How Things Might
Have Been
It is a great privilege to
be Chief of the Western American Federation of
Indian Tribes. I write these words while sitting
on a high point in the foothills of the Sierra
Nevada and looking down upon the lands of my
peoples. Below are scattered many villages with
traditional roundhouses and bark dwellings. I can
see fields of oaks, the acorns from which have
provided sustenance for eight thousand years.
Women are grinding acorn flour and small groups
of men are setting-out to hunt.
I am proud of the survival
of our traditional lifestyle. I feel more proud,
however, that our philosophy of respect for all
life and harmony with nature has spread
throughout the world, leading to peace on Earth -
something for which the whole planet now gives
thanks to our legendary chief, White Flame.
All are taught of how, four
thousand years ago, White Flame became Chief of
my people. He too had rejoiced in their simple,
peaceful and sustainable lifestyle. He had
feared, however, that, one day, bad people might
come from across the mountains and do us harm.
White Flame had thus decreed that our most able
men and women should devote some of their time to
scientific and technological development.
Their fellows soon reaped
the benefits as the wheel and the discovery of
metal production enhanced their lives. So it was
with other machines, the horseless carriage, the
aeroplane, nuclear power, computers and myriad
other advances culminating in intergalactic space
travel. All were developed in research
establishments while our traditional village
lifestyle, the bedrock of our attitudes and
philosophy, has quietly continued.
The great wisdom of White
Flame was profoundly illustrated just one hundred
and fifty years ago when bad men finally came
from across the mountains. They wanted to take
our gold – gold that we needed for advanced
microprocessor circuitry. Thus their initial
offers of beads, mirrors and whisky for our land
seemed somewhat inadequate. When refused,
however, they quickly reverted to threats of
violence.
Fortunately, despite their
huge numbers, greed, aggression and racism, their
weaponry was no match for non-lethal defensive
force-fields deployed from our anti-matter
powered spacecraft.
We had no wish to interfere
in the lives and cultures of others with whom we
shared this planet. However, we felt that their
propensity for killing each other in astronomical
numbers for no particular reason was not a
helpful trait. As neither was their apparent
intent to destroy as quickly as possible all the
resources of the Earth that my people had, for
countless generations, honoured and cherished.
We, therefore, restrained
them from the worst manifestations of their
behaviour for four generations. By that time,
their actions were no longer poisonously driven
by memories of past cycles of violence. Hence we
came to the peace and harmony of the world as it
is today.
Sometimes I wonder what the
world would have been like had it not been for
White Flame. What would have happened if my
people had simply sat on their backsides grinding
acorns and hunter-gathering for eight thousand
years without any noticeable scientific or
technological advancement?
A cold shiver runs down my
spine when I think of how things might have been.
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