welcome October 7, 2002 ISSUE

Healing the wounds of history

Warren Bolon

"History" makes it sound ancient and remote. It's neither. The abuse of whole cultures and peoples is, sadly, solidly in the category of current events, even if it's seldom treated as breaking news. While some indigenous groups do still suffer incidents of violence and land-grabbing, today's oppression is more commonly found as stereotyping, ignorance, neglect, exploitation. What about the history of abuse, though?

In many cases the motives were maliciously or ignorantly rooted in a belief of racial superiority. Migrating settlers encountered native populations and set out to marginalize or eliminate (or in a few cases coexist with) what were believed to be inferior or subhuman beings—the Australian Aborigines, Native Americans from Alaska to the Andes, the Bushman in southern Africa.

Send a comment to the editors
NEXT IN THIS ISSUE
Letters
letters
October 7, 2002
Contents

We'd love to hear from you!

Easily submit your testimonies, articles, and poems online.

Submit