"In South America, those who butchered the Indians pushed this condition of the Other to the limit: the Indian savage (sic-BR) is not a human being, but simply an animal. The murder of an Indian is not a criminal act, racism doesn't play any part in it, since in practice it effectively implies the recognition of a minimum humanity of the Other. The monotonous repetition of a very ancient infamy: Claude Levi-Strauss, addressing ethnocide before the term existed, recalls in Race and History how the West Indians asked themselves whether the newly-arrived Spanish were gods or men, while the Whites argued over the human or animal nature of the natives." ('On Ethnocide', Art and Text 28 1988:53)
In both cases we learn crucial lessons about the situation of life in Europe and in the Americas as a result of what they are capable of projecting onto other peoples.
How instructive is it, then, of the humanity of Australia's First Peoples that when faced with a similar dilemma, they regarded the newly-arriving Europeans as dearly missed deceased family members returning from the land of the dead?
Australian history since 1788 demonstrates what Europeans thought of Australia's First Peoples in the scheme of things.
Isobel Coe, an indigenous activitist, says "End the psychic war."
One task for life's conceptual craftspeoples - as a step towards planetary healing - is to make this psychic war visible.
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