american-holocaust

BEFORE COLUMBUSring without him. His irruption into the history of the colonized people isdeified, transformed into absolute necessity." 26 Then, as Said has cogentlyobserved, the settler group adorns itself with the mantle of the victim: theEuropean homeland of the colonists-or the metropolitan European powerthat politically controls the settlement area-is portrayed as the oppressor,while the European settlers depict themselves as valiant seekers of justiceand freedom, struggling to gain their deserved independence on the landthat they "discovered" or that is theirs by holy right.In such post-independence national celebrations of self, it is essentialthat the dispossessed native people not openly be acknowledged, lest theybecome embarrassingly unwelcome trespassers whose legacy of past andongoing persecution by the celebrants might spoil the festivities' moral tone.This particular celebration, however, has gone on long enough. Beforeturning to an examination of the European invasion of the Americas, then,and the monumental Indian population collapse directly brought on bythat genocidal siege, it is necessary that we survey, however briefly, someof the cultures of the Americas, and the people who created them, in themillennia that preceded the European conquest.