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Honestly, as a Caucasian woman raised going to the Reservations in native country in New Mexico, I am sick and tired of white people answering this question. How bout we let a real First Nations person talk? Black Elk - WikiquoteGuess what folks - we stole their land, slaughtered their people and their buffalo, gave them diseases they had never even known about, destroyed them with alcohol when we weren’t outright killing them with firearms they had no initial access to, herded their children to schools far away from their families where the children had their language ripped out of them and were often raped and tortured. How would you deal with this if it happened to your people? The Canadian Government Systematically Tortured And Abused Aboriginal Children For 100 YearsBecause white people write the history books, we refuse to acknowledge that Hitler was studying how well we genocidally massacred entire populations and rewrote them out of history, and he used much of our horrific success as a model for how to get rid of the Jews, gypsies, and other outcast populations when he was writing Mein Kampf. Were American Indians the Victims of Genocide?Thanks for yet again perpetuating the white colonizer superiority myth that we whose ancestors were part of the original Holocaust have participated in since the “Founding” (Read Occupation) of this country. I’d love to hear from any First Nations folks out there who can speak to the incomprehensible assault on their land, their peoples, their language, their traditions, their animals, and their spirituality by ruthless, master race colonizers.Read up on this before you rattle on about it white folk!Yes, Native Americans Were the Victims of GenocideHistorians/History Native Americans, genocide by Roxanne Dunbar-OrtizRoxanne Dunbar-Ortiz grew up in rural Oklahoma, the daughter of a tenant farmer and part-Indian mother. She has been active in the international Indigenous movement for more than four decades and is known for her lifelong commitment to national and international social justice issues. After receiving her PhD in history at the University of California at Los Angeles, she taught in the newly established Native American Studies Program at California State University, Hayward, and helped found the Departments of Ethnic Studies and Women’s Studies. Her latest book is An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States.Mass Grave at Wounded KneeThis paper, written under the title, “U.S. Settler-Colonialism and Genocide Policies,” was delivered at the Organization of American Historians 2015 Annual Meeting in St. Louis, MO on April 18, 2015.US policies and actions related to Indigenous peoples, though often termed “racist” or “discriminatory,” are rarely depicted as what they are: classic cases of imperialism and a particular form of colonialism—settler colonialism. As anthropologist Patrick Wolfe writes, “The question of genocide is never far from discussions of settler colonialism. Land is life—or, at least, land is necessary for life.”i The history of the United States is a history of settler colonialism.The extension of the United States from sea to shining sea was the intention and design of the country’s founders. “Free” land was the magnet that attracted European settlers. After the war for independence but preceding the writing of the US Constitution, the Continental Congress produced the Northwest Ordinance. This was the first law of the incipient republic, revealing the motive for those desiring independence. It was the blueprint for gobbling up the British-protected Indian Territory (“Ohio Country”) on the other side of the Appalachians and Alleghenies. Britain had made settlement there illegal with the Proclamation of 1763.In 1801, President Jefferson aptly described the new settler state’s intentions for horizontal and vertical continental expansion, stating: “However our present interests may restrain us within our own limits, it is impossible not to look forward to distant times, when our rapid multiplication will expand itself beyond those limits and cover the whole northern, if not the southern continent, with a people speaking the same language, governed in similar form by similar laws.” This vision of manifest destiny found form a few years later in the Monroe Doctrine, signaling the intention of annexing or dominating former Spanish colonial territories in the Americas and the Pacific, which would be put into practice during the rest of the century.The form of colonialism that the Indigenous peoples of North America have experienced was modern from the beginning: the expansion of European corporations, backed by government armies, into foreign areas, with subsequent expropriation of lands and resources. Settler colonialism requires a genocidal policy. Native nations and communities, while struggling to maintain fundamental values and collectivity, have from the beginning resisted modern colonialism using both defensive and offensive techniques, including the modern forms of armed resistance of national liberation movements and what now is called terrorism. In every instance they have fought and continue to fight for survival as peoples. The objective of US authorities was to terminate their existence as peoples—not as random individuals. This is the very definition of modern genocide.The objective of US colonialist authorities was to terminate their existence as peoples—not as random individuals. This is the very definition of modern genocide as contrasted with premodern instances of extreme violence that did not have the goal of extinction. The United States as a socioeconomic and political entity is a result of this centuries-long and ongoing colonial process. Modern Indigenous nations and communities are societies formed by their resistance to colonialism, through which they have carried their practices and histories. It is breathtaking, but no miracle, that they have survived as peoples.Settler-colonialism requires violence or the threat of violence to attain its goals, which then forms the foundation of the United States’ system. People do not hand over their land, resources, children, and futures without a fight, and that fight is met with violence. In employing the force necessary to accomplish its expansionist goals, a colonizing regime institutionalizes violence. The notion that settler-indigenous conflict is an inevitable product of cultural differences and misunderstandings, or that violence was committed equally by the colonized and the colonizer, blurs the nature of the historical processes. Euro-American colonialism, an aspect of the capitalist economic globalization, had from its beginnings a genocidal tendency.So, what constitutes genocide? My colleague on the panel, Gary Clayton Anderson, in his recent book, “Ethnic Cleansing and the Indian,” argues: “Genocide will never become a widely accepted characterization for what happened in North America, because large numbers of Indians survived and because policies of mass murder on a scale similar to events in central Europe, Cambodia, or Rwanda were never implemented.”ii There are fatal errors in this assessment.The term “genocide” was coined following the Shoah, or Holocaust, and its prohibition was enshrined in the United Nations convention presented in 1948 and adopted in 1951: the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. The convention is not retroactive but is applicable to US-Indigenous relations since 1988, when the US Senate ratified it. The genocide convention is an essential tool for historical analysis of the effects of colonialism in any era, and particularly in US history.In the convention, any one of five acts is considered genocide if “committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group”:(a) killing members of the group;(b) causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;(c) deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;(d) imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;(e) forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.iiiThe followings acts are punishable:(a) Genocide;(b) Conspiracy to commit genocide;(c) Direct and public incitement to commit genocide;(d) Attempt to commit genocide;(e) Complicity in genocide.The term “genocide” is often incorrectly used, such as in Dr. Anderson’s assessment, to describe extreme examples of mass murder, the death of vast numbers of people, as, for instance in Cambodia. What took place in Cambodia was horrific, but it does not fall under the terms of the Genocide Convention, as the Convention specifically refers to a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, with individuals within that group targeted by a government or its agents because they are members of the group or by attacking the underpinnings of the group’s existence as a group being met with the intent to destroy that group in whole or in part. The Cambodian government committed crimes against humanity, but not genocide. Genocide is not an act simply worse than anything else, rather a specific kind of act. The term, “ethnic cleansing,” is a descriptive term created by humanitarian interventionists to describe what was said to be happening in the 1990s wars among the republics of Yugoslavia. It is a descriptive term, not a term of international humanitarian law.Although clearly the Holocaust was the most extreme of all genocides, the bar set by the Nazis is not the bar required to be considered genocide. The title of the Genocide convention is the “Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide,” so the law is about preventing genocide by identifying the elements of government policy, rather than only punishment after the fact. Most importantly, genocide does not have to be complete to be considered genocide.US history, as well as inherited Indigenous trauma, cannot be understood without dealing with the genocide that the United States committed against Indigenous peoples. From the colonial period through the founding of the United States and continuing in the twentieth century, this has entailed torture, terror, sexual abuse, massacres, systematic military occupations, removals of Indigenous peoples from their ancestral territories, forced removal of Native American children to military-like boarding schools, allotment, and a policy of termination.Within the logic of settler-colonialism, genocide was the inherent overall policy of the United States from its founding, but there are also specific documented policies of genocide on the part of US administrations that can be identified in at least four distinct periods: the Jacksonian era of forced removal; the California gold rush in Northern California; during the Civil War and in the post Civil War era of the so-called Indian Wars in the Southwest and the Great Plains; and the 1950s termination period; additionally, there is the overlapping period of compulsory boarding schools, 1870s to 1960s. The Carlisle boarding school, founded by US Army officer Richard Henry Pratt in 1879, became a model for others established by the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA). Pratt said in a speech in 1892, "A great general has said that the only good Indian is a dead one. In a sense, I agree with the sentiment, but only in this: that all the Indian there is in the race should be dead. Kill the Indian in him and save the man."Cases of genocide carried out as policy may be found in historical documents as well as in the oral histories of Indigenous communities. An example from 1873 is typical, with General William T. Sherman writing, “We must act with vindictive earnestness against the Sioux, even to their extermination, men, women and children . . . during an assault, the soldiers can not pause to distinguish between male and female, or even discriminate as to age.”ivThe so-called “Indian Wars” technically ended around 1880, although the Wounded Knee massacre occurred a decade later. Clearly an act with genocidal intent, it is still officially considered a “battle” in the annals of US military genealogy. Congressional Medals of Honor were bestowed on twenty of the soldiers involved. A monument was built at Fort Riley, Kansas, to honor the soldiers killed by friendly fire. A battle streamer was created to honor the event and added to other streamers that are displayed at the Pentagon, West Point, and army bases throughout the world. L. Frank Baum, a Dakota Territory settler later famous for writing The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, edited the Aberdeen Saturday Pioneer at the time.Five days after the sickening event at Wounded Knee, on January 3, 1891, he wrote, “The Pioneer has before declared that our only safety depends upon the total extermination of the Indians. Having wronged them for centuries we had better, in order to protect our civilization, follow it up by one or more wrong and wipe these untamed and untamable creatures from the face of the earth.”Whether 1880 or 1890, most of the collective land base that Native Nations secured through hard fought for treaties made with the United States was lost after that date.After the end of the Indian Wars, came allotment, another policy of genocide of Native nations as nations, as peoples, the dissolution of the group. Taking the Sioux Nation as an example, even before the Dawes Allotment Act of 1884 was implemented, and with the Black Hills already illegally confiscated by the federal government, a government commission arrived in Sioux territory from Washington, DC, in 1888 with a proposal to reduce the Sioux Nation to six small reservations, a scheme that would leave nine million acres open for Euro-American settlement. The commission found it impossible to obtain signatures of the required three-fourths of the nation as required under the 1868 treaty, and so returned to Washington with a recommendation that the government ignore the treaty and take the land without Sioux consent. The only means to accomplish that goal was legislation, Congress having relieved the government of the obligation to negotiate a treaty. Congress commissioned General George Crook to head a delegation to try again, this time with an offer of $1.50 per acre. In a series of manipulations and dealings with leaders whose people were now starving, the commission garnered the needed signatures. The great Sioux Nation was broken into small islands soon surrounded on all sides by European immigrants, with much of the reservation land a checkerboard with settlers on allotments or leased land.vCreating these isolated reservations broke the historical relationships between clans and communities of the Sioux Nation and opened areas where Europeans settled. It also allowed the Bureau of Indian Affairs to exercise tighter control, buttressed by the bureau’s boarding school system. The Sun Dance, the annual ceremony that had brought Sioux together and reinforced national unity, was outlawed, along with other religious ceremonies. Despite the Sioux people’s weak position under late-nineteenth-century colonial domination, they managed to begin building a modest cattle-ranching business to replace their former bison-hunting economy. In 1903, the US Supreme Court ruled, in Lone Wolf v. Hitchcock, that a March 3, 1871, appropriations rider was constitutional and that Congress had “plenary” power to manage Indian property. The Office of Indian Affairs could thus dispose of Indian lands and resources regardless of the terms of previous treaty provisions. Legislation followed that opened the reservations to settlement through leasing and even sale of allotments taken out of trust. Nearly all prime grazing lands came to be occupied by non-Indian ranchers by the 1920s.By the time of the New Deal–Collier era and nullification of Indian land allotment under the Indian Reorganization Act, non-Indians outnumbered Indians on the Sioux reservations three to one. However, “tribal governments” imposed in the wake of the Indian Reorganization Act proved particularly harmful and divisive for the Sioux.”vi Concerning this measure, the late Mathew King, elder traditional historian of the Oglala Sioux (Pine Ridge), observed: “The Bureau of Indian Affairs drew up the constitution and by-laws of this organization with the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934. This was the introduction of home rule. . . . The traditional people still hang on to their Treaty, for we are a sovereign nation. We have our own government.”vii “Home rule,” or neocolonialism, proved a short-lived policy, however, for in the early 1950s the United States developed its termination policy, with legislation ordering gradual eradication of every reservation and even the tribal governments.viii At the time of termination and relocation, per capita annual income on the Sioux reservations stood at $355, while that in nearby South Dakota towns was $2,500. Despite these circumstances, in pursuing its termination policy, the Bureau of Indian Affairs advocated the reduction of services and introduced its program to relocate Indians to urban industrial centers, with a high percentage of Sioux moving to San Francisco and Denver in search of jobs.ixThe situations of other Indigenous Nations were similar.Pawnee Attorney Walter R. Echo-Hawk writes:In 1881, Indian landholdings in the United States had plummeted to 156 million acres. By 1934, only about 50 million acres remained (an area the size of Idaho and Washington) as a result of the General Allotment Act of 1887. During World War II, the government took 500,000 more acres for military use. Over one hundred tribes, bands, and Rancherias relinquished their lands under various acts of Congress during the termination era of the 1950s. By 1955, the indigenous land base had shrunk to just 2.3 percent of its [size at the end of the Indian wars].xAccording to the current consensus among historians, the wholesale transfer of land from Indigenous to Euro-American hands that occurred in the Americas after 1492 is due less to British and US American invasion, warfare, refugee conditions, and genocidal policies in North America than to the bacteria that the invaders unwittingly brought with them. Historian Colin Calloway is among the proponents of this theory writing, “Epidemic diseases would have caused massive depopulation in the Americas whether brought by European invaders or brought home by Native American traders.”xiSuch an absolutist assertion renders any other fate for the Indigenous peoples improbable. This is what anthropologist Michael Wilcox has dubbed “the terminal narrative.” Professor Calloway is a careful and widely respected historian of Indigenous North America, but his conclusion articulates a default assumption. The thinking behind the assumption is both ahistorical and illogical in that Europe itself lost a third to one-half of its population to infectious disease during medieval pandemics. The principle reason the consensus view is wrong and ahistorical is that it erases the effects of settler colonialism with its antecedents in the Spanish “Reconquest” and the English conquest of Scotland, Ireland, and Wales. By the time Spain, Portugal, and Britain arrived to colonize the Americas, their methods of eradicating peoples or forcing them into dependency and servitude were ingrained, streamlined, and effective.Whatever disagreement may exist about the size of precolonial Indigenous populations, no one doubts that a rapid demographic decline occurred in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, its timing from region to region depending on when conquest and colonization began. Nearly all the population areas of the Americas were reduced by 90 percent following the onset of colonizing projects, decreasing the targeted Indigenous populations of the Americas from a one hundred million to ten million. Commonly referred to as the most extreme demographic disaster—framed as natural—in human history, it was rarely called genocide until the rise of Indigenous movements in the mid-twentieth century forged new questions.US scholar Benjamin Keen acknowledges that historians “accept uncritically a fatalistic ‘epidemic plus lack of acquired immunity’ explanation for the shrinkage of Indian populations, without sufficient attention to the socioeconomic factors . . . which predisposed the natives to succumb to even slight infections.”xiiOther scholars agree. Geographer William M. Denevan, while not ignoring the existence of widespread epidemic diseases, has emphasized the role of warfare, which reinforced the lethal impact of disease. There were military engagements directly between European and Indigenous nations, but many more saw European powers pitting one Indigenous nation against another or factions within nations, with European allies aiding one or both sides, as was the case in the colonization of the peoples of Ireland, Africa and Asia, and was also a factor in the Holocaust. Other killers cited by Denevan are overwork in mines, frequent outright butchery, malnutrition and starvation resulting from the breakdown of Indigenous trade networks, subsistence food production and loss of land, loss of will to live or reproduce (and thus suicide, abortion, and infanticide), and deportation and enslavement.xiii Anthropologist Henry Dobyns has pointed to the interruption of Indigenous peoples’ trade networks. When colonizing powers seized Indigenous trade routes, the ensuing acute shortages, including food products, weakened populations and forced them into dependency on the colonizers, with European manufactured goods replacing Indigenous ones. Dobyns has estimated that all Indigenous groups suffered serious food shortages one year in four. In these circumstances, the introduction and promotion of alcohol proved addictive and deadly, adding to the breakdown of social order and responsibility.xiv These realities render the myth of “lack of immunity,” including to alcohol, pernicious.Historian Woodrow Wilson Borah focused on the broader arena of European colonization, which also brought severely reduced populations in the Pacific Islands, Australia, Western Central America, and West Africa.xv Sherburne Cook—associated with Borah in the revisionist Berkeley School, as it was called—studied the attempted destruction of the California Indians. Cook estimated 2,245 deaths among peoples in Northern California—the Wintu, Maidu, Miwak, Omo, Wappo, and Yokuts nations—in late eighteenth-century armed conflicts with the Spanish while some 5,000 died from disease and another 4,000 were relocated to missions. Among the same people in the second half of the nineteenth century, US armed forces killed 4,000, and disease killed another 6,000. Between 1852 and 1867, US citizens kidnapped 4,000 Indian children from these groups in California. Disruption of Indigenous social structures under these conditions and dire economic necessity forced many of the women into prostitution in goldfield camps, further wrecking what vestiges of family life remained in these matriarchal societies.Historians and others who deny genocide emphasize population attrition by disease, weakening Indigenous peoples ability to resist. In doing so they refuse to accept that the colonization of America was genocidal by plan, not simply the tragic fate of populations lacking immunity to disease. If disease could have done the job, it is not clear why the United States found it necessary to carry out unrelenting wars against Indigenous communities in order to gain every inch of land they took from them—along with the prior period of British colonization, nearly three hundred years of eliminationist warfare.In the case of the Jewish Holocaust, no one denies that more Jews died of starvation, overwork, and disease under Nazi incarceration than died in gas ovens or murdered by other means, yet the acts of creating and maintaining the conditions that led to those deaths clearly constitute genocide. And no one recites the terminal narrative associated with Native Americans, or Armenians, or Bosnian.Not all of the acts iterated in the genocide convention are required to exist to constitute genocide; any one of them suffices. In cases of United States genocidal policies and actions, each of the five requirements can be seen.First, Killing members of the group: The genocide convention does not specify that large numbers of people must be killed in order to constitute genocide, rather that members of the group are killed because they are members of the group. Assessing a situation in terms of preventing genocide, this kind of killing is a marker for intervention.Second, Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group: such as starvation, the control of food supply and withholding food as punishment or as reward for compliance, for instance, in signing confiscatory treaties. As military historian John Grenier points out in his First Way of War:For the first 200 years of our military heritage, then, Americans depended on arts of war that contemporary professional soldiers supposedly abhorred: razing and destroying enemy villages and fields; killing enemy women and children; raiding settlements for captives; intimidating and brutalizing enemy noncombatants; and assassinating enemy leaders. . . . In the frontier wars between 1607 and 1814, Americans forged two elements—unlimited war and irregular war—into their first way of war.xviiGrenier argues that not only did this way of war continue throughout the 19th century in wars against the Indigenous nations, but continued in the 20th century and currently in counterinsurgent wars against peoples in Latin America, the Caribbean and Pacific, Southeast Asia, Middle and Western Asia and Africa.Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part: Forced removal of all the Indigenous nations east of the Mississippi to Indian Territory during the Jackson administration was a calculated policy intent on destroying those peoples ties to their original lands, as well as declaring Native people who did not remove to no longer be Muskogee, Sauk, Kickapoo, Choctaw, destroying the existence of up to half of each nation removed. Mandatory boarding schools, Allotment and Termination—all official government policies--also fall under this category of the crime of genocide. The forced removal and four year incarceration of the Navajo people resulted in the death of half their population.Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group: Famously, during the Termination Era, the US government administrated Indian Health Service made the top medical priority the sterilization of Indigenous women. In 1974, an independent study by one the few Native American physicians, Dr. Connie Pinkerton-Uri, Choctaw/Cherokee, found that one in four Native women had been sterilized without her consent. Pnkerton-Uri’s research indicated that the Indian Health Service had “singled out full-blooded Indian women for sterilization procedures.” At first denied by the Indian Health Service, two years later, a study by the U.S. General Accounting Office found that 4 of the 12 Indian Health Service regions sterilized 3,406 Native women without their permission between 1973 and 1976. The GAO found that 36 women under age 21 had been forcibly sterilized during this period despite a court-ordered moratorium on sterilizations of women younger than 21.Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group: Various governmental entities, mostly municipalities, counties, and states, routinely removed Native children from their families and put them up for adoption. In the Native resistance movements of the 1960s and 1970s, the demand to put a stop to the practice was codified in the Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978. However, the burden of enforcing the legislation lay with Tribal Government, but the legislation provided no financial resources for Native governments to establish infrastructure to retrieve children from the adoption industry, in which Indian babies were high in demand. Despite these barriers to enforcement, the worst abuses had been curbed over the following three decades. But, on June 25, 2013, the U.S. Supreme Court, in a 5-4 ruling drafted by Justice Samuel Alito, used provisions of the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) to say that a child, widely known as Baby Veronica, did not have to live with her biological Cherokee father. The high court’s decision paved the way for Matt and Melanie Capobianco, the adoptive parents, to ask the South Carolina Courts to have the child returned to them. The court gutted the purpose and intent of the Indian Child Welfare Act, missing the concept behind the ICWA, the protection of cultural resource and treasure that are Native children; it’s not about protecting so-called traditional or nuclear families. It’s about recognizing the prevalence of extended families and culture.xviiiSo, why does the Genocide Convention matter? Native nations are still here and still vulnerable to genocidal policy. This isn’t just history that predates the 1948 Genocide Convention. But, the history is important and needs to be widely aired, included in public school texts and public service announcements. The Doctrine of Discovery is still law of the land. From the mid-fifteenth century to the mid-twentieth century, most of the non-European world was colonized under the Doctrine of Discovery, one of the first principles of international law Christian European monarchies promulgated to legitimize investigating, mapping, and claiming lands belonging to peoples outside Europe. It originated in a papal bull issued in 1455 that permitted the Portuguese monarchy to seize West Africa. Following Columbus’s infamous exploratory voyage in 1492, sponsored by the king and queen of the infant Spanish state, another papal bull extended similar permission to Spain. Disputes between the Portuguese and Spanish monarchies led to the papal-initiated Treaty of Tordesillas (1494), which, besides dividing the globe equally between the two Iberian empires, clarified that only non-Christian lands fell under the discovery doctrine.xixThis doctrine on which all European states relied thus originated with the arbitrary and unilateral establishment of the Iberian monarchies’ exclusive rights under Christian canon law to colonize foreign peoples, and this right was later seized by other European monarchical colonizing projects. The French Republic used this legalistic instrument for its nineteenth- and twentieth-century settler colonialist projects, as did the newly independent United States when it continued the colonization of North America begun by the British.In 1792, not long after the US founding, Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson claimed that the Doctrine of Discovery developed by European states was international law applicable to the new US government as well. In 1823 the US Supreme Court issued its decision inJohnson v. McIntosh. Writing for the majority, Chief Justice John Marshall held that the Doctrine of Discovery had been an established principle of European law and of English law in effect in Britain’s North American colonies and was also the law of the United States. The Court defined the exclusive property rights that a European country acquired by dint of discovery: “Discovery gave title to the government, by whose subjects, or by whose authority, it was made, against all other European governments, which title might be consummated by possession.” Therefore, European and Euro-American “discoverers” had gained real-property rights in the lands of Indigenous peoples by merely planting a flag. Indigenous rights were, in the Court’s words, “in no instance, entirely disregarded; but were necessarily, to a considerable extent, impaired.” The court further held that Indigenous “rights to complete sovereignty, as independent nations, were necessarily diminished.” Indigenous people could continue to live on the land, but title resided with the discovering power, the United States. The decision concluded that Native nations were “domestic, dependent nations.”The Doctrine of Discovery is so taken for granted that it is rarely mentioned in historical or legal texts published in the Americas. The UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Peoples, which meets annually for two weeks, devoted its entire 2012 session to the doctrine.xx But few US citizens are aware of the precarity of the situation of Indigenous Peoples in the United States._______________i Patrick Wolfe, “Settler Colonialism and the Elimination of the Native,” Journal of Genocide Research 8, vol. 4 (December 2006), 387.ii Gary Clayton Anderson, Ethnic Cleansing and the Indian: The Crime that Should Haunt America. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2014.), 4.iii “Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, Paris, 9 December 1948,” Audiovisual Library of International Law, http://untreaty.un.org/cod/avl/ha/cppcg/cppcg.html (accessed December 6, 2012). See also Josef L. Kunz, “The United Nations Convention on Genocide,” American Journal of International Law 43, no. 4 (October 1949) 738–46.iv April 17, 1873, quoted in John F. Marszalek, Sherman: A Soldier’s Passion for Order(New York: Free Press, 1992), 379.v See Testimony of Pat McLaughlin, Chairman of the Standing Rock Sioux government, Fort Yates, North Dakota (May 8, 1976), at hearings of the American Indian Policy Review Commission, established by Congress in the Act of January 3, 1975.vi See: Kenneth R. Philp, John Collier’s Crusade for Indian Reform, 1920-1954.vii King quoted in Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, The Great Sioux Nation: Sitting in Judgment on America (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2013), 156.viii For a lucid discussion of neocolonialism in relation to American Indians and the reservation system, see Joseph Jorgensen, The Sun Dance Religion: Power for the Powerless (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977), 89–146.ix There is continuous migration from reservations to cities and border towns and back to the reservations, so that half the Indian population at any time is away from the reservation. Generally, however, relocation is not permanent and resembles migratory labor more than permanent relocation. This conclusion is based on my personal observations and on unpublished studies of the Indigenous populations in the San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles.x Walter R. Echo-Hawk, In the Courts of the Conqueror (Golden, CO: Fulcrum, 2010), 77–78.xi Colin G. Calloway, review of Julian Granberry, The Americas That Might Have Been: Native American Social Systems through Time (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2005), Ethnohistory 54, no. 1 (Winter 2007), 196.xii Benjamin Keen, “The White Legend Revisited,” Hispanic American Historical Review 51 (1971): 353.xiii Denevan, “The Pristine Myth,” 4–5.xiv Henry F. Dobyns, Their Number Become Thinned: Native American Population Dynamics in Eastern North America (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press in cooperation with the Newberry Library, 1983), 2. See also Dobyns, Native American Historical Demography, and Dobyns, “Estimating Aboriginal American Population: An Appraisal of Techniques with a New Hemispheric Estimate,” Current Anthropology 7 (1966), 295–416, and “Reply,” 440–44.xv Woodrow Wilson Borah, “America as Model: The Demographic Impact of European Expansion upon the Non-European World,” in Actas y Morías XXXV Congreso Internacional de Americanistas, México 1962,3 vols. (Mexico City: Editorial Libros de México, 1964), 381.xvii John Grenier, The First Way of War: American War Making on the Frontier, 1607–1814 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 5, 10.xviii http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2013/06/25/supreme-court-thwarts-icwa-intent-baby-veronica-case-150103xix Robert J. Miller, “The International Law of Colonialism: A Comparative Analysis,” in “Symposium of International Law in Indigenous Affairs: The Doctrine of Discovery, the United Nations, and the Organization of Americans States,” special issue, Lewis and Clark Law Review 15, no. 4 (Winter 2011), 847–922. See also Vine Deloria Jr., Of Utmost Good Faith (San Francisco: Straight Arrow Books, 1971), 6–39; Steven T. Newcomb, Pagans in the Promised Land: Decoding the Doctrine of Christian Discovery (Golden, CO: Fulcrum, 2008).xx Eleventh Session, United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, http://social.un.org/index/IndigenousPeoples/UNPFIISessions/Eleventh.aspx (accessed October 3, 2013).

The different fossils that can be found on the U.S West Coast are the following:FossilEraList of State Fossils:The majority of the states in the United States have an official state in fossil designation. Several states have fossils unofficially designated thanks to a fossil being designated as the “State Dinosaur” or “State Stone”. There are 7 states without a state fossil designation, Arkansas, Hawaii, Indiana, Iowa, Minnesota, New Hampshire and Rhode Island.Alabama State FossilFossil:A reconstructed skull of Basilosaurus, the state fossil of Alabama.Primitive Whale (Basilosaurus cetoides)Age: EoceneYear Designated: 1984Basilosaurus ("king lizard") is a genus of early whale that lived 40 to 34 million years ago in the late Eocene. Basilosaurus represents one of the earliest whales although it is actually descended from land mammals. The front flippers had an elbow joint and the back flippers where hind legs would have been are greatly reduced in size. It's estimated it could reach gigantic sizes of 40-60 feet in length. These ancient whale fossils are most abundant in Alabama but fossil remains of the Basilosaurus cetoides may not be removed from the state without prior written approval of the governor.Alaska State FossilFossil:Woolly Mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius)Age: PleistoceneYear Designated: 1986The Woolly Mammoth or Mammuthus primigenius was a species of mammoth. The common name for the extinct elephant genus Mammuthus. It was about the size of a modern day elephant, covered in fur and lived from 400,000 years ago to as recent as 4,000 years ago. It first evolved in Eurasia and entered Alaska from Siberia over the Bering Land Bridge around 65,000 years ago. It's fossils are frequently found in Alaska by gold miners after being washed out of stream banks.Arizona State FossilFossil:Petrified Wood (Araucarioxylon arizonicum)Age: TriassicYear Designated: 1988Arizona is famous for it's vast petrified forest, so it makes sense that Arizona's state fossil would be the most plentiful species of fossil tree in that forest, Araucarioxylon arizonicum. Petrified wood is fossil wood that has been turn to a fossil via permineralization. That is the organic wood material was replaced with minerals by water after it was buried. The Petrified Forest National Monument is located north of I-40 east of Holbrook and is from the Triassic age, approximately 200 million years ago.Arkansas State FossilFossil:Arkansaurus fridayiAge: Early CretaceousYear Designated: 2017Arkansaurus, a bipedal coelurosaurian dinosaur, is the only dinosaur whose remains have been found in Arkansas. Joe B. Friday discovered the dinosaur's fossilized foot in a gravel pit near Lockesburg in 1972 when he was out looking for a cow.California State FossilFossil:Saber-Toothed Cat (Smilodon californicus)Age: PleistoceneYear Designated: 1974Fossils of the Saber-Toothed Cat (Smilodon californicus) are abundant at the La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles. Smilodon is one of the most recognizable of the ferocious saber-toothed cats which roamed the Americas up until 11,000 years ago. They could weight up to 350 kg and had massive, 8 inch long upper canine teeth which they used to prey on large ice age mammals.Colorado State FossilFossil:Dinosaur (Stegosaurus stenops)Age: JurassicYear Designated: 1972The spike-tailed Stegosaurus is one of the most iconic and recognizable dinosaurs. It's rare fossils can be found in the Jurassic aged Morrison Formation of Colorado. It is believed that a typical Stegosaurus weighed five to ten tons but had a brain that was only about 2 ounces (the size of a walnut). But no, it did not have two brains. While probably not the brightest of the dinosaurs it had a formidable array of armored plates, and a spiked tail with which to defend itself.Connecticut State FossilFossil:Dinosaur Tracks (Eubrontes giganteus)Age: JurassicYear Designated: 1991The Connecticut Valley is home to one of the most impressive dinosaur track sites in the world. Tracks of many different types of dinosaurs have been found preserved in the Valley's sandstone dating back to the Early Jurassic. Eubrontes is the name given to the three-toed tracks but no skeletal remains have been found of their creator and the specific genus of dinosaur is not yet known. These tracks were the first known dinosaur fossils to be discovered in North America.Delaware State FossilFossil:Belemnite fossils.Cephalopod (Belemnitella americana)Age: CretaceousYear Designated: 1996Belemnites are an extinct group of squid-like cephalopods that lived during the Jurassic and Cretaceous. They had a hard, internal, cone shaped structure that is often preserved as a fossil though it is not technically a shell. They had 10 arms but unlike modern squid these arms had small hooks instead of suckers.Belemnites of the species Belemnitella americana are found abundantly in the exposures of the Mount Laurel Formation along the banks of the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal. The fine-grained sands and silts of the Mount Laurel were deposited in a shallow sea during the Late Cretaceous.Florida State FossilFossil:Agatized Coral (Anthozoa)Age: EoceneYear Designated: 1979 (Designated State Stone)Currently, Florida does not officially recognize a state fossil but it's state stone is actually a fossil, so we'll count it. The state stone, err fossil is agatized coral and the most commonly found type found in Florida is Anthozoa. "Agatized" is a common name given to fossils that have been replaced by silica and contaminate minerals which provide the color. Agate replaced, fossil coral is found in several Florida locations and may have been formed when runoffs of silt rich is clay and silica buried an Eocene aged Coral reef. Some of the first inhabitants of Florida some 5,000 years ago used this agatized coral as a material for making stone tools and points.Georgia State FossilFossil:A large Megalodon Shark tooth found in Georgia.Generic Fossil Shark ToothAge: Cretaceous through MioceneYear Designated: 1976Georgia's state fossil is the fossil shark tooth without any specific species or genus identified. Fossil shark teeth are common in deposits ranging the Cretaceous through the Miocene in Georgia. The reason shark teeth are so common is that sharks shed their teeth frequently during their lifetime and an adult shark may have left behind many thousands of teeth on the seafloor. The most impressive of these fossil shark teeth found in Georgia are those of the Megalodon Shark which can reach lengths in excess of 7 inches long.Hawaii State FossilFossil: No state fossil...Idaho State FossilFossil:Hagerman Horse (Equus simplicidens)Age: PlioceneYear Designated: 1988The Hagerman Horse was discovered in 1928 by a cattle rancher near Hagerman, Idaho, hence the name. It is one of the oldest horses of the Equus genus appearing 3.5 million years ago and is believed to be very similar to the African Zebra. Nearly 200 fossil horse skeletons have been recovered from the Hagerman Fossil Beds National Monument.Illinois State FossilFossil:Tully Monster (Tullimonstrum gregarium)Age: PennsylvanianYear Designated: 1989The "Tully Monser" (Tullimonstrum gregarium) was a soft-bodied invertebrate of unknown affinities that lived in the the waters of muddy estuaries during the Pennsylvanian period, 300 million years ago. Its fossils have only been found in the Mazon Creek fossil beds of Illinois, United States. It lacks characteristics of any modern phyla and paleontologists speculate that it may be a representative of a stem group to one of the many phyla of worms.Indiana State FossilFossil: None, but crinoid (Elegantocrinus hemisphaericus) proposedIowa State FossilFossil: No state fossil, lame...Kansas State FossilFossil: Pteranodon(flying reptile) & Tylosaurus (marine reptile)Age: CretaceousYear Designated: 2014Kansas, the most recent state to designate a state fossil, decided to make up for being late to the party and designate two. They designated to two reptiles that inhabited the Western Interior Seaway that covered Kansas during the late Cretaceous period. Tylosaurus, a type of Mosasaur was a giant, predatory marine lizard that could reach sizes of up to 50 feet in length. Pteranodon is a type of pterosaurs which included some of the largest known flying reptiles, with wingspans up to 20 ft.Kentucky State FossilFossil:Ordovician brachiopod specimen from Maysville, Kentucky.BrachiopodAge: PaleozoicYear Designated: 1986Brachiopod shells are probably the most commonly found fossils in Kentucky. They are so many different species of fossil brachiopods found in Kentucky, the state simply designated the entire group as the state fossil. Brachiopods are marine animals that superficially resembled clams, but are a completely different phylum with a vastly different internal structure.Louisiana State FossilFossil:Petrified Palmwood (Palmoxylon sp.)Age: OligoceneYear Designated: 1976Petrified palm wood is the Louisiana state fossil and is characterized by prominent rod-like structures within the regular grain of the petrified wood. In Louisiana, petrified palm wood belongs to the genus Palmoxylon. It is found within the Catahoula Formation, which consists almost entirely of sediments deposited within broad, low-lying coastal plains during the Oligocene period about 30 million years ago.Maine State FossilFossil:Fossil Plant (Pertica quadrifaria)Age: DevonianYear Designated: 1985Pertica is a genus of extinct vascular plants of the Early to Middle Devonian (around 420 to 380 million years ago). Pertica quadrifaria (the type species of the genus) was described in 1972 from compression fossils found in the Trout Valley Formation of northern Maine, USA. It was an upright plant which grew to perhaps as much as a 3 feet in height.Maryland State FossilFossil:Gastropod (Ecphora gardnerae)Age: MioceneYear Designated: 1994Ecphora gardnerae is a species of large carnivorous sea snail lived during the Miocene epoch, and became extinct more than five million years ago. The shells are found as fossils in Maryland and Virginia. Ecphora was one of the first fossils from the New World to be illustrated in a scientific work in Europe.Massachusetts State FossilFossil: Undetermined Dinosaur TracksAge: TriassicYear Designated: 1980The Connecticut River Valley of Western Massachusetts is one of the world's richest sources of prehistoric dinosaur tracks. The dinosaur tracks in the Connecticut Valley date from about 180 million to 210 million years ago. They are actually the first recorded dinosaur tracks being first discovered by a farmer's son in the early 1800's. The prints were first thought to be the marks of ancient birds. No one can be certain which dinosaurs made the prints, but it's believed the largest (more than a foot in length) may have been made by Dilophosaurus, a 20-foot long meat-eating dinosaur.Michigan State FossilFossil:Mastodon (Mammut americanum), Petoskey Stone (rugose coral, Hexagonaria percarinata)Age: Pliocene - Pleistocene & DevonianYear Designated: 2002 & 1965Mammut americanum or the American mastodon is the youngest and most widely known member of the genus Mammut. Mastodons where relatives of elephants and mammoths and lived in Michigan during the Pliocene and Pleistocene.In addition the "Petoskey Stone" which is a rock containing fossilized rugose coral (Hexagonaria percarinata) was designated the Michigan state stone in 1965.Petoskey stones are found in the Gravel Point Formation of the Traverse Group. They are fragments of a coral reef that was originally deposited during the Devonian period. The fragments were then natural polished by glaciers and are found over a wide area.The name comes from an Ottawa Indian Chief, Chief Pet-O-Sega. The city of Petoskey, Michigan, is also named after him, and is the center of the area where the stones are found.Minnesota State FossilFossil: No state fossil, lame...Mississippi State FossilFossil:Primitive Whales (Basilosaurus cetoides and Zygorhiza kochii)Age: EoceneYear Designated: 1981Like Alabama, Mississippi has designated a primitive whale (or rather two of them) as their state fossils. Basilosaurus and Zygorhiza are both extinct genus' of basilosaurids whales from the Late Eocene (40-34 million years ago)Missouri State FossilFossil:Crinoid FossilCrinoid (Delocrinus missouriensis)Age: PennsylvanianYear Designated: 1989Crinoids, sometimes commonly referred to as sea lilies are animals not plants. They are echinoderms related to starfish, sea urchins and brittle stars.Montana State FossilFossil:Maiasaura peeblesorum, a hadrosaur from Montana. Drawing by: Nobu TamuraDuck-Billed Dinosaur (Maiasaura peeblesorum)Age: CretaceousYear Designated: 1985Maiasaura is a large type of duck-billed dinosaur in Montana during the Upper Cretaceous Period, about 76.7 million years ago. Maiasaura was large, attaining an adult length of about 30 ft and had the typical hadrosaurid flat (duck-billed) beak.. It had a small, spiky crest in front of its eyes, which may have been used in headbutting contests between males during the breeding season.Nebraska State FossilFossil:Woolly Mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius)Age: PleistoceneYear Designated: 1967The mammoth was adopted as the Nebraska state fossil in 1967. The world’s largest Mammoth skeleton, nicknamed ‘Archie’ was discovered in Lincoln County, Nebraska and is currently on display at the University of Nebraska State Museum. Archie is 15 feet tall, 25 feet long and is estimate to have weighed a staggering 7 tons.The mammoth was an elephant but much larger than the modern day version, hence the name. The remains on three different species of Mammoth that roamed the plains during the Pleistocene period have been found in Nebraska.New Hampshire State FossilFossil: None, but Mastodon proposedNevada State FossilFossil:Drawing of Shonisaurus by Nobu TamuraIchthyosaur (Shonisaurus sp.)Age: TriassicYear Designated: 1977, amended 1989Shonisaurus is a gigantic genus of Ichthyosaur that could reach lengths of nearly 50 feet. An Ichthyosaur is an extinct marine reptile resembling a dolphin, with a long pointed head, four flippers, and a vertical tail.In 1928 a large bone-bed of Shonisaurus fossils was discovered near Berlin, Nevada in the Triassic aged Luning Formation. Excavations thirty years later would reveal the remains of 37 large individuals. These were named Shonisaurus, which means "Lizard from the Shoshone Mountains", after the where the fossils were found. This area is now encompassed by Berlin–Ichthyosaur State Park. Ichthyosaur fossils in general were designated as the Nevada state fossil in 1977 and this amended in 1989 to specifically be fossils of Shonisaurus.New Jersey State FossilFossil:Duck-Billed Dinosaur (Hadrosaurus foulkii)Age: CretaceousYear Designated: 1991 (State Dinosaur)Hadrosaurus foulkii was a type of duckbilled dinosaur that roamed the forests and swamps along New Jersey's coastline 80 million years ago. It was probably about 25 feet long and 10 feet tall. Hadrosaurs are believed to have stood on their hind legs while grazing, and had a mouthful of hundreds of tiny, blocky teeth that would have functioned to grind leaves and other vegetation.Hadrosaurus foulkii was the dinosaur known from more than isolated teeth to be found in North America. A of Hadrosaurus foulkii skeleton was discovered in 1858 by William Foulke in a marl pit near Haddonfield, New Jersey. In 1868, it became the first mounted dinosaur skeleton in the world and it was named the state dinosaur of New Jersey in 1991.New Mexico State FossilFossil:Dinosaur (Coelophysis bauri)Age: TriassicYear Designated: 1981Coelophysis bauri is an extinct species of coelophysid dinosaur that lived during the Late Triassic period, approximately 200 million years ago. It was a small, theropod dinosaur, about 6 feet in length and only weighing around 50 lbs. It was most likely a carnivore, preying on small reptiles, amphibians and early Triassic mammals.The remains of hundreds of skeletons of Coelophysis were discovered at Ghost Ranch during the 1940s. Because of the large number of remains that have been found it is probably the best known dinosaur of the Triassic. Coelophysis was adopted as the official fossil of New Mexico by law in 1981.New York State FossilFossil:Sea Scorpion (Eurypterus remipes)Age: SilurianYear Designated: 1984Eurypterus is an extinct genus of “Sea Scorpion” that lived during the Silurian Period from around around 432 to 418 million years ago. The first discovered species of the genus was Eurypterus remipes. Eurypterus averaged at about 5 to 9 inches in length and possessed spine-bearing appendages with a large paddle they used for swimming.Eurypterus remipes lived along the bottom of the shallow, brackish sea that covered much of New York over 400 million years ago. The first fossil of Eurypterus was found in 1818 by S. L. Mitchill. It was first thought to be a fossil catfish and wasn’t correctly identified as an arthropod until years later. It was named the official state fossil of NY in 1984.North Carolina State FossilFossil:Megalodon Teeth (Carcharodon megalodon)Age: MioceneYear Designated: 2013The official state fossil of North Carolina is fossilized teeth of the extinct, mega-mouthed shark Carcharocles megalodon. Megalodon is the largest known predator in the history of the planet having been estimated to reach sizes of up to 60 feet long. Huge serrated teeth up to 7 1/2 inches have been discovered. It's a good thing that this gigantic shark went extinct about 2.6 million years ago.Fossil teeth of the Megalodon are relatively common fossils in North Carolina. They are popularly collected by divers in the rivers and offshore after they erode out of the Miocene aged Hawthorn Formation. These fossil teeth were adopted as the official state fossil of North Carolina in 2013.North Dakota State FossilFossil:Teredo Petrified WoodAge: PaleoceneYear Designated: 1967Teredo wood the name that is given to wood that was bored into by small marine mollusks called shipworms. Thus, petrified teredo wood would be the fossils of this wood bearing the distinctive boreholes.During the Paleocene (around 60 million years ago) parts of North Dakota were covered by warm water swamps, similar to Florida today. Sequoias and other trees growing in these swamps fell into the water and were washed out to sea become driftwood. They would then be bored into by the marine shipworms. Under the right conditions this driftwood would become fossilized and replaced with silica through the process of petrification.Teredo petrified wood is a common fossil in the Cannonball formation of South-Central North Dakota. It was designated the North Dakota state fossil in 1967.Ohio State FossilFossil:Trilobite (Isotelus)Age: OrdovicianYear Designated: 1985Isotelus is a genus to large Asaphid trilobite that lived during the Ordovician Period. It’s fossils are common within several formations that outcrop in Southwestern Ohio. The largest Isotelus trilobite to be found in Ohio is about 16 inches long though the largest known trilobite Isotelus rex found in Manitoba, Canada is from the same genus.The most famous specimen of Isotelus from Ohio was discovered in 1919 while digging an outlet tunnel during the construction of the Huffman Dam near Dayton. This giant trilobite specimen measures 14 ½ inches long. A couple elementary school classes in Dayton proposed naming this specimen of the official state fossil. While declining to designate only that specific specimen, the legislature instead passed a bill naming the genus Isotelus in 1985.Oklahoma State FossilFossil:Theropod Dinosaur (Saurophaganax maximus)Age: JurassicYear Designated: 2000Saurophaganax is a genus of allosaurid dinosaur from the Late Jurassic (~151 million years old) Morrison Formation of Oklahoma. It was a truly massive predator, estimated to have reached a maximum size of 34-43 feet in length. The first bones of Saurophaganax were found in the early 1930s near Kenton, Oklahoma. Since that time, discoveries have been rare and fragmentary.On April, 14th, 2000 the governor of Oklahoma signed a senate bill designating Saurophaganax maximus as the official Oklahoma state fossilOregon State FossilFossil:Plant - Dawn Redwood (Metasequoia)Age: MioceneYear Designated: 2005The Metasequoia or “Dawn redwood” is a deciduous conifer that flourished from 34 to 5 million years ago. It’s fossils are common in rocks of these ages in Oregon and many other areas of the Pacific Northwest. It was made the official Oregon state fossil in 2005 after intense lobbying by a local fossil enthusiast who presented every legislator with a Metasequoia fossil. It’s an appropriate fossil for the state, because of the states prominent timber heritage.Pennsylvania State FossilFossil:Trilobite (Phacops rana rana)Age: DevonianYear Designated: 1988Phacops may be the most widely recognizable type of trilobite fossil in the world. Phacops rana is a species of the genus that can found in Pennsylvania's Devonian aged rocks. Trilobites are an extinct marine arthropod that occurred abundantly during the Paleozoic era.Phacops rana was named the official state fossil of Pennsylvania in 1988 after being proposed to lawmakers by a elementary school science class.South Carolina State FossilFossil:Columbian Mammoth (Mammuthus columbi)Age: PleistoceneYear Designated: 2014The Columbian mammoth became the official state fossil of South Carolina in 2014. South Carolina is the sixth state to make a mammoth the state fossil, and the second most recent to official name a state fossil. It almost didn’t happen because of months of delays by creationist lawmakers who tried to add amendments referring to the book of Genesis and God's creation to the law.“The Columbian Mammoth, which was created on the Sixth Day with the other beasts of the field, is designated as the official State Fossil of South Carolina and must be officially referred to as the 'Columbian Mammoth,' which was created on the Sixth Day with the other beasts of the field."It took much pleading by state residents to keep religion out of science but eventually the bill passed free of religious amendments.South Dakota State FossilFossil:Dinosaur (Triceratops horridus)Age: CretaceousYear Designated: 1988Prior to 1988 the official state fossil of South Dakota was the cycad, a type of palm like Mesozoic plant. Legislators decided to change it to one of the most recognizable dinosaurs to all-time, Triceratops.The horned dinosaur Triceratops is one of the most common dinosaur fossils in the Cretaceous aged Hell Creek Formation that outcrops in South Dakota. Many fine specimens of this large, rhinocerous looking herbivore have been discovered in South Dakota. Read more about Triceratops.Rhode Island State FossilFossil: No state fossil, lame...Tennessee State FossilFossil:Bivalve Mollusc (Pterotrigonia thoracica)Age: CretaceousYear Designated: 1998Pterorigonia is an extinct genus of that is a common fossil in the Cretaceous aged rocks in West Tennessee. About 70 million years ago, much of Tennessee was covered by a shallow sea. In 1998 Pterorigonia thoracica was named as the official state fossil of the state.Texas State FossilFossil:Sauropod Dinosaur (Paluxysaurus jonesi) & Petrified Palm Wood (Palmoxylon sp)Age: Cretaceous & OligoceneYear Designated: 2009 (State Dinosaur) & 1969 (State Stone)The Early Cretaceous sauropod dinosaur Paluxysaurus jonesi is estimated to have been about 60 feet long, 26 feet of that being it’s long neck. It is a relative of Brachiosaurus & Camarasaurus and its tracks can be viewed at Dinosaur Valley State Park near Glen Rose, Texas. Complete skeletons of this dinosaur are unknown, and most material is fragmentary.Originally the official state dinosaur was Pleurocoelus but that designation only lasted seven years when the bones were determined to have come from a different genus and species, Paluxysaurus jonesi. In 2009 Governor Rick Perry signed House Concurrent Resolution No changing the name of the state dinosaur to match.Texas's state stone, petrified Palmoxylon wood also happens to be a fossil.Utah State FossilFossil:Theropod Dinosaur (Allosaurusfragilis)Age: JurassicYear Designated: 1988Allosaurus is a well-known predatory dinosaur that lived during the Jurassic period and probably hunted in packs. It averaged about 25-30 feet in length and is the most common dinosaur fossil found in the Morrison Formation that outcrops in Eastern Utah. Over 60 skeletons, representing both adults and juveniles of the species have been found in one quarry in Utah along. It’s skull could reach up to 3 feet in length with backwardly curving teeth. It could open its jaw very wide and it has been theorized that it used it’s upper jaw like a hatchet to attach prey.The Allosaurus was designated the Utah State Fossil in 1988.Vermont State FossilFossil:Delphinapterus leucas skeleton on display. Image Credit: AV DezignWhale (Delphinapterus leucas) & Mount Holly mammoth tooth and tuskAge: PleistoceneYear Designated: 1993 (State terrestrial fossil) & 2014 (State marine fossil)Vermont has two state fossils designated, a state terrestrial (land) fossil and a state marine fossil.The “Mount Holly mammoth” was designated as the state terrestrial fossil in 2014. Discovered in 1848, the Mount Holly Mammoth consists of a partial mammoth found in a peat bog on Mt. Holly while making an excavation for a railroad."In making this excavation, the workmen found at the bottom of the bed, resting upon gravel which separated it from the rock below, a huge tooth. The depth of the peat at that place was eleven feet. Soon afterwards one of the tusks was found, about eighty feet from the place of the tooth mentioned above, which was a grinder. Subsequently the other tusk and several of the bones of the animal were found near the same place. These bones and teeth were submitted to the inspection of Professor Agassiz, who pronounced them to be extinct species of elephant. The directors of the R.& B.R.R. to whom they belong, placed them in the museum of the University of Vermont, for preservation, and for the illustration of our fossil geology.”In 1993 a fossil beluga whale skeleton was designated as the official Vermont Marine Fossil. Vermont is the only state that designates a fossil symbol from a species that still exists today.Virginia State FossilFossil:Bivalve Scallop (Chesapecten jeffersonius)Age: PlioceneYear Designated: 1993The prehistoric scallop Chesapecten jeffersonius holds the distinction of being the first fossil illustrated in a scientific publication from North America in 1687. It would later be named in honor Thomas Jefferson because of his interest in natural history and to celebrate the Chesapeake Bay, the largest estuary in the US. Fossils of this 4 million year old shellfish are commonly found in streams and beaches of Southeastern Virginia. It is an index fossil for the Lower Yorktown Formation.In 1993 is was officially adopted at the Virginia state fossil.Washington State FossilFossil:Columbian Mammoth (Mammuthus columbi) & Petrified WoodAge: Pleistocene & MioceneYear Designated: 1998 & 1975Washington is one of six states to have a mammoth, designated as their state fossil, but Washington was one of the first to do so. So, it’s the other states being unoriginal. Petrified wood (a fossil) is also designated as the state stone. Fossilized remains of the Columbian mammoth were found on the Olympic Peninsula in Western Washington and petrified wood at several localities in Eastern Washington.West Virginia State FossilFossil:Giant Ground Sloth (Megalonyx jeffersonnii)Age: PleistoceneYear Designated: 2008Megalonyx jeffersonii is an extinct giant ground sloth that lived in North America from the Late Miocene (10 million years ago) through the Pleistocene (11k years ago) It was nearly 10 feet high and weight up to a ton. It is one of the most unusual North American ice-age mammals. It had thick hair that enabled the species to endure colder temperatures and range farther north than other ground sloths. It’s name latin for “Great Claw” from the fact that it had a giant claw.Like the state fossil of Virginia the species is named after fossil lover and third president of the United State, Thomas Jefferson. His lecture on Megalonyx to the American Philosophical Society in 1797 marked the beginning of vertebrate paleontology in North America. In 2008 Megalonyx jeffersonii was officially adopted as the West Virginia state fossil.Wisconsin State FossilFossil:Trilobite (Calymene celebra)Age: SilurianYear Designated: 1985In 1985 the trilobite Calymene celebra was adopted as the official Wisconsin state fossil. Trilobites are extinct marine arthropods which dominated the seas during the Paleozoic period. Calymene celebra lived during the Silurian period, at a time when warm, shallow seas covered the state. Its fossils are common in the vast Niagara dolomite outcroppings which are exposed in the state.Wyoming State FossilFossil:Fossil FIsh (Knightia) & Dinosaur (Triceratops)Age: Eocene & CretaceousYear Designated: 1987 & 1994Wyoming has both a state fossil, designated in 1987 and a state dinosaur designated in 1994.Knightia a genus of fossil herring was designated at the official state fossil. 45-50 million years ago, several large, freshwater lakes covered the Southwestern part of Wyoming, as well as areas of Utah and Colorado. Periodically there were mass die-offs of fish in the lake, potentially caused by volcanic eruptions, temperature fluctuations, or algal blooms. A low oxygen environment at the bottom of the lake allowed for beautiful preservation of these fish as fossils. Today these fossils are found in huge numbers at several quarries near Kemmerer, WY. Knightia is the most common of the fossil fish from the Green River Formation.RELATED ARTICLESAlaska State Fossil - Woolly MammothAbout Mammoth MolarsTexas State Fossil(s) - Petrified Palmwood & PaluxysaurusNevada State Fossil - Ichthyosaur (Shonisaurus popularis)Wyoming State Fossil - Fossil Fish (Knightia)Alabama State Fossil - Basilosaurus

I can answer this to a degree, contextualized through my own experience as a highly trained immigrant to Oslo, Norway, from Croatia, a small South-East European country with a load of economic and political problems. My experiences may not be representative of other personal conditions and particular destinies.PreambleIn Which We Meet Our Hero.After completing my Ph.D. in Automation (Electrical Engineering) in 2012, with the focus on Marine Robotics / Cybernetics I decided to look for employment outside my country. I had previously had limited experiences living in the UK and US. I had previously lived for 1 year in the UK while I was lower sixth form, in a public boarding school (public, confusingly, means private in the UK, and boarding school is the one where you live in the school). Lower sixth form in the UK is the penultimate year of secondary / high school, so I guess, high school junior in the US? Kids aged roughly 16 - 18, mode on 17. In the US, I lived during a three month research stint tied to my Ph.D. research on a scholarship in Monterey, CA, researching in the Naval Postgraduate School. I had also traveled extensively during my Ph.D. around Europe and to a lesser degree to the US and around the world. I speak English at the native speaker level.It took me about three quarters of a year to find a job in Norway, and I chose to concentrate on Norway for several reasons:During my studies, I had learned that Norway invests extreme amounts of money, even by the EU standards (i.e. the whole of EU through the Directorate for S&T's instrument called Framework Programme 7 before 2013, and now Horizon 2020), into marine technology and marine cybernetics research,Norway, although a small country, has a disproportionally large labor market, relatively speaking, for highly trained marine technology and marine cybernetics professionals, with globally operating Norwegian-based companies such as Kongsberg, Marine Cybernetics, DNV-GL, and multinationals with significant presence and marine technology operations in Norway, like ABB, GE, Siemens, Rolls Royce Marine, etc.Norway is in the same time-zone as Croatia, CET, and is 5 hours away by plane with one change-over somewhere in Western or Central Europe (usually Frankfurt, Munich, Copenhagen, Zurich, Brussels, or Vienna). During the summer, there are cheap seasonal flights directly to the coast by Ryanair. I have a lot of family in Croatia still, as well as friends, and like to be close.Norway is extremely socialist. I espouse socialist values, and, compared to other possible countries that would have an interest in an immigrant like me (a highly trained focused expert who might only be able to get paperwork based on his expertise and the real need of some company to employ a guy with such credentials), like Canada, the UK (Scotland), the US, Mexico, Brazil, Singapore, Hong Kong, it is the best governed. I am very wary of the US culture of over-work (although I grant that I may be misinformed or not have the proper understanding of how it looks in practice). This is especially true at a juncture in my life where I want to think hard and serious about starting a family and having a good work-life balance with respect to that. Norway also offers apt labor rights to employees, and a good amount of paid vacation, as well as paternity leave, health, social welfare programs etc. I consider the American approach to vacation (summed up as one word -- "No") to be uncivilized in the extreme.Norway is still essentially European. Any alienation that I may come to feel should at least be less than in the US, or in Asia.Norway is extremely family-friendly.Most critical to my experience, I had some connections in Norway that helped when competing in their labor market. So all that said, come February 2013, I packed my bags, sat on the plane, and arrived for a two weeks stay in a hotel before I found myself a place to live. The plane, the overweight luggage charges, and the two weeks of stay in the hotel near work were picked up by my company. Seeing as how the oil market has moved in the last two years, I would not expect to see the same happening again were I to get a job today. I also got a liaison in the Chamber of Commerce through my company's Global Mobility office who helped with paperwork, and, which turned out to be rather critical when comparing my story to those of other immigrants -- vetting and vouching for me with Norwegian landlords and essentially acting as my at-large factotum during the first few weeks, driving me around and setting me up as painlessly as humanly possible.Prior to getting the job I ultimately landed, I have to point out that the job-hunting embodied two vastly different experiences:With one company, I went through a protracted competitive and whittling-down process since they were advertising and hiring globally and for a very specific purpose. I begrudged the company for not going through the process more efficiently and communicating their ultimate choice (of another person) sooner. The process was drawn out, very formal, and without too much interaction save for one interview. They would have been happy to cover the travel costs for, from Croatia, had I not had a parallel activity in Norway at a date that was satisfactory for both, so I was already in the country. They were kind enough to send a chauffeur to the airport at Oslo, where I landed for my other activities, and drive me three hours to the company headquarters, and covered the price of the train back to Oslo. So a civilized, but largely faceless and formal process, with a tail end of waiting for the ultimate answer by far too long and slightly mismanaged in my opinion.With my ultimate company, it started with a friendly phone-call by a Technology Manager in charge of the unit that was interested in getting me, on the recommendation of mutual acquaintances who were kind enough to refer me. We had another chat with the unit manager, and the guy who would be my immediate manager after a week from the initial chat. Two weeks after that, they paid for me to come in for an in-person interview. This was not an advertised position essentially, but the company saw it as an opportunity to get the expertise that I embodied. So I was basically head-hunted personally and in a targeted way. They presented me with an offer right after the interview, and gave me three weeks to consider (it was right around the time of Christmas holidays, so companies would have shut down anyway for at least two weeks). I accepted. Very fast, very friendly, I didn't feel too much tension, and after the first experience, was duly impressed by their willingness to come to terms almost immediately.Now, finally, on to the actual experiences of living and working in Norway.Working in NorwayThe GoodWorking in a big multinational company in Norway is... well I don't have a good standard for comparison, having only worked in academia before my stint here, but in general -- nice, civilized, and interesting. It does have its share of frustrations, but I imagine that will be the case anywhere and everywhere. Now, my standard for comparison is Croatian business life and business practices, and e.g. American practices are in many respects even further removed. So, when I say "the internal administration seems to be fast and efficient", maybe for an American it would seem overly bureaucratic and convoluted, but then that person would run away screaming and insane from Croatia. That said -- my onboarding period was extremely efficiently handled. I got a nice office with modern, functional furniture (electrical motor for adjusting your desk, a fancy chair that has more ways of setting it up that I have cared to learn), a cellphone, a computer, 2 big screens, and other paraphernalia within the first week. Well, the laptop was a temporary hand-down that I got on the first day, to be followed by my own, brand new model in two weeks.The working language in my company is English, and at the time there were very many expats and international workers, so communication was never a problem. All Norwegians (at the workplace for sure, and I would wager -- most Norwegians in general, regardless of age, at least in Oslo) also speak quite good English, if with an unmistakable Scandinavian accent. But then again, I probably have an unmistakable Slavic accent, so there is that. The company also agreed to pay Norwegian language courses for me.Norwegians in general are practical, goal-oriented folk. They strike me as having a good balance between setting up workable and rational rules, and sticking to them, and being willing to adapt to a situation. Unlike Croatians, they have a can-do, positive outlook and don't have a particular Croatian trauma and obsession with not incurring any costs in doing business. You've got to spend money to earn money. And if the cost is rational, targeted, known in advance, and will lead to a business result, it gets paid quickly and efficiently.By and large, you can be very flexible with your time, involvement, vacation days, going to the doctor, or doing administration stuff with the state (although for that last one, there is not much need since most of the administration is digital and web-based). There are some restrictions if, unlike me, who works in R&D, you work "front line" in direct contact with customers and in the core business of the company. Then, work is driven by customer-imposed deadlines, and since we build complicated solutions that are systems constructed from components produced, shipped, and coordinated from factories around the world, you may have some constraints on when in particular you want to take your spring, summer, autumn, or winter vacation.Hierarchies in Norwegian companies are flat, and bosses don't command respect just by the virtue of being placed on top of you in the organization chart. They are rather approachable (if sometimes bland and non-committal if you insist on talking to them only about the business), and almost to a fault don't expect any obeisance or sycophancy. The right way to socialize with bosses is to talk about leisure, sports, the weather, travel etc.The "Bad" -- Well, the peculiar in any caseEven in globally operating companies with a multinational workforce, for getting ahead and being in the know, Norwegian is a must. Then again, Norwegians act extremely friendly and like it very much when you exhibit any interest in learning their language. However, I have seen that the feelings get mixed once you've established yourself as at least a mediocre speaker of Norwegian. As time passes, their enthusiasm for talking to you like they would to an idiot child decreases. They start "forgetting themselves" and begin to just talk normal in front of, or to you, and then are a little bit stumped when they see that you can't quite keep up. However, this is probably not strange. I try to think how the situation would play out in e.g. a Croatian company, and I can't in all honesty say that it would be much different. This is by and large true for a lot of things I will say in this section.Getting ahead, in the career sense, is absolutely predicated not only on learning Norwegian, but actively integrating into the Norwegian lifestyle, preferences, culture, and leisure time activities. Norwegians, somewhat like Croatians, are a small nation, so everybody knows everybody else, and networking and mingling are very important. Combined with the sometimes stifling Janteloven ("You shall not consider yourself to be better than anybody else. You are not, the society will not treat you as such, and you will get no more breaks or opportunities than anybody else."), this means that whom you know, who is a good friend, and who you've managed to impress with your personality and your good humor, is equally important to how good you actually are in whatever you do. On the other side of that coin, they still manage to be more meritocratic than Croatians, but Croatians are a byword for nepotism, corruption, and clientelism.Due to this deep-seated respect for the opinions of others and sense of community, decision-making and responsibility-taking, as well as exercise of authority is sometimes... challenging. The way they try to resolve this is by calling an irrational number of meetings, especially when the decision to be made is a multi-faceted one, with many valid arguments in favor of different courses of action. If there is no consensus, you can be sure there will be another meeting on the same issue. Ultimately, this sometimes undercuts business because in a lot of situations, it is important to be fast, rather than right. Especially in the really interesting problems, when it is simplistic in the first instance to try to frame the decision as right-or-wrong. This does feel nice for the people lower down on the pecking order because you get the sense that it truly is important (and it really is) what you think how the company, or your team, or your unit, should proceed on some matter. However, what I think many people fail to understand is that sometimes you either don't have an opinion, or would just like to get on with your work, in whichever way someone tells you to. Sometimes you just need information on how to proceed, and not a debate.Other than that, what I think I am noticing as frustrations or down-sides of the job have more to do with the nature of big corporations in general, than with anything uniquely Norwegian, like the Peters principle ("people tend to get promoted to their exact level of incompetence"). Also, if you are extremely efficient and effective in your work, and if your work is the company's core business and you are in the "front lines", which in my company means engineering the actual deliveries, your chances of getting promoted off of that front line are slim. Because you are indispensable right where you are right now. Whereas as a middle manager, your less-than-efficient-engineer colleague might do just as well. And that is largely true when you consider the job one rung on top of yours. But if you really want to advance along the entire ladder, you need that rung's experience to move forward and further. Not just for the sake of being a team leader.In that last respect, I've noticed that careers in Norwegian engineering companies have some of the nature of "switchback staircase". You get promoted by leaving a company, and stepping into a higher-up role in the other company. Then after some years you come back to the company in a yet higher role. This is something that happens in Norway -- companies often take people back, even after a period where these people have worked with a direct competitor.The UglyNothing really.Living in NorwayOslo And Public TransportNorway is a relatively non-urban country. Even Oslo, the biggest city, is quite small compared to some other European, and even Scandinavian cities, like Stockholm or Copenhagen. The government actually actively pursues the policy of decentralized development, and Norwegian people in general seem to not mind living in the country, or rather, actually prefer it. On top of questions of relative size, to me, who came from the capital of Croatia that is loosely the same size as Oslo (maybe 100 - 200 thousand inhabitants more, depending on how far you cast your statistical net), Oslo just doesn't feel very big. This is due to the fact that Oslo, which for me was quite unexpected since I tend to associate the trend much more with cities and towns in the US, is not very congested or urbanized, urban panning-wise. It has a relatively small urban center, surrounded by a lot of suburban sprawl of detached housing. While in Oslo the public transport infrastructure is good, that is not necessarily the case over all. Oslo has the T-bane, the semi-underground semi-overground light rail, a network of slow and meandering trams, a high speed underground railway connection between the eastern and western railway networks of Norway, buses, and ferries all operated by the same concern -- Ruter.no. Whenever the T-bane stops service (after midnight on weekdays and Sunday, and after 1 am on Friday and Saturday), even in Oslo getting around in public transport becomes a hassle.Nightlife, Social Life, Drinks, And TaxisThese leads me to segue into discussions of nightlife, social life, drinks, and taxis. When you are out and about in Oslo (and even more so in other cities and town) after hours, the only real efficient option of getting around is taxis (and Uber). Taxis are goddamned expensive, but so is almost anything else associated with urbanite nightlife. Drinks are ridiculous, as I am sure many of you already know. Prices of alcohol and nicotine products are extremely high on account of the punitive tariffs imposed by the government. This stance of the Norwegian society towards drinks and tobacco I find to be extremely hypocritical. If you consider that it is so damaging and dangerous -- ban it outright. However, I think every sane person can immediately recognize that this will not work. The Islamic world tried this, and still there is a lively black market for alcohol in the UAE, Saudi Arabia, or Iran. This is one aspect of the otherwise quite accomplished Norwegian nanny state that I severely dislike. To a man from a culture that is the most... interesting, to put it diplomatically, mix of the Mediterranean and Slavic cultures, it is of supreme importance to have his beer or wine in peace and not have the nanny state look down upon you with a tsk-ing sound on its lips and a wagging finger on its hand.Other aspects of nightlife are equally expensive, and to add insult to injury, quite annoying as well. All nightclubs rigorously enforce fire rules (as all establishments in Norway in general rigorously enforce all of the rules all of the time), which results in scenes which I had for the longest of times considered, when I would see them on American TV shows like Friends to be some weird fiction. Namely those of people freezing their asses off in those pesky lines for admittance into nightclubs. More often than not, not without paying an exorbitant fee to top it off. Additionally, all premises that remain open after a given time (I don't know exactly, but I'd say maybe 10 pm) employ bouncers and guards, who are entitled to refuse you entry if they only judge you to be inebriated, or in general, a menace. For me, inebriation at a reasonable level is in no way necessarily connected with being a potential problem in a nightclub or bar. This has more to do with a person's experience in drinking, the set of cultural expectation about how to behave while out at night, and how drinking in general is perceived by the society.Inebriation, Pulling Tail, And FightingThen again, maybe that kind of practice is for the better in Norway, where people generally go for what I like to call the bipolar approach -- either they are stone-cold, dead-set, boring-the-pants-off-of-you sober, or fucked-up drunk beyond possibility of parole. There is no culture like in the Mediterranean countries (Italy, Spain, France, Greece) of being cheerfully tipsy, inhibitions-somewhat-released, comfortably buzzed. Where the buzz and the tipsiness sneaks up on you because you've been sipping wine with cheese, grapes, and nuts for the better part of the afternoon which somehow decided to turn into dead of night at some point. In Norway, like in the UK, you drink to get shit-faced, and that's the sole point of the exercise. Norwegians seem to regard alcohol exclusively as an intoxicant / drug, without a cultural patina associated with drinking as a social activity established through the course of history. As you wouldn't "sip" heroin or meth, but you'd shoot up in order to feel the psychotropic effects, so with alcohol.Additionally, compared to Croatians, and most Italians I've known, Norwegians have poor self-control when drinking. If I was inclined to not being particularly charitable, I'd wager that it was because they actually like that the alcohol gives them the excuse to act more outside of the bounds of what is normally expected of them. More in tune with their id, as opposed to their nanny-state-moderated, Janteloven-totting superego. It is not uncommon (not particularly common, but in my subjective experience also not uncommon enough) to see drunken Norwegians getting into fights with each other. The kind of fights entered in are more a case of peacocking and signalling, then of wishing to actually do someone lasting harm. For me, this was extremely scary, because in Croatia, you fight if a) you're a sociopath thug, b) you've been assaulted by a sociopath thug. In both cases, you fight hard, fast, dirty, and for dear life. No amount of alcohol will cause adult socially functioning Croatians to consider getting into a fight over sports, women, or political opinions. Of course, there are crazies, sociopaths, psychopaths, bullies, hooligans, and thugs everywhere. And the reason why normal tax-paying upstanding citizens don't like to posture aggressively and invite for fights is that what might happen once the proverbial bro proverbially comes at you is that you (or him) get curb-stomped, you get your family jewels kicked out from underneath you, or a knife finds its way to a fist-fight, or a gun finds its way to a knife-fight.Additionally, it is really funny (and recently, for reasons of changed personal circumstances, also somewhat frustrating) to observe Norwegian mating rituals. Norwegians are, in the opinion of this reviewer, notoriously bad at play-of-words, double entendres, and seduction in general. They congregate into bars in unisex groups, proceed to drink themselves into a stupor, without making much effort to communicate with the opposite number. Once comfortably smashed out of their brains, they proceed to play touch-heavy, and bumble that they "like each other", which basically means they want to have sex. After which more often then not, they do (fortunately, mostly away from the prying eyes of the Attenboroughian neutral observer).DrivingComing back to daylight affairs, the road network in Norway leaves a lot to be desired, and the country has but one motorway that I consider worthy of the name, from Oslo along the west side of the Oslofjord towards Kristiansand. The road network includes several A-roads, but generally speaking, Norwegians often fly domestically. It is difficult to keep a country with geography of Norway connected by overland transport. Additionally, Norwegians drive extremely passively and defensively, and quite slow, to someone from Croatia. This is one of the reasons I don't really enjoy the thought of having to eventually buy a car and drive here (at the very latest, if and when I start a family, if I will still be living here) -- I think I'd have real problems with being constantly annoyed over how slow and passively the traffic moves over here. It's similar to California, how I remember it while I was living there. So for Americans reading this, I guess not too different from home, but for Italians, Spaniards, maybe the French (?) and people from the Balkans, this is an excruciatingly bland and passive, almost boring experience. And I fear that I might not be able to refrain from committing misdemeanors like speeding or what would be considered "aggressive" driving.Janteloven; Or How We Tore The Neck Off Of The American Dream And Proceeded To Shit Down Its NeckIn general, from my perspective life in Norway is very calm and organized, and Norwegians are quite worry-free, because they have a rich nanny state that takes care of a lot of things for them. One thing that people need to understand when living here is the Janteloven. In Croatia, we actually have, as a remnant of communist times, a similar term, but in Croatia it is (I would daresay, in the particular socioeconomic context, and perceived needs of Croatia to develop into a modern country, rightly so) perceived as an extremely negative, stifling, and limiting ideological term -- Uravnilovka (roughly Equalization). Both terms can be understood with the same positive and negative facets, and there are, to be sure, both of those.On the positive side, like all socialist ideologies, Janteloven provides social homogeneity, corps esprit, sense of community, and a social safety network that removes a lot of existential weltschmertz from the life experience of even the most socially imperiled Norwegians. On the negative side, I will just share one particular image for Uravnilovka that pertains equally well to my experience and perception of Janteloven -- that of a pendulum blade like in Poe's The Pit and the Pendulum, or like the circular saws springing from the walls in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. These blades are tuned exquisitely to a certain height that is enforced as a universal standard. If your height happens to exceed that to which the saws / blades are set, you get cut down to size.I would imagine that to Americans with their diametrically opposed idea of the American Dream, this sounds like something out of a story with which the Tea Party scare their children.Ordnung Muss Sein; Or On The Question Of Whether You Need A PMP To Have Fun In A SMART Way; Oh, And Sports, Just So, So Many SportsA funny thing about Norwegians in formal settings, like let's say in a company, is that a lot of the time they insist on everything fun being exquisitely planned, with four-color highlighters, neatly organized lists, and arranged seating. It is almost as the idea of the ancient and mystical art of "just shooting the shit out on the patio" is wholly unknown to them. They want to know when we are going, where we are going, how we are getting there, what's the plan B, what do we need to buy before we get there, of course, most important of all, HOW DO WE SPLIT THE BIL.L, before they will even consider doing something fun. And by that, they always mean some kind of organized activity. You cannot just go have something to eat and some drinks. Or you know, god forbid, talk, tell jokes, flirt, and tell stories. There has to be something participatory to do for the organization. Some kind of team-building bullshit. How we build teams in Croatia? Step 1) Lots of food. Step 2) Mountains of booze. Step 3) Maybe some drugs. Step 4) It is in fact not the case that Ana from Accounting must look much worse without all the makeup in the morning. But I'm still not seeing clear from all the booze anyway.The obsession with planned activities reminds me of American summer camps or kindergarten groups.There is one thing that Norwegians are super-passionate about, though, and that is sports. They are an amazingly good-looking, fit, and healthy nation and I have to tip the hat to them for that. But the amount of preoccupation with sports is too damn high, quoth the memetastic Jimmy McMillan. They are crazy about sports, especially the Nordic skiing disciplines, but extending to jogging, cycling, gym, crossfit, everything. If you don't do sports, you are dangerously close to being considered a pariah. And, like the joke about the Vegan, the Cross-fitter, and the Anti-GMO guy, they will tell you about it.Closing Arguments And VerdictIf I wanted to be uncharitable, I'd be inclined to describe the less appetizing facets of Norwegian society and Norway as:They are hidebound. A lot of them do exactly the same thing as the neighbor, and do the popular thing, and do it at the exactly prescribed time of the year, with exactly prescribed gear, having the exactly prescribed opinions on how great whatever they are doing, is.They are spoiled. They have an excellent, rational, social, rich, and high-functioning nation-state that provides, and often don't know how good they are having it, and are prone to First-World-Problemism. In this, they manage to walk the fine line of doublethink wherein they are at the same time extremely liberal and progressive in theory, and quite xenophobic and bigoted in practice.They are unambitious. Their approach to work, while practical and honest, is quite laissez-faire and lackadaisical. Come friday 2 pm, nobody's around to answer phones and emails, and everyone's halfway across the first hill to their cabin.If, on the other hand, I wanted to be charitable, I'd cover exactly the same bases as the above like this, claiming of Norwegians that:They are socially cohesive. They value the same things, understand each other well, are neighborly, and raise children with a high participation of the entire society. They find strength, courage, and beauty in adhering to tradition and unanimity.They are calm, rational, and practical. Their excellent, rational, social, rich, and high-functioning nation-state is an excellent example of how a nation state should be set up. Seeing as how they have their cake and continue to eat it to, at least while the oil still flows, they for the love of all that is holy cannot understand why Rwandans, Somalis, Ex-Yugoslavs, or Russians would choose to operate differently.They realize what is really valuable in life and that you work to live, and not the other way around. They travel on holidays across half the world, are home a lot to spend time with their families, are healthy and content due to sports and spending time in nature, and suffer low levels of work-related stress.All people are people, and there's beautiful, ugly, or boring people everywhere. Croatians are not the rose-petal-smelling pearly ass-farts of rainbow-regurgitating unicorns either, but the question was not about Croatians anyway. For an excellent overview of Croatian idiosyncrasies, I urge everyone to read the excellent Croatian son-in-law, Cody Brown's blog Zablogreb, or more recently, his collected columns on the Voice of Croatia.