Remember The Arawak

by Darren

If you can’t immediately think of who the Arawak were, you aren’t alone. The Arawak are a people who are long gone, and nearly forgotten in most parts of the world. Once they thrived, living in a land something quite like Paradise. Their happy lives were shattered by the arrival of virulent foreigners who foisted their own values upon the innocent tribe.

At one time the Arawak dominated the Caribbean Archipelago. Now extinct, there’s an important lesson we can learn from them. If an entire culture can be wiped out so easily and casually, what would prevent it from happening again and again?

The Arawak were wiped out by the diseases brought to them by the Europeans. They had no immunity, because they’d never experienced the misery of the diseases that were common among their conquerors. Again, their basic purity seemed to work against them in an exchange against people who believed in organized cruelty.

Who are the Arawak of our day? That’s the question that we should try and have an answer for. Cultural genocide has been carried out so many times by so many disparate groups of people that it isn’t hard to think of such an act as “human nature”. If we don’t guard against the type of sentiment that wells up into oppressive hatred, we are in constant danger of losing another culture in much the same way as we’ve lost the lessons of the Arawak.

Indifference is the enemy of the modern person. We might be more plugged in than ever before, but that doesn’t eliminate the feeling of isolation many have. If our indifference becomes too profound, it could lead to a lack of caring that becomes terminal.

When such cynicism threatens to take over, we can step back and remember the Arawak. And call up the stark fact that none of them exist today. The Arawak once thrived but are now basically forgotten. Is this the fate for any more of Earth’s children?