Those of us who live in Santa Fe have what Steve has written thrust into our faces daily. He speaks of the indigenous people who have been colonized, with all the miseries that entails (and who had themselves, in some cases--e.g., the Diné--moved late into the land of others). He doesn't mention the Anglo takeover of Hispanic New Mexico, which is a sad tale in its own right.
Steve is right; the subject is vexed. It gets even more vexed when the issues are about psychological colonization--of minorities, of ethnic groups, of women. I have no answers either. My privileged life is very different from the lives my forebears led as Irish immigrants in England, as colonized Irish in Ireland, as (it seems) conquerors of the Irish from Scotland. What is different is attitude: white Europeans believed in their divine right, even obligation, to do these things. The Israeli settlers in Palestine may also feel they have a divine right to their Biblical homeland, but few people in the world share this view any more. Pamela "Bounded Rationality," by Pamela McCorduck, the second novel in the series, Santa Fe Stories, Sunstone Press, is now available both as ink-on-paper and as an e-book. “The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.” ― Jane Austen
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