12 October 1492 , in the non-Gregorian calendar system, on San Salvador (formerly Watlings), Grand Turk, Caicos, Cat, Mayaguana, Crooked, Conception, Eleuthera, Egg, Plana Cay, Rum Cay, or Samana Cay. (The preceding information was found in The Conquest of Paradise: Christopher Columbus and the Columbian Legacy by Kirkpatrick Sale.) Why are the above date and islands so important? On that very day, an historic event happened that forever changed the course of the world. For some that day began a good and satisfying dream, for others that day marked the beginning of a very real nightmare that continues today. From three ships, a group full of Breakers stepped on dry land after being at sea for several months and initiated contact with the Keepers who had lived on that island for a millennium and were more in harmony with the Earth.

Sharif Abdullah describes the Breakers, in Creating a World That Works for All, as people whose fundamental operating belief is I am separate,’ and whose operating assumption is There is not enough.’ The Breaker story is Creating a World That Works for Me.’ Breakers treat the Earth as their own property, a life support system for them to use as they please. They seek ever greater control over all aspects of life on Earth, while behaving as though they were exempt from the laws of Nature. In that same book, he describes the Keepers as indigenous people who live their lives inextricably connected to their local ecology. Their fundamental operating belief is We are One.’ Keepers behave as though they are a part of the Earth. For them, no one group or species is more important than any other.

The Breakers came from a place full of extremes: a substantial gap in social and economic well-being between the most impoverished and the wealthiest people as well as thousands of people dying daily from disease, violence and/or hunger because of the famines regardless of their class status. Though the life expectancy during this time is not known, a person was considered old in his or her 40s. There were approximately 3 million Keepers living on that island in 1492. There was no homelessness, no poverty, no famine, no class distinction, a feeling of community and shared responsibility and no major illnesses among the indigenous peoples on that island until that unfortunate day. Why would the passengers on those three ships risk their lives to travel to lands that they had not seen before? Were they in search of riches, glory, or a pardon from the king and queen? Did they know that through their forced assimilation, murdering, raping, pillaging, torturing, enslaving and infecting with disease of the inhabitants on that island that they would destroy in less than 500 years that which the indigenous population had created and sustained for millennia?

The travelers’ attitude towards the Earth is well-written in The Conquest of Paradise: Christopher Columbus and the Columbian Legacy: … it was right and natural’ for human societies to fell trees, clear brush, recover’ fens and marshes, till soils, plant crops, graze herds, harness beasts, kill predators and vermin,’ dig canals and ditches and in general make use of the bounty of nature that a benevolent Lord had provided for them. Increasingly from the 12th and especially the 14th century on, they did just that with a vengeance. For it was indeed a struggle, a battle experienced in hostile and violent terms, an unending campaign by which, as Marx would later say approvingly, man opposes himself to Nature … in order to appropriate Nature’s products.’ What’s wrong with this view towards the Earth, it’s the very idea that has helped America successfully become the richest nation in the world, only at the expense of all of the Earth’s inhabitants, including ourselves?

A hereditary chief of the Oglala Sioux, Luther Standing Bear, stated in his autobiography Land of the Spotted Eagle, the difference between the indigenous person’s view towards the Earth and that of the Europeans: The white man considered natural animal life just as he did the natural man life upon this continent, as pests.’ Plants which the Indian found beneficial were also pests.’ There is no word in the Lakota vocabulary with the English meaning of this word.

There was a great difference in the attitude taken by the Indian and the Caucasian toward nature, and this difference made of one a conservationist and of the other a non-conservationist of life. The Indian, as well as all other creatures that were given birth and grew, were sustained by the common mother earth. He was therefore kin to all living things and he gave to all creatures equal rights with himself. Everything of earth was loved and reverenced.

Irucka Ajani Embry can be reached at [email protected] and is still comprehending the American dislike for the Earth.