I have come to the conclusion that imperialism and exploitation are forms of cannibalism and, in fact, are precisely those forms of cannibalism which are most diabolical or evil.... Cannibalism, as I define it, is the consuming of another's life for one's own private purpose or profit.

With these words, Professor Jack D. Forbes introduces his concept of the wétiko disease or the sickness of cannibalism, a socio-cultural epidemic of which Columbus was a major carrier, according to Forbes. 
Thus the slaver who forces blacks or Indians to lose their lives in the slave-trade or who drains away their lives in a slave system is a cannibal. He may "eat" other people immediately... or he may "eat" their flesh gradually over a period of years.

Professor Forbes, former chair of Native American Studies and professor of anthropology at the University of California, Davis, was born in Long Beach but has lived in Berkeley and Davis since 1967. He attended the University of Southern California, earning A.B., M.A. and Ph.D. degrees, the latter in history with a minor in North American ethnology. Forbes worked his way through college, serving on the fire crew of the Lassen National Forest and driving trucks for Meadow Gold Dairies. In 1960 he joined the faculty at California State University, Northridge. There he received a Guggenheim Fellowship and then in 1964 moved north to the University of Nevada, Reno.

In 1967 he assumed the post of Research Program Director at the Far West Laboratory for Educational Research and Development in Berkeley. He then became a professor at U.C. Davis in 1969. In 1981-82 he was named a Fulbright Visiting Professor at the University of Warwick, England, and in 1983-84 he was honored with the Tinbergen Chair at the Erasmus University of Rotterdam. In 1986-87 he served as a Visiting Scholar at the Institute of Social Anthropology, Oxford University, England.

Of Powhatan, Delaware and non-Indian background, Professor Forbes became very active in Native Arnerican affairs very early, organizing the Native Arnerican Movement in 1961. In 1960 he formed the American Indian College Committee with Navajo artist Carl Gorman and others to create proposals for an Indian university. At Cal State Northridge he developed a proposal for an American Indian Studies program in 1960, ten years ahead of its time. In 1967 he was a co-founder of the California Indian Education Association and in 1971 of D-Q University, the Indian college near Davis. From 1968 through 1969 Forbes was a co-organizer of United Native Americans in the Bay Area and served as editor of Warpath. During the same period and later he served as editior of the Powhatan newspapers Tsen-Akamak and Attam-Akamik.

Forbes' published writings include twelve books, over twenty short books and monographs, ninety-five scholarly articles, over one hundred popular articles, numerous short stories, and poems. His first book, Apache, Navaho and Spaniard, remains in print after thirty-two years. Columbus and Other Cannibals is the current culmination of Forbes' thinking about the ultimate social causes of aggression and exploitation and about Native American philosophical beliefs. His earliest version of the book was sketched out in 1976 and published in a preliminary version in 1978.

Although focusing upon tragic issues of terrorism, genocide, and violence, Forbes does not offer only a negative view of human evolution. He goes beyond a condemnation of aggression to undertake an analysis of how colonialism and systems of hierarchy systematically alter and brutalize individuals. Most importantly, he offers cultural options based upon traditional Native American philosophy and antidotes to the disease of cannibalism.

"Finding a Good Path," Forbes' final chapter rests upon the notion that the real test of a spiritual path is not to see how many monuments result, or how many converts are obtained, or how many prayers are repeated over and over again by imitative voices, but rather the test is: How do people who follow that path behave? How do they behave towards other humans? How do they behave towards the earth? How do they behave towards other living creatures?...

Columbus and Other Cannibals will offer readers an exciting challenge, an opportunity to look at the world in a new way, with hope for the future rising out of the pain of the last five hundred years. [Published by Autonomedia Publishers, June 1992, ISBN 0-936-756-70-5; distributed by Small Press Distribution, Berkely, California.]

last updated 11 March 1996
Native American Studies, UCD 

A Review 1998 by Bruce D. Olsen. 
 
Columbus and Other Cannibals: The Wetiko Disease of Exploitation, Imperialism and Terrorism (New York: Autonomedia/Semiotexts, 1992). 160 pp.
 

Subtitled The WETIKO Disease of Exploitation, Imperialism and Terrorism, this is one of the most important books I have read. It examines the subjects of aggression, violence, imperialism, rape and so on, not just from a Native American perspective, but from a perspective as uncontaminated as possible by assumptions created by the very wetiko (the word for cannibal in the Cree language) disease being studied. Most significantly, the author's central premise is that these evils are not simply "bad" choices which men make, but are the symptoms of a genuine, very real, epidemic sickness, a cannibal (wetiko) psychosis. People who exhibit these symptoms are insane (unclean) in the true sense of the word, they are mentally ill. "I shall argue that Columbus was a wetiko," Forbes writes, "that he was mentally ill or insane, the carrier of a terribly contagious psychological disease, the wetiko psychosis." He defines cannibalism as "the consuming of another's life for one's own private purpose or profit," a term which includes the subjugation of the Native Peoples of this continent, the genocide of Nazism, the pollution of our environment and contemporary pornography. The last chapter offers ways for the individual to recover from this all-too-common disease. It has an excellent bibliography which is useful for further study.
 

The book is a refreshing, insightful, informative and stimulating look at "Western civilization" and is well-researched. This is a must-read for all non-Indians. Jack D. Forbes is Professor of Native American Studies at the University of California at Davis.

buddhism, materialsim, etc.
Sun, 24 Nov 1996 17:40:13 -0700 
Koerner, Darrell (kozan@mho.net)

John: Despite my previous posting, I must say that I'm quite
appreciative of your efforts here and also of your article, when it
appeared in Tricylce Magazine. I lived for one year in the community of
Sazaki roshi, both in New Mexico and at Mt. Baldy; then for five years
at the San Francisco Zen Center. I would like to make two points (which
I feel are relevant here) based on my experiences with Buddhism in
general and Sazaki roshi in particular. 1)In all spiritual practice,
humility is recognized as the rock-bottom foundation and key. This
quality of humility I found to be missing in the Boulder Tibetan
Buddhist community of the 1980's, among the residential followers of
Sazaki roshi (and I think even of the roshi himself), and I sorely see
it lacking when you publicly take to task other prominent practitioners
(such as Gary Snyder) for not listening to their own dharma teachers
well enough. I especially see it lacking when you imply that other
people in this seminar have not, or haven't yet, arrived at your
understanding of non-duality. 2)I disagree with the essence of this
discussion revolving around "dual/non-dual, or relative/absolute" views.
The problem which concerns all of us is how to take care of that which
is - we have created technology and we must assume full responsibility
for this/these ongoing act(s). Isn't a more critical question "Why do
we as a collective continue to assimilate everything in our path?" And
what/who gives us the right to think that we can do so? We being the
colonizers of the world. I would refer you to a book by Jack Forbes,
entitled, "Columbus and Other Cannibals - The Wetiko Disease of
Exploitation, Imperialism and Terrorism" (1992). Rather than bowing to
our nightmarish creations, perhaps we should deeply mourn our all-too
apparent separation from life, each other and the common good. Sorry I
can't suggest any answers; rather I would suggest we be wary of
high-falutin' and high-sounding spiritual views which can have the ill
effect of separating us from each other and the earth. Once again,
thank you for your deep concern and efforts. Darrell Koerner
source

A column by Jack Forbes, NATIVE INTELLIGENCE, Davis, CA

Most of us have been taught to think of our body as a physical structure, isolated from everything else. But if we think of it as a living system, then a different picture emerges. Traditional indigenous thinking points towards an open system, connected with the Universe and the Creator.
In the mid-1970s I wrote down what I had been saying in many Indian gatherings: "I can lose my hands, and still live. I can lose my legs and still live. I can lose my eyes and still live. I can lose my hair, eyebrows, nose, arms, and many other things and still live. But if I lose the air I die. If I lose the Sun I die. If I lose the Earth I die. If I lose the water I die. If I lose the plants and animals I die. All of these things are more a part of me, more essential to my every breath, than is my so-called body. What is my real body?
We are not autonomous, self-sufficient beings as European mythology teaches.... We are rooted just like the trees. But our roots come out of our nose and mouth, like an umbilical cord, forever connected to the rest of the world.... Nothing that we do, do we do by ourselves. We do not see by ourselves. We do not hear by ourselves.... That which the tree exhales, I inhale. That which I exhale, the trees inhale. Together we form a circle." (Forbes, Columbus and Other Cannibals, 1992, pp. 145-6, and Forbes, A World Ruled by Cannibals, 1978, pp. 85-6 ).
When I was growing up I had a strong feeling of relatedness to the Earth, to the animals, and to the trees and plants. At age 22 I wrote a poem which expressed my feelings of wonder, and of relatedness, as regards the non-human world. But it wasnít until I read some of the teachings of Black Elk, the Lakota holy man, that I started thinking deeply about "nature" as being being part of us, and we being part of nature. He told a British writer, John Epes Brown, in 1947, that
...peace comes within the souls of men when they realize their relationship, their oneness, with the universe and all of its powers, and when they realize that at the center of the Universe dwells Wakan Tanka, and that this center is everywhere, it is within each of us. ("The Spiritual Legacy of the American Indian," Tomorrow, 12(4), Autumn 1964, p. 302; also in Sacred Pipe (1953), p. 115).
He also said, on many occasions, that humans and animals are to be relative-like and that we humans were like a suckling child, all of our lives, in relation to the Mother Earth. And then, too, I remember reading of what Pete Catches and Lame Deer both said: that all of nature is in us. (Lame Deer: Seeker of Visions, 1972, p.149).
Gradually I began to understand that our relationship with the Earth, with the air, with the water, and with all of the living creatures of the world, is more than simply a relationship of mutual dependence, kinship, and respect. I began to see that "our body" is bigger than what we normally think of as our physical body; that  we have such absolutely essential connections with air, water, plants, earth, and animals, and also with the Sun and Moon, that we literally have a physical body which embraces all of these things.
From about 1967 on I began to give lots of talks to Native audiences, from Virginia and New Jersey to Seattle and the Southwest. In these lectures I often focused on the "Greatness of the Native Mind," and one of the major aspects of this greatness was the idea of unity between humans and other living creatures. "If we lose the water we die. If we lose the plants and animals we die."
In the early 1970s, while struggling with racism in the university, I experienced a spiritual transformation. I began to write in a manner quite different from most of my earlier books, incorporating many of my deepest feelings and insights even if they might be very displeasing in eurocentric and materialistic academic circles. I wrote a book which was originally called "The Wetiko Psychosis" (about the cultural disease of cannibalism, or conscious exploitation of others, which I believed was dominating much of the world). When published it was called A World Ruled by Cannibals. This book was to have been printed by Akwesasne Notes in 1976 but they had insufficient funds. It came out in 1978 instead (from D-Q University). In this work I gave written expression to the idea that our bodies included more than simply our arms, legs, head, and trunk.
It is certainly true that we can lose part of our "flesh," and go on living, but we cannot lose the air, the Sun, the animals, the plants, or pure water. These gifts are not simply added to us, they are the core of our flesh. We are made of these things.
Still further: "Our eyes are not clear-glass windows. We do not look directly out upon ... the world surrounding us...." We must therefore eliminate "...the border between mind and universe...." (Forbes, What is Space?, 2001, p. 13). I have also written that "We and all the animals and living things , we complete the world. If the world be a drum, we are its taut skin vibrating with its messages.... (Forbes, "The Universe is Our Holy Book," unpublished poem, 1993).

We are, indeed, bodies without borders.
[Professor Jack D. Forbes, Powhatan-Delaware, is the author of RED BLOOD, AFRICANS AND NATIVE AMERICANS, ONLY APPROVED INDIANS and other books. He is professor emeritus, University of California, Davis. His web site is http://cougar.ucdavis.edu/nas/faculty/forbes/jfhome.html
New webpage address at: http://cougar.ucdavis.edu/nas/faculty/forbes/jfhome.html
 

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