Joel Holsteen- Practice of the Wild #1

In Gary Snyder's "The Practice of the Wild," He mentions how early Americans kicked Native Americans off of their land due to their greed of gold. This is typical through out history, you will have a group of foreigners that come into another civilization’s territory and take over. This normally results in killing of those who were there first because their way of life is different and they are forced to conform or die. One example of this is how Americans treated the Native Americans, how we slaughtered them and kicked them off their lands. But what we don’t realize about making them conform is that we are loosing not only traditions but sacred places that could be shared and experienced. Yes what Gary Snyder said is true that other people will probably stumble across them later but what if they don’t, that shouldn’t give us the right to take away something sacred to another group of people. Another example of this is when the Spanish came to Central America and met up with the Aztecs. Not only did the Spanish try to convert every Aztec to Catholicism but they also stole jewels and other valuables from shrines and other sacred places. Places of great importance to their way of life and were considered sacred were not seen that way to the Spanish so they stole and desecrated these places. It makes you wonder what could have been accomplished if the foreigners, instead of destroying a civilizations way of life in fact coincided with it. So much has been lost all over the world because of acts like this not only in information but also in spiritual and sacred places that might still be out there but we don’t know because like Snyder said “there is no one left to teach us.”