Wretched Oppression

Many faces of oppression - The Hindu

From the founding of the Americas to the rape of the tropical rainforest today, natives of respective region had endured not only marginalization but total annihilation in certain boundaries. Who would be responsible or who should be responsible for this calamity?

Blaming the powers that be seems to be the most convenient way of transferring the accountability. But many fail to see the that the root cause of this degradation is a culmination of reckless actions by various stakeholders including the insatiable and often hedonistic consumers.

The Doctrine of Discovery (Romanus Pontifex) a decree awarded by Pope Nicholas V to King Alfonso V of Portugal paved the way for Columbus later, a passport, to "take possession" of land, its people and resources on behalf of the King and Queen of Spain. Thus this led the way to modern day raiding as we know. The reason has always been the same but the perpetrators used different reasons at different times, the conquistadors used God as a motive, and today "development and progress" seem the obvious excuse. 

Jumo Kenyatta the founding father of Kenya once said "When the missionaries came to Africa we had land; they had the Bible. They asked us to pray with our eyes closed. When we opened them they had our land; we had the Bible."

The name of GOD yet once again has been used by mortals to serve his own agenda.

At least the Bible gave hope, and through hope attempts were made to regain what was lost hundreds of years later. But today coercion and aggression is used instead, for non compliance it may mean extermination leading to extinction. 

 

Regardless of the cause, the consequential damage has inflicted the same since time immemorial. We were thought to believe that society had progressed, where championing of humanity was a prime focus. But if that were to be so than the current predicament should not happen. Over the years the injustice done to indigenous people around the world has grown at  catastrophic proportion. Does this mean that society has actually regressed? 

Maybe society has become so self immersed that anything that happens outside their own comfort boundary is not recognized as their own concerns. Thus the self fulfilling prophecy that "I do no wrong" absolve the society from taking responsibility to the maligning of this unfortunate people who are the actual "son of the soil" where the rest of us are actually contemptuous migrants.