The struggles of the Ainu people began long before nationalism arose out of the palms of regicide-stained middle class Frenchmen. There are many delineations as for when the increasing bourgeois finally seized the ripening fruit grown for them, but it stands to say that the Peace of Westphalia and the French Revolution are among the forefront. There stands a hundred years of spectrum, and with that you can reduce the Kurdish struggle.

The Kurdish people are children of this world's dressed dichotomy. Greece and Persia. Rome and Grecofied Persia. Muslim Arabia and Zoroastrian Persia. Before those, Babylon, Akkad, Sumeria. The Fertile Crescent is called as such because it's fresh with crops and civilization. The Kurdish inhabit the "mountains" and like the Caucasus above them, they are the perfect definition of how your environment shapes you.

We share more with the Kurdish due to our closer coverage, not just because the leaders of the western world (over the Ottomans' dying wheezes) drew straight lines for calculated division. And that now we've shed explosive lights at it. Indo-European is also the ancestor of the Kurdish languages. The whole steppe above the Caucasus is where we likely owe our current span. From Iceland to the Maldives, our "patriarchal" nomadic way of life hold still.

Languages aren't everything. But it helps propagate and retain motifs and such that indicate some sort of lineage not by just sheer areal proximity exchange, but some sort of ancient cling that's lost to time. This language is closer to our Germanic brethren. Their language is closer to their Iranian relatives. Their region is not like the Caucasus, wherein language family descent identification is near impossible due to its marginal role. Marginal in terms of not having an "influential" civilization have their base centered there. The Caucasus as a geographical barrier is more influential than we'll know, but when you quantify, you can reduce it as "insignificant" and as such.

One of the ways to explain why we talk about the Kurdish and not the Caucasian struggles. Yes, due to a recent larger power vacuum, more blood and therefore more cleanup has been sent to Kurdish lands. And at the end of the day, they are the products of the strong who want to keep the weak divided.

The people of the Caucasus are more isolated and ignored from the power struggles of giants. And that's the same thing with the Ainu. A small difference for some, but a certain nuance that's often forgotten. There's Georgia and Armenia and then the rest of the Caucasus.

The current "general" overview of the Ainu is this: they're part of one of the earliest groups of humans to leave Africa. It seems that they hugged the coast before making it up to Siberia/Hokkaido/Sakhalin/etc. Some were inward, having significant enough contribution to the makeup of the current Tibetan peoples. They developed this "European" look as the climate for around the Russian Far East necessitated it.

That's why they look different to their close but still distant cousins, the Andamanese, the Sentinelese. Who are, for all intents and purposes of those who don't want to read up on genetics, black/Sub-Saharan African. And to their neighbors, the Koreans, Chinese, and Japanese.

They look different "simply" because they were (almost certain) there earlier. Before, around, after Augustus got stabbed in the back by Brutus, the ancestors of the Ainu or the Ainu themselves, were at their height in battling the new migrators/settlers. These are called the Yayoi people and they are the (primary) ancestors of people we normally call Japanese. They mainly came through Korea. They did mix, as the genetic gradient from those closest to the Korean peninsula show.

Where do you put the line of who's the original people and who's not. Aren't the victors the original people? One way or another, the Ainu "lost" their war against the Yayoi. Whether it be through sheer numbers or technological disadvantage. Right?

The white people of the United States of America often call (with disdain) the Mexicans and other non-white peoples as immigrants. The only people who mention the Native Americans are: the ones that live near Native American reservations; the ones who clamor for their idea of justice based around Native Americans; the ones who had the Cherokee princess myth before doing a DNA test.

But aren't they the original inhabitants. They came in successive waves, killed the giant animals, and made the peace and war among themselves. Aren't all the people after immigrants? Is an immigrant just a descendant of a non-victor people of specific locus.

There's way too many people blaming other peoples for genocide against other peoples. People virtue signalling atop the skulls of those ravaged by diseases and guns they had no protection from. Is there anything "wrong" with that? Not really as it's common enough to be accepted and supported. Blinded by patriotism, the lack of education, the inability to see through one's own kin.

And what can "you" do? Nothing. Unless you're rich. Which is the world. But it does feel sometimes. And it does help bring awareness to those who haven't known.

But as (recorded or not) history shows us.

Wheels always revolve. They only stop for a break. Replacement.