Message #145387

[Bianca]

Happy Columbus Day


The results of Europe's conquest of the Americas are well known.  Nearly 90 percent of the indigenous
populations were wiped out, often by wholesale slaughter but mostly through the introduction of disease
and subsequent despair.


By the 20th century, however, the threat faced by indigenous populations became more insidious - a life
devoid of life.  One can witness this today on many Native American reservations in the United States
and Canada, with epidemic levels of depression, suicide, alcoholism and diabetes, a disease that never
existed in these cultures before the introduction of the white man with his white sugar and white bread.


In Australia, Aborigines forced to resettle live ten years less on average than those still living on their native homelands and up to 20 years less than non-indigenous Australians, according to data compiled by Survival International, a UK-based group advocating for indigenous peoples.


As with Native Americans and, for that matter, many of the populations in the South Pacific Islands, Aborigines
are faced with astonishingly high rates of diabetes - as high as 50 percent in some communities - along with
the depression that comes from a loss of culture and livelihood. 





Primitive understanding


Clashes with natives live on today in Southeast Asia and the Amazon, where within the last 50 years almost
every encounter has brought a sharp decline in the length and quality of life.  Threats to these populations
include loggers, who lay barren their land, and evangelists, who perhaps with good intentions eradicate their culture.


Whose life is better - theirs or ours - can never be determined, for the answer is subjective.  We have real
joys, such as the ability to travel and learn about the world.  They have joys we cannot comprehend.

The "uncontacted" tribes of the Amazon are not primitive; it takes an advanced culture to survive in this
dangerous natural terrain.  The only thing primitive is our notion that what we have is better and needs
to be forced upon them.