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I know a Japanese older guy who has been living in Brazil for years. He visited Native American reservations. He made it clear to me that East Asians and Native Americans should not be considered the same, they may have shared ancestry thousands of years ago but that's it. According to modern studies, Native Americans left Siberia over ten thousand years ago, and they had an autosomal component which modern East Asians do not have, though they shared ancestry with East Asians too.
My wife (Chinese) only had a vague inkling of what Native Americans are, mostly from media. In her education, they were taught that white Americans took the land from Natives, but with very little detail beyond that. She's 28. The students that I taught who are in school now knew basically nothing about it. When I've shown them photos, they are surprised, and say that they look "sort of" like Chinese people, or more like Filipinos.
A friend of mine who lives in Japan and is one of those white women who claim to be "Native" because her great great great great great grandmother was a member of a long-vanished New England Native tribe and is way up in all the Native Pride movements (literal quote: "I may be white-passing but I feel her power in my veins") expressed disappointment that people in Japan were largely clueless and uninterested about Native Americans. What they do know about them tends to be from Japanese adaptations of 1950's-era American media, and is literally cartoonish.
I don't gain a sense that people in Asia feel any kinship towards Native Americans, or would if they were more aware of them and their history, other than maybe being victims and survivors of European imperialism. It's important to remember that to most people in Asia, nationality is the same thing as ethnicity and ethnicity is the same thing as race: people in East Asia don't generally think of themselves as "Asians" so much as Chinese, Japanese, or Korean. Professors, politicians, and media personalities have lost jobs for suggesting that there provable genetic and cultural links between these nations in the past. Speaking in averages, if you were to suggest similarities between Chinese and Vietnamese to a Vietnamese person, they'd look at you like you were insane because Chinese are warmongering land-grabbers; suggest the same to a Chinese person and they would laugh at you because the Vietnamese are poor, cultureless banana farmers.
I think it's different with Asian-Americans (or -Canadians). Since they grew up in the West and were raised with Western attitudes towards race and in many cases they grow up in areas where there is a population of people of different Asian backgrounds as opposed to just one ethnicity, they are much more likely to have an "Asian" identity and view the different Asian cultures as linked. When I mentioned to some old coworkers here that I have two friends back home who are half Japanese/half Chinese, they were shocked and stated that there was no way they would ever have a child with a Japanese person; in North America this isn't anything exceptional in the Asian-American community. Especially among the younger crowd that has a larger contingent that's grappling with and pushing back against white-dominated society, I think you'd find people who feel kinship or solidarity with Natives for being a minority in the US, and even some who would be of the opinion that they are ancestral kin. I have a few AA/AC friends who hold this view.
I know a Japanese older guy who has been living in Brazil for years. He visited Native American reservations. He made it clear to me that East Asians and Native Americans should not be considered the same, they may have shared ancestry thousands of years ago but that's it. According to modern studies, Native Americans left Siberia over ten thousand years ago, and they had an autosomal component which modern East Asians do not have, though they shared ancestry with East Asians to.
Exactly. Natives have been here a very long time. They should not be considered Asian at all. Considering the way Japanese have treated the "Ainu' I doubt they would have a good opinion of any Natives.
It depends on the Asians. North Asians (Siberians) do. Some have participated in DNA studies related to this question, or they've seen scientists visiting their village to take DNA samples. And after 1990, visits and collaborations on a professional level, and cultural exchanges, between Native Americans and north Asians began to take place, and to increase in frequency.
Quite a few articles were published in the Mongol area of Siberia, and in Mongolia, about DNA studies that traced the roots of some Native Americans to the Mongol region. Other studies found a DNA connection coming from the Amur River region in the Russian Far East, where the Manchu-speaking peoples live. The peoples living in those regions and on Kamchatka are well aware of the connection, and have individuals who have visited the US many times to connect with Native Americans.
You'd be surprised how many Navajos have been to Mongolia and/or Tibet. They feel at home in areas where people live in yurts and live by herding sheep and horses. They pick up the languages easily, as Athabaskan languages are similar structurally to some Asian languages. And linguistic and genetic studies have now tied the Ket tribe, the last remaining one of a language family called Yeniseian (after the Yenisei River in Siberia) to the Athabaskan family of peoples in North America. There's been at least one delegation of Kets to Alaska, to meet with their distant cousins.
You never know what's going on in the Native world until you ask.
I worked for a year in Mongolia and was struck by the similarities of traditions of the Mongolians with the Native Americans and a noticeable resemblance in physical features. I asked a few Mongolians if they thought about it and some were interested in the migration of the Native Americans and their belief is that they are related to the NA. I was very impressed with Mongolian culture.
I won't repeat what I wrote in my earlier posts (I disgress from the question of whether Asians feel kinship with Native Americans- I already answered that in my earlier post)- you can read those. I am Taiwanese background. But, born and grew up in the US. The pan-Asian identity occurs more with Asians who grew up in North America. My wife is Korean-American. Thus, my wife will embrace being an American of Korean heritage, but also Asian-American. I will embrace being an American of Taiwanese heritage, but also Asian-American. My younger brother's wife is also Korean-American and they have a child- so the child is mixed Taiwanese-Korean. As somebody wrote earlier, Asians in East Asia are quite nationalistic and many would not embrace such "mixed" marriages. But, in the US and North America it may be a different story (largely because many of us who grew up in North America has been indoctrinated by the Western view of "race" also we are a minority. There is more power in numbers- if you just stick to your specific Asian ethnicity in the US then you have a smaller number vs. having a more Pan-Asian identity where there are more numbers. I guess that is more crucial if you are a minority.
My wife (Chinese) only had a vague inkling of what Native Americans are, mostly from media. In her education, they were taught that white Americans took the land from Natives, but with very little detail beyond that. She's 28. The students that I taught who are in school now knew basically nothing about it. When I've shown them photos, they are surprised, and say that they look "sort of" like Chinese people, or more like Filipinos.
A friend of mine who lives in Japan and is one of those white women who claim to be "Native" because her great great great great great grandmother was a member of a long-vanished New England Native tribe and is way up in all the Native Pride movements (literal quote: "I may be white-passing but I feel her power in my veins") expressed disappointment that people in Japan were largely clueless and uninterested about Native Americans. What they do know about them tends to be from Japanese adaptations of 1950's-era American media, and is literally cartoonish.
I don't gain a sense that people in Asia feel any kinship towards Native Americans, or would if they were more aware of them and their history, other than maybe being victims and survivors of European imperialism. It's important to remember that to most people in Asia, nationality is the same thing as ethnicity and ethnicity is the same thing as race: people in East Asia don't generally think of themselves as "Asians" so much as Chinese, Japanese, or Korean. Professors, politicians, and media personalities have lost jobs for suggesting that there provable genetic and cultural links between these nations in the past. Speaking in averages, if you were to suggest similarities between Chinese and Vietnamese to a Vietnamese person, they'd look at you like you were insane because Chinese are warmongering land-grabbers; suggest the same to a Chinese person and they would laugh at you because the Vietnamese are poor, cultureless banana farmers.
I think it's different with Asian-Americans (or -Canadians). Since they grew up in the West and were raised with Western attitudes towards race and in many cases they grow up in areas where there is a population of people of different Asian backgrounds as opposed to just one ethnicity, they are much more likely to have an "Asian" identity and view the different Asian cultures as linked. When I mentioned to some old coworkers here that I have two friends back home who are half Japanese/half Chinese, they were shocked and stated that there was no way they would ever have a child with a Japanese person; in North America this isn't anything exceptional in the Asian-American community. Especially among the younger crowd that has a larger contingent that's grappling with and pushing back against white-dominated society, I think you'd find people who feel kinship or solidarity with Natives for being a minority in the US, and even some who would be of the opinion that they are ancestral kin. I have a few AA/AC friends who hold this view.
Probably China is too big to generalize. Although some people feel it is odd to marry Japanese, in certain parts of China, it is actually quite common. For example, the Fangzheng County of Heilongjiang Province is famous (in that area) for intermarriage with Japanese. Many of them are actually descendants of Japanese colonists. However, ordinary people in Guangdong may never heard of it, because they literally know nothing about Northeast China except "it is cold as hell".
In school we learn about Native Americans (we still call them "Indians"), but not too much. While some people who are interested in history and geography may know a lot about native Americans, ordinary female students who only care about pop stars may have memorized nothing.
I recent years, quite a lot of people in China become interested in molecular anthropology, because population DNA data have been available.
I worked for a year in Mongolia and was struck by the similarities of traditions of the Mongolians with the Native Americans and a noticeable resemblance in physical features. I asked a few Mongolians if they thought about it and some were interested in the migration of the Native Americans and their belief is that they are related to the NA. I was very impressed with Mongolian culture.
Yes, that's kind of surprising, isn't it? Who knew? I'm very impressed with it, too. When I get homesick for it, I watch the film "Genghis Blues", lol.
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