresby is a crime-flooded, drunken urban catastrophe. In Samoa, traditional Western Samoa seems to do a lot better with their traditional lifestyle than American Samoa, where a Western way of life holds sway along with a very high crime rate. Cook Islanders and New Zealand natives are both Maori. Cook Islanders have a functional society, as they still live a traditional life and have not yet been deluged with tourists. In contrast, the Maori situation in New Zealand is often regarded as catastrophic, with very rates of crime and the sorts of pathologies described above. Biologically and IQ-wise, the two groups are identical. A few Andaman Islands Negritos have barely been contacted much at all (Sentinel Island), and they are doing quite well. Others have been contacted but still mostly live a traditional life, and they are doing less well but are still generally functional (the Onge and Jawara). Some Andaman tribes who have been removed from traditional life seem to have completely lost their way, live on government reservations, are mired in the most deplorable pathology and even seem to be slowly going extinct (Greater Andamanese). For an overview, see George Weber’s great website. A roughly similar situation holds with a number of tribes in the Amazon – the more they are left pretty much alone, the better off the are. In regard to the difficulties in adaptation described above, let us note that in their traditional societies, these people typically never had vehicle roads (or vehicles), water treatment plants, schools, money-based societies with paid government employees and cops nor written languages. In addition, marriage and divorce may have been a casual affair in many pre-contact societies. An in an effort to act like men. I don’t really know what to do about any of this. One idea is that a lot of these groups are not really cut out for modern life. Many of these people may do better if they lived more traditional lives, in traditional villages, with traditional styles of behavioral regulation (chief, elders, family or clan). Of course, the decision of whether to live a more Western or less Western life should be left completely up to the people themselves. Western life is not for everyone, and we need to consider that for many indigenous peoples, it is not only harmful, but it is also deadly. We can still provide them with medical care, make sure their structures and infrastructure are functional and intact, insure that they have water, plumbing and electricity, and provide them with food or supplementation if they need it. In many cases, they may need to return to a native diet or risk early death eating a Western diet.

Notes

1. Hill, K. and Hurtado, A.M. 1996. Ache Life History: The Ecology and Demography of a Foraging People. New York: Aldine de Gruyter. 2. Lykken, D.T. 1995. The Antisocial Personalities. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Assoc.

18 thoughts on “Native Peoples Adrift in the Modern World”

  1. “Early travelers to Africa reported that marriages often did not seem to last long, and that marriage, divorce, and sex seemed to be all casual enterprises.”
    Maybe things are never quite as casual as they might appear to an outside observer.
    I think that often there has been a mistaken impression that primitive groups lived (or still live) a kind of unfettered, lawless existence simply because we don’t know the actual dictates and constraints of their cultures.
    For some reason I doubt that marriage was ever taken lightly in primitive societies.

    1. Did you read the post about the Ache? It’s well documented that pre-acculturation, by age 30, quite a few women had already been married and divorced a few times and were living as single Moms. Further, there was quite a bit of extramarital sex.
      Depends on the culture, of course.

  2. Yes, I read that post and I just looked over it again. Some people might conclude from it that the Ache had a casual attitude toward marriage. It seems to me, though, that in a culture where women are sometimes married ten times is that marriage is of great importance!
    Can you tell me why women were so often married in that culture?

    1. Not sure, they tended to take a pretty casual attitude towards everything. For some reason, LTR’s at least admist the younger adults, tended to peter out. What I think was interesting about that piece is that single motherhood is not exactly pathological at all, nor is serial marriage or having 3 or 4 kids all by different fathers. It worked just fine in that culture. However, in modern cultures, it’s not working so well.
      Honestly, I think this is just the natural state of humans. Societies rigidly impose marriage and then ferociously proscribe divorce in order that humans not revert into their “basic savage natures”, quoting you here.

    2. I see what you mean about the natural state of human beings.
      I do think that any society in which people marry recognizes the value and importance of marriage. I’ve heard that in some groups you’re not considered an adult member unless you’re married.

    3. Indeed it is true. In Iran, for instance, an unmarried man is referred to by a word meaning “not-man.” In some cultures, even fairly modern ones, there is a yearly ritual whereby the males who are unmarried past a certain age are forced to undergo to some public humiliation, often at the hands of young unmarried females.

  3. “We can still provide them with medical care, make sure their structures and infrastructure are functional and intact, insure that they have water, plumbing and electricity, and provide them with food or supplementation if they need it. In many cases, they may need to return to a native diet or risk early death eating a Western diet.”
    And for how long are we going to do that? The population of the third world is exploding, and that of the developed world is poised to plummet.
    I have no idea what the minimum ratio of First World person to “Developing” World person necessary to provide for the Developing world is, but it seems to me that we’re heading toward it.

  4. Where did you get your information from where you state the nz maori iq averages 93 and the samoan iq is 90.5? You have a link pointing to a wikipedia page but i am interested in a page which displays the samoan iq of 90.5 etc.

    1. It is really
      NZ Maori 90
      Samoan 87.5
      by the old system. All IQ’s were bumped up by 3 points when the new IQ system changed.
      Old system was US White IQ = 100
      New system is US = 100 and US White IQ = 103

      1. Ok got it. Are you aware of any url that exists where the samoan iq of 90.5 is displayed “in writing” ? Based on the wikipedia link in your article i found the 2006 samoan iq to be 88 but i am wanting to see this 90.5 business.
        I am part samoan and am quite interested. I live in new zealand.

  5. Hi…im unsure if my reply to your message went through. Do you a link showing “in writing” a samoan iq of 90.5? You say that points have been added in the new system…i would like to know if there is a page showing me these IQs ? Thanks. Am part samoan and live in NZ.

    1. The results are from Richard Lynn’s work. You can find it under the national IQ comparison charts on Wikipedia.
      The Samoan IQ is really 87.5. That’s how it would show up on the Wikipedia page.
      A 90.5 IQ under the new system = an 87.5 IQ under the old system. No one’s IQ has gone up; they are just figuring them differently.

  6. I lived in Saipan at one time, no joke. Nice people. Great place. It does have some problems though. However, I think a lot of them problems stem of too much immigration. Since, everybody wants the Yankee dollar, all these foreigners flood into the little island. Naturally, there is a lot of resentment.
    I hate that anybody would make a site called “Saipan Sucks”, cause it’s really a cool place.

    1. You can’t blame locals, for wanting to take advantage of their American citizenship to get superior jobs, since all the lower jobs are taken by immigrants. The American citizenship is all the native Saipan people have.

    2. QUOTE”The locals are profoundly racist against all Americans – especially White Americans.”
      Bullshit. The locals are very friendly to Americans. I only had one bad scene with them. I ran with a bad character one night, and he broke some windows while drunk. So the cops hated me after that. But I clearly remember going to the cops before, and they all were incredibly friendly. I taught at a school there, and also the native people were incredibly friendly. Contrast that to Korea, where the whole place riots when they lose the Olympics, and every few years US troops rape or kill locals.

      1. Considering that Saipan people are like Mexicans, there is a good chance they hate black Americans worse, than white Americans.
        QUOTE”The wealthy Micronesians on Saipan are almost all notorious thieves who stole every nickel they made. Theft and lying in all of the Mariana Islands is endemic, and the stealing is so bad that locals actually resort to bolting their furniture to the floor.”
        That’s common throughout the third world. The author is acting like Saipan is the only place like that.
        QUOTE”Micronesians feel they are racially superior to everyone, especially Filipinos, who are the most talented and hardest working people on the islands, as they are in much of that part of Asia.”
        That’s common also in Japan, Korea, China. Probably they developed this attitude, cause they’re nation is over-run with immigrants who cause problems in their culture.

        1. QUOTE”The wealthy Micronesians on Saipan are almost all notorious thieves who stole every nickel they made. Theft and lying in all of the Mariana Islands is endemic, and the stealing is so bad that locals actually resort to bolting their furniture to the floor.”
          That’s common throughout the third world. The author is acting like Saipan is the only place like that.

          Well then the Hell with the Third World. Also that’s not a very good argument. It’s like a criminal going before a judge and asking to me let off the hook because so many other criminals have committed the same offense.
          I really don’t see why, “Hey it’s a 3rd World country,” has to be an excuse every time a country is full of people acting like scumbags.

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