Ah crap .. I broke the 4k limit on this post. Rather than wait for the moderator to approve it, I'll split it in half. (Who is the moderator, anyhow?) On Thu, 2003-06-26 at 17:21, learn&Evolve wrote:

Mick Szucs brought up an old subject -interesting -without help, as a holier than thou Canadian, what's your take on the following: -the world would be a much better place if all settlers would return to where their forefathers came from? "History has not been kind to the First Nations people of Canada. When Europeans arrived in the sixteenth century, they brought DISEASE and WAR THAT SLOWELY DESTROYED THE CULTURES THAT EXISTED HERE FOR THOUSANDS OF YEARS." How about fucking off back to Hungary and give that stolen land back to its rightful owners?

I'm second generation Canadian on my father's side, and third on my mother's side, so sadly, the wholesale slaughter and displacement of indigenous Canadians was already well under way before my _direct_ ancestors stepped off the boat onto Canadian soil. But we're all from someplace, right? I'm not too clear on the history of my Hungarian ancestry, or my Irish/Welsh ancestry, but I'd bet money that a close look would show that my distant relatives also arrived someplace, displaced the local population and took their land, possibly through force. How far back do you wanna go? It's about atoning for the "sins" of the past with our actions in the present, as far as I can see. I spent some of my youth learning the traditions of the native cultures of North America, attending elders conferences and being schooled in philosophies and skills. The world would be a better place today if people shared the same respect for the land, for the world, and each other that was common among traditional native values. My native land is planet earth. There's not a thing that I do today that isn't connected with the whole. This has always been the case, but media and telecommunications revolution is making it evident in everyone's life. My footprint on the planet grows every time I turn on my car. Every time I buy something that was put together by exploited children. Every time I buy anything, for that matter. Every penny I dole out to my government can be traced back to it's subsidy of the spoiling of the air or the destruction of forests. Every penny I dole out to American corporations can be traced back to it's subsidy of the war against the people of Iraq or Afghanistan. We are all one - that's the crux of native philosophy, most world religions and ultimately Western science as well. "the world would be a much better place if all settlers would return to where their forefathers came from?" - I disagree. There's no place to go, man, it's all just one big rock spinning through void. AFAIK - the world would be a much better place if everyone was just aware (or at least tried to be) of their impact on the world. (con't)