Thank you for this response, and for your other ones in this thread as well.

This passage in particular really gave me some needed perspective:

There are no “uncontacted tribes”, everyone has been in touch with their neighbors the whole time, for as long as there have been humans. Every part of the world, except Antarctica and a very small number of islands, has been inhabited by humans a very long time, with Polynesia being one of the last places humans arrived at a few thousand years ago. Humans have been in NA for at least 30,000 years, Australia for at least 40k but probably longer, in Europe for at least 50k. Even the famous North Sentinelese have had more and less contact with their neighbors over prior centuries. Their current closed borders are a modern policy decision made by a modern people choosing how to interact with other people in the modern world.

(Although I didn’t mention them directly, the Sentinelese definitely were one of the things I had lingering in my mind when I posted my OP, so I’m glad you said something about them)

the Canadian Shield

Man we really need to just get rid of districts and do proportional representation. This is such bullshit and it keeps happening.