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 90% of the country’s roads have vanished due to lack of repairs.
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 excellent study1 of the pre-contact Northern Ache of Paraguay found that by age 30, the average Ache woman had been married and divorced 10 times (see page 13).
For decades, the Left has been offering an intellectually vapid, yet appealing, reason for these pathologies. “Western imperialism” or some such evil invaded and settled their lands, or colonized them, or looked at them wrong, or something. A long time ago. Like over 100 years ago.
Like most arguments of the Crazy Left, this argument sounds really cool until you start to look into it.
Many of these groups here never really got colonized in any real way, or at all, and in many cases, Whites did not even “take their land.” Lots of folks who were “colonized” or “got their land taken” recently still get on fine with modernity, including Basques, people of the Caucasus, Kurds, Armenians, Greeks, Assyrians, Ahwaz, Berbers, Tamils, Kashmiris, Assamese, Karen, Shan, Acehese, Saami, on and on.
Jews even got 75% of their population killed in Europe in one of the crimes of the century. Sure it was horrible, but the Jews picked themselves up, dusted themselves off, and are now possibly the most successful ethnic group on Earth.
The pattern above raises interesting questions. A pattern of having multiple children by different men, where the men refuse to support the women, is the bane of many of these cultures above. Does it have roots in tribal society?
Was the Ache pattern of repeated marriages and divorces described above the norm in many tribal societies? Early travelers to Africa did report that marriages often did not seem to last long and that marriage, divorce and sex seemed to be all be casual enterprises.
In a tribal culture, where all food just gets tossed into the pot for everyone to eat, maybe it does not matter if a man does not provide specifically for his wife and kids, as long as the village provides for them. Children were often raised by groups of women while the men went off and hunted, fished or did whatever all day. By evening, the men would return, and then the intact families would spend some time together.
Since the children were being raised collectively by large groups of women – mothers, aunts, older cousins and sisters, grandmothers – there was little chance to get into trouble. At the first sign of trouble, one of the many women would be right there to put an end to it.
Curiously, studies in Israeli kibbutzes have shown that children raised this way have the lowest rates of antisocial behavior of any child-raising style.2
In our modern world, with many incompetent females raising children with no father around, or a father around only sporadically, with the woman overwhelmed, absent, working or on drugs or alcohol, kids are free to run wild. Lack of father figures and modern extended adolescence means the young males drift towards gangs 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.
