If in our tales Columbus was a brave contrarian who discovered a continent that on a flat earth wouldn’t have existed, how did the tale evolve for the descendants of the Indians? Can we ever heal a relationship built fundamentally on dysfunctional stories?

The story is not entirely about greed. It is partly about the Spanish view that Christians were inherently superior and obliged to save souls even at the cost of the lives of their inferiors. It was a high-stakes collision between two societies in which one was technologically far ahead of the other, though in some other respects it may have been equal at best, or even behind. It is actually a story we don’t understand all that well, because to understand it, we must all understand ourselves better.

We seem caught between two stories: a whitewash inherited from the descendants of the Spaniards, and a ‘holocaust’ story passed on by the descendants of their victims. We need a middle path that steers towards a healthier relationship. And all that requires is stories that respect what we know, and don’t attempt to over-reach it. Science is comfortable accepting that there are things that it doesn’t know. There are facts in this case that can support a unified story, but there is also a lot that has been lost in the mists of time.

In our stories we need to accept the unknown with greater grace. Accepting the unknown won’t end our civilization; it will revitalize it.

    Brett Hudson Matthews

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    Fighting poverty on the oral-digital frontier.