mardi 2 janvier 2007

Westerners vs. First Nations, 400 years ago

I saw it, I saw it now. The great clash between the civilisations. The reason why one might want to adopt a First Nation view of the world to live in harmony with nature. I understood a great deal of the teachings of the MSE, in addition with Cegep philosophy. The answer was depicted in images in The New World movie, or “the Pocahontas movie”, as it was refered to me by a radio guy from the Montreal South Shore that I met while coming back home with Allô-Stop.
I was shocked with the camps difference between “the naturals”, as they call the natives/primitives/amerindians/indigenous, I’m not sure about the politically correct word in English, but be sure I do not intend to insult or offend anyone with the use of words to describe the Americas inhabitants before people from the Old World came to seize land, and the English settlement. The opposition is there, and due to our respective culture. The clash is between an animist practice and another one formed with the Bible, the Greek’s Antiquity philosophy, etc. (take a look at the content in ENVR 203 at McGill http://www.mcgill.ca/mse/programs/ug_programs/ba/development/ to understand what I’m talking
about).
One camp is built within nature, the other with it but outside of it. One view lives through nature, the other uses it. One people enjoys and feels nature, the other fears it.

Here is the description that justifies those reflexions: The Algonquian camp is built inside the forest, while the English camp is built outside of it. Bushes, herbs and flowers are found growing on the ground of the indigenous territory, while the soil is barren in Jamestown, and enclosed with gates made out of wood. The First Nation view of the world seems to feed this respect and enjoyment of everything that lives and is natural such as weeds and thunder, whereas the other ensures nature is well-ordered and constrained in useful edible crops aligned in rows, and fears thunder as the wrath of God.

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