Highest possible Native American population in North America?

As we all know, North America has a very small amount of native americans, only adding up to around 1% of the US population, and about 5% of the Canadian population. But how could this have been changed? What would you need to have large and thriving Native populations today, and maybe even independent Amerindian nation-states? No Trail of tears? America-screw? And how would native americans be viewed in society if they had much higher populations?
 
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You need this in the Pre 1900 thread because your POD lies in the late 15th century and it involves some sort of immunity to small pox.
 
So... What about a very native-friendly progressive or socialist president getting elected after the great depression? They could stop the allotment of native land and end the boarding schools.
 
Only way is that USA doesn't practise such genocidal politics with Natives in 19th century.
Genocide wasn't the policy, unlike what went on in Tasmania.
Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity of the people working at the Bureau of Indian Affairs
 
Genocide wasn't the policy, unlike what went on in Tasmania. . .
But most genocide is active means, but plausible denial. That is, an accidental-on-purpose kind of thing.

For example, even the Cambodian Genocide (1975-78). The big part was selling rice to China on the fiction that the Khmer Rouge had succeeded in tripling production, with the unpopular city people moved to the northeast northwest of the country. Oh, there emphatically were killing fields and direct shooting of persons, but the really big numbers came from the starvation.

And the Bengali famine of 1971, I think a big part was then West Pakistan manipulating an already existing food shortage. I have heard it argued that this one, too, is genocide, although I don't know as much about it.

* yes, I make mistakes, but I try to hang in there
 
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manav95

Banned
As we all know, North America has a very small amount of native americans, only adding up to around 1% of the US population, and about 5% of the Canadian population. But how could this have been changed? What would you need to have large and thriving Native populations today, and maybe even independent Amerindian nation-states? No Trail of tears? America-screw? And how would native americans be viewed in society if they had much higher populations?

Simple POD: livestock like horses and cows make it to North America and give natives the immunity they need to diseases the OTL Europeans brought with them on their filthy, rat-infested ships
 
OTL is likely within the highest range of semi-realistic ATLs in terms of numbers+remaining culture of amerindians imo

I disagree. OTL was a pretty big native screw. For example, other British settler colonies have higher proportions of natives in them... Canada at 5%, NZ at 15%, even the Australian Aborigines, who had no agriculture whatsoever, have a higher proportion of the population than in the US (3% Aboriginal).

This is mostly due to extra-hostile policies towards natives in the US, as while as taking ages to recongize their land claims as valid. IMO, the US govt reconciling with native Americans earlier, as well as recognition of amerindian native land, like NZ did, would be the best way to boost native population.
 
Canada at 5%, NZ at 15%, even the Australian Aborigines, who had no agriculture whatsoever, have a higher proportion of the population than in the US (3% Aboriginal).
OZ and Canada even today, have near hollow interiors, with most of the populations in a thin strip. The former British Colonies were not the population draws that the US was.

In 1900, here is the total population, when natives were close to their lowest population totals
Oz 3.7M
Canada 5.3M
NZ 800k
USA 76M

Three of the four countries are similar in area

The rural midwestern state of Iowa in 1900, had 2.2M, Minnesota 1.75M, Nebraska 1M--- areas where the Natives had lived, almost the equal of all of Canada and exceed Oz
After the last of the Indian Wars were over and most Indians counted in the US census in 1890, population was 248k, with 58k 'off Reservation' and 189k 'on Reservation' across the 44 States and 4 Territories, from 295k 'on Reservation' and 44k 'off Reservation' from 1860, 339k total

Compared to NZ, Maori population was roughly 60k in 1860, to 39k in 1896, 35% drop, to US, 27% drop over the same time period
 

jocay

Banned
Have the United States government forcibly categorize Mexicans and other Latin American peoples as Native American early on and eventually they themselves will see themselves as such. Imagine the Chicano movement but on steroids.
 
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