I was first proud and then disgusted to learn that one of my ancestors was a Spanish conquistador, Pánfilo de Narváez. He is most famous for fighting Hernán Cortés in the Caribbean, at the behest of the governor of Cuba, when Cortés refused to obey the governor’s cancellation of his expedition to the Aztec Empire. Narváez is most famous for losing the battle with Cortés and for losing an eye. He also massacred Natives. Like most of his men, he was swept to death in the ocean.
It was the era of conquest, when Europeans were astonished at finding a “new world,” and tried to explain it to themselves by deciding that the Natives were subhuman savages—undirected and uncouth—who needed conversion to Christianity, enslavement, or death. Papal decrees gave conquistadors license to convert or kill them and claim any undeveloped land as their own.
Most histories do not say much about the conquistadors’ conquest of Nature, but it occurred simultaneously with the slaughter of Native Peoples. Biological diversity and cultural diversity are offensive to the colonizer mentality. Sameness and control are preferred, whether human culture or the natural landscape.
The ‘new world’ was a paradise. The Europeans could smell the blossoms for miles off the coast. The birds were so abundant, like the rivers full of fish, one could easily pluck one out of their flock or school. When Columbus met the island of Jamaica, he thought its forests were paradisical—until tropical deluges threatened his ships. Then he wrote that all its forests should be cut down to make the island more temperate, like the European continent. (Yes, he and many Europeans knew that deforestation was a causal factor of climate change.)
The ‘new world’ seemed to have an endless supply of “resources” like “timber” and “animal pelts” (“resources”=living plants, animals and dynamic, complex ecologies; “timber”=old growth forests with mother and grandmother trees nourishing the young and a countless variety of animals and plants; “animal pelts”=skins of relations of the humans in residence). The “wilderness” or empty space seemed to beg to be cultivated by settler colonizers, who leveled everything for farming (“wilderness”=unfarmed land). The First Peoples’ perception of Nature as sacred was far from the minds of conquistadors and settler colonizers.
The ravaging of Nature has continued for hundreds of years.
Efforts to erode the conquistador mindset are ongoing. In the USA, Henry David Thoreau inspired many to appreciate the beauty of the natural world. At the turn of the 20th century John Muir advocated for the preservation of Nature’s wonders.
I just finished reading Douglas Brinkley’s book, Silent Spring Revolution, which spans the long sixties (1945-1973) when the conservation movement arose strongly and morphed into the more familiar environmental movement of today. After World War II as wild lands were taken over by development (felling of old growth forests, construction of dams and suburbs), people started to lament the losses. From ongoing nuclear testing, concern for nuclear fallout grew. Corporations and cities were dumping sewage directly into rivers which would sometimes catch fire. Smog filled cities. Rachel Carson, a marvelous nature writer, wrote Silent Spring about the biocide DDT being sprayed routinely to control insects, alerting the public to its dangers to birds and life generally. Even government officials, like Supreme Court justice William O. Douglas, were writing books about natural wonders they experienced. Douglas also led demonstrations against the Army Core of Engineers’ plans for dams. Republican and Democrat politicians worked over years to develop legislation to protect wilderness, create national parks, forests and monuments. They saved the Grand Canyon (but not Glen Canyon which was flooded to make Lake Powell) and years of work led to the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, and the Environmental Protection Agency.
The era of conquest continues today, as every day harmful chemicals are poured on lawns, plants, and insects and animals are shot for being annoying (see this story from Michigan; and note that Kristi Noem, the governor of South Dakota, shot her puppy and goat for being undisciplined).
The conquistador mindset continues. Conquest and colonization go hand in hand with the domination of Nature, which spreads with the globalization of capitalistic colonization.
In the last few years, as we became Nature-wellness aware and took up our responsibilities, our household has practiced “No Mow May,” for the sake of the insects and pollinators who otherwise become victims of the lawn mower. This year however, weather patterns are a month early. So it’s been a “No Mow April,” though I still had to hide the lawnmower to keep my husband from joining the other husbands in our neighborhood who have been mowing for weeks.
I said: “Please step out of your conquistador mindset and into your partnership mindset. See the big picture of your place on Earth. Adopt the Indigenous Worldview and consider the plants and animals, including insects, as all your relations. This is your legacy, not the flat green lawn of the aristocracy.”
My ancestor, Pánfilo, ended his life with one eye, but he seems to have been routinely perceiving the world with only one eye—with the eye of a cannibalizer of life (the wétiko virus). Early on in the European invasion of the ‘new world,’ Native Americans noted the difference between their perceptions and those of the invaders. Europeans they met seemed to perceive with only one eye, the active-deciding-controlling-manipulating part of the self, which is embedded in Western culture. Perceiving the world with two eyes includes the receptive, intuitive, spiritual aspect of the self. A fully actualized human uses two eyes—an integrated, holistic way of being that comprises all capacities but emphasizes respectful, responsible relationships with All, a kinship worldview.
We each have a choice of mindset in each moment (as long as we learn to diminish our threat reactivity which can rob us of free will):
- Will I be a life promoter, fully present and flowing with the spirit of love, enhancing the other and respecting diversity? Or
- Will I be a life cannibalizer, taking the life energy of others in a spirit of fear or hate to use for my own ends? Or
- Will I be absent, numb, or dissociated and skip being present to life altogether?
Which will you practice?
References
More on Panfilo de Narvaez
Brinkley, D. (2022). Silent spring revolution. Harper Collins.
Douglas, W.O. (1961). My Wilderness: East to Katahdin. Doubleday.
Eisler, R. (1988). The chalice and the blade. New York, NY: Harper One.
Eisler, R., & Fry, D.P. (2019). Nurturing our humanity. New York: Oxford University Press.
Forbes, J.D. (2008). Columbus and other cannibals: The wétiko disease of exploitation, imperialism, and terrorism, rev ed. New York: Seven Stories Press.
Fressoz, J-B, & Locher, F. (2024). Chaos in the Heavens: The Forgotten History of Climate Change (G. Elliott, Trans.). Verso.
Sale, K. (1990) The conquest of paradise: Christopher Columbus and the Columbian Legacy. New York, NY: Penguin Plume.
Martin, C.L. (1982). Keepers of the game: Indian-animal relationships and the fur trade. University of California Press.
Muir, J. (2011). My first summer in the Sierra. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Co.
Topa, Wahinkpe & Narvaez, D. (2022). Restoring the kinship worldview: Indigenous voices introduce 28 precepts for rebalancing life on planet earth. Berkeley: North Atlantic Books.
Scott, J. C. (2009). The art of not being governed: An anarchist history of upland southeast Asia. Yale University Press.
Turner, F. (1994). Beyond geography: The Western spirit against the wilderness. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
Thoreau, H. D. (1854/2016). Walden. Macmillan.