| Photo by Galen Crout on Unsplash
Most Indigenous people have long-held beliefs in the spirit world, the domains of the spirit that protect and renew the land, forests, mountains, rivers, seas, and even the sky and air. The Malay culture had deities of spirits that ruled domains of Mother Earth. The Hindus had devas and multiple gods.
The Chinese and neighboring countries like Vietnam and Cambodia included spirits of the dead in their mythology of the spirit world. In Scandinavian countries, their ancestors believed in gnomes that ruled the spirit world. Among the Celtic cultures of the Irish and Scottish people, they had the fairies. And the English had the elves, spirits that populated the underworld. Mesoamerica had a web of beliefs and myths of spirits and deities that closely interacted with the human world and their affairs.
These ancients’ conceptions of nature and the universe brought them closer to Mother Nature. They viewed the two worlds as intertwined so that human actions had repercussions for the other. There was an effort designed to promote harmony, and when this balance was upset, humans made sacrifices, bold and tame, to restore this balance. In some cultures, human sacrifices were offered to appease the gods when famine and pestilence struck the land. In others, animals were slaughtered or offered harvests to please the spirits or gods when resources were plentiful.
The ancients viewed natural calamities as the doings of gods as punishments for some human offenses. This connection between the human and spirit worlds precluded the wanton desecration of Mother Earth to satisfy human needs. This view tempered human inclinations to greed and accumulation.
“The colonial virus, with all its toxic elements, infected the nations it touched and left a legacy of environmental abuse and a mentality of greed and accumulation, whatever the price.”
As human societies evolved and civilizations flourished, conflicts and wars resulted from man’s drive for conquest and power. Wars and conquests became instruments of survival and domination. Resources were needed to support empires, and the exploitation and extraction of natural resources came hand in hand with the conquest and expansion of empires beyond borders and across vast oceans to feed human hunger for power and control.
Colonialism was born. A means to export religious ideologies as justification for trampling Indigenous cultures and, in some cases, decimating them. Cultural hegemony and the self-serving idea that conquering or “civilizing” armies came to build on less developed societies were veneers for exploitation and extraction from the land and its people.
The plunder and extractive practices of colonizing powers left in their wake the destruction of the natural order of things, replaced by an instrumental attitude towards the land and its resources. The colonial virus, with all its toxic elements, infected the nations it touched and left a legacy of environmental abuse and a mentality of greed and accumulation, whatever the price.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Dr. Fernando B. Perfas is an addiction specialist who has written several books and articles on the subject. He currently provides training and consulting services to various government and non-government drug treatment agencies regarding drug treatment and prevention approaches. He can be reached at fbperfas@gmail.com.
