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We are agreeing more than disagreeing. I agree that nature has incredible power to regenerate if given the chance, and I also agree that we now know how to be as good as we can be to our environment when there are so dang many of us, and our habits of paving everything and producing our wares have become so "unnatural" and potentially harmful.

I guess I only question the wisdom of trying to find dirt on the indians as part of the debate. That is why I said in my first comment that we would look worse for winning. It gets us no further in developing a strategy now, and may only make us look like jerks, unless you expand on your point the way you just did above.

I guess we do agree. I have never looked on it as finding dirt, just as finding the truth. I don't care for culture worship, all of them have good points and bad points some more then others. I have, for example, a great deal of trouble finding anything good to say about the Aztec culture. Most of the admirable parts were not developed by them but by other cultures and only used by them.

I generally argue with students and what I have found is that you have to hit them over the head to wake them up. Also that most of them have only the vaguest idea of why they even believe what they do.

Pointing out to someone who’s only idea of what the Druids were comes from watching "The Mists of Avalon" that they had the charming custom of stuffing people in wicker baskets and roasting them alive is the first step in finding the teachable.

Some stick their fingers in their ears and hum loudly. Others are inspired to ask questions and read. Some will accept that what they thought they knew is either false or only half the story. Some won't. Those that do will be inspired to learn how to research and find out for themselves. Presto! You have created a thinker. The world is now a better place.

(Oh, boy but that sounds egotistical!)

You have to light a fire under most people to shake their worldview. And it must be done. Otherwise they are going to continue believing lies and those lies can be very harmful to the rest of us. Even if all they do is hinder the search of others for truth. Look at what happened with "The Kennewick Man". The sight is destroyed and the bones, or at least most of them, have been taken and destroyed or hidden.

What he had to tell us we might never know. Just because a handful of people were so caught up in making sure that their point of view wasn’t disturbed. And they were not even sure that that point of view was going to be disturbed only that it might be.

What happens to history when that point of view becomes the prevailing one? There are efforts to stop archaeological digs into the Anasazi ruins when we are only now just starting to understand how they lived.

Sorry for the rant but I wanted to try to make you understand why I feel this way. Those who teach this stuff are not harmless but are trying to push a watermelon agenda and that is why it matters.

Me personally, I don’t want to go back to the days when starvation was only a bad harvest away.

a.cricket