Wijsheid 17

I have come to the conclusion that imperialism and exploitation are forms of cannibalism and, in fact, are precisely those forms of cannibalism which are most diabolical or evil.... Cannibalism, as I define it, is the consuming of another's life for one's own private purpose or profit.

With these words, Professor Jack D. Forbes introduces his concept of the wétiko disease or the sickness of cannibalism, a socio-cultural epidemic of which Columbus was a major carrier, according to Forbes.
Thus the slaver who forces blacks or Indians to lose their lives in the slave-trade or who drains away their lives in a slave system is a cannibal. He may "eat" other people immediately... or he may "eat" their flesh gradually over a period of years.

Professor Forbes, former chair of Native American Studies and professor of anthropology at the University of California, Davis, was born in Long Beach but has lived in Berkeley and Davis since 1967. He attended the University of Southern California, earning A.B., M.A. and Ph.D. degrees, the latter in history with a minor in North American ethnology. Forbes worked his way through college, serving on the fire crew of the Lassen National Forest and driving trucks for Meadow Gold Dairies. In 1960 he joined the faculty at California State University, Northridge. There he received a Guggenheim Fellowship and then in 1964 moved north to the University of Nevada, Reno.In 1967 he assumed the post of Research Program Director at the Far West Laboratory for Educational Research and Development in Berkeley. He then became a professor at U.C. Davis in 1969. In 1981-82 he was named a Fulbright Visiting Professor at the University of Warwick, England, and in 1983-84 he was honored with the Tinbergen Chair at the Erasmus University of Rotterdam. In 1986-87 he served as a Visiting Scholar at the Institute of Social Anthropology, Oxford University, England.Of Powhatan, Delaware and non-Indian background, Professor Forbes became very active in Native Arnerican affairs very early, organizing the Native Arnerican Movement in 1961. In 1960 he formed the American Indian College Committee with Navajo artist Carl Gorman and others to create proposals for an Indian university. At Cal State Northridge he developed a proposal for an American Indian Studies program in 1960, ten years ahead of its time. In 1967 he was a co-founder of the California Indian Education Association and in 1971 of D-Q University, the Indian college near Davis. From 1968 through 1969 Forbes was a co-organizer of United Native Americans in the Bay Area and served as editor of Warpath. During the same period and later he served as editior of the Powhatan newspapers Tsen-Akamak and Attam-Akamik.Forbes' published writings include twelve books, over twenty short books and monographs, ninety-five scholarly articles, over one hundred popular articles, numerous short stories, and poems. His first book, Apache, Navaho and Spaniard, remains in print after thirty-two years. Columbus and Other Cannibals is the current culmination of Forbes' thinking about the ultimate social causes of aggression and exploitation and about Native American philosophical beliefs. His earliest version of the book was sketched out in 1976 and published in a preliminary version in 1978. Although focusing upon tragic issues of terrorism, genocide, and violence, Forbes does not offer only a negative view of human evolution. He goes beyond a condemnation of aggression to undertake an analysis of how colonialism and systems of hierarchy systematically alter and brutalize individuals. Most importantly, he offers cultural options based upon traditional Native American philosophy and antidotes to the disease of cannibalism."Finding a Good Path," Forbes' final chapter rests upon the notion that the real test of a spiritual path is not to see how many monuments result, or how many converts are obtained, or how many prayers are repeated over and over again by imitative voices, but rather the test is: How do people who follow that path behave? How do they behave towards other humans? How do they behave towards the earth? How do they behave towards other living creatures?...Columbus and Other Cannibals will offer readers an exciting challenge, an opportunity to look at the world in a new way, with hope for the future rising out of the pain of the last five hundred years. [Published by Autonomedia Publishers, June 1992, ISBN 0-936-756-70-5; distributed by Small Press Distribution, Berkely, California.]

Zie: http://nas.ucdavis.edu/Forbes/forbes.html