Photo by CHUTTERSNAP

In 1964 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote a famous book under the title Why We Can’t Wait. Besides addressing the crime of slavery and the daily indignities endured by Afro-Americans, Dr. King also devoted several pages to examine what may be termed the 16th-19th century “clash of civilizations” between European migrants and the 70-million indigenous peoples who were settled in the continent of North and South America. Columbus did not “discover” America – others had been here for tens of thousands of years. What became known as “America” was not “terra nullius”, but actually belonged to hundreds of distinct indigenous peoples, with their own cultures and languages, the “first nations” of the North American continent.

Some ten million Algonquins, Apaches, Cayugas, Cherokees, Cheyennes, Chippewas, Comanches, Coyotes, Crees, Dakotas, Delawares, Hopi, Iowas, Iroquois, Lakotas, Micosukees, Mi’kmaqs, Mohawks, Mohegans, Mojaves, Muscogees, Narragansetts, Omahas, Oneidas, Pawnees, Pequots, Pueblos, Quechans, Saginows, Seminoles, Senecas, Shawnee, Shoshones, Sioux, Spokanes, Squamish, Tlingits, Unangans, Utes, Wichitas, Yuroks, Zunis, etc. lived in the territory now occupied by the United States and Canada.

Dr. King wrote:

“Our nation was born in genocide when it embraced the doctrine that the original American, the Indian, was an inferior race. Even before there were large numbers of Negroes on our shores, the scar of racial hatred had already disfigured colonial society. From the sixteenth century forward, blood flowed in battles of racial supremacy. We are perhaps the only nation that tried, as a matter of national policy, to wipe out its Indigenous population. Moreover, we elevated that tragic experience into a noble crusade. Indeed, even today, we have not permitted ourselves to reject or feel remorse for this shameful episode. Our literature, our films, our drama, our folklore all exalt it.”[1]

Indeed, when I was growing up in Chicago in the 1960’s, it was clear to me that in the struggle between cowboys and Indians, the cowboys were the good guys, the Indians the bad guys. It took me many years to realize who was the oppressor and who the oppressed, who the thief and who the victim of murder, spoliation and humiliation.

Has our mentality changed? Are we ready to reject the philosophy of “manifest destiny”? Have we developed our faculty of self-criticism and started to realize the enormity of the crime committed on the indigenous of North and South America? Are we capable to practice Christianity and observe a minimum of humanity toward other peoples? What does America first mean? Does it mean oppression of the rest of the world? What does Trump mean by “Make Amerika Great Again”? Would it not be better to make America loved and respected? Would it not be better for the United States and the rest of the world if the executive orders emanating from the Oval Office were in keeping with the Christian traditions of the United States? Would it not be better to revive the legacy of Eleanor Roosevelt and rediscover the spirituality of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights?

Alas, if we observe how President Donald Trump is acting, I doubt that the rest of the world would consider us “great”. Most civilized people in the world would have reason to fear us and even to hate us. It seems that Trump would practice the motto of Caligula – oderint dum metuant – let them hate as long as they fear[2]. Why change the name of Mount Denali in Alaska to Mount McKinley[3]? Why endorse the on-going Israeli ethnic cleansing and genocide of the people of Gaza[4] and Palestine?[5] Why deny the Palestinian people their right of self-determination, their right to their homeland[6], where their ancestors have lived for thousands of years? Here too, the roles have been reversed. It is clear that Israel is the occupier and the oppressor. It is clear that the Palestinians are the victims and have been the victims since the Nakba 1947-48. The genocidal war in Gaza did not start on 7 October 2023, but 76 years earlier. But instead of trying to do justice to the long-suffering people of Palestine, President Trump pretends to steal their lands, “transfer” the Palestinians out of their homes and make a Mediterranean “Riviera”[7] for the oligarchs of Israel and the United States. Has the genocide against the First Nations of America already gone into our DNA that we can enthusiastically support ethnic cleansing and genocide in Palestine?

The “discovery of America”

Every year on 12 October, many in the United States celebrate Christopher Columbus’ adventures. What do we learn in history books about the colonization of North and South America? What do we understand under the term “History”? As Herodotus noted, history-writing, means “inquiry”, a vocation further developed and applied by Thucydides.

Now, did the Europeans come to an empty continent, which they then settled and developed, or were our ancestors more like “migrants” to new frontiers? Let us look at Europe during the “age of discovery”. Our European ancestors were pretty poor, our cities were squalid, overcrowded, unemployment, disease and violence were rife. The 16th, 17th, 18th. 19th century migrants — the Spanish, the Portuguese, the British, the French. the Dutch, the Germans, the Poles, the Irish and other “colonizers” — were adventurers, mavericks bent on getting rich fast, followed by simple folk hoping for a new start. The historical fact is that what we know today as North America (the Western hemisphere north of the Rio Grande) was a rich land, ecologically-balanced, populated by some 10 million human beings, minding their own business and posing no threat to Europeans, when in 1492 Christopher Columbus landed on Guanahani, an Island in the Bahamas, thinking that he had found a western route to India. Columbus went on to Cuba and the Antilles, undertook four voyages to the Americas, still thinking that the inhabitants were “Indians”.

Unlike the Spaniards who “Christianised” the indigenous populations and used them as cheap labour, our Anglo-Saxon forebears had little use for the natives, whom they referred to as “devils” and “wolves”, not worth assimilating into our superior society. The Massachusetts Puritans, who also burned witches, pretty much wiped out the native “Indians” who taught them how to survive, while the Reverend John Cotton of the first Church of Boston, and the Reverend Cotton Mather of the Second Church of Boston justified the endeavour as the will of God himself. Deus vult.

In the course of three centuries 98% of the native North American population was not only displaced pursuant to the official policy of “manifest destiny” — it was deliberately exterminated. The founding fathers of the “land of the free and the home of the brave”, Benjamin Franklin (“the design of Providence to extirpate these savages”), George Washington (“beasts of prey”) , John Adams (“blood hounds”), Thomas Jefferson (“merciless Indian savages”), James Madison, James Monroe, Andrew Jackson (“the wolf be struck in his den”)– all called for the extinction of the American “Indian”. There is damning evidence that Lord Jeffrey Amherst actually waged germ warfare on the Indigenous by deliberately delivering smallpox-contaminated blankets[8]. These dreadful historical facts lie sleeping in the archives, if anyone cares to consult them. But most historians and the mainstream media only choose........

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