Of mass murderers and petty criminals

The white man will never understand the ancient wordshere in spirits roaming freebetween sky and trees.
Let Columbus scour the seas to find India,it's his right!
He can call our ghosts the names of spices,
he can call us Red Indians,
he can fiddle with his compass to correct his course,
twist all the errors of the North wind,
but outside the narrow world to his maphe can't believe that all men are born equalthe same as air and water,
the same as people in Barcelona,
except that they happen to worship Nature's God in everthingand not gold
.Columbus was free to look for a languagehe couldn't find here,
to look for gold in the skulls of our ancestors.
He took his fill from the flesh of our livingand our dead.
So why is he bent on carrying out his deadly wareven from the grave?
When we have nothing left to givebut a few ruinous trinkets, a few tiny feathers toembroider our lakes?
All told,you killed over seventy million hearts,
more than enough for you to return from slaughteras kind on the throne of a new age.
Isn't it about time,
stranger,for us to meet face to face in the same age
,both of us strangers to the same land,meeting at the tip of an abyss?
We have what is ours
andwe have what is yours of the sky.Yours air and water, such as we have.
Ours pebbles, such as we have,yours iron, such as you have.
In the shadow domain, let us share the light.
Take what you need of the nightbut leave us a few stars to bury our celestial dead.
Take what you need of the seabut leave us a few waves in which to catch our fish.
Take all the gold of the earth and sunbut leave the land of our names to us.
Then go back, stranger.Search for India once more!

This quaint poem was written by red indians for their masters .History is nothing but a biography of great men said a historian . If we can draw some parallels between us and them and between then and now , every things has changed , every body has changed .The world has been stripped from the natives and have been given special staus in their own native countires , Israel ,drawing on false historical premise , established itself as a pariah state with borders .

Where there was merchant ships looting on hapless natives , now we have multi -national corporations doing brisk business empowereing the poor in their backyard .where we had British , Spanish and Portuguese civilizing the natives now we have Americans spreading their noble vision of democracy and freedom ( no body talks of responsibilities but freedom alone ).Where we had coal now we have petroleum , where we had horses we have automobiles .
Everything has changed but everything is the same for the poor .Armed with words of disguise and lofty promises rich countries set up growth oriented democracies after sanguinary conflicts .
Those who forget history are condemed to repeat it said Satyayana . But now we people forgetting everything through consumerism.
Are we better people , more civilized and humane than our predecessors ? HAs all the goods , materials and prosperity that came with so much bloodshed making us anybetter or is everything an illusion ? Are we disillusioned about the future of humanity as a whole ?