Amidst all that’s happening, I’m reading The Nutmeg’s Curse by Amitav Ghosh.

It shows the conflict between native people living in harmony with Mother Earth and those who seek to domesticate, dominate, murder, and control.

I’ll give an example from the book of our horrific past in this country that demonstrates what happened this week with a Supreme Court now dominated by those who lied to be on it.

“The differences between European and Indian conception of living on the land have never been more eloquently summarized than by the Oglala Lakota chief Standing Bear: “We did not think of the great open plains, the beautiful rolling hills, and winding streams with tangled growth as ‘wild’.  Only to the white man was Nature a ‘wilderness’ and only to him was the land infested with ‘wild animals’ and ‘savage’ people.  To us, it was tame. Earth was bountiful and we were surrounded with the blessings of the Great Mystery.”

Ghosh continues: “These contrasting conceptions, suggests the Native American botanist Robin Wall Kimmerer, were ultimately founded on radically different stories about the world, like those of Skywoman and Eve.” She writes:

“On one side of the world were people whose relationship with the living world was shaped by Skywoman, who created a garden for all. On the other side was another woman with a garden and a tree. But for tasting its fruit, she was banished from the garden … That mother of men was made to wander in the wilderness and earn her bread by the sweat of her brow, not by filling her mouth with the sweet juicy fruits that bend the branches low. In order to eat, she was instructed to subdue the wilderness into which she was cast.”