There are at least three world views that developed over thousands of years around the globe. Two claimed to be “civilized”. These are the eastern out of Asia, and the western, which was a mashing together of Greco-Roman philosophy and Judeo-Christian religion.
The third is now called Indigenous, which took varying but similar forms across Africa and what are now the Americas. The key to these belief systems were stories and traditions for living in harmony with the natural world. I do not claim they were perfect. No human system is.
But these systems were sustainable over millennia. The biosphere flourished, as did its human component.
On the other side of the water things did not go so smoothly. I won’t go into the eastern path because they are not the ones who built ships and went looking for land to colonize. At least not in this story.
The genocide committed by Christopher Columbus was a feature, not a bug. He was a typical member of the society from which he came. The two forces forming the European worldview are inherently violent, materialistic, and reductive.
If the world is a machine and God nothing more than a mechanic it all makes sense. And how easy then to dehumanize the inhabitants of the land such a society bumped into, by way of its representative, Columbus.
We all know the bloody history. The raping, torturing, and enslaving of the Taino, the first people he and his men encountered. We know he opened up the slave trade to Africa.
And that these two original sins have colored all of the history in the United States to this day.
But how is the line straight to our present great ecocide, the only greater sin?
When Columbus began the European access to the “new world” he didn’t just bring genocide and disease. He also brought the European world view. Europe was the cradle of modern patriarchy and was just beginning to develop what later became capitalism.
Most of the pretensions of religion are gone now, but the patriarchy and capitalism are going strong.
Europe itself is neither large in area nor particularly rich in natural resources. But the Americas are both large and blessed with all manner of natural wealth. Which was intact because the humans in those places lived within the bounds of the natural world.
That is the straight line. A large group of technically adept but spiritually dead Europeans got their hands on the wealth of the Americas.
In their philosophy they were the crown of creation and creation was nothing more than a machine. They treated women, non-Europeans, and the Earth herself all with the same brutality.
And they began to unmake the world for profit’s sake while wrapping the entire enterprise in the clothing of virtue.
And now, here we are. Trying to heal a dying planet while the same types who colonized the Americas continue to wound her. This war is being fought on every level.
But imagine: what if those three ships had sunk in the Atlantic. And what if the inhabitants of the Atlantic seaboard had somehow known to defend themselves? If no Europeans ever returned from the journey, it may have protected the people and lands of Turtle Island for enough time to create a different outcome.
Imagine North America with its forests, plains, rivers, lakes, shorelines, and animal life intact. Imagine…
Not only this, but there is evidence that some of the very ideas of the Enlightenment - Europe's great contribution to the planet- came from Indigenous peoples of the Americas.
Ahhh, the dream of "what if", of regret and sorrow. As with any trauma, we cannot go back and change what is. And it does us no good to point the finger unforgivingly to the perpetrator. The perpetrator will not, typically, accept responsibility, nor change.
What we must do, as the victim of these traumatic experiences and the suffering that resulted, is to see ourselves as strong and capable of creating something better. We are resilient as a human species. We see the trauma and the suffering. It is up to us to choose a better way. To create a better world for the future. It won't be easy. Healing never is. And all healing is done from the inside out.
Let us follow the philosophy of the indigenous people who listened to Mother Earth and assisted in her balance. It is an individual effort, that can become a community effort. And in bringing balance to our environment, we begin to bring balance, and healing, to ourselves.
Thank you for writing this. It helps us to understand where we came from. We are strong and resilient and amazing! And, learning from the past, we have powerful, creative minds that can be directed every moment toward a better future. ♥️🏞️🪶🌎