A Different American History

As children in American schools we were and the young continue to be taught that our great nation is the product of the application of high ideals of freedom and a frontier spirit.  Modern American nations are the consequence of the subjugation and in cases total destruction of Native societies. This fact is glossed over as not significant.  The US constitution makes land ownership sacred, but the lands were most often taken from Native people without treaties of deeds.  Probably largely because landownership in the USA is based on the racism and religious differences of the past, denigration of Native societies continues to be fashionable in the present.  The history being taught our children is the history from the point of view of the colonists who took the land.  The future needs to be taught a history that includes the views and experiences of Native people.

I am an archaeologist and historian who has studied the history of California Native societies for over forty years.  What I am learning about Native history has implications concerning the design of societies.  While attempting to preserve places of significance to Native people and to history I have been exposed to an ugly side of American values and to corruption of well intended laws. More on this later. 

My experiences have led me to identify monotheistic religions as important parts of societies that have expanded at the expense of other societies. In this posting, I concentrate on a problem of religion in America. In California, Christianity was used to validate Spain's claim to the land and Christian missions were used to remove Native people from their lands.  The Spanish and later the Mexican government gave areas to soldiers who fought Indians as grants. Many grants were later recognized as private property when the USA took over the area. Native ownership was not recognized by any of the colonial governments.  The history of the world during the last several thousand years documents the spread of Christianity and Islam over a large area of the world.  A map of the distribution of religions today indicates that after monotheistic religions dominate an area they have seldom lost ground.  In the October 3, 2008 issue of Science, there is an article "The Rise and Evolution of Religious Prosociality" that discusses evidence that religion is important in organizing people.  The article concludes that the religions with really big gods- that is monotheistic Abrahamic religions have resulted in organizing very large groups.  (Abraham's god told him to take other people's lands.) The article concludes that the organization of the large tightly knit groups may have negative consequences.  One negative consequence is that monotheists consider people who do not have the big god and related dogma as the "other."  The other whether they be called heathen, pagan, infidels or atheists (unbelievers in the first Commandment) are fair game when it comes to taking their lands and destroying their ways of life.  Monotheistic religions have in the last several thousand years caused the extinction of many Native traditional religions.  Many small societies survived for thousands of years before the advent of the monotheistic religions.  The religions in these societies did not emphasize belief in dogma, a need to convert others, or strangeness of the beliefs of surrounding societies.  The leaders of monotheistic religions should renounce the use of their religions to divide people and their history of conquest of small nations.

In the present world, not only are monotheists responsible for much of the aggression against non-monotheists  but they are responsible for a great deal of fighting between different monotheistic sects.  These are considered religious wars by many fundamentalist Christian, Islamic, and Jewish people.  Perhaps the religions can be saved or perhaps they should be replaced by religions that recognize scientific discoveries and religions that stress design of better societies and do not have the clutter of dogma.