Columbus and Western Culture

Column Right by Michael S. Berliner (“Man’s Best Came With Columbus,” Dec. 30) is one of the most tragic expressions of bigotry I’ve read in recent months. And, with the controversy surrounding the Rose Parade, I’ve had the opportunity to read many anti-Indian articles.

Berliner’s assertions that “some cultures are better than others” and Western civilization “is the objectively superior culture” go beyond mere bigotry. His words echo the rhetoric of the Ku Klux Klan, neo-Nazis, Aryan Nations and other white supremacists.

By describing our lives as “nasty, brutish and short,” Berliner exposes his own ignorance. At the time of Columbus’ arrival in the New World, Native Americans had advanced cultures with strong family structures, devout religious beliefs, representative and elective governments, respect for elders, sophisticated medicine and an ecologically sound way of life.

He has fallen into the common trap of equating civilization with technology, when they are not the same. Look at what technology has given us--air unfit to breathe, water unfit to drink, Hiroshima, Chernobyl and a continent-size hole in Mother Earth’s protective ozone layer.

Perhaps Berliner decries multiculturalism out of fear that some of the values of Western civilization which he treasures, such as individualism, have proved morally bankrupt. Native Americans have another word for Berliner’s individualism. Our word for it is selfishness, and we consider it a moral failing.

We do not deny that Europeans have contributed much to American society. So have African-Americans, Latinos and Asians. And so have my own Native American people.

REP. BEN NIGHTHORSE CAMPBELL

D-Colorado