In the recent edition of National Geographic there
is an article about Native Americans named
"In the shadow of wounded knee"
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2012/08/pine-ridge/fuller-text
It contains a map ("the lost land") which shows
the shrinking land of the Indian reservation (esp. the
ones from the Sioux) during the 19th century. Once the
native Americans owned the whole country, from the
Apache in the south west to the Massachusett in the north
east. Then the British settlers and European colonists came,
and in the name of their god they occupied and invaded
the country. Now the Indians live in ever shrinking
reservations.
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2012/08/pine-ridge/reservation-map
Somehow this reminded me of the shrinking land
of the Palestinian people. Palestinians are a bit
like the native Americans, they are the native
inhabitants of a countried occupied by foreign
settlers. Today they live in a small confined area.
http://sabbah.biz/mt/archives/2006/05/10/the-shrinking-map-of-palestine/
In both cases, the occupying force justify the
occupation with an higher entity which gave
them the right to live there. Expelled from
there original countries, the settlers (Puritans
in American, Jews in Palestine) came to stay.
In Australia, the native Australians ("Aborigines")
are confined in aboriginal reserves. Like the
native Americans, the indigenous Australians had
not developed a system of writing. Does this
lower cultural level justify an occupation?
-J.
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