[PEN-L:7514] Re: Re: J. Donald Hughes on Mayan collapse

["Charles Brown" <CharlesB@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>>> Jim Devine <jdevine@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> 05/28/99 05:03PM >>>
 But I see no
reason to embrace "Dances with Wolves" romanticism about the Indians.

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CB: This is a well known stereotyping of a position that focuses on respect for the ideas of other modes of production. Another term for this romanticism is "noblizing the savage". Rousseau was an Enlightenment proponent of a version of this.

The argument I have made on this thread regarding the hard nosed, long term viability for our species of the earliest modes of production is based on scientific evidence from anthropology. My statements on possible advantagees of primary culture are very limited , because knowledge to this point allows mainly assertion of negative conclusions and semi-truisms. Stone age economics has not caused the species to go extinct for a much longer time than modern industry has even existed. The only reason to doubt modern industry's long term survivability is because it has brought about modes and means of destruction as astonishingly large as the new modes and means  of production it has brought forth.

I think of a synthesis of the special advantages of the earliest modes of production and the more recent, hi tec. I wouldn't absolutely negate either historical extreme. Rob Schaap pointed out the problem of larger modern populations, deomonstrating that there is no simple such synthesis. Yet, I am not willing to give up on the potential treasures of these ancestoral yet contemporary human cultures.

The problem is that there has not been a sober, calm assessment of what wisdom gathering and gardening kingroups have and offer the hussle and bustle of the rat race.

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BTW, until a year or so ago, my wife worked with Indians (who like to be
called that, thinking of "Native American" as hopelessly academic). (She
worked as a peer and health educator, by the way.) She said one of the
things that really irritated them was the way many white folks were totally
romantic about them (especially the New Age types). They liked it from kids
(like my son), but with adults, they wanted respect not adoration.

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CB: Several of my ancestors were Indians. When I was young, I often visited the Spears (Narragansetts) in Rhode Island, as extended family. I worked on legal land recovery projects with the Yuroks in Northwest California and Mohicans in Connecticut. I have worked on the campaign to free Leonard Peltier for many years. Here in Detroit,  Nancy Wanshon, and others, and I opposed the 500th anniversary of Columbus' usurpation.

I don't use the word "Indian" much except with those who I know from family or these struggles for indigenous cultural liberation and revival.


Charles Brown