New World Rising -- Native America

This is the fourth and last of the video series "Native America," produced by the PBS.  It deals primarily with the last 500 years, or the invasion and colonization of these continents by Europeans.  I wanted to write "avaricious zealots."  A lust for gold, land, and the forced conversion of the minds of those resident here seems the most obvious characteristics and motivations of the people who landed upon these shores.  In our own history of the United States, we tend to always state that our progenitors came here seeking religious freedom. It's just that we didn't extend the charity of that intention to anyone already present upon this continent.

There are themes in this video that are interesting and hopeful.  The horse, an animal which evolved in the Americas, went extinct, and then was reintroduced by Europeans, became a kind of new technology for this land, as well as a form of commerce and a mobile unit of warfare.  Native culture was quick to adapt to this new element of life.  The horse seems to belong to this land, along with these people.

What I really come away with after watching all four of these videos is a deep sense of the tremendous strength of character and endurance of those who have withstood five centuries of oppression, and who have successfully resisted both their elimination and/or their total assimilation.  In my lifetime, I feel I have witnessed the resurgence of Native cultures and the re-emergence of their spiritualities into open expression once more, after generations of their practices, even their languages, having been driven underground.  It really is a testament to the incredible strength of spirit present in all these many peoples that they are standing strong once again today.

My hope is that these many indigenous cultures continue to grow, expand, and thoroughly flourish over the next several hundred -- no, thousands -- of years.

I will continue to write of Native culture because I feel that their approach to life and to the totality of Nature itself, holds valuable lessons -- keys -- both for me personally, and for those of us who stand perilously on the precipice of our collective future.