AHC: Anti-U.S.A. Native American insurgency in 20th century.

whitecrow

Banned
A while back there was a thread in post-1900 forum asking what POD would result in Israel having better relations with Arab countries. One of the responses was for Israelis to as early as possible ethnically cleanse (through deporting, not genociding) ALL the Palestinians. The reasoning was that although it would be a “short-term” PR nightmare, it would avoid the constant and simmering conflict in the region that the Arab leaders could use to rally their populations against Israel, leading to normalized relations within decades.

The author of this opinion pointed to how the USA dealt with the Indian populations and said “You don’t have Indians shooting SCUDS at American cities now”.

This got me thinking: (regardless of what you think about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict) is there any way to prolong the “Indian Wars” and have a anti-USA Indian insurgency well into the 20th century? Bonus points if you find a way for Indian rebels (NOTE: they have to be a guerrilla force) to fire ATL-SCUD missiles into a USA city at least once.
 
A while back there was a thread in post-1900 forum asking what POD would result in Israel having better relations with Arab countries. One of the responses was for Israelis to as early as possible ethnically cleanse (through deporting, not genociding) ALL the Palestinians. The reasoning was that although it would be a “short-term” PR nightmare, it would avoid the constant and simmering conflict in the region that the Arab leaders could use to rally their populations against Israel, leading to normalized relations within decades.

The author of this opinion pointed to how the USA dealt with the Indian populations and said “You don’t have Indians shooting SCUDS at American cities now”.

This got me thinking: (regardless of what you think about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict) is there any way to prolong the “Indian Wars” and have a anti-USA Indian insurgency well into the 20th century? Bonus points if you find a way for Indian rebels (NOTE: they have to be a guerrilla force) to fire ATL-SCUD missiles into a USA city at least once.

Well, there was actually some violent Native American direct action in the 1960s and 1970s, at Alcatraz and Wounded Knee.
 
Ahem. There is a reason I put this in the pre-1900 forum with no restrictions on the POD (actually, lets try to have a POD post-1776).

If we go that far back, it's still not viable. Native Americans tried everything imaginable for themselves in terms of resisting the USA. Foreign allies, playing off European states against the USA, Pan-Tribal Alliances. Nothing worked against a government willing to use genocidal means and bad faith.
 

whitecrow

Banned
If we go that far back, it's still not viable. Native Americans tried everything imaginable for themselves in terms of resisting the USA. Foreign allies, playing off European states against the USA, Pan-Tribal Alliances. Nothing worked against a government willing to use genocidal means and bad faith.
Well, they don't have to "win". Just survive to be a viable guerrilla force well into the 20th century.
 
Ahem. There is a reason I put this in the pre-1900 forum with no restrictions on the POD (actually, lets try to have a POD post-1776).

Well, we'd need a heck of a lot more Native Americans to make that situation viable. At less than 2% of the population, any victory the Native Americans might achieve in such an agenda would surely be a Pyrrhic one. Why would they even try?

On the other hand, if (however this may be achieved, and many here have debated the plausibility of it) the United States manages to annex the entirety of Mexico at some point during the 19th Century, we'd have a different story. The percentage of Mexicans speaking indigenous languages as their primary tongue of communication ranged from around 60% in the 1820s to around 40% in the 1880s. In addition, it's estimated that around 90% of Mexico's population has some indigenous ancestry, whether they be culturally indigenous or mestizo.

With a United States takeover in the 19th Century, we'd probably see a very different coalescing of racial and cultural identity - You wouldn't have the hispanization and mestizaje processes that were actively promoted by the Mexican government. Instead, you'd have a society that actively sought to distinguish people seen as non-white from "pure" white people. The half of the population speaking indigenous languages would easily be classified as "Indians" in the census. The large, Spanish-speaking mestizo minority would likely be lumped in with them as well, just as English-speaking Native Americans in the United States are still Native Americans.

Now, you'd have a disenfranchised, dissatisfied population of people in the United States forced into a common Native American racial identity, with a lot more manpower than in OTL.
 
Great points. Everything I wanted to say has already been said (well, almost everything). It's unfortunate, what happened to the American Indian nations, but they have no hope of being able to wage any kind of guerrilla war in the 20th century.
Mexico, on the other hand, was still fighting to pacify its Sonoran Yaqui Indians as late as 1927. The Mexican air force participated in this campaign, an early use of aircraft in counterinsurgency.
 
Alcatraz wasn't violent in the slightest, and Wounded Knee was massively escalated by continual government over-reaction.

I concede the point about Alcatraz, but I wasn't necessarily saying what AIM was doing was a bad thing, mind. It started making white people have to realize the Indians had never vanished, which is a good thing.
 

NothingNow

Banned
I concede the point about Alcatraz, but I wasn't necessarily saying what AIM was doing was a bad thing, mind. It started making white people have to realize the Indians had never vanished, which is a good thing.

Very much so.
Now threatening to blow up the Lewis and Clark Bicentennial Keel boat might've been going a bit too far, but there still is a need for groups like the AIM, since most congress critters think that Reservation Gambling and preferential treatment for Indian business fixed everything, when outside of a few tribes that have done very well, (especially the Miccosukee and Florida Seminoles,) things really haven't improved. (and actually, with rising costs for healthcare, look to be getting worse.)
A high profile event here or there can't hurt anything if the population normally forgets that you exist at all.
 
A while back there was a thread in post-1900 forum asking what POD would result in Israel having better relations with Arab countries. One of the responses was for Israelis to as early as possible ethnically cleanse (through deporting, not genociding) ALL the Palestinians. The reasoning was that although it would be a “short-term” PR nightmare, it would avoid the constant and simmering conflict in the region that the Arab leaders could use to rally their populations against Israel, leading to normalized relations within decades.

The author of this opinion pointed to how the USA dealt with the Indian populations and said “You don’t have Indians shooting SCUDS at American cities now”.

I'm sure the Israelites would love to do to the Palestinians what the USA did to the Ameridian populations. But there were too many Palestinians for the Israelites to ethnically cleanse successfully. Palestinians outnumber the Israelites. The Amerindian population was already too small to resist the Americans. So this is not a case of the USA being more evil than Israel. The USA in its ethnic cleansing and genocidal aims were no worse than the European colonizers. The Americans, British, and Spanish were lucky that the Ameridian populations were very low in North America, Australia, New Zealand and Argentina; making it easy for them to take over these territories completly.

This got me thinking: (regardless of what you think about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict) is there any way to prolong the “Indian Wars” and have a anti-USA Indian insurgency well into the 20th century? Bonus points if you find a way for Indian rebels (NOTE: they have to be a guerrilla force) to fire ATL-SCUD missiles into a USA city at least once.

A much bigger Amerindian population before European settlers arrived in North America would be a good start.
 
Except for a few extreme right-wingers the Israelis would not love to do to the Palestinians what the USA did to the Amerindian population.
 
Except for a few extreme right-wingers the Israelis would not love to do to the Palestinians what the USA did to the Amerindian population.

I am generally on Israel's side in this Palestinian conflict. Israel is a small country surrounded by hostile neighbors dedicated in wiping out Israel and the Jewish presence in the Middle East. They need to defend themselves using any means necessary.

However, be honest. Removing Palestinians and giving the land to Jewish settlers is ethnic cleansing and is no better than what the Europeans and the USA were doing to the indigenous peoples. The Israelites would probably like to do more but there are simply too many Palestinians for ethnic cleansing to be successful.
 
That All-Mexico POD is interesting. The problem with it is that pre-mid century governments didn't object to extremely ruthless, near genocidal methods to stamp out insurgencies. Look at the US in the Phillippines, for example, or the Boer War. One wouldn't necessarily even rule out the use of gas for an insurgency during the 20s or early 30s. If the insurgency happens to take place during some alt-WWI, the use of gas is near inevitable.
 
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