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I remember trying to speak to my dad about the indigenous genocides committed by the American settlers and he said “that was a long time ago.” And while much ca
by SequoiaHope 2y ago
I remember trying to speak to my dad about the indigenous genocides committed by the American settlers and he said “that was a long time ago.” And while much can be said of such a response, it’s important to recognize that genocides of various groups and regions have occurred throughout the history of colonization, and before, for hundreds and for thousands of years, they have never stopped, and are ongoing to this day. Such things were not a long time ago. They were in the 1990’s, they are today. They can only be ended by a recognition of and reconciliation with the force inside of us that drives us to ignore the needs of others so that we may have what they possess. We must recognize the humanity in all people.
Carl Sagan said “It will not be we who reach Alpha Centauri and the other nearby stars. It will be a species very like us, but with more of our strengths and fewer of our weaknesses, more confident, farseeing, capable, and prudent.” [1]
Maybe reconciling with these beasts of our nature, growing up and becoming more far seeing and confident, will be a part of that process.
[1] https://haveabit.com/sagan/earth/ https://haveabit.com/sagan/earth/
- mr_toad 2y ago> confident, farseeing, capable, and prudent Sounds like a good description of some of the most villainous species of science fiction. Or members of our own species.
- sameoldtune 2y agoMy indigenous partner likes to make a quip: when someone mentions “the apocalypse” he asks “which apocalypse?”
- SequoiaHope 2y agoReminds me of the book I read “The Culture of Make Believe” about how we pretend the world is different than it really is. It has a chapter called “Holocausts” and notes that in US culture we tend to think there was just one, but there have been many.
- poikroequ 2y agoYep, it's very important to recognize these things still happen today and are not remnants of the past. It was maybe a few ago that people were being sold into slavery somewhere in Africa. There's something like 30-40 million people trafficked worldwide, not sure how many are sex slaves or how many are children. I think we're all aware of what's happening in Ukraine and Palestine. For those of us living in the United States, it feels like we may be just months away from living in an fascist authorization dictatorship... of sorts. The problems of the past are very much still with us today.
- liendolucas 2y agoIf you are interested in this topic I highly recommend you to read "Las venas abiertas de America Latina" by Eduardo Galeano. All the atrocities committed by the spanish crown, and how they literally emptied America of its richness (in all senses). And yet to this very day we teach kids a fairy tale about how Colombus with its ships discovered America. And I don't think it was that long ago.
- TaylorAlexander 2y agoThank you for the recommendation! I also learned a lot about Columbus’s atrocities and greed from this apparently well-researched YouTube video on the subject: https://youtu.be/OaJDc85h3ME https://youtu.be/OaJDc85h3ME He was truly an exceptionally brutal, evil, vile, and selfish person with no regard for the humanity of indigenous peoples.
- AlgorithmicTime 2y ago[dead]
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