On Cultural Genocide

 

One of the main obstructions to progress and change can be ideology, and it is passed on from one generation to the next.


One case in point is the attitude of colonizers towards aboriginal peoples as cultures meet and clash.


I first came across this phenomenon in Australia after I arrived there in the nineteen sixties. As an avid lifelong reader of books, I read about the early encounters between the European explorers and the people they met as they moved inland.

And the encounters were generally amicable and respectful on both sides – for a while. Things changed as more Europeans arrived with highly judgemental attitudes.

As I have since discovered, the same happened right across the globe as colonialism spread its wings.

The only place where some kind of mutual respect endured was in New Zealand because of the Maori people’s ability to give tit for tat and kill a lot of white people. So, a balance of power developed.

Over time, attitudes hardened and colonized people, alienated from mainstream European society, sank into poverty, disease and misery. And as they succumbed to impossible odds, they were held in increasing contempt by their oppressors, to the point where most of them began to believe the colonizer’s narrative.

A particularly tragic example of this development is contained in a book I read a long time ago, while in Australia: “The Passing of the Aborigines: A Lifetime Spent Among the Natives of Australia” by Daisy Bates

Daisy Bates, an admirable woman in every way, was convinced that the Australian aboriginal peoples were doomed to extinction because of their failure to adapt to European civilization. So she devoted her life to making their “passing” less traumatic.

Bates’ attitude was common in the academic community of her day, and right across society generally.

The tragic result of this attitude was the establishment of residential schools for aboriginal people in colonies right across the globe, with the idea of replacing their native cultures and values with the European ones.

The desired, and almost gained goal of this exercise is now called “cultural genocide” and the results are all around us in the form of record suicide rates among aboriginal people.

The profound ignorance and arrogance of the ideology that allowed this to happen should be a wake-up call for us all:

Ideology invariably tries to put Nature into a straight jacket of ideas that suit our own ends.


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