History of the World || Summer Solstice Moment

Copyright ©2011 Turtle Heart

Over the last years I have made a strong video study of the history of the world. In the morning I watch the history of the middle east, in the afternoon I look at the history of europe and the evenings bring me to China and Japan with frequent readings and viewings in American Indian and South American issues (mush less material on those subjects is available).

A curious pattern emerges. All of those non-american indian nations have long histories of strong arm bosses, kings, queens, pharohs, sheiks, shoguns, warlords and generals. Native America never had those things. Tribes in North America favor self-determination and self-governing and never had the need for emperors or kings or presidents.

At this point there are many outstanding documentary videos about the histories of the non American Indian world. Not so many on the American and South American cultures.

These boss-emperor-king-president cultures have written the histories of the world which fill our libraries and schools. No one has said it more clearly, in recent years, than the authors Paul Schrag and Xaviant Haze in their  important must read book, “The Suppressed History of America”

“….how to define the America that existed before the Spanish conquistadores, French explorers, and British adventurers arrived in the so-called New World. This intellectual battle has been waged for centuries now by two factions of scholars—the diffusionists and the independent inventionists.

To this day the diffusionists are spoken of with derision in main- stream academic circles, as they dig into the past with the same courage that characterized Lewis (of Lewis and Clark) and his journey west. Like Lewis, these rogue scholars continue to unearth evidence that America was visited long before Columbus by explorers crossing both the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans. Moreover, these scholars continue to unearth evidence of rich, vibrant, highly evolved cultures that existed in ancient America. This growing volume of archaeological evidence stands in clear contradiction to many key assumptions held by America’s founders and their scholarly counterparts, the so-called independent inventionists. The inventionist perspective remains the standard among archaeologists and suggests that natives of the American continent are descended from Ice Age relatives who crossed the Bering Strait and developed in complete isolation—until, that is, they were “discovered” by Spanish, French, and British explorers during the late fifteenth century. In the early days of America it was the federal government and its proponents who were most interested in characterizing the continent as an untrammeled paradise populated by savages.

This set of assumptions gave early explorers and exploiters of the American continent the justification they needed to co-opt and pillage its resources, wage war on its native people, and occupy its lands with impunity. It was the perspective that America’s government officials held as they tamed America’s terrain and battled its people for control of the vast stores of resources that would fuel the creation of their New World. It also became the perspective that was later adopted by the Smithsonian Institution, which, more than any other organization, has defined our understanding of America’s origins. Since its inception in the 1800s, the Smithsonian joined the powers in Washington in vigorously promoting the idea that America was an untouched landscape before Europeans arrived to “claim” it. Simply put, the Smithsonian’s initial administrators followed the direction already chosen by America’s early leaders, supported by their own inherited cultural and scholarly myopia.”

I find it gratifying that at last some historians and technical research is revealing clearly the sophistication, complexity, beauty and deep social sophistication of American Indians tribes and lives. It has always been, and remains, in the interests of the United States government to see American Indians defined in the weakest possible terms. After so many generations of this, so many volumes, so many enacted policies, the inmates themselves have come to believe the made up stories which is passed around as history.

Most minority scholars argue that the compiled and accepted histories of the world is a basket of lies and misdirection. These days most educated people do not argue this point, in general, but rather accept it as the status quo.

In private art auctions, very old ceremonial items sell for millions of dollars. In international art galleries, you will never see an American Indian painting in the same showing as a Van Gogh or a Rembrandt. This toxic duality of high profit from the ceremonial and often sacred bones of ancient people while considering them “not artists” in mainstream galleries is a perfect example of how widely accepted this policy of diminishing American Indians has become ingrained in the culture of America.

As a student of both history and life, I have experienced many valuable teachings and experiences from American Indians all over the country, all my life. When I compare those ideas and those experiences to what I have learned from politics in America, American history, Christianity and other world religions and all the rest of it, the ideas of the old Indians shine like a jewel in the mud, to me. The status quo demands that all attention be given to the bosses, the corporations and the institutionalized truth over the evidence of time and our senses.

It seems that the quest for the “truth is out there” is only for fictionalized actors. The real truth has become less important the the flavors chosen for us by our paymasters. Much like the victims of bad government policy, the mainstream itself is a victim to its own desire to accept a manufactured reality. 

Today is the Summer Solstice. The old Indians call this moment “a gateway”, implying if you know how, you may pass from one place to another. This is what the old Indians tell us. The Christians, Muslims, Jews and so forth tell us…..nothing.