Climate and Early Asian Immigrants

Hi Willis,
First let me say that I always look for your articles on WUWT, and enjoy them the most. I find your common sense approach to life, and your clear explanations of complex things, very refreshing.
Second, I agree with your point regarding the absurd NWF claims. These types of reparations are just fantasy – one group trying to wrest economic benefit from another under a dubious guise. I do not think that native Americans (or “early Asian Immigrants” as you deem this ethnic group) are behind such silliness. I would guess it is primarily European descended folks who try to assuage their self-inflicted guilty consciences by forcing genetically similar peoples to surrender their wealth to a perceived less fortunate ethnic group.
However, those points are not what has garnered the most comments. Most of the comments are regarding your assertion that “native Americans” are more properly referred to as “early Asian Immigrants”. And frankly, I agree with those objections.
Yes, the genetic heritage of the poorly named “Indians” is Asian. However, that is not entirely true. Were we to trace the heritage back far enough, they are actually Indian, then African. So, I suppose the correct term is “early American nee Asian nee Indian nee African immigrants”.
By their own reckoning from the Bible, Israelites who consider themselves of genetic Jewish heritage are actually early Iraqi, to Israeli to everywhereelseintheworld to Israelites. And Europeans? Nope. They are early African immigrants. So us formerly “European Americans” are now “early African to late European American immigrants”.
I would argue that a peoples who populated a continent prior to any other dominant homosapien offshoot, and inhabited that continent for thousands of years, can fairly be called “native” to that continent. Genetically, no, they are not “native”. But realistically, and quite frankly rationally, yes the are.
I gotta’ admit, I find this whole exercise of arguing genetic heritage quite silly and distracting. It detracts from the otherwise valid argument.

Jason Joice M.D. says (August 8, 2011 at 11:40 am): “Okay, if that’s how you see it then we all came from Africa. Period. It makes no difference what route you came or the timing of your ancestors migration.”
Jason nailed it. Everyone born in the Americas is either a native (or Native) American, or an African-American. Anything in between is politically motivated hair-splitting. Personally, I prefer the all-encompassing “native American” label, as it’s more consistent with the US ideal that you are what you do with your life, not what your ancestors did with theirs.
Wiglaf says (August 8, 2011 at 1:18 pm): “It’s about the elite using class and race warfare to manipulate the general public into handing over money and power to the few to “fix” this problem.”
It’s another case of what Thomas Sowell calls “The Quest for Cosmic Justice”, the impossible dream of correcting “not merely the sins of man but the oversights of God or the accidents of history.” It’s prospects of actual success are about the same as alarmists’ chances of controlling our planet’s climate system.
http://www.tsowell.com/spquestc.html
http://www.amazon.com/Quest-Cosmic-Justice-Thomas-Sowell/dp/0684864630

Willis Eschenbach – The National Wildlife Federation (NWF) has issued a new report (PDF) asserting that the Early Asian Immigrants (incorrectly referred to as “Native” Americans).
Willis quote: Now, the history of the Early Asian Immigrants is a sad and tragic one.
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Native American tribes showed they were comprised of four distinct mtDNA haplogroups called A, B, C, and D. This means that the Native Americans are derived from four different lineages.These haplogroups were also found in native populations in Central and South America. Utter mtDNA research utilizing ancient remains recovered in the Americas validated these four haplogroups. Three of these haplogroups, A, C, and D are found primarily in Siberian Asia. The B haplogroup, however, is found only in aboriginal groups in Southeast Asia. China, Japan, Melanesia, and Polynesia confirming a South Pacific and Japanese Migration.
Based on the mutations found in the mtDNA, most researchers think that groups A, C and D, entered America from Siberia across Beringia some time around 35.000 B.C. Group B, they assert, probably came to America from the South Pacific or Japan via boats. It is believed the B groups began this migration not long after the A, C, and D groups arrived. However, the majority of the B group arrived about 11.000 B.C. This leaves open the possibility of several migrations by the B group from different locations.
It should be noted that a few geneticists have proposed that each of these tour haplogroups came in four separate migrations. And many Clovis supporters argue that all the groups migrated together.
An Unknown and Unexpected Migration Group Confirmed
In 1997, a fifth mtDNA haplogroup was identified in Native Americans. This group, called ‘”X,” is present in three percent of living Native Americans. Haplogroup X was not then found in Asia, but was found only in Europe and the Middle East where two to four percent of the population carry it. In those areas, the X haplogroup has primarily been found in parts of Spain, Bulgaria, Finland, Italy, and Israel. In July 2001, a research letter was published in the American Journal of Human Genetics, relating that a few people with the ‘X’ type had been identified in a tribe located in extreme southern Siberia.
These people, called the Altasians, or Altaics, as Russian geneticists refer to them, have always lived in the Gobi Desert area. Archaeologists and geneticists are certain that the presence of “X” in America is not the result of historic intermarriages. It is of ancient origin. In addition, the ‘X’ type has now been found in the ancient remains of the Basque. Among Native American tribes, the X haplogroup has been found in small numbers in the Yakima, Sioux, and Navaho tribes. It has been found to a larger degree in the Ojibway, Oneota, and Nuu-Chah-Nulth tribes.
Therefore, Native American or First Nations come from multiple locations.
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The X haplogroup has also been discovered in ancient remains in Illinois near Ohio and a ‘few’ other areas near the Great Lakes. It has not (so far) been found in South or Central American tribes including the Maya. The X haplogroup appears to have entered America in limited numbers perhaps as long ago as 34.000 B.C. Around 12,000 B.C. to 10.000 B.C. it appeared in much greater numbers.
Willis Eschenbach – Asian immigrants?
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Perhaps you better explain what dictionary you’re using in your definition of immigrant. Your usage confuses me. Or broadly speaking then everyone who walked out of Africa must also be called an immigrant in every nation on the planet if by your definition if Native Americans are
immigrants.
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Willis – the US Government, after many years, was to give the remaining tribes of Immigrants their own nations. These are sovereign areas with their own leaders, where many US laws do not apply.
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Response – Native American tribal governments are an integral part of the political fabric of the United States. As the Supreme Court of the United States determined in its 1831 decision in Cherokee Nation v. Georgia, 30 U.S. (5 Peters) 1, tribal governments are not “states” in a constitutional sense, nor are they “foreign states,” at least for purposes of Article III original jurisdiction. Instead, they are “domestic dependent nations,” with many sovereign powers retained from the pre-contact period. As tribal governments have grown in political and economic power, the Supreme Court, the United States Congress, the federal executive, and the tribes have engaged in an increasingly important discussion to determine the scope of their powers. States, municipalities and individual citizens have all contributed to this conversation.
The result is a legal regime of fascinating complexity.
Although Native Americans have been held to have both inherent rights and rights guaranteed, either explicitly or implicitly, by treaties with the federal government, the government retains the ultimate power and authority to either abrogate or protect Native American rights. This power stems from several legal sources. One is the power that the Constitution gives to Congress to make regulations governing the territory belonging to the United States (Art. IV, Sec. 3, Cl. 2), and another is the president’s constitutional power to make treaties (Art. II, Sec. 2, Cl. 2). A more commonly cited source of federal power over Native American affairs is the Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution, which provides that “Congress shall have the Power … to regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes” (Art. I, Sec. 8, Cl. 3). This clause has resulted in what is known as Congress’s “plenary power” over Indian affairs, which means that Congress has the ultimate right to pass legislation governing Native Americans, even when that legislation conflicts with or abrogates Indian treaties. The most well-known case supporting this congressional right is Lone Wolf v. Hitchcock, 187 U.S. 553, 23 S. Ct. 216, 47 L. Ed. 299 (1903), in which Congress broke a treaty provision that had guaranteed that no more cessions of land would be made without the consent of three-fourths of the adult males from the Kiowa and Comanche tribes. In justifying this abrogation, Justice edward d. white declared that when “treaties were entered into between the United States and a tribe of Indians it was never doubted that the power to abrogate existed in Congress, and that in a contingency such power might be availed of from considerations of governmental policy.”
Another source for the federal government’s power over Native American affairs is what is called the “trust relationship” between the government and Native American tribes. This “trust relationship” or “trust responsibility” refers to the federal government’s consistent promise, in the treaties that it signed, to protect the safety and well-being of the tribal members in return for their willingness to give up their lands. This notion of a trust relationship between Native Americans and the federal government was developed by U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Marshall in the opinions that he wrote for the three cases on tribal sovereignty described above, which became known as the Marshall Trilogy. In the second of these cases, Cherokee Nation v. Georgia, Marshall specifically described the tribes as “domestic dependant nations” whose relation to the United States was like “that of a ward to his guardian.” Similarly, in Worcester v. Georgia, Marshall declared that the federal government had entered into a special relationship with the Cherokees through the treaties they had signed, a relationship involving certain moral obligations. “The Cherokees,” he wrote, “acknowledge themselves to be under the protection of the United States, and of no other power.

Ummm, Willis, you miss the point – people state they should be treated differently now because they were treated differently and horrifically earlier, not because they are “native” or hot. You conflate two arguments and come to a logical muddle, and you sound, well, like a true believer or one who cannot analyze well.
I, fact, if well argued, I would likely agree we do not need to treat native Americans differently now, we need to treat them equally now which is also something we do not do. Is that what you meant? You have conflated two arguments and gotten well off the logical track.