Guns and Arrows

I'm NOT interested in fomenting bloody revolution. I believe Donald Trump came extremely close in his previous term as president to breaking this country up into multiple smaller countries and his current policies are doing a lot of harm to the US.

This includes but is not limited to threatening to "deport" Native Americans, effectively giving them no place to go in a world where they are already third class citizens. THIS is a recipe for bloody revolution. People with no other options fight like cornered rats.

Historically, a few times and places where things were in crisis and on the verge of significant drama managed to sidestep bloody conflict by educating people and problem solving. THAT is my goal.

Native Americans are conquered and pacified peoples. They are nominally still sovereign nations but in fact not really.

Sovereign independent nations have features these conquered and pacified peoples lack, such as the right to try people for crimes committed on their lands and the ability to provide for defense against their enemies should someone attack them.

Even before you get to that step, you need adequate economic development and ability to provide for the needs of your people materially. France has nuclear power plants because it's the only way to preserve their independence and not be at the mercy of some foreign nation providing their energy needs.

This is a compendium of links to my writing about Natives. You may wish to start there, but I also recommend these pieces from this site:

1. Apples (a tag to currently two posts)

2. Business

In addition to working on economic development, you need to start working out pieces of being a sovereign nation you haven't had in a long time, like providing for the common defense. You are our bitch because we have tanks, you have bows and arrows and a lot of your people can no longer use them.

If you want independence, you don't necessarily want to start shit but you better be prepared to end it if someone else starts shit.

This post began as a stub in reaction to something on Reddit about prepping. I think most preppers are upper class fools with a neurotic hobby and if you have enough money to store guns, ammo and food designed to last twenty years that probably tastes like cardboard, you would be better off getting involved in trying to solve whatever has you concerned that society will collapse and getting into homesteading.

If society truly collapses, you may be unable to get ammo for your guns and I think people terrified of societal collapse and arming themselves for a zombie apocalypse like some bizarre movie would be better off taking up archery and learning to MAKE their own bows and arrows.

I pursued archery in my youth and much of this post will be a ramble about seemingly unrelated archery tidbits. But first let's talk about David and Goliath scenarios like I've been toking even though I don't because I'm allergic to marijuana.

I have heard from an unreliable source that when a large nation and a small nation go to war, seventy percent of the time the smaller nation wins. I don't know why that supposedly happens.

The source is my twice exceptional son who has big strengths and big weaknesses and can find information online I have no hope of digging up in spite of having had a college class in online search. He is thus often able to support assertions that sound really crazy, like "Gold allergy causes spontaneous skin bleeds. You probably have a gold allergy, mom."

That nutty sounding conclusion is true and he sent me a citation when I couldn't find verification online myself by trying to search for it. However, he also sometimes is very creatively wrong in his interpretation of things, so I don't really like citing his comments if I don't have a source to back it up.

I'm making an exception here because I think he sent me citations at the time we had that conversation some years ago, but when I've looked in recent months I can't quite find what I would like to see. I did find enough information about bigger nations fleeing a fight with a smaller one or similar that I'm going to include it here and tell you that as someone who knows something about military history, size isn't everything.

Benjamin Franklin wanted American forces to use bows and arrows in the Revolutionary War against the British Empire as a silent sneak attack. Letting less well trained American forces line up with muskets on the field of battle the way the British fought was not going well and was practically handing our heads to the British. 

Tip: If you let your enemy pick the field of battle and terms of battle, you are all but guaranteeing their victory.

My ex was career military and a history buff. We would pull one or more books off the shelf and look up the real details of the historic battles in movies we were watching.

The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc watered down the truth so audiences would find it believable. She wasn't shot in the chest or shoulder and slept it off. She was shot in the neck and slept it off.

I took archery in college for PE. I was the best shot in my class and on a short list of people who could actually hit the bullseye while some asshole guy in class called it "luck."

It was a class with stationary targets. To hunt or fight, you have to be much better than I was.

I have read some things that suggest Natives lost to begin with because they were enamored of Western technology and abandoned their own culture and their own strengths because of it. I believe a Native chief dreamed that they would lose because of that and they did.

To be clear, I don't believe most dreams that "predict the future" are psychic. I believe they are like weather prediction: Someone knowledgeable crunched the data and drew a conclusion and his subconscious spoke of it in dream form.

And it's a conclusion that makes logical sense. Natives adopted guns and then didn't have the ability to produce the proper oils for them and couldn't afford to buy it or perhaps were being cut off from buying it because the source was the people they were battling, so they used lard or animal fats. These things get solid in cold weather and that fact leads to misfires, so they slept with their guns to keep them warm enough to be usable.

In contrast, Welsh Bowman were trained from age four to use a Welsh longbow and they were holy terrors on the battlefield. 

The word Amazon means without breast. My understanding is their enemies thought these warrior women cut off a breast to get it out of their way while using a bow, but most likely they had gear that flattened one breast to keep it out of the way of the bow.

I was extremely flat chested when I was pursuing archery but I did get a leather worker to make me a protective piece for my forearm to protect me from the bowstring until I got more consistent about proper arm position.

I'm a woman. I see no reason that a small nation cannot train all citizens to use a bow or otherwise participate in defense.

My understanding is Switzerland has a high percentage of people trained to serve as reservists and the fact that most of the country could mobilize is part of why they have a reputation as a peaceful nation. The other piece is mountainous terrain helps discourage potential invaders.

I recommend you learn the old ways and revive your culture. Historically, Natives lived lightly on the land and were stewards of the land.

Europeans introduced monoculture farming and while we feed more people with less effort taken up by food production, we are strip mining our soils and nutrient value of produce has steadily declined for decades.

You need healthy, strong people. This starts with adequate nutrition and exercise, something most Americans don't get enough of in either category.

Historically, urban planners intentionally fostered walkable environments and adequate exercise for citizens. You still find this in many older cities in other countries but America has a car-centric built environment to a greater degree than most if not all other countries and it's doing our health no favors.

I encourage you to take a comprehensive approach to health and actively seek to get free of what I understand are probably federally funded and controlled clinics and hospitals which are routinely underfunded and short staffed. You may wish to read my health site as food for thought.

Soldiers need physical stamina most Americans no longer have and the US Federal government LOWERED PT standards for incoming troops because our teenagers play video games instead of sports and no longer take summer construction jobs. Historically, most Americans grew up on farms and worked physically hard on the farm every summer starting as early as age four.

America is arguably in its death throes and Donald Trump has allowed Elon Musk to actively hurry its demise.

When I was growing up, there was a TV show called Dukes of Hazard.

The show is about two young male cousins, Bo and Luke Duke, who live in rural Georgia and are on probation for moonshine-running. Probation prevents the "Duke Boys" from owning guns, and they are armed with bows and arrows and clever plans to outwit a corrupt sheriff and greedy rich "city slickers."

Going back to your old ways should be defensible as "historic reenactment" or "cultural pride." Check YOUR state laws, but even tribal members with a criminal record that denies them the right to own a gun may be able to pursue archery and/or learning to MAKE bows and arrows the old way.

As noted above, letting your enemies dictate the field of battle and terms of engagement is nearly suicidal. As a handicapped woman, I very much enjoyed the old black and white film Wait Until Dark, about a blind woman being harassed by criminals who turns the tables on them by killing all the lights after nightfall.