Conservative liberalism or right-liberalism is a variant of liberalism, combining liberal values and policies with conservative stances, or simply representing the right-wing of the liberal movement. In the case of modern "conservative liberalism", scholars sometimes see it as a more positive and less radical variant of classical liberalism, but it is also referred to as an individual tradition that distinguishes it from classical liberalism and social liberalism. Conservative liberal parties tend to combine economically liberalpolicies with more traditional stances and personal beliefs on social and ethical issues.
In general, liberal conservatism and conservative liberalism have different philosophical roots. Historically, "liberal conservatism" refers mainly to the case where conservatives embrace the elements of classical liberalism, and "conservative liberalism" refers to classical liberals who support a laissez-faire economy as well as socially conservative principles (for instance, Christian family values).
Since classical liberal institutions were gradually accepted by
conservatives, there is very little to distinguish liberal conservatives
from conservative liberals.
Neoconservatism has also been identified as an ideological relative or twin to conservative liberalism, and some similarities exist also between conservative liberalism and national liberalism.
Overview
Alexis de Tocqueville, who had a profound influence on modern conservative liberal philosophy
Conservative liberalism emerged in late 18th century France, when the moderate bourgeoisie supported the monarchy within the liberal camp. Representatively, Doctrinaires, which existed during the Bourbon Restoration was a representative conservative-liberal party. Radicalism emerged as an opposition against the moderateness of these (conservative) liberals.
According to Robert Kraynak, a professor at Colgate University, rather than "following progressive liberalism (i.e. social liberalism), conservative liberals draw upon pre-modern sources, such as classical philosophy (with its ideas of virtue, the common good, and natural rights), Christianity (with its ideas of natural law, the social nature of man, and original sin), and ancient institutions (such as common law, corporate bodies, and social hierarchies). This gives their liberalism a conservative foundation. It means following Plato, Aristotle, Socrates, St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, and Edmund Burke rather than Locke or Kant; it usually includes a deep sympathy for the politics of the Greekpolis, the Roman Republic, and Christianmonarchies. But, as realists, conservative liberals acknowledge that classical and medieval
politics cannot be restored in the modern world. And, as moralists,
they see that the modern experiment in liberty and self-government has
the positive effect of enhancing human dignity as well as providing an
opening (even in the midst of mass culture)
for transcendent longings for eternity. At its practical best,
conservative liberalism promotes ordered liberty under God and
establishes constitutional safeguards against tyranny. It shows that a
regime of liberty based on traditional morality and classical-Christian
culture is an achievement we can be proud of, rather than merely
defensive about, as trustees of Western civilization".
In the European context, conservative liberalism should not be confused with liberal conservatism
which is a variant of conservatism combining conservative views with
liberal policies in regards to the economy, social and ethical issues. The roots of conservative liberalism are to be found at the beginning of the history of liberalism. Until the two world wars, the political class in most European countries from Germany to Italy was formed by conservative liberals. The events such as World War I
occurring after 1917 brought the more radical version of classical
liberalism to a more conservative (i.e. more moderate) type of
liberalism. Conservative liberal parties have tended to develop in those European countries where there was no strong secular conservative party and where the separation of church and state was less of an issue. In those countries, where the conservative parties were Christian democratic, this conservative brand of liberalism developed.
Conservative liberalism is generally a liberal ideology that contrasts with social liberalism.
Conservative liberalism, along with social liberalism and classical liberalism, is mentioned as the main liberal ideology of European politics. It is often used to describe liberalism close to the centre to centre-right of the political spectrum. However, there are sometimes conservative liberals who are located on the right-wing political position.
"Conservative liberalism" is an ideology that highlights the
conservative aspect of liberalism, so it can appear in a somewhat
different form depending on the local reality.
Conservative liberalism refers to ideologies that show relatively
conservative tendencies within the liberal camp, so it has some
relative meaning. In the United States, conservative liberals mean de facto classical liberals, but in Europe, "Christian democrats" and "Ordoliberals"
can also be included. (Christian democracy is a mainstream European
conservative ideology, so there are cases where it supports free markets.)
Ordoliberalism
is more a variant of conservative liberalism than classical liberalism
(which is economic liberalism that embraces cultural liberalism) or
social liberalism, in principle because it is influenced by the notion
of social justice based on traditional Catholic teachings. After the war, Germany pursued economic growth based on the social market economy, which is deeply related to ordoliberalism.
In the United States, liberal usually refers to a social liberal form, so those referred to as conservative liberals in Europe are often simply referred to as conservatives in the United States. Milton Friedman and Irving Kristol are mentioned as representative conservative liberal scholars.
Political scientists evaluate all politicians in the United States as liberals in the academic sense. In general, rather than the Democratic Party, which is close to social-liberal, the Republican Party is evaluated as a conservative-liberal party. In the case of the Democratic Party, Blue Dog Democrats is evaluated as close to conservative-liberal in fiscal policy. However, the current Blue Dog is cultural moderate to liberal. (Unlike classical liberals, conservative liberals in Europe, including KESK, sometimes criticize cultural liberalism.)
[I]n
America today, responsible liberals—who are usually called
neoconservatives—see that liberalism depends on human beings who are
somewhat child-centered, patriotic, and religious. These responsible
liberals praise these non-individualistic human propensities in an
effort to shore up liberalism. One of their slogans is 'conservative
sociology with liberal politics.' The neoconservatives recognize that
the politics of free and rational individuals depends upon a
pre-political social world that is far from free and rational as a
whole.
Historically, the prevailing notions of what is regarded as
sexually ethical have been linked to philosophy and religious teachings. More recently, the feminist movement has emphasized personal choice and consent in sexual activities.
Terminology and philosophical context
The terms ethics and morality are often used interchangeably, but sometimes ethics is reserved for interpersonal interactions and morality is used to cover both interpersonal and inherent questions.
Different approaches to applied ethics hold different views on inherent morality, for example:
Moral nihilism
is the meta-ethical view that nothing is inherently right or wrong, and
that all value judgments are either human constructs or meaningless.
Moral relativism
is the meta-ethical view that moral judgments are subjective. In some
cases this is merely descriptive, in other cases this approach is normative – the idea that morality should be judged in the context of each culture's convictions and practices.
Moral universalism
is the meta-ethical view that moral judgments are objectively true or
false, that everyone should behave according to the same set of
normative ethics.
Many practical questions arise regarding human sexuality, such as whether sexual norms
should be enforced by law, given social approval, or changed. Answers
to these questions can sometimes be considered on a scale from social liberalism to social conservatism. Considerable controversy continues over which system of ethics or morality best promotes human happiness and prosperity.
Christian denominations generally hold that sexual morality is defined by natural law, the Bible and tradition.
The unity of a couple in marriage and procreation are key factors
in Christian sexual ethics, particularly in the teachings of the
Catholic Church.
Catholicism teaches that there is a universal human nature established
by God, and that which disrupts God's natural plan for human beings is
inherently wrong. This teaching stipulates procreation as the natural
purpose of sexuality, and thus sexual activity not open to the
transmission of life is prohibited. In Humanae vitae, the most
recent Catholic encyclical on the topic of sexuality, permanent
monogamous marriage is stated as the only appropriate context for the
fulfillment of moral sexuality. In this encyclical, both the unitive and
procreative dimensions of sex must be present for a sexual encounter or
sex act to be considered morally permissible.
St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Augustine were some of the key figures
in honing Christian ethics. Augustine underlined fidelity, offspring,
and sacrament as the goods of sexual morality.
Thomas Aquinas developed Augustine's thought to suggest that these
ought to be understood as the three ends (telos) of marriage, and ranked
them in order of importance, with procreation as the primary end.
Philosophy
Not
until contemporary times has sex thought of as something generally good
in the history of western philosophy: "Plato denigrated it, arguing
that it should lead to something higher or better (Phaedrus, Symposium),
Aristotle barely mentioned it, and Christian philosophers condemned
it."
A major topic in the philosophy of sex and related to the question of
the moral status of sex is objectification, where sexual objectification
is treating a person only as a sex object. The concept originates in
Kant's moral philosophy, and many modern thinkers have used it to
criticize and analyze a wide range of ethical issues related to sex,
such as pornography.
Kant
views sex as only morally permissible in the context of a heterosexual,
lifelong, and monogamous marriage, whereas any sexual act that is
performed outside this context is considered morally wrong. This is due to Kant's interpretation of the Categorical Imperative
with regard to sexual desire. He considers sex the only inclination
that cannot satisfy the Categorical Imperative; in fact, sexual desire
by its nature is objectifying and lends itself to the thing-like
treatment of other persons.
The idea seems to be that sexual
desire and pleasure cause very acute forms of sensation in a person's
own body; that these sensations drive out, for a time, all other
thoughts, including the thoughts of respect for humanity that are
characteristic of the moral attitude to persons. ... In that condition
of mind, one cannot manage to see the other person as anything but a
tool of one's own interests, a set of bodily parts that are useful tools
for one's pleasure, and the powerful urge to secure one's own sexual
satisfaction will ensure that instrumentalization (and therefore denial
of autonomy and of subjectivity) continues until the sexual act has
reached its conclusion.
The solution to the overall problem of objectification and sex, on
Kant's view, is marriage: Only marriage can make objectification
tolerable. Kant argues that in a marriage, which is "a relationship that
is structured institutionally in ways that promote and, at least
legally if not morally, guarantee mutual respect and regard",
objectification may be rendered harmless. Furthermore, not all sexual
activity is necessarily objectifying here: sexual activity that does not
involve sexual desire might treat another person as a mere thing and
might thus not be objectifying. However, Kant does not distinguish
between male and female sexuality, and his analysis does not consider
social hierarchies or asymmetric formations of erotic desire in or
outside of marriage. Kant's argument is seen as implausible by most modern thinkers.
From a human rights and international law perspective, consent
has become a key issue in sexual ethics. Nevertheless, historically,
this has not necessarily been the case. Throughout history, a whole
range of consensual sexual acts, such as adultery, fornication, interracial or interfaith sex, 'sodomy' (see sodomy laws)
have been prohibited; while at the same time various forced sexual
encounters such as rape of a slave, prostitute, war enemy, and most
notably of a spouse, were not illegal. The criminalization of marital rape
is very recent, having occurred during the past few decades, and the
act is still legal in many places around the world - this is due to some
not essentially viewing the act as rape. In the UK, marital rape was
made illegal as recently as 1992.
Outside the West, in many countries, consent is still not central and
some consensual sexual acts are forbidden. For instance, adultery and
homosexual acts remain illegal in many countries.
Many modern systems of ethics hold that sexual activity is
morally permissible only if all participants consent. Sexual ethics also
considers whether a person is capable of giving consent and what sort
of acts they can properly consent to. In western countries, the legal
concept of "informed consent" often sets the public standards on this issue.
Children, the mentally handicapped, the mentally ill, animals,
prisoners, and people under the influence of drugs like alcohol might be
considered in certain situations as lacking an ability to give informed
consent. In the United States, Maouloud Baby v. State
is a state court case ruling that a person can withdraw sexual consent
and that continuing sexual activity in the absence of consent may
constitute rape. Also, if infected with a sexually transmitted disease,
it is important that one notifies the partner before sexual contact.
Sexual acts which are illegal, and often considered unethical, because of the absence of consent include rape and molestation.
Enthusiastic consent, as expressed in the slogan "Yes means yes,"
rather than marriage, is typically the focus of liberal sexual ethics. Under that view passivity, not saying "No," is not consent.
An individual can give consent for one act of sexual activity, however,
it does not condone proceeding into other acts of sexual activity
without reestablishing consent.
The concept of consent being the primary arbiter of sexual ethics
and morality has drawn criticism from both feminist and religious
philosophies. Religious criticisms argue that relying on consent alone
to determine morality ignores other intrinsic moral factors, while
feminist criticisms argue that consent is too broad and does not always
account for disproportionate power dynamics.
The feminist position is that women's freedom of choice regarding
sexuality takes precedence over family, community, state, and church.
Based on historical and cultural context, feminist views on sexuality
has widely varied. Sexual representation in the media, the sex
industry, and related topics pertaining to sexual consent are all
questions which feminist theory attempts to address. The debate
resulting from the divergence of feminist attitudes culminated in the
late 1970s and the 1980s. The resulting discursive dualism was one which
contrasted those feminists who believed that patriarchal structure made
consent impossible under certain conditions, whereas sex-positive feminists
attempted to redefine and regain control of what it means to be a
woman. Questions of sexual ethics remain relevant to feminist theory.
Early feminists were accused of being 'wanton' as a consequence
of stating that just as for men, women did not necessarily have to have
sex with the intention of reproducing.
At the beginning of the 20th century, feminist authors were already
theorising about a relationship between a man and a woman as equals
(although this has a heterosexual bias) and the idea that relationships
should be sincere, that the mark of virtue in a relationship was its
sincerity rather than its permanence. Setting a standard for reciprocity
in relationships fundamentally changed notions of sexuality from one of
duty to one of intimacy.
Age of consent
is also a key issue in sexual ethics. It is a controversial question of
whether or not minors should be allowed to have sex for recreation or
engage in sexual activities such as sexting.
The debate includes whether or not minors can meaningfully consent to
have sex with each other, and whether they can meaningfully consent to
have sex with adults. In many places in the world, people are not
legally allowed to have sex until they reach a set age. The age of consent averages around the age of 16.
Some areas have 'Romeo and Juliet' laws, which place a frame around
teenage relationships within a certain age bracket, but do not permit
sexual contact between those above or below a certain age.
In all cultures, consensual sexual intercourse is acceptable within
marriage. In some cultures sexual intercourse outside marriage is
controversial, if not totally unacceptable, or even illegal. In some
countries, such as Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Kuwait, Maldives, Morocco, Oman, Mauritania, United Arab Emirates, Sudan, Yemen, any form of sexual activity outside marriage is illegal.
As the philosopher Michel Foucault
has noted, such societies often create spaces or heterotopias outside
themselves where sex outside marriage can be practiced. According to his
theory, this was the reason for the often unusual sexual ethics
displayed by persons living in brothels, asylums, onboard ships, or in
prisons. Sexual expression was freed of social controls in such places
whereas, within society, sexuality has been controlled through the
institution of marriage which socially sanctions the sex act. Many
different types of marriage exist, but in most cultures that practice
marriage, extramarital sex without the approval of the partner is often
considered to be unethical. There are a number of complex issues that
fall under the category of marriage.
When one member of a marital union has sexual intercourse with
another person without the consent of their spouse, it may be considered
to be infidelity.
In some cultures, this act may be considered ethical if the spouse
consents, or acceptable as long as the partner is not married while
other cultures might view any sexual intercourse outside marriage as
unethical, with or without consent.
Furthermore, the institution of marriage brings up the issue of
premarital sex wherein people who may choose to at some point in their
lives marry, engage in sexual activity with partners who they may or may
not marry. Various cultures have different attitudes about the ethics
of such behavior, some condemning it while others view it to be normal
and acceptable.
There are persons, groups and cultures that consider premarital sex to be immoral, or even sinful, and refer to such behaviour as fornication.
In recent decades, premarital sex has increasingly been regarded as less
socially or morally objectionable, especially within Western cultures.
Similarly, but perhaps more than sex by unmarried persons, extramarital sex may be regarded as immoral or sinful by some, and referred to as adultery, infidelity or "cheating", while some cultures, groups or individuals regard extramarital sex as acceptable.
Monogamy, especially in Christian societies, is widely regarded as a norm, and polygamy is deprecated. Even within polygamous societies, polyandry is regarded as unacceptable. Today, the practice, especially in Western cultures, of polyamory or open marriage raises ethical or moral issues.
Most societies disapprove of a person in a position of power to
engage in sexual activity with a subordinate. This is often considered
unethical simply as a breach of trust. When the person takes advantage of a position of power in the workplace, this may constitute sexual harassment, because subordinates may be unable to give proper consent to a sexual advance because of a fear of repercussions.
Child-parent incest is also seen as an abuse of a position of trust and power, in addition to the inability of a child to give consent.
Incest between adults may not involve this lack of consent, and is,
therefore, less clear-cut for most observers. Many professional
organizations have rules forbidding sexual relations between members and
their clients. Examples in many countries include psychiatrists,
psychologists, therapists, doctors, and lawyers. In addition, laws exist
against this kind of abuse of power by priests, preachers, teachers,
religious counselors, and coaches.
In countries where public health is considered a public concern,
there is also the issue of how sex impacts the health of individuals. In
such circumstances, where there are health impacts resulting from
certain sexual activities, there is the question of whether individuals
have an ethical responsibility to the public at large for their
behavior. Such concerns might involve the regular periodic testing for sexually transmitted diseases, disclosure of infection with sexually transmitted diseases, responsibility for taking safer sex precautions, ethics of sex without using contraception, leading to an increased level of unplanned pregnancies
and unwanted children, and just what amount of personal care an
individual needs to take in order to meet his or her requisite
contribution to the general health of a nation's citizens.
Moving forward there is going to be more restrictions on
conscription with the global population exponentially increasing like it
is. In China there is a two-child policy, and before that they had a one-child policy which was highly controversial and came into effect in 2015. But in terms of practicality, and by more modern Malthusianism, putting a limit on amount of babies one can have seems like one of the few going theories we have to limit it. However, this brings in major ethical issues on what to do if families happen to go over the limit.
Legal and social dress codes
are often related to sexuality. In the United States, there are many
rules against nudity. An individual cannot be naked even on their own
property if the public can see them. These laws are often considered a
violation to the constitution regarding freedom of expression. It is
said that common sense needs to be used when deciding whether or not
nudity is appropriate. Nevertheless, Hawaii, Texas, New York, Maine, and
Ohio allow all women to go topless at all locations that let men be
shirtless. In California it is not illegal to hike in the nude, however
it is frowned upon. Also in state parks it is legal to sunbathe in the
nude unless a private citizen complains then you are to be removed from
the premise by force if the individual doesn't comply. Breastfeeding in public
is considered wrong and mothers are encouraged to either cover
themselves in a blanket or go to the restroom to breastfeed their
newborn. There are no actual laws that prohibit the action of
breastfeeding in public except two places in Illinois and Missouri.
Various sexual acts are traded for money or other goods across the world. Ethical positions on sex work
may depend on the type of sex act traded and the conditions in which it
is traded, there are for example additional ethical concerns over the
abrogation of autonomy in the situation of trafficked sex workers.
Sex work has been a particularity divisive issue within feminism. Some feminists may regard sex work as an example of societal oppression of the sex workers by the patriarchy.
The ethical argument underlying this position is that despite the
apparent consent of the sex worker, the choice to engage in sex work is
often not an autonomous choice, because of economic, familial or
societal pressures. Sex work may also be seen as an objectification of women. An opposing view held by other feminists such as Wendy McElroy
is that sex work is a means of empowering women, the argument here
being that in sex work women are able to extract psychological and
financial power over men which is a justified correction of the power
unbalance inherent in a patriarchal society. Some feminists regard to
sex work as simply a form of labor which is neither morally good or bad,
but subject to the same difficulties of other labor forms.
If sex work is accepted as unethical, there is then the dispute
over which parties of the contract are responsible for the ethical or
legal breach. Traditionally, in many societies, the legal and ethical
burden of guilt has been placed largely on the sex worker rather than
consumers. In recent decades, some countries such as Sweden, Norway and
Iceland have rewritten their laws to outlaw the buying of sexual
services but not its sale (although they still retain laws and use
enforcement tactics which sex workers say are deleterious to their
safety, such as pressuring to have sex workers evicted from their
residences).
In ancient Athens, sexual attraction between men was the norm. In the Levant, however, persons who committed homosexual acts were stoned to death at the same period in history that young Alcibiades attempted to seduce Socrates
to glean wisdom from him. As presented by Plato in his Symposium,
Socrates did not "dally" with young Alcibiades, and instead treated him
as his father or brother would when they spent the night sharing a
blanket. In Xenophon's Symposium Socrates strongly speaks against men
kissing each other, saying that doing so will make them slavish, i.e.,
risk something that seems akin to an addiction to homosexual acts.
Most modern secular ethicists since the heyday of Utilitarianism, e.g. T.M. Scanlon and Bernard Williams,
have constructed systems of ethics whereby homosexuality is a matter of
individual choice and where ethical questions have been answered by an
appeal to non-interference in activities involving consenting adults.
However, Scanlon's system, notably, goes in a slightly different
direction from this and requires that no person who meets certain
criteria could rationally reject a principle that either sanctions or
condemns a certain act. Under Scanlon's system, it is difficult to see
how one would construct a principle condemning homosexuality outright,
although certain acts, such as homosexual rape, would still be fairly
straightforward cases of unethical behavior.
The history of masturbation describes broad changes in society concerning the ethics, social attitudes, scientific study, and artistic depiction of masturbation over the history of sexuality.
The sexual stimulation of one's own genitals has been
interpreted variously by different religions, and has been the subject of legislation, social controversy, activism, as well as intellectual study in sexology.
Social views regarding masturbation taboo have varied greatly in different cultures, and over history.
Ancient history
There are depictions of male and female masturbation in prehistoric rock paintings
around the world. Most early people seem to have connected human
sexuality with abundance in nature. A clay figurine of the 4th
millennium BC from a temple site on the island of Malta, depicts a woman masturbating. However, in the ancient world, depictions of male masturbation are far more common.
From the earliest records, the ancient Sumerians had very relaxed attitudes toward sex. The Sumerians widely believed that masturbation enhanced sexual potency, both for men and for women, and they frequently engaged in it, both alone and with their partners. Men would often use puru-oil, a special oil probably mixed with pulverized iron ore intended to enhance friction. Masturbation was also an act of creation and, in Sumerian mythology, the god Enki was believed to have created the Tigris and Euphrates rivers by masturbating and ejaculating into their empty riverbeds.
Male masturbation was an even more important image in ancient Egypt: when performed by a god it could be considered a creative or magical act: the god Atum was believed to have created the universe by masturbating to ejaculation.
Detail of a krater, dating to c. 560-550 BC, showing a satyr masturbating, a common scene in many ancient Greek pottery paintings
The ancient Greeks also regarded masturbation as a normal and healthy substitute for other forms of sexual pleasure. Most information about masturbation in ancient Greece comes from surviving works of ancient Greek comedy and pottery. Masturbation is frequently referenced in the surviving comedies of Aristophanes, which are the most important sources of information on ancient Greek views on the subject. In ancient Greek pottery, satyrs are often depicted masturbating.
According to the Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers by the third-century AD biographer Diogenes Laërtius, Diogenes of Sinope, the fourth-century BC Cynic philosopher, often masturbated in public, which was considered scandalous. When people confronted him over this, he would say, "If only it were as easy to banish hunger by rubbing my belly." Diogenes, speaking in jest, credited the god Hermes with its invention: he allegedly took pity on his son Pan, who was pining for Echo
but unable to seduce her, and taught him the trick of masturbation in
order to relieve his suffering. Pan in his turn taught the habit to
young shepherds.
Masturbation is little noted in the sources for ancient Roman sexuality. The poet Martial considers it an inferior form of sexual release resorted to by slaves. Aulus Gellius, a Latin writer of the second century A.D., claims that the fragment of Empedocles
"O wretches, utter wretches, from beans withhold your hands" refers to
the testicles symbolically, trying to keep men away "from excess in
venery".
Though infrequently mentioned, masturbation was a longstanding theme in
Latin satire, appearing in one of the few surviving fragments of Lucilius, Rome's earliest practitioner of the genre. The Romans preferred the left hand for masturbation.
Cultures without masturbation
Within the African Congo Basin, the Aka and Nganduethnic groups all lack a word for masturbation in their languages and are confused by the concept of masturbation.
Health concerns
Insanity
Several
medical papers were written on insanity as a result of masturbation,
and this was written as a reason for admission when a person was
confined in a hospital. A doctor named J W Robertson tried to describe
the differences between different types of masturbation in the year
1898, when addressing the Medical Society of the State of California.
18th century pamphlet
The
first use of the word "onanism" to consistently and specifically refer
to masturbation is a pamphlet first distributed in London in 1716,
titled "Onania, or the Heinous Sin of self-Pollution,
And All Its Frightful Consequences, In Both Sexes, Considered: With
Spiritual and Physical Advice To Those Who Have Already Injured
Themselves By This Abominable Practice." It drew on familiar themes of
sin and vice, this time in particular against the "heinous sin" of
"self-pollution", with dire warnings that those who so indulged would
suffer:
Disturbances of the stomach and digestion, loss of appetite or
ravenous hunger, vomiting, nausea, weakening of the organs of breathing,
coughing, hoarseness, paralysis, weakening of the organ of generation
to the point of impotence, lack of libido, back pain, disorders of the
eye and ear, total diminution of bodily powers, paleness, thinness,
pimples on the face, decline of intellectual powers, loss of memory,
attacks of rage, madness, idiocy, epilepsy, fever and finally suicide.
Included were letters and testimonials supposedly from young men ill
and dying from the effects of compulsive masturbation. The pamphlet then
goes on to recommend as an effective remedy a "Strengthening Tincture"
at 10 shillings a bottle and a "Prolific Powder" at 12 shillings a bag,
available from a local shop.
"Onania" was a huge success with over 60 editions published and being
translated into several languages.
Robert James
In 1743–45, the British physician Robert James published A Medicinal Dictionary,
in which he described masturbation as being "productive of the most
deplorable and generally incurable disorders" and stated that "there is
perhaps no sin productive of so many hideous consequences".
Tissot
1785 Italian edition of Samuel Auguste André David Tissot's book: Treatise on the Diseases Produced by Onanism.
One of the many horrified by the descriptions of malady in Onania was the notable Swiss physician Samuel-Auguste Tissot. In 1760, he published L'Onanisme, his own comprehensive medical treatise on the purported ill-effects of masturbation. Citing case studies of young male masturbators amongst his patients in Lausanne, Switzerland
as basis for his reasoning, Tissot argued that semen was an "essential
oil" and "stimulus", the loss of which in great amounts would cause "a
perceptible reduction of strength, of memory and even of reason; blurred
vision, all the nervous disorders, all types of gout and rheumatism,
weakening of the organs of generation, blood in the urine, disturbance
of the appetite, headaches and a great number of other disorders."
Though Tissot's ideas are now considered conjectural
at best, his treatise was presented as a scholarly, scientific work in a
time when experimental physiology was practically nonexistent. The
authority with which the work was subsequently treated – Tissot's
arguments were even acknowledged and echoed by Kant and Voltaire
– arguably turned the perception of masturbation in Western medicine
over the next two centuries into that of a debilitating illness.
Rush
In 1812 Benjamin Rush included "Of the Morbid State of the Sexual Appetite" as chapter 18 of his book on diseases of the mind.
In it he cites excessive eating, intemperance in drinking, and idleness
as causative factors of onanism. Earlier in the book (page 33) he
claims there is a "train of physical and moral evils which this solitary
vice fixes upon the body and mind." In his charge of mentally ill
people he notes three driven to mania by onanism (page 48). In his
observation of "congenital idiotism" (page 292) he notes, "The venereal
appetite exists in them with great force, and they gratify it after
puberty by onanism."
By 1838 Jean Esquirol declared in his Des Maladies Mentales that masturbation was "recognized in all countries as a cause of insanity."
White
In the 1870 book A Solemn Appeal Relative to Solitary Vice, and the Abuses and Excesses of the Marriage Relation, edited by James Springer White, and written by Ellen G. White, we find:
If the practice [of self-indulgence] is continued from the age of
fifteen and upward, nature will protest against the abuse he has
suffered, and continues to suffer, and will make them pay the penalty
for the transgression of his laws, especially from the ages of thirty to
forty-five, by numerous pains in the system, and various diseases, such
as affection of the liver and lungs, neuralgia, rheumatism, affection of the spine, diseased kidneys,
and cancerous humors. Some of nature's fine machinery gives way,
leaving a heavier task for the remaining to perform, which disorders
nature's fine arrangement, and there is often a sudden breaking down of
the constitution; and death is the result.
Females possess less vital force than the other sex, and are deprived
very much of the bracing, invigorating air, by their in-door life. The
result of self-abuse in them is seen in various diseases, such as catarrh, dropsy,
headache, loss of memory and sight, great weakness in the back and
loins, affections of the spine, and frequently, inward decay of the
head. Cancerous humor, which would lie dormant in the system their
lifetime, is inflamed, and commences its eating, destructive work. The
mind is often utterly ruined, and insanity supervenes.
Kellogg
Doctor John Harvey Kellogg (February 26, 1852 – December 14, 1943) was an especially zealous campaigner against masturbation.
Kellogg was able to draw upon many medical sources' claims such as
"neither the plague, nor war, nor small-pox, nor similar diseases, have
produced results so disastrous to humanity as the pernicious habit of onanism," credited to one Dr. Adam Clarke.
Kellogg strongly warned against the habit in his own words, claiming of
masturbation-related deaths "such a victim literally dies by his own
hand," among other condemnations. Kellogg believed the practice of
"solitary-vice" caused cancer of the womb, urinary diseases, nocturnal
emissions, impotence, epilepsy, insanity, and mental and physical
debility – "dimness of vision" was only briefly mentioned.
In Plain Facts for Old and Young, Kellogg issued a warning on the
evils of sex. Of the 644 pages, 97 address "Secret Vice (Solitary Vice
or Self-Abuse)", its symptoms and results. Included are 39 signs
indicating someone is masturbating.
He recommended, to cure children from this "solitary vice", bandaging or
tying their hands, covering their genitals with patented cages, sewing
the foreskin shut and electrical shock, and circumcision without
anesthesia, which would break the habit. In order to prevent it, he
advised parents first to teach children to avoid handling their
genitalia, and as they get more mature, to inform them "of the evil
consequences". He also warned parents against "evil associations",
servants, and "wicked or ignorant" nurses who would masturbate children
in order to quiet them.
Freud
Sigmund Freud wrote of the "disease of masturbation": "He was suffering from the effects of masturbation."
bin Baz
In the 1990s, Abd al-Aziz bin Baz, the Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia,
argued masturbation causes disruption of the digestive system,
inflammation of the testicles, damage to the spine, "trembling and
instability in some parts of the body like the feet", weakening of the
"cerebral glands" leading to decreased intellect and even "mental
disorders and insanity".
Immanuel Kant regarded masturbation as a violation of the moral law. In the Metaphysics of Morals (1797) he made the a posteriori
argument that 'such an unnatural use of one's sexual attributes'
strikes 'everyone upon his thinking of it' as 'a violation of one's duty
to himself', and suggested that it was regarded as immoral even to give
it its proper name (unlike the case of the similarly undutiful act of suicide).
He went on, however, to acknowledge that 'it is not so easy to produce a
rational demonstration of the inadmissibility of that unnatural use',
but ultimately concluded that its immorality lay in the fact that 'a man
gives up his personality … when he uses himself merely as a means for
the gratification of an animal drive'.
The 18th-century philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau saw masturbation as equal to 'mental rape', and discussed it in both Émile and Confessions.
He argued that it was the corrupting influence of society that led to
such unnatural acts as masturbation and that humans living a simple life
amidst nature would never do such things.
This continued well into the Victorian Era, where such medical censure of masturbation was in line with the widespread social conservatism and opposition to open sexual behavior common at the time. In 1879, Mark Twain wrote a speech titled Some Thoughts on the Science of Onanism which he ended with the words:
Of all the various kinds of sexual intercourse, this has the least to
recommend it. As an amusement it is too fleeting; as an occupation it
is too wearing; as a public exhibition there is no money in it. It is
unsuited to the drawing room, and in the most cultured society it has
long since been banished from the social board…
So, in concluding, I say: If you must gamble away your life sexually, don’t play a Lone Hand too much.
When you feel a revolutionary uprising in your system, get your Vendome Column down some other way — don’t jerk it down.
There were recommendations to have boys' trousers constructed so that
the genitals could not be touched through the pockets, for
schoolchildren to be seated at special desks to prevent their crossing
their legs in class and for girls to be forbidden from riding horses and
bicycles because the sensations these activities produce were
considered too similar to masturbation. Boys and young men who
nevertheless continued to indulge in the practice were branded as
"weak-minded." Many "remedies" were devised, including eating a bland, meatless diet. This approach was promoted by Dr. John Harvey Kellogg (inventor of corn flakes) and Rev. Sylvester Graham (inventor of Graham crackers). The medical literature of the times describes procedures for electric shock treatment, infibulation, restraining devices like chastity belts and straitjackets, cauterization or – as a last resort – wholesale surgical excision of the genitals. Routine neonatal circumcision
was widely adopted in the United States and the UK at least partly
because of its believed preventive effect against masturbation (see also
History of male circumcision).
In later decades, the more drastic of these measures were increasingly
replaced with psychological techniques, such as warnings that
masturbation led to blindness, hairy hands or stunted growth. Some of
these persist as myths even today. Referring to such viewpoints and
treatments, Messer and Walker stated: "These are some of the darkest
pages of religious and medical history."
In 1905, Sigmund Freud addressed masturbation in his Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality
and associated it with addictive substances. He described the
masturbation of infants at the period when the infant is nursing, at
four years of age, and at puberty.
In 1910, the meetings of the Vienna psychoanalytic circle discussed the moral or health effects of masturbation but its publication was suppressed.
Medical attitudes toward masturbation began to change at the beginning of the 20th century when H. Havelock Ellis, in his seminal 1897 work Studies in the Psychology of Sex,
questioned Tissot's premises, cheerfully named famous men of the era
who masturbated and then set out to disprove (with the work of more
recent physicians) each of the claimed diseases of which masturbation
was purportedly the cause. "We reach the conclusion", he wrote, "that in
the case of moderate masturbation in healthy, well-born individuals, no
seriously pernicious results necessarily follow."
Robert Baden-Powell, the founder of The Scout Association, incorporated a passage in the 1914 edition of Scouting for Boys
warning against the dangers of masturbation. This passage stated that
the individual should run away from the temptation by performing
physical activity which was supposed to tire the individual so that
masturbation could not be performed. By 1930, however, Dr. F. W. W. Griffin, editor of The Scouter, had written in a book for Rover Scouts that the temptation to masturbate was "a quite natural stage of development" and, citing Ellis' work, held that "the effort to achieve complete abstinence was a very serious error."
The works of sexologist Alfred Kinsey during the 1940s and 1950s, most notably the Kinsey Reports,
insisted that masturbation was an instinctive behaviour for both males
and females, citing the results of Gallup Poll surveys indicating how
common it was in the United States. Some critics of this theory held
that his research was biased and that the Gallup Poll method was
redundant for defining "natural behavior".
In the US masturbation has not been a diagnosable condition since DSM II (1968).[41] The American Medical Association consensually declared masturbation as normal in 1972.
Thomas Szasz states the shift in scientific consensus
as "Masturbation: the primary sexual activity of mankind. In the
nineteenth century it was a disease; in the twentieth, it's a cure."
In the 1980s Michel Foucault was arguing masturbation taboo was "rape by the parents of the sexual activity of their children":
To intervene in this personal, secret activity, which masturbation
was, does not represent something neutral for the parents. It is not
only a matter of power, or authority, or ethics; it's also a pleasure.
In 1994, when the Surgeon General of the United States, Dr. Joycelyn Elders, mentioned as an aside that it should be mentioned in school curricula that masturbation was safe and healthy, she was forced to resign, with opponents asserting that she was promoting the teaching of how to masturbate.
The Indigenous peoples of the Americas are the inhabitants of the Americas before the arrival of the European settlers in the 15th century, and the ethnic groups who now identify themselves with those peoples.
Many Indigenous peoples of the Americas were traditionally hunter-gatherers and many, especially in the Amazon basin, still are, but many groups practiced aquaculture and agriculture.
While some societies depended heavily on agriculture, others practiced a
mix of farming, hunting, and gathering. In some regions, the Indigenous
peoples created monumental architecture, large-scale organized cities, city-states, chiefdoms, states, kingdoms, republics, confederacies, and empires.
Some had varying degrees of knowledge of engineering, architecture,
mathematics, astronomy, writing, physics, medicine, planting and
irrigation, geology, mining, metallurgy, sculpture, and gold smithing.
Many parts of the Americas are still populated by Indigenous peoples; some countries have sizeable populations, especially Bolivia, Canada, Chile, Ecuador, Guatemala, Mexico, Peru, and the United States. At least a thousand different Indigenous languages are spoken in the Americas. Some, such as Quechua, Arawak, Aymara, Guaraní, Mayan, and Nahuatl,
count their speakers in the millions. Many also maintain aspects of
Indigenous cultural practices to varying degrees, including religion, social organization, and subsistence
practices. Like most cultures, over time, cultures specific to many
Indigenous peoples have evolved to incorporate traditional aspects but
also cater to modern needs. Some Indigenous peoples still live in
relative isolation from Western culture and a few are still counted as uncontacted peoples.
Terminology
Diné
boy, in the desert of Monument Valley, Arizona, United States of
America. The Three Sisters buttes are visible in the background.
Application of the term "Indian" originated with Christopher Columbus, who, in his search for India, thought that he had arrived in the East Indies. Eventually, those islands came to be known as the "West Indies", a name still used. This led to the blanket term "Indies" and "Indians" (Spanish: indios; Portuguese: índios; French: indiens; Dutch: indianen)
for the Indigenous inhabitants, which implied some kind of ethnic or
cultural unity among the Indigenous peoples of the Americas. This
unifying concept, codified in law, religion, and politics, was not
originally accepted by the myriad groups of Indigenous peoples
themselves, but has since been embraced or tolerated by many over the
last two centuries. Even though the term "Indian" generally does not include the culturally and linguistically distinct Indigenous peoples of the Arctic regions of the Americas—such as the Aleuts, Inuit, or Yupik peoples,
who entered the continent as a second, more recent wave of migration
several thousand years later and have much more recent genetic and
cultural commonalities with the Aboriginal peoples of the Asiatic Arctic Russian Far East—these groups are nonetheless considered "Indigenous peoples of the Americas".
The term Amerindian, a portmanteau of "American Indian", was coined in 1902 by the American Anthropological Association.
However, it has been controversial since its creation. It was
immediately rejected by some leading members of the Association, and,
while adopted by many, it was never universally accepted.
While never popular in Indigenous communities themselves, it remains a
preferred term among some anthropologists, notably in some parts of
Canada and the English-speaking Caribbean.
Indigenous peoples in Canada is used as the collective name for First Nations, Inuit, and Métis. The term Aboriginal peoples as a collective noun (also describing First Nations, Inuit, and Métis) is a specific term of art used in some legal documents, including the Constitution Act, 1982, though in most Indigenous circles Aboriginal has also fallen into disfavor.
Over time, as societal perceptions and government-Indigenous
relationships have shifted, many historical terms have changed
definition or been replaced as they have fallen out of favor.
Use of the term "Indian" is frowned upon because it represents the
imposition and restriction of Indigenous peoples and cultures by the
Canadian Government. The terms "Native" and "Eskimo" are generally regarded as disrespectful, and so are rarely used unless specifically required.
While "Indigenous peoples" is the preferred term, many individuals or
communities may choose to self-describe their identity using a different
term.
The Métis people of Canada can be contrasted, for instance, to the Indigenous-European mixed race mestizos (or caboclos in Brazil) of Hispanic America
who, with their larger population (in most Latin-American countries
constituting either outright majorities, pluralities, or at the least
large minorities), identify largely as a new ethnic group distinct from
both Europeans and Indigenous, but still considering themselves a subset
of the European-derived Hispanic or Brazilian peoplehood in culture and ethnicity (cf.ladinos).
Among Spanish-speaking countries, indígenas or pueblos indígenas ('Indigenous peoples') is a common term, though nativos or pueblos nativos ('native peoples') may also be heard; moreover, aborigen ('aborigine') is used in Argentina and pueblos originarios ('original peoples') is common in Chile. In Brazil, indígenas or povos indígenas ('Indigenous peoples') are common of formal-sounding designations, while índio ('Indian') is still the more often-heard term (the noun for the South-Asian nationality being indiano). Aborígene and nativo is rarely used in Brazil in Indigenous-specific contexts (e.g., aborígene is usually understood as the ethnonym for Indigenous Australians). The Spanish and Portuguese equivalents to Indian, nevertheless, could be used to mean any hunter-gatherer or full-blooded Indigenous person, particularly to continents other than Europe or Africa—for example, indios filipinos.
Indigenous peoples of the United States are commonly known as Native Americans, Indians, as well as Alaska Natives.
The term "Indian" is still used in some communities and remains in use
in the official names of many institutions and businesses in Indian Country.
The various Nations, tribes, and bands of Indigenous peoples of the
Americas have differing preferences in terminology for themselves.
While there are regional and generational variations in which umbrella
terms are preferred for Indigenous peoples as a whole, in general, most
Indigenous peoples prefer to be identified by the name of their specific
Nation, tribe, or band.
Quechua women in festive dress, on the island of Taquile (Lake Titicaca)
Early settlers often adopted terms that some tribes used for each
other, not realizing these were derogatory terms used by enemies. When
discussing broader subsets of peoples, naming has often been based on
shared language, region, or historical relationship. Many English exonyms
have been used to refer to the Indigenous peoples of the Americas. Some
of these names were based on foreign-language terms used by earlier
explorers and colonists, while others resulted from the colonists'
attempts to translate or transliterate endonyms from the native languages. Other terms arose during periods of conflict between the colonists and Indigenous peoples.
Since the late 20th century, Indigenous peoples in the Americas
have been more vocal about how they want to be addressed, pushing to
suppress use of terms widely considered to be obsolete, inaccurate, or racist. During the latter half of the 20th century and the rise of the Indian rights movement, the United States government responded by proposing the use of the term "Native American", to recognize the primacy of Indigenous peoples' tenure in the nation.
As may be expected among people of over 400 different cultures in the
US alone, not all of the people intended to be described by this term
have agreed on its use or adopted it. No single group naming convention
has been accepted by all Indigenous peoples in the Americas. Most prefer
to be addressed as people of their tribe or nations when not speaking
about Native Americans/American Indians as a whole.
Since the 1970s, Indigenous (capitalized when referring to
people) has gradually emerged as a favored umbrella term. The
capitalization is to acknowledge that Indigenous peoples have cultures
and societies that are equal to Europeans, Africans, and Asians. This has recently been acknowledged in the AP Stylebook.
Some consider it improper to refer to Indigenous people as "Indigenous
Americans" or to append any colonial nationality to the term because
Indigenous cultures have existed prior to European colonization.
Indigenous groups have territorial claims that are different from modern
national and international borders, and when labelled as part of a
country, their traditional lands are not acknowledged. Some who have
written guidelines consider it more appropriate to describe an
Indigenous person as "living in" or "of" the Americas, rather than
calling them "American"; or to simply call them "Indigenous" without any
addition of a colonial state.
While there is general agreement that the Americas were first
settled from Asia, the pattern of migration and the place(s) of origin
in Eurasia of the peoples who migrated to the Americas remain unclear.[66] The traditional theory is that Ancient Beringians moved when sea levels were significantly lowered due to the Quaternary glaciation, following herds of now-extinct Pleistocenemegafauna along ice-free corridors that stretched between the Laurentide and Cordilleran ice sheets. Another route proposed is that, either on foot or using primitive boats, they migrated down the Pacific coast to South America as far as Chile. Any archaeological evidence of coastal occupation during the last Ice Age would now have been covered by the sea level rise, up to a hundred metres since then.
The precise date for the peopling of the Americas is a long-standing open question, and while advances in archaeology, Pleistocenegeology, physical anthropology, and DNA analysis have progressively shed more light on the subject, significant questions remain unresolved. The "Clovis first theory" refers to the hypothesis that the Clovis culture represents the earliest human presence in the Americas about 13,000 years ago. Evidence of pre-Clovis cultures has accumulated and pushed back the possible date of the first peopling of the Americas.
Academics generally believe that humans reached North America south of
the Laurentide Ice Sheet at some point between 15,000 and 20,000 years
ago. Some archaeological evidence suggests the possibility that human arrival in the Americas may have occurred prior to the Last Glacial Maximum more than 20,000 years ago.
Geneticist and professor of anthropology Jennifer Raff (2022) in the book "A Genetic Chronicle of the First Peoples in the Americas"
summarized that the first people in the Americas diverged from Ancient
East Asians about 36,000 years ago and expanded northwards into Siberia,
where they encountered and interacted with a different Paleolithic
Siberian population (known as Ancient North Eurasians), giving rise to both Paleosiberian peoples and Ancient Native Americans,
which later migrated towards the Beringian region, became isolated from
other populations, and subsequently populated the Americas.
The Kogi, descendants of the Tairona, are a culturally-intact, largely pre-Columbian society. The Tairona were one of the few indigenous American tribes that were not fully conquered.
"The Maiden", one of the discovered Llullaillaco mummies. A Preserved Inca human sacrifice from around the year 1500.
The Norte Chico civilization
(in present-day Peru) is one of the defining six original civilizations
of the world, arising independently around the same time as that of Egypt.
Many later pre-Columbian civilizations achieved great complexity, with
hallmarks that included permanent or urban settlements, agriculture,
engineering, astronomy, trade, civic and monumental architecture, and complex societal hierarchies.
Some of these civilizations had long faded by the time of the first
significant European and African arrivals (ca. late 15th–early 16th
centuries), and are known only through oral history
and through archaeological investigations. Others were contemporary
with the contact and colonization period, and were documented in
historical accounts of the time. A few, such as the Mayan, Olmec,
Mixtec, Aztec and Nahua peoples,
had their own written languages and records. However, the European
colonists of the time worked to eliminate non-Christian beliefs, and
burned many pre-Columbian written records. Only a few documents remained
hidden and survived, leaving contemporary historians with glimpses of
ancient culture and knowledge.
According to both Indigenous and European accounts and documents,
American civilizations before and at the time of European encounter had
achieved great complexity and many accomplishments. For instance, the Aztecs built one of the largest cities in the world, Tenochtitlan (the historical site of what would become Mexico City),
with an estimated population of 200,000 for the city proper and a
population of close to five million for the extended empire.
By comparison, the largest European cities in the 16th century were
Constantinople and Paris with 300,000 and 200,000 inhabitants
respectively.
The population in London, Madrid and Rome hardly exceeded 50,000
people. In 1523, right around the time of the Spanish conquest, the
entire population in the country of England was just under three million
people.
This fact speaks to the level of sophistication, agriculture,
governmental procedure and rule of law that existed in Tenochtitlan,
needed to govern over such a large citizenry. Indigenous civilizations
also displayed impressive accomplishments in astronomy and mathematics,
including the most accurate calendar in the world. The domestication of maize
or corn required thousands of years of selective breeding, and
continued cultivation of multiple varieties was done with planning and
selection, generally by women.
Inuit, Yupik, Aleut, and Indigenous creation myths
tell of a variety of origins of their respective peoples. Some were
"always there" or were created by gods or animals, some migrated from a
specified compass point, and others came from "across the ocean".
Cultural areas of North America at time of European contact
The European colonization of the Americas fundamentally changed the
lives and cultures of the resident Indigenous peoples. Although the
exact pre-colonization population-count of the Americas is unknown,
scholars estimate that Indigenous populations diminished by between 80%
and 90% within the first centuries of European colonization. The
majority of these losses are attributed to the introduction of
Afro-Eurasian diseases into the Americas. Epidemics ravaged the Americas
with diseases such as smallpox, measles, and cholera, which the early colonists brought from Europe.
The spread of infectious diseases was slow initially, as most
Europeans were not actively or visibly infected, due to inherited
immunity from generations of exposure to these diseases in Europe. This
changed when the Europeans began the human trafficking of massive numbers of enslaved Western and Central African people
to the Americas. Like Indigenous peoples, these African people, newly
exposed to European diseases, lacked any inherited resistances to the
diseases of Europe. In 1520 an African who had been infected with
smallpox had arrived in Yucatán. By 1558, the disease had spread
throughout South America and had arrived at the Plata basin.
Colonist violence towards Indigenous peoples accelerated the loss of
lives. European colonists perpetrated massacres on the Indigenous
peoples and enslaved them. According to the U.S. Bureau of the Census (1894), the North American Indian Wars of the 19th century cost the lives of about 19,000 Europeans and 30,000 Native Americans.
The first Indigenous group encountered by Columbus, the 250,000 Taínos of Hispaniola, represented the dominant culture in the Greater Antilles and the Bahamas. Within thirty years about 70% of the Taínos had died. They had no immunity to European diseases, so outbreaks of measles and smallpox ravaged their population. One such outbreak occurred in a camp of enslaved Africans, where smallpox spread to the nearby Taíno population and reduced their numbers by 50%. Increasing punishment of the Taínos for revolting against forced labor, despite measures put in place by the encomienda, which included religious education and protection from warring tribes, eventually led to the last great Taíno rebellion (1511–1529).
Following years of mistreatment, the Taínos began to adopt
suicidal behaviors, with women aborting or killing their infants and men
jumping from cliffs or ingesting untreated cassava, a violent poison. Eventually, a Taíno Cacique named Enriquillo managed to hold out in the Baoruco Mountain Range for thirteen years, causing serious damage to the Spanish, Carib-held plantations and their Indian auxiliaries. Hearing of the seriousness of the revolt,
Emperor Charles V
(also King of Spain) sent captain Francisco Barrionuevo to negotiate a
peace treaty with the ever-increasing number of rebels. Two months
later, after consultation with the Audencia of Santo Domingo, Enriquillo
was offered any part of the island to live in peace.
The Laws of Burgos, 1512–1513,
were the first codified set of laws governing the behavior of Spanish
settlers in America, particularly with regard to Indigenous peoples. The
laws forbade the maltreatment of them and endorsed their conversion to Catholicism. The Spanish crown found it difficult to enforce these laws in distant colonies.
Drawing accompanying text in Book XII of the 16th-century Florentine Codex (compiled 1540–1585), showing Nahuas of conquest-era central Mexico suffering from smallpox
Epidemic disease was the overwhelming cause of the population decline of the Indigenous peoples. After initial contact with Europeans and Africans, Old World diseases caused the deaths of 90 to 95% of the native population of the New World in the following 150 years. Smallpox killed from one third to half of the native population of Hispaniola in 1518. By killing the Incan ruler Huayna Capac, smallpox caused the Inca Civil War of 1529–1532. Smallpox was only the first epidemic. Typhus (probably) in 1546, influenza and smallpox together in 1558, smallpox again in 1589, diphtheria in 1614, measles in 1618—all ravaged the remains of Inca culture.
Smallpox killed millions of native inhabitants of Mexico. Unintentionally introduced at Veracruz with the arrival of Pánfilo de Narváez on 23 April 1520, smallpox ravaged Mexico in the 1520s, possibly killing over 150,000 in Tenochtitlán (the heartland of the Aztec Empire) alone, and aiding in the victory of Hernán Cortés over the Aztec Empire at Tenochtitlan (present-day Mexico City) in 1521.
There are many factors as to why Indigenous peoples suffered such
immense losses from Afro-Eurasian diseases. Many European diseases,
like cow pox, are acquired from domesticated animals that are not
indigenous to the Americas. European populations had adapted to these
diseases, and built up resistance, over many generations. Many of the
European diseases that were brought over to the Americas were diseases,
like yellow fever,
that were relatively manageable if infected as a child, but were deadly
if infected as an adult. Children could often survive the disease,
resulting in immunity to the disease for the rest of their lives. But
contact with adult populations without this childhood or inherited
immunity would result in these diseases proving fatal.
Colonization of the Caribbean led to the destruction of the Arawaks of the Lesser Antilles.
Their culture was destroyed by 1650. Only 500 had survived by the year
1550, though the bloodlines continued through to the modern populace. In
Amazonia, Indigenous societies weathered, and continue to suffer,
centuries of colonization and genocide.
Indigenous people at a Brazilian farm plantation in Minas Gerais ca. 1824
Contact with European diseases such as smallpox and measles killed
between 50 and 67 per cent of the Indigenous population of North America
in the first hundred years after the arrival of Europeans. Some 90 per cent of the native population near Massachusetts Bay Colony died of smallpox in an epidemic in 1617–1619. In 1633, in Fort Orange (New Netherland),
the Native Americans there were exposed to smallpox because of contact
with Europeans. As it had done elsewhere, the virus wiped out entire
population-groups of Native Americans. It reached Lake Ontario in 1636, and the lands of the Iroquois by 1679. During the 1770s smallpox killed at least 30% of the West Coast Native Americans. The 1775–82 North American smallpox epidemic and the 1837 Great Plains smallpox epidemic brought devastation and drastic population depletion among the Plains Indians. In 1832 the federal government of the United States established a smallpox vaccination program for Native Americans (The Indian Vaccination Act of 1832).
The Indigenous peoples in Brazil declined from a pre-Columbian high of an estimated three million to some 300,000 in 1997.
The Spanish Empire and other Europeans re-introduced horses to the Americas. Some of these animals escaped and began to breed and increase their numbers in the wild.
The re-introduction of the horse, extinct in the Americas for over 7500 years, had a profound impact on Indigenous cultures in the Great Plains of North America and in Patagonia
in South America. By domesticating horses, some tribes had great
success: horses enabled them to expand their territories, exchange more
goods with neighboring tribes, and more easily capture game, especially bison.
Indigenous historical trauma (IHT) is the trauma that can accumulate across generations that develops as a result of the historical ramifications of colonization and is linked to mental and physical health hardships and population decline. IHT affects many different people in a multitude of ways because the Indigenous community and their history is diverse.
Many studies (such as Whitbeck et al., 2014; Brockie, 2012; Anastasio et al., 2016; Clark & Winterowd, 2012; Tucker et al., 2016)
have evaluated the impact of IHT on health outcomes of Indigenous
communities from the United States and Canada. IHT is a difficult term
to standardize and measure because of the vast and variable diversity of
Indigenous people and their communities. Therefore, it is an arduous
task to assign an operational definition
and systematically collect data when studying IHT. Many of the studies
that incorporate IHT measure it in different ways, making it hard to
compile data and review it holistically. This is an important point that
provides context for the following studies that attempt to understand
the relationship between IHT and potential adverse health impacts.
Some of the methodologies to measure IHT include a "Historical
Losses Scale" (HLS), "Historical Losses Associated Symptoms Scale"
(HLASS), and residential school ancestry studies.
HLS uses a survey format that includes "12 kinds of historical losses,"
such as loss of language and loss of land and asks participants how
often they think about those losses. The HLASS includes 12 emotional reactions and asks participants how they feel when they think about these losses. Lastly, the residential school
ancestry studies ask respondents if their parents, grandparents,
great-grandparents or "elders from their community" went to a
residential school to understand if family or community history in
residential schools are associated with negative health outcomes. In a comprehensive review of the research literature, Joseph Gone and colleagues
compiled and compared outcomes for studies using these IHT measures
relative to health outcomes of Indigenous peoples. The study defined
negative health outcomes to include such concepts as anxiety, suicidal ideation, suicide attempts, polysubstance abuse, PTSD, depression, binge eating, anger, and sexual abuse.
The connection between IHT and health conditions is complicated
because of the difficult nature of measuring IHT, the unknown
directionality of IHT and health outcomes, and because the term Indigenous people
used in the various samples comprises a huge population of individuals
with drastically different experiences and histories. That being said,
some studies such as Bombay, Matheson, and Anisman (2014), Elias et al. (2012), and Pearce et al. (2008)
found that Indigenous respondents with a connection to residential
schools have more negative health outcomes (e.g., suicide ideation,
suicide attempts, and depression) than those who did not have a
connection to residential schools. Additionally, Indigenous respondents
with higher HLS and HLASS scores had one or more negative health
outcomes. While there many studies
that found an association between IHT and adverse health outcomes,
scholars continue to suggest that it remains difficult to understand the
impact of IHT. IHT needs to be systematically measured. Indigenous
people also need to be understood in separated categories based on
similar experiences, location, and background as opposed to being
categorized as one monolithic group.
The
domesticated plant species that were cultivated by the Indigenous
peoples have greatly influenced the crops that were produced globally.
Despite not being acknowledged for their contributions, they are still
highly influential in the agricultural industry.
In the course of thousands of years, Indigenous peoples domesticated,
bred and cultivated a large array of plant species. These species now
constitute between 50% and 60% of all crops in cultivation worldwide. In certain cases, the Indigenous peoples developed entirely new species and strains through artificial selection, as with the domestication and breeding of maize from wild teosinte
grasses in the valleys of southern Mexico. Numerous such agricultural
products retain their native names in the English and Spanish lexicons.
The South American highlands became a center of early agriculture. Genetic testing of the wide variety of cultivars and wild species suggests that the potato has a single origin in the area of southern Peru, from a species in the Solanum brevicaule complex. Over 99% of all modern cultivated potatoes worldwide are descendants of a subspecies Indigenous to south-central Chile, Solanum tuberosum ssp. tuberosum, where it was cultivated as long as 10,000 years ago. According to Linda Newson, "It is clear that in pre-Columbian times some groups struggled to survive and often suffered food shortages and famines, while others enjoyed a varied and substantial diet."
Persistent drought around AD 850 coincided with the collapse of Classic Maya civilization, and the famine of One Rabbit (AD 1454) was a major catastrophe in Mexico.
Indigenous peoples of North America began practicing farming approximately 4,000 years ago, late in the Archaic
period of North American cultures. Technology had advanced to the point
where pottery had started to become common and the small-scale felling
of trees had become feasible. Concurrently, the Archaic Indigenous peoples began using fire
in a controlled manner. They carried out intentional burning of
vegetation to mimic the effects of natural fires that tended to clear
forest understories. It made travel easier and facilitated the growth of
herbs and berry-producing plants, which were important both for food
and for medicines.
In the Mississippi River valley, Europeans noted that Native Americans managed groves of nut- and fruit-trees not far from villages and towns and their gardens and agricultural fields. They would have used prescribed burning further away, in forest and prairie areas.
Studies of contemporary Indigenous environmental management—including of agro-forestry practices among ItzaMaya in Guatemala and of hunting and fishing among the Menominee of Wisconsin—suggest that longstanding "sacred values" may represent a summary of sustainable millennial traditions.
Cultural practices in the Americas seem to have been shared mostly
within geographical zones where distinct ethnic groups adopting shared
cultural traits, similar technologies, and social organizations. An
example of such a cultural area is Mesoamerica,
where millennia of coexistence and shared development among the peoples
of the region produced a fairly homogeneous culture with complex
agricultural and social patterns. Another well-known example is the
North American plains where until the 19th century several peoples
shared the traits of nomadic hunter-gatherers based primarily on buffalo hunting.
Main indigenous language families of South America and Panama (except Quechua, Aymaran, and Mapudungun (Mapuche´ languague))
The languages of the North American Indians have been classified into
56 groups or stock tongues, in which the spoken languages of the tribes
may be said to centre. In connection with speech, reference may be made
to gesture language which was highly developed in parts of this area.
Of equal interest is the picture writing especially well developed among
the Chippewas and Delawares.
Beginning in the 1st millennium BCE, pre-Columbian cultures in Mesoamerica developed several Indigenous writing systems (independent of any influence from the writing systems that existed in other parts of the world). The Cascajal Block is perhaps the earliest-known example in the Americas of what may be an extensive written text. The Olmec
hieroglyphs tablet has been indirectly dated (from ceramic shards found
in the same context) to approximately 900 BCE-which is around the same
time that the Olmec occupation of San Lorenzo Tenochtitlán began to weaken.
The Maya writing system was logosyllabic (a combination of phoneticsyllabic symbols and logograms). It is the only pre-Columbian writing system known to have completely represented the spoken language of its community. It has more than a thousand different glyphs,
but a few are variations on the same sign or have the same meaning,
many appear only rarely or in particular localities, no more than about
five hundred were in use in any given time period, and, of those, it
seems only about two hundred (including variations) represented a
particular phoneme or syllable.
The Zapotec writing system, one of the earliest in the Americas, was logographic and presumably syllabic.[161]
There are remnants of Zapotec writing in inscriptions on some of the
monumental architecture of the period, but so few inscriptions are
extant that it is difficult to fully describe the writing system. The
oldest example of Zapotec script, dating from around 600 BCE, is on a
monument that was discovered in San José Mogote.
Aztec codices (singular codex) are books that were written by pre-Columbian and colonial-era Aztecs. These codices are some of the best primary sources for descriptions of Aztec culture. The pre-Columbian codices are largely pictorial; they do not contain symbols that represent spoken or written language. By contrast, colonial-era codices contain not only Aztec pictograms, but also writing that uses the Latin alphabet in several languages: Classical Nahuatl, Spanish, and occasionally Latin.
Spanish mendicants in the sixteenth century taught Indigenous
scribes in their communities to write their languages using Latin
letters, and there are a large number of local-level documents in Nahuatl, Zapotec, Mixtec, and Yucatec Maya
from the colonial era, many of which were part of lawsuits and other
legal matters. Although Spaniards initially taught Indigenous scribes
alphabetic writing, the tradition became self-perpetuating at the local
level.
The Spanish crown gathered such documentation, and contemporary Spanish
translations were made for legal cases. Scholars have translated and
analyzed these documents in what is called the New Philology to write histories of Indigenous peoples from Indigenous viewpoints.
Aboriginal syllabic writing, or simply syllabics, is a family of abugidas used to write some Indigenous languages of the Algonquian, Inuit, and Athabaskan language families.
Chimu culture feather pectoral, feathers, reed, copper, silver, hide, cordage, ca. 1350–1450 CE
Indigenous music can vary between cultures, however there are significant commonalities. Traditional music often centers around drumming and singing. Rattles, clapper sticks, and rasps are also popular percussive instruments, both historically and in contemporary cultures. Flutes are made of river-cane, cedar, and other woods. The Apache have a type of fiddle, and fiddles are also found among a number of First Nations and Métis cultures.
The music of the Indigenous peoples of Central Mexico and Central
America, like that of the North American cultures, tend to be spiritual
ceremonies. It traditionally includes a large variety of percussion and
wind instruments
such as drums, flutes, sea shells (used as trumpets) and "rain" tubes.
No remnants of pre-Columbian stringed instruments were found until
archaeologists discovered a jar in Guatemala, attributed to the Maya of
the Late Classic Era (600–900 CE); this jar was decorated with imagery
depicting a stringed musical instrument which has since been reproduced.
This instrument is one of the very few stringed instruments known in
the Americas prior to the introduction of European musical instruments; when played, it produces a sound that mimics a jaguar's growl.
After the entry of the Spaniards, the process of spiritual conquest was favored, among other things, by the liturgical
musical service to which the natives, whose musical gifts came to
surprise the missionaries, were integrated. The musical gifts of the
natives were of such magnitude that they soon learned the rules of
counterpoint and polyphony
and even the virtuous handling of the instruments. This helped to
ensure that it was not necessary to bring more musicians from Spain,
which significantly annoyed the clergy.
The solution that was proposed was not to employ but a certain
number of indigenous people in the musical service, not to teach them
counterpoint, not to allow them to play certain instruments (brass breaths, for example, in Oaxaca,
Mexico) and, finally, not to import more instruments so that the
indigenous people would not have access to them. The latter was not an
obstacle to the musical enjoyment of the natives, who experienced the
making of instruments, particularly rubbed strings (violins and double basses)
or plucked (third). It is there where we can find the origin of what is
now called traditional music whose instruments they have their own
tuning and a typical western structure.
Bill Reid's sculpture The Raven and the First Men (collection of the Museum of Anthropology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver). The Raven represents the Trickster figure common to many mythologies.
Indigenous peoples in Canada comprise the First Nations, Inuit and Métis; the descriptors "Indian" and "Eskimo" are falling into disuse. In Canada, it is quite frowned upon to use the name "Indian" in casual conversation.
"Eskimo" is considered derogatory in many other places because it was
given by non-Inuit and was said to mean "eater of raw meat".
Hundreds of Indigenous nations evolved trade, spiritual and social hierarchies. The Métis ethnicity developed a culture during the 18th century after generations of First Nations married European settlers. They were small farmers, hunters and trappers, and usually Catholic and French-speaking. The Inuit had more limited interaction with European settlers during that early period. Various laws, treaties, and legislation have been enacted between European-Canadians and First Nations across Canada. Aboriginal Right to Self-Government provides the opportunity for First Nations to manage their own historical, cultural, political, health care and economic control within their communities.
Although not without conflict, early European interactions in the
east with First Nations and Inuit populations were relatively peaceful
compared to the later experience of Indigenous peoples in the United
States. Combined with a late economic development in many regions,
this relatively peaceful history resulted in Indigenous peoples having a
fairly strong influence on the early national culture, while preserving
their own identity. From the late 18th century, European Canadians (primarily British Canadians and French Canadians) worked to force Indigenous peoples to assimilate into the mainstream European-influenced culture, which they referred to as Canadian culture. The government attempted violent forced integration in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Notable examples here include residential schools.
National Indigenous Peoples Day recognizes the cultures and contributions of Indigenous peoples of Canada. There are currently over 600 recognized First Nations governments or bands encompassing 1,807,250 people spread across Canada, with distinctive Indigenous cultures, languages, art, and music.
Approximately 89 percent of Greenland's population of 57,695 is Greenlandic Inuit, or 51,349 people as of 2012. Ethnographically, they consist of three major groups:
The territory of modern-day Mexico was home to numerous Indigenous civilizations prior to the arrival of the Spanish conquistadores: The Olmecs, who flourished from between 1200 BCE to about 400 BCE in the coastal regions of the Gulf of Mexico; the Zapotecs and the Mixtecs, who held sway in the mountains of Oaxaca and the Isthmus of Tehuantepec; the Maya in the Yucatán (and into neighbouring areas of contemporary Central America); the Purépecha in present-day Michoacán and surrounding areas, and the Aztecs/Mexica, who, from their central capital at Tenochtitlan, dominated much of the centre and south of the country (and the non-Aztec inhabitants of those areas) when Hernán Cortés first landed at Veracruz.
In contrast to what was the general rule in the rest of North America, the history of the colony of New Spain was one of racial intermingling (mestizaje). Mestizos,
which in Mexico designate people who do not identify culturally with
any Indigenous grouping, quickly came to account for a majority of the
colony's population. Today, Mestizos in Mexico
of mixed indigenous and European ancestry (with a minor African
contribution) are still a majority of the population. Genetic studies
vary over whether indigenous or European ancestry predominates in the
Mexican Mestizo population. In the 2015 census, 20.3% of the Mexican population self-identified as indigenous. In the 2020 INEGI
(National Institute of Statistics and Geography) census showed that at
the national level there are 11.8 million indigenous people (9.3% of the
Mexican population). In 2020 the National Institute of Indigenous Peoples reported 11.1 million people in Mexico belonging to an indigenous ethnicity (8.8% of the Mexican population). The indigenous population is distributed throughout the territory of Mexico, but is especially concentrated in the Sierra Madre del Sur, the Yucatán Peninsula and in the most remote and difficult-to-access areas, such as the Sierra Madre Oriental, the Sierra Madre Occidental and neighboring areas. The CDI identifies 62 Indigenous groups in Mexico, each with a unique language.
In the states of Chiapas and Oaxaca and in the interior of the Yucatán Peninsula a large amount of the population is Indigenous descent with the largest ethnic group being mayan with a population of 900,000. Large Indigenous minorities, including Aztecs or Nahua, Purépechas, Mazahua, Otomi, and Mixtecs are also present in the central regions of Mexico. In the Northern and Bajio regions of Mexico, Indigenous people are a small minority.
The General Law of Linguistic Rights of the Indigenous Peoples
grants all Indigenous languages spoken in Mexico, regardless of the
number of speakers, the same validity as Spanish in all territories in
which they are spoken, and Indigenous peoples are entitled to request
some public services and documents in their native languages.
Along with Spanish, the law has granted them—more than 60 languages—the
status of "national languages". The law includes all Indigenous
languages of the Americas regardless of origin; that is, it includes the
Indigenous languages of ethnic groups non-native to the territory. The National Commission for the Development of Indigenous Peoples recognizes the language of the Kickapoo, who immigrated from the United States, and recognizes the languages of the Indigenous refugees from Guatemala. The Mexican government has promoted and established bilingual primary and secondary education
in some Indigenous rural communities. Nonetheless, of the Indigenous
peoples in Mexico, 93% are either a native speaker or a bilingual second
language speaker of Spanish with only about 62.4% of them (or 5.4% of
the country's population) speak an Indigenous language and about a sixth
do not speak Spanish (0.7% of the country's population).
The Indigenous peoples in Mexico have the right of free
determination under the second article of the constitution. According to
this article the Indigenous peoples are granted:
Indigenous peoples in what is now the contiguous United States,
including their descendants, were commonly called American Indians, or
simply Indians domestically and since the late 20th century the term
Native American came into common use. In Alaska, Indigenous peoples belong to 11 cultures with 11 languages. These include the St. Lawrence Island Yupik, Iñupiat, Athabaskan, Yup'ik, Cup'ik, Unangax, Alutiiq, Eyak, Haida, Tsimshian, and Tlingit, and are collectively called Alaska Natives. They include Native American peoples as well as Inuit, who are distinct but occupy areas of the region.
The United States has authority with Indigenous Polynesian peoples, which include Hawaiians, Marshallese (Micronesian), and Samoan; politically they are classified as Pacific Islander American.
They are geographically, genetically, and culturally distinct from
Indigenous peoples of the mainland continents of the Americas.
Native Americans in the United States make up 1.1% of the population.
In the 2020 census, 3.7 million people identified as Native American
and Alaska Native alone. A total of 9.7 million people identified as
Native Americans and Alaska Native, either alone or in combination with
one or more ethnicity or other races. Tribes have established their own criteria for membership, which are often based on blood quantum, lineal descent, or residency. A minority of Native Americans live in land units called Indian reservations.
There are over 114,000 inhabitants of Native American origins,
representing 2.4% of the population. Most of them live in secluded
reservations, distributed among eight ethnic groups: Quitirrisí (In the Central Valley), Matambú or Chorotega (Guanacaste), Maleku (Northern Alajuela), Bribri (Southern Atlantic), Cabécar (Cordillera de Talamanca), Boruca (Southern Costa Rica) and Ngäbe (Southern Costa Rica long the Panamá border).
These native groups are characterized for their work in wood,
like masks, drums and other artistic figures, as well as fabrics made of
cotton.
Their subsistence is based on agriculture, having corn, beans and plantains as the main crops.
Indigenous Salvadoran Pipil women dancing in the traditional Procession of Palms, Panchimalco in El Salvador
Estimates for El Salvador's indigenous population vary. The last time
a reported census had an Indigenous ethnic option was in 2007, which
estimated that 0.23% of the population identified as Indigenous. Historically, estimates have claimed higher amounts. A 1930 census stated that 5.6% were Indigenous.
By the mid-20th century, there may have been as much as 20% (or
400,000) that would qualify as "Indigenous". Another estimate stated
that by the late 1980s, 10% of the population was Indigenous, and
another 89% was mestizo (or people of mixed European and Indigenous
ancestry).
Much of El Salvador was home to the Pipil, the Lenca, Xinca, and Kakawira. The Pipil lived in western El Salvador, spoke Nawat, and had many settlements there, most noticeably Cuzcatlan. The Pipil had no precious mineral resources, but they did have rich and fertile land that was good for farming. The Spaniards were disappointed not to find gold or jewels in El Salvador as they had in other lands like Guatemala
or Mexico, but upon learning of the fertile land in El Salvador, they
attempted to conquer it. Noted Meso-American Indigenous warriors to rise
militarily against the Spanish included Princes Atonal and Atlacatl of
the Pipil people in central El Salvador and Princess Antu Silan Ulap of
the Lenca people in eastern El Salvador, who saw the Spanish not as gods
but as barbaric invaders. After fierce battles, the Pipil successfully
fought off the Spanish army led by Pedro de Alvarado
along with their Indigenous allies (the Tlaxcalas), sending them back
to Guatemala. After many other attacks with an army reinforced with
Indigenous allies, the Spanish were able to conquer Cuzcatlan. After
further attacks, the Spanish also conquered the Lenca people.
Eventually, the Spaniards intermarried with Pipil and Lenca women,
resulting in the mestizo population that would make up the vast majority
of the Salvadoran people. Today many Pipil and other Indigenous
populations live in the many small towns of El Salvador like Izalco, Panchimalco, Sacacoyo, and Nahuizalco.
Guatemala has one of the largest Indigenous populations in Central
America, with approximately 43.6% of the population considering
themselves Indigenous. The Indigenous
demographic portion of Guatemala's population consists of majority
Mayan groups and one Non-Mayan group. The Mayan language speaking
portion makes up 29.7% of the population and is distributed into 23
groups namely Q’eqchi' 8.3%, K’iche 7.8%, Mam 4.4%, Kaqchikel 3%, Q'anjob'al 1.2%, Poqomchi' 1%, and Other 4%. The Non-Mayan group consists of the Xinca who are another set of Indigenous people making up 1.8% of the population.
Other sources indicate that between 50% and 60% of the population could
be Indigenous, because part of the Mestizo population is predominantly
Indigenous.
The Mayan tribes cover a vast geographic area throughout Central
America and expanding beyond Guatemala into other countries. One could
find vast groups of Mayan people in Boca Costa, in the Southern portions
of Guatemala, as well as the Western Highlands living together in close
communities. Within these communities and outside of them, around 23 Indigenous languages (or Native American Indigenous languages)
are spoken as a first language. Of these 23 languages, they only
received official recognition by the Government in 2003 under the Law of
National Languages.
The Law on National Languages recognizes 23 Indigenous languages
including Xinca, enforcing that public and government institutions not
only translate but also provide services in said languages. It would provide services in Cakchiquel, Garifuna, Kekchi, Mam, Quiche and Xinca.
A Mayan woman
The Law of National Languages has been an effort to grant and
protect Indigenous people rights not afforded to them previously. Along
with the Law of National Languages passed in 2003, in 1996 the
Guatemalan Constitutional Court had ratified the ILO Convention 169 on
Indigenous and Tribal Peoples. The ILO Convention 169 on Indigenous and Tribal Peoples,
is also known as Convention 169. Which is the only International Law
regarding Indigenous peoples that Independent countries can adopt. The
convention, establishes that governments like Guatemala's must consult
with Indigenous groups prior to any projects occurring on tribal lands.
Honduras
About five percent of the population are of full-blooded Indigenous descent, but as much as 80 percent of Hondurans are mestizo or part-Indigenous with European admixture, and about ten percent are of Indigenous or African descent. The largest concentrations of Indigenous communities in Honduras are in the westernmost areas facing Guatemala and along the coast of the Caribbean Sea, as well as on the border with Nicaragua. The majority of Indigenous people are Lencas, Miskitos to the east, Mayans, Pech, Sumos, and Tolupan.
Nicaragua
About 5% of the Nicaraguan population are Indigenous. The largest Indigenous group in Nicaragua is the Miskito people. Their territory extended from Cape Camarón, Honduras, to Rio Grande, Nicaragua along the Mosquito Coast. There is a native Miskito language, but large numbers speak Miskito Coast Creole, Spanish, Rama and other languages. Their use of Creole English
came about through frequent contact with the British, who colonized the
area. Many Miskitos are Christians. Traditional Miskito society was
highly structured, politically and otherwise. It had a king, but he did
not have total power. Instead, the power was split between himself, a Miskito Governor, a Miskito General, and by the 1750s, a Miskito Admiral. Historical information on Miskito kings is often obscured by the fact that many of the kings were semi-mythical.
Another major Indigenous culture in eastern Nicaragua are the Mayangna (or Sumu) people, counting some 10,000 people. A smaller Indigenous culture in southeastern Nicaragua are the Rama.
Indigenous peoples of Panama, or Native Panamanians, are the native peoples of Panama. According to the 2010 census, they make up 12.3% of the overall population of 3.4 million, or just over 418,000 people. The Ngäbe and Buglé comprise half of the indigenous peoples of Panama.
In 2005, Indigenous population living in Argentina (known as pueblos originarios)
numbered about 600,329 (1.6% of total population); this figure includes
457,363 people who self-identified as belonging to an Indigenous ethnic
group and 142,966 who identified themselves as first-generation
descendants of an Indigenous people. The ten most populous Indigenous peoples are the Mapuche (113,680 people), the Kolla (70,505), the Toba (69,452), the Guaraní (68,454), the Wichi (40,036), the Diaguita–Calchaquí (31,753), the Mocoví (15,837), the Huarpe (14,633), the Comechingón (10,863) and the Tehuelche (10,590). Minor but important peoples are the Quechua (6,739), the Charrúa (4,511), the Pilagá (4,465), the Chané (4,376), and the Chorote (2,613). The Selknam
(Ona) people are now virtually extinct in its pure form. The languages
of the Diaguita, Tehuelche, and Selknam nations have become extinct or
virtually extinct: the Cacán language (spoken by Diaguitas) in the 18th
century and the Selknam language in the 20th century; one Tehuelche
language (Southern Tehuelche) is still spoken by a handful of elderly
people.
In Bolivia,
the 2001 census reported that 62% of residents over the age of 15
identify as belonging to an Indigenous people. Some 3.7% report growing
up with an Indigenous mother tongue but do not identify as Indigenous.
When both of these categories are totaled, and children under 15, some
66.4% of Bolivia's population was recorded as Indigenous in the 2001
Census.
The largest Indigenous ethnic groups are: Quechua, about 2.5 million people; Aymara, 2.0 million; Chiquitano, 181,000; Guaraní, 126,000; and Mojeño, 69,000. Some 124,000 belong to smaller Indigenous groups. The Constitution of Bolivia,
enacted in 2009, recognizes 36 cultures, each with its own language, as
part of a pluri-national state. Some groups, including CONAMAQ
(the National Council of Ayllus and Markas of Qullasuyu), draw ethnic
boundaries within the Quechua- and Aymara-speaking population, resulting
in a total of 50 Indigenous peoples native to Bolivia.
Large numbers of Bolivian highland peasants retained Indigenous
language, culture, customs, and communal organization throughout the
Spanish conquest and the post-independence period. They mobilized to
resist various attempts at the dissolution of communal landholdings and
used legal recognition of "empowered caciques" to further communal
organization. Indigenous revolts took place frequently until 1953.
While the National Revolutionary Movement government begun in 1952
discouraged people identifying as Indigenous (reclassifying rural people
as campesinos, or peasants), renewed ethnic and class militancy re-emerged in the Katarista movement beginning in the 1970s.
Many lowland Indigenous peoples, mostly in the east, entered national
politics through the 1990 March for Territory and Dignity organized by
the CIDOB confederation. That march successfully pressured the national government to sign the ILO Convention 169 and to begin the still-ongoing process of recognizing and giving official title to Indigenous territories. The 1994 Law of Popular Participation
granted "grassroots territorial organizations;" these are recognized by
the state and have certain rights to govern local areas.
Some radio and television programs are produced in the Quechua
and Aymara languages. The constitutional reform in 1997 recognized
Bolivia as a multi-lingual, pluri-ethnic society and introduced education reform. In 2005, for the first time in the country's history, an Indigenous Aymara, Evo Morales, was elected as president.
Morales began work on his "Indigenous autonomy" policy, which he launched in the eastern lowlands department
on 3 August 2009. Bolivia was the first nation in the history of South
America to affirm the right of Indigenous people to self-government. Speaking in Santa Cruz Department,
the President called it "a historic day for the peasant and Indigenous
movement", saying that, though he might make errors, he would "never
betray the fight started by our ancestors and the fight of the Bolivian
people".
A vote on further autonomy for jurisdictions took place in December
2009, at the same time as general elections to office. The issue divided
the country.
At that time, Indigenous peoples voted overwhelmingly for more
autonomy: five departments that had not already done so voted for it; as did Gran Chaco Province in Taríja, for regional autonomy; and 11 of 12 municipalities that had referendums on this issue.
Indigenous peoples of Brazil
make up 0.4% of Brazil's population, or about 817,000 people, but
millions of Brazilians are mestizo or have some Indigenous ancestry. Indigenous peoples are found in the entire territory of Brazil, although in the 21st century, the majority of them live in Indigenous territories in the North and Center-Western part of the country. On 18 January 2007, Fundação Nacional do Índio (FUNAI) reported that it had confirmed the presence of 67 different uncontacted tribes in Brazil, up from 40 in 2005. Brazil is now the nation that has the largest number of uncontacted tribes, and the island of New Guinea is second.
The Washington Post reported in 2007, "As has been proved
in the past when uncontacted tribes are introduced to other populations
and the microbes they carry, maladies as simple as the common cold can
be deadly. In the 1970s, 185 members of the Panara tribe died within two years of discovery after contracting such diseases as flu and chickenpox, leaving only 69 survivors."
Mapuche man and woman. The Mapuche make up about 85% of Indigenous population that live in Chile.
According to the 2012 Census, 10% of the Chilean population, including the Rapa Nui (a Polynesian people) of Easter Island, was Indigenous, although most show varying degrees of mixed heritage. Many are descendants of the Mapuche, and live in Santiago, Araucanía and Los Lagos Region. The Mapuche successfully fought off defeat in the first 300–350 years of Spanish rule during the Arauco War. Relations with the new Chilean Republic were good until the Chilean state decided to occupy their lands. During the Occupation of Araucanía the Mapuche surrendered to the country's army in the 1880s. Their land was opened to settlement by Chileans and Europeans. Conflict over Mapuche land rights continues to the present.
Other groups include the Aymara, the majority of whom live in Bolivia and Peru, with smaller numbers in the Arica-Parinacota and Tarapacá regions, and the Atacama people (Atacameños), who reside mainly in El Loa.
A minority today within Colombia's overwhelmingly Mestizo and White Colombian population, Indigenous peoples living in Colombia, consist of around 85 distinct cultures and more than 1,378,884 people. A variety of collective rights for Indigenous peoples are recognized in the 1991 Constitution.
One of the influences is the Muisca culture, a subset of the larger Chibchaethnic group, famous for their use of gold, which led to the legend of El Dorado. At the time of the Spanish conquest, the Muisca were the largest Indigenous civilization geographically between the Incas and the Aztecs empires.
Ecuador was the site of many Indigenous cultures, and civilizations of different proportions. An early sedentary culture, known as the Valdivia culture, developed in the coastal region, while the Caras and the Quitus unified to form an elaborate civilization that ended at the birth of the Capital Quito. The Cañaris near Cuenca were the most advanced, and most feared by the Inca,
due to their fierce resistance to the Incan expansion. Their
architecture remains were later destroyed by Spaniards and the Incas.
Between 55% and 65% of Ecuador's population consists of Mestizos
of mixed indigenous and European ancestry while indigenous people
comprise about 25%. Genetic analysis indicates that Ecuadorian Mestizos are of predominantly indigenous ancestry.
Approximately 96.4% of Ecuador's Indigenous population are Highland
Quichuas living in the valleys of the Sierra region. Primarily
consisting of the descendants of peoples conquered by the Incas, they
are Kichwa speakers and include the Caranqui, the Otavalos, the Cayambe, the Quitu-Caras, the Panzaleo, the Chimbuelo, the Salasacan, the Tugua, the Puruhá, the Cañari, and the Saraguro.
Linguistic evidence suggests that the Salascan and the Saraguro may
have been the descendants of Bolivian ethnic groups transplanted to
Ecuador as mitimaes.
Coastal groups, including the Awá, Chachi, and the Tsáchila,
make up 0.24% percent of the Indigenous population, while the remaining
3.35 percent live in the Oriente and consist of the Oriente Kichwa (the
Canelo and the Quijos), the Shuar, the Huaorani, the Siona-Secoya, the Cofán, and the Achuar.
According to the 2017 Census, the Indigenous population in Peru make up around 26% approximately. However, this does not include Mestizos
of mixed indigenous and European descent, who make up the majority of
the population. Genetic testing indicates that Peruvian Mestizos are of
predominantly indigenous ancestry.
Indigenous traditions and customs have shaped the way Peruvians live
and see themselves today. Cultural citizenship—or what Renato Rosaldo
has called, "the right to be different and to belong, in a democratic,
participatory sense" (1996:243)—is not yet very well developed in Peru.
This is perhaps no more apparent than in the country's Amazonian regions
where Indigenous societies continue to struggle against state-sponsored
economic abuses, cultural discrimination, and pervasive violence.
A Warao family from Venezuela traveling in their canoe
Most Venezuelans have some degree of indigenous heritage even if they
may not identify as such. The 2011 census estimated that around 52% of
the population identified as mestizo.
But those who identify as Indigenous, from being raised in those
cultures, make up only around 2% of the total population. The Indigenous
peoples speak around 29 different languages and many more dialects. As
some of the ethnic groups are very small, their native languages are in
danger of becoming extinct in the next decades. The most important
Indigenous groups are the Ye'kuana, the Wayuu, the Pemon and the Warao. The most advanced Indigenous peoples to have lived within the boundaries of present-day Venezuela is thought to have been the Timoto-cuicas,
who lived in the Venezuelan Andes. Historians estimate that there were
between 350 thousand and 500 thousand Indigenous inhabitants at the time
of Spanish colonization. The most densely populated area was the Andean
region (Timoto-cuicas), thanks to their advanced agricultural
techniques and ability to produce a surplus of food.
The 1999 constitution of Venezuela gives indigenous peoples special rights, although the vast majority of them still live in very critical conditions of poverty. The government provides primary education in their languages in public schools to some of the largest groups, in efforts to continue the languages.
Other parts of the Americas
Indigenous peoples make up the majority of the population in Bolivia and Peru, and are a significant element in most other former Spanish colonies. Exceptions to this include Uruguay (Charrúa). According to the 2011 Census, 2.4% of Uruguayans reported having Indigenous ancestry. Some governments recognize some of the major Indigenous languages as official languages: Quechua in Peru and Bolivia; Aymara also in Peru and Bolivia, Guaraní in Paraguay, and Greenlandic in Greenland.
Rise of Indigenous movements
Since the late 20th century, Indigenous peoples in the Americas have
become more politically active in asserting their treaty rights and
expanding their influence. Some have organized in order to achieve some
sort of self-determination and preservation of their cultures. Organizations such as the Coordinator of Indigenous Organizations of the Amazon River Basin
and the Indian Council of South America are examples of movements that
are overcoming national borders to reunite Indigenous populations, for
instance those across the Amazon Basin. Similar movements for Indigenous rights can also be seen in Canada and the United States, with movements like the International Indian Treaty Council and the accession of native Indigenous groups into the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization.
There has been a recognition of Indigenous movements on an international scale. The membership of the United Nations voted to adopt the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, despite dissent from some of the stronger countries of the Americas.
In Colombia, various Indigenous groups have protested the denial of their rights. People organized a march in Cali
in October 2008 to demand the government live up to promises to protect
Indigenous lands, defend the Indigenous against violence, and
reconsider the free trade pact with the United States.
The first Indigenous candidate to be democratically elected as head of a country in the Americas was Benito Juárez, a Zapotec Mexican who was elected President of Mexico in 1858.
Genetic comparisons of the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) of some Native Americans to that of some Siberian and Central Asian
peoples have led Russian researcher I.A. Zakharov to believe that,
among all the previously studied Asian peoples, it is "the peoples
living between Altai and Lake Baikal along the Sayan mountains that are genetically closest to" Indigenous Americans.
Some scientific evidence links Indigenous peoples of the Americas to North Asian peoples, specifically the Indigenous peoples of Siberia, such as the Ket, Selkup, Chukchi and Koryak peoples. Indigenous peoples of the Americas have been linked to some extent to North Asian populations by the distribution of blood types, and in genetic composition as reflected by molecular data, and limited DNA studies.
The common occurrence of the mtDNA Haplogroups A, B, C, and D among eastern Asian and Native American populations has been noted. Some subclades of C and D that have been found in the limited populations of Native Americans who have agreed to DNA testing bear some resemblance to the C and D sublades in Mongolian, Amur, Japanese, Korean, and Ainu populations.
Available genetic patterns lead to two main theories of genetic
episodes affecting the Indigenous peoples of the Americas; first with
the initial peopling of the Americas, and secondly with European colonization of the Americas. The former is the determinant factor for the number of gene lineages, zygosity mutations, and founding haplotypes present in today's Indigenous peoples of the Americas populations.
The most popular theory among anthropologists is the Bering Strait theory, of human settlement of the New World occurred in stages from the Bering sea coast line, with a possible initial layover of 10,000 to 20,000 years in Beringia for the small founding population.The micro-satellite
diversity and distributions of the Y lineage specific to South America
indicates that certain Indigenous peoples of the Americas populations
have been isolated since the initial colonization of the region. The Na-Dené, Inuit and Indigenous populations of Alaska exhibit haplogroup Q (Y-DNA) mutations, however are distinct from other Indigenous peoples of the Americas with various mtDNA and atDNA mutations. This suggests that the earliest migrants into the northern extremes of North America and Greenland derived from later migrant populations.
A 2013 study in Nature reported that DNA found in the 24,000-year-old remains of a young boy from the archaeological Mal'ta-Buret' culture suggest that up to one-third of the ancestry of Indigenous peoples may be traced back to western Eurasians,
who may have "had a more north-easterly distribution 24,000 years ago
than commonly thought" (with the rest tracing back to early East Asian
peoples).
"We estimate that 15 to 30 percent of Native American ancestry may
originate through gene flow from this ancient population", the authors
wrote. Professor Kelly Graf said:
"Our findings are significant at two levels. First, it
shows that Upper Paleolithic Siberians came from a cosmopolitan
population of early modern humans that spread out of Africa to Europe
and Central and South Asia. Second, Paleoindian skeletons like Buhl
Woman with phenotypic traits atypical of modern-day indigenous Americans
can be explained as having a direct historical connection to Upper
Paleolithic Siberia."
A route through Beringia is seen as more likely than the Solutrean hypothesis.
Kashani et al. 2012 state that "The similarities in ages and
geographical distributions for C4c and the previously analyzed X2a
lineage provide support to the scenario of a dual origin for
Paleo-Indians. Taking into account that C4c is deeply rooted in the
Asian portion of the mtDNA phylogeny and is indubitably of Asian origin,
the finding that C4c and X2a are characterized by parallel genetic
histories definitively dismisses the controversial hypothesis of an
Atlantic glacial entry route into North America."
Genetic analyses of HLA I and HLA II genes as well as HLA-A, -B, and -DRB1 gene frequencies links the Ainu people in northern Japan and southeastern Russia to some Indigenous peoples of the Americas, especially to populations on the Pacific Northwest Coast such as Tlingit. The scientists suggest that the main ancestor of the Ainu and of some Indigenous groups can be traced back to Paleolithic groups in Southern Siberia.
A 2016 study found that Indigenous peoples of the Americas and Polynesians most likely came into contact around 1200.
A study published in the Nature journal
in 2018 concluded that Native Americans descended from a single
founding population which initially split from East Asians at about
~36,000 BC, with geneflow between Ancestral Native Americans and
Siberians persisting until ~25,000BC, before becoming isolated in the
Americas at ~22,000BC. Northern and Southern Native American
subpopulationes split from each other at ~17,500BC. There is also some
evidence for a back-migration from the Americas into Siberia after
~11,500BC.
A study published in the Cell journal
in 2019, analysed 49 ancient Native American samples from all over
North and South America, and concluded that all Native American
populations descended from a single ancestral source population which
split from Siberians and East Asians, and gave rise to the Ancestral
Native Americans, which later diverged into the various Indigenous
groups. The authors further dismissed previous claims for the
possibility of two distinct population groups among the peopling of the
Americas and concluded that both Northern and Southern Native Americans
are closest to each other, and do not show evidence of admixture with
hypothetical previous populations.
Another study published in the Nature journal
in 2021, which analysed a large amount of ancient genomes, similarly
concluded that all Native Americans descended from the movement of
people from Northeast Asia
into the Americas. These Ancestral Americans, once south of the
continental ice sheets, spread and expanded rapidly, and branched into
multiple groups, which later gave rise to the major subgroups of Native
American populations. The study also dismissed the existence of an
hypothetical distinct non-Native American population (suggested to have
been related to Indigenous Australians and Papuans), sometimes called
"Paleoamerican". The authors posited that these previous claims were
based on a misinterpreted genetic echo, which was revealed to represent
early East-Eurasian geneflow (close but distinct to the 40,000BC old
Tianyuan lineage) into Aboriginal Australians and Papuans.
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