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[Solomon]

How did the arrival of Europeans affect Amerindians?

Are they better or worse off as a result?

How should one view European colonisation today, in full light of what happened?

Would colonisation by a different, non-European grouping have been different? If so, how?

If you could turn back time and stop colonisation, would you?

Have we learned anything?

Solomon

[Baja Bush Pilot]

My dos centavos...

How did the arrival of Europeans affect Amerindians?

From what I have learned, it pretty well wiped their culture and most of their population from the face of the earth.

Are they better or worse off as a result?

The culture as it existed then, or the remaining members of the population?  Since the arrival of the Europeans was most likely the cause of the near extinction of a people and their way of life, it obviously didn't do them a hell of a lot of good.  Are the survivor's descendants better off?  I think my friends on the reservation here would say they themselves are better off now because of the European's arrival.  Without it there would be no casinos.

How should one view European colonisation today, in full light of what happened?

For the Europeans it was a profitable venture, but from the viewpoint of the Indians, it certainly wasn't a rewarding experience.  It would have been nice if the Europeans could have immigrated to the New World without depopulating it and destroying the existing culture.  I believe it's possible that many of them thought that is what they were doing, but the two cultures were totally incompatible.

Would colonisation by a different, non-European grouping have been different? If so, how?

I believe it was different, as I'm sure many different non-European groups conquered and colonized many other Native American groups.  The Athabaskan destruction of the Pueblo People is just one example and there are many Indian stories of one people being conquered by another.  If there were a written record of the Americas as there is of the Eastern Hemisphere, I think we'd find just as much 'colonization'.

If you could turn back time and stop colonisation, would you?

Probably not.  I'm a descendant of colonists and live in a country that is a result of colonization and I like it here.  I'm not sure where I'd be if not for the past as it was.

Have we learned anything?

Probably not.  What's left to colonize?  Maybe space, and if we get the chance to do it, we will.  Would we look at other life forms with more respect than the Europeans had for the Indians?  Probably only if they are no threat to us.  If they are, we'll probably try to wipe them out, too.

[Solomon]

A realistic point of view, Barry.

The story of the European colonisation of Canada was, though, slightly different to the rest of North America and perhaps less destructive.

The Chinese colonisation of Tibet, in modern times, can give us an example of how destructive can be the colonisation of non-Europeans.

In New Zealand, when a northern tribe of Maoris first gained firearms from whaling expeditions, they not only tried to exterminate all other Maoris in both the North Island and South, they did so with ferocity. Driving large numbers of people over a cliff, then eating the babies whilst still warm was one of their habits.

Solomon