the way colonial societies resolved these mental tensions in the past was by telling themselves that the Indigenous population would naturally die out (while helping the “natural” process along a bit, if necessary) resulting in the new settlers inheriting the mantle of rightful occupiers and doing a better job of it.
there’s a steaming dose of Just World hypothesis in this, and a big chunk of the ersatz Darwinian chain of being idea, where god or nature had given various groups a shot at occupying particular areas and some of them just weren’t good enough and sadly but inevitably they would diminish like Tolkien’s elves and be replaced by hard-working Anglos or whatever and this was just The Plan.
a lot of the debate at the time was between the people who thought that the pesky natives should be done away with as soon as possible, and the gentle folk who thought that the pesky natives should be cared for and converted to christianity before their inevitable demise.
of course it didn’t turn out that way: we don’t know exactly how many Aboriginal people lived in Australia in 1788 when the British showed up, but it was probably not that far off the number living in Australia today, and the two populations have never been more estranged.
White people will die off and be replaced by more-deserving diverse populations… …wait a minute, why does that sound familiar…
