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The Rediscovery of North America
Five hundred years ago an Italian whose name, translated into English, meant Christopher Dove, came to America and began a process not of discovery, but incursion -- "a ruthless, angry search for wealth" that continues to the present day.
This provocative and superbly written book gives a true assessment of Columbus's legacy while taking the first steps toward its redemption. Even as he draws a direct line between the atrocities of Spanish conquistadors and the ongoing pillage of our lands and waters, Barry Lopez challenges us to adopt an ethic that will make further depredations impossible. The Rediscovery of North America is a ringingly persuasive call for us, at long last, to make this country our home.
This provocative and superbly written book gives a true assessment of Columbus's legacy while taking the first steps toward its redemption. Even as he draws a direct line between the atrocities of Spanish conquistadors and the ongoing pillage of our lands and waters, Barry Lopez challenges us to adopt an ethic that will make further depredations impossible. The Rediscovery of North America is a ringingly persuasive call for us, at long last, to make this country our home.
58 pages, Paperback
First published June 18, 1991
About the author
Barry Lopez
59 books864 followersBarry Holstun Lopez is an American author, essayist, and fiction writer whose work is known for its environmental and social concerns.
Lopez has been described as "the nation's premier nature writer" by the San Francisco Chronicle. In his non-fiction, he frequently examines the relationship between human culture and physical landscape, while in his fiction he addresses issues of intimacy, ethics and identity.
Lopez has been described as "the nation's premier nature writer" by the San Francisco Chronicle. In his non-fiction, he frequently examines the relationship between human culture and physical landscape, while in his fiction he addresses issues of intimacy, ethics and identity.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 63 reviews
March 2, 2023
Thank you again Will Schwalbe, this time for giving me my new bible—a 34-page masterpiece by the late environmentalist and writer Barry Lopez.
In his book We Should Not Be Friends that I reviewed a day or so ago, Schwalbe’s friend Chris Maxey considers Barry Lopez’s book his and his Island School’s bible; he assigns it to students before they ever step onto the school land, and I can see why.
The book starts with the horrific history of the conquering and genocide at the foundation of European takeover of North America and advances to Indigenous wisdom that made me fall onto the couch for a while to let it go through and into me. This is what Europeans wiped out. What would life be like if Columbus et al. had asked questions instead of murdered and plundered? I can’t even imagine it, but I’d like to imagine it for our future. I’d like to imagine it’s not too late to ask people who have cultures different than our own: What advice do you have for me? Tell me about your home? How do you survive? What do you love? What do you value?
I learned two important words from this book: “antiphony” and “biophilia.” Antiphony is a call and response—which requires listening; how could one respond without listening to what one wants to respond to? Biophilia is a love of land—land that we might practice antiphony with for a life of paradise on this planet.
Here’s a small quote that I’ll probably reread for the rest of my life, after my hard copy of this book arrives:
In his book We Should Not Be Friends that I reviewed a day or so ago, Schwalbe’s friend Chris Maxey considers Barry Lopez’s book his and his Island School’s bible; he assigns it to students before they ever step onto the school land, and I can see why.
The book starts with the horrific history of the conquering and genocide at the foundation of European takeover of North America and advances to Indigenous wisdom that made me fall onto the couch for a while to let it go through and into me. This is what Europeans wiped out. What would life be like if Columbus et al. had asked questions instead of murdered and plundered? I can’t even imagine it, but I’d like to imagine it for our future. I’d like to imagine it’s not too late to ask people who have cultures different than our own: What advice do you have for me? Tell me about your home? How do you survive? What do you love? What do you value?
I learned two important words from this book: “antiphony” and “biophilia.” Antiphony is a call and response—which requires listening; how could one respond without listening to what one wants to respond to? Biophilia is a love of land—land that we might practice antiphony with for a life of paradise on this planet.
Here’s a small quote that I’ll probably reread for the rest of my life, after my hard copy of this book arrives:
I [Barry Lopez] remember a Nunamiut man at Anaktuvuk Pass in the Brooks Range in Alaska named Justus Mekiana. I was there working on a book and I asked him what he did when he went into a foreign landscape. He said, “I listen.”
And a man named Levine Williams, a Koyukon Athapaskan, who spoke sternly to a friend, after he had made an innocent remark about how intelligent people were, saying to him, “Every animal knows way more than you do.”
And another man, an Inuk, watching a group of polar bear biologists on Baffin Island comparing notes on the migration paths of polar bears, in an effort to predict where they might go. “Quajijau-jungangitut,” he said softly, “it can’t be learned.”
I remember a Kamba man in Kenya, Kamoya Kimeu, a companion in the stone desert west of Lake Turkana—and a dozen other men—telling me, you know how to see, learn how to mark the country. And he and others teaching me to sit down in one place for two or three hours and look.
When we enter the landscape to learn something, we are obligated, I think, to pay attention rather than constantly to pose questions. To approach the land as we would a person, by opening an intelligent conversation. And to stay in one place, to make of that one, long observation a fully dilated experience. We will always be rewarded if we give the land credit for more than we imagine, and if we imagine it as being more complex even than language.
In these ways we begin, I think, to find a home, to sense how to fit a place.
October 5, 2018
2018 re-read for my naturalist-themed Inktober efforts. What I wrote for that:
Barry López has written some seriously wonderful naturalist books. The Rediscovery of North America is by far his shortest one, clocking in at only 58 pages, but every single one of those pages overflows with the sort of raw, sizzling truth so rarely taught or openly discussed. Truth about our country’s violent, colonizing origins and penchant for destruction in the endless pursuit of material wealth—realities he argues must be faced before we can truly know a place, and thus, before we can begin to treat the land we occupy with the respect it deserves. (I agree with him.)
Published in 1990 and dedicated to the memory of Rachel Carson, this book is an impassioned plea to stay in one place long enough to truly connect with it, know it, be willing to stand up for it against forces that would seek to take more than the land can give. This book asks a lot of tough and timely questions, but especially: How can we treat this earth as an ally, an integral member of our communities, instead of as something to be perpetually owned, pillaged, conquered?
Lopez’s answer: Know the land, intimately and honestly. Learn its history. (Not just the shallow, whitewashed version.) Who lived here first? What connections did they have with the land? Can we become the sort of people who look upon the ground we stand, work, live, and recreate upon, and instead of looking at what we can take—what it can offer us—consider instead what it looked like before we arrived, and what we can give back to it? (I hope so.)
_______________
“A sense of place must include, at the very least, knowledge of what is inviolate about the relationship between a people and the place they occupy, and certainly, too, how the destruction of this relationship, or the failure to attend to it, wounds people.” —from pg. 40
"The deep and tragic confusion here is that this pose of responsibility, this harkening to a heritage of ennobled independence, has no historical foundation in America. Outside of single individuals and a few small groups that attended to the responsibilities of living on the land, the history of the use of the American landscape has been lawless exploitation." —from pg. 47
[Five stars for still being as apt and important as ever.]
_______________
Original 2016 review:
I want to buy this book for every one I love. I want it to be required reading for every human. Please please please read it. I bet it'll take you 30 minutes or less, and it'll be time so well spent.
[Five stars for repeatedly punching me in the face with 58 pages overflowing with truth and timeless relevance.]
Barry López has written some seriously wonderful naturalist books. The Rediscovery of North America is by far his shortest one, clocking in at only 58 pages, but every single one of those pages overflows with the sort of raw, sizzling truth so rarely taught or openly discussed. Truth about our country’s violent, colonizing origins and penchant for destruction in the endless pursuit of material wealth—realities he argues must be faced before we can truly know a place, and thus, before we can begin to treat the land we occupy with the respect it deserves. (I agree with him.)
Published in 1990 and dedicated to the memory of Rachel Carson, this book is an impassioned plea to stay in one place long enough to truly connect with it, know it, be willing to stand up for it against forces that would seek to take more than the land can give. This book asks a lot of tough and timely questions, but especially: How can we treat this earth as an ally, an integral member of our communities, instead of as something to be perpetually owned, pillaged, conquered?
Lopez’s answer: Know the land, intimately and honestly. Learn its history. (Not just the shallow, whitewashed version.) Who lived here first? What connections did they have with the land? Can we become the sort of people who look upon the ground we stand, work, live, and recreate upon, and instead of looking at what we can take—what it can offer us—consider instead what it looked like before we arrived, and what we can give back to it? (I hope so.)
_______________
“A sense of place must include, at the very least, knowledge of what is inviolate about the relationship between a people and the place they occupy, and certainly, too, how the destruction of this relationship, or the failure to attend to it, wounds people.” —from pg. 40
"The deep and tragic confusion here is that this pose of responsibility, this harkening to a heritage of ennobled independence, has no historical foundation in America. Outside of single individuals and a few small groups that attended to the responsibilities of living on the land, the history of the use of the American landscape has been lawless exploitation." —from pg. 47
[Five stars for still being as apt and important as ever.]
_______________
Original 2016 review:
I want to buy this book for every one I love. I want it to be required reading for every human. Please please please read it. I bet it'll take you 30 minutes or less, and it'll be time so well spent.
[Five stars for repeatedly punching me in the face with 58 pages overflowing with truth and timeless relevance.]
April 5, 2019
This is a short book, by acclaimed nature writer Barry Lopez based on a lecture he gave. The premise is that the attitude Columbus brought from Spain to North America when he rediscovered it in 1492 still persists today resulting into a fragmented natural world, disastrous relations with Native Americans, and a continuing spirit of rugged individualism and greed that completely impedes with our ability to connect with one another and nature.
It is both a sweet tribute to the people that were here before Columbus and the majestic environment that both were decimated by the worldviews developed in Europe and perpetuated and lived out to its fullest destructive crescendo here.
Here are a couple of my favorite quotes that I think help give a sense of what you are in for if you pick up this jewel of a book:
"It is by looking upon the land not as its possesor but as a companion. To achieve this, one must I think cultivate intimacy, as one would with a human being. And that would me being IN a place, taking up residency in a place."
"The Spanish experience was to amass wealth and go home. Those of us who have stayed, who delight in the litanies of this landscape and who can imagine no deeper pleasure than the fullness of our residency here, look with horror on that imperial framework in North America - the physical destruction of a local landscape to increase the wealth of people that don't live there, or to supply materials to buyers in distant places who will never know the destruction that process leaves behind."
Highly recommended for those that love nature, have a deep love of real community, question our history, or at the very least want a thought provoking essay that will help us get a glimpse into who we are and how we got here.
It is both a sweet tribute to the people that were here before Columbus and the majestic environment that both were decimated by the worldviews developed in Europe and perpetuated and lived out to its fullest destructive crescendo here.
Here are a couple of my favorite quotes that I think help give a sense of what you are in for if you pick up this jewel of a book:
"It is by looking upon the land not as its possesor but as a companion. To achieve this, one must I think cultivate intimacy, as one would with a human being. And that would me being IN a place, taking up residency in a place."
"The Spanish experience was to amass wealth and go home. Those of us who have stayed, who delight in the litanies of this landscape and who can imagine no deeper pleasure than the fullness of our residency here, look with horror on that imperial framework in North America - the physical destruction of a local landscape to increase the wealth of people that don't live there, or to supply materials to buyers in distant places who will never know the destruction that process leaves behind."
Highly recommended for those that love nature, have a deep love of real community, question our history, or at the very least want a thought provoking essay that will help us get a glimpse into who we are and how we got here.
October 30, 2011
If this brilliant expose' and plea for justice and action to save our environment and society doesn't wake you up, you need to check your pulse. Brilliant analysis of how the sins of our past continue to haunt us now. This needs to be mandatory reading for all children and the nail in the coffin for revisionist historians. Sad that this nation still honours Columbus Day as a holiday and most don't realize the blood and lies that surround it.
PLEASE read this book NOW!!! SHARE it with all that you know and love.
PLEASE read this book NOW!!! SHARE it with all that you know and love.
November 1, 2021
Dang. Beautiful little essay/book. I have a habit of trying to think about US culture in terms of the founding of this country, but this book reminds me to also go back further to (at least) the Spanish incursion and the mindset they arrived with.... and then even further to the thousands of cultures that have been here before that. I'm not articulating it well, but this book presents a valuable view of history as well as a call to know and take responsibility for this land, make it a home and not just a thing to be exploited.
July 19, 2016
I've come to respect Lopez as the most mature, measured, and wise of my favorite authors. I expect to see his works grow on me with time where others might pass into the disreputable bin of "phases." One of the things I've learned to appreciate (which before rather frustrated me) was his reluctance to make strong political statements: his perspective is wide and long and not prone to unconsidered anythings. He seems to grasp the inadequacy of ideologies and politickings as heady narratives that can distract us from the business of living in the world. His excellent Resistance puts it best: “The world is beautiful and we are a part of it. That's all. Our work is not to improve it, it is to participate.” Ideologies whisper grandiose dreams of fixing and fighting when all we really need to do, and all we can ever do, by dint of our place in the Universe, is just be people and live our people lives.
The business at hand, in Lopez's terms, can become frustratingly vague, and when I was younger this is what drove me from his philosophy into the more noble romance of Deep Green Resistance: Strategy to Save the Planet. Among the take-home messages from this volume, for instance, are "listen," and "discover the continent again . . . discover the lineaments of cooperation with it." This is of course inevitable: Lopez is trying to point the way to an ineffable knowledge and wisdom that is only obtained through extended experience; he can't just tell us. And he is unparalleled in the art of suggesting this ineffable knowledge (to the extent that I begin to wonder how much he too, is just selling a narrative, this experience of imagining deep and ineffable knowledge of nature).
The message of the book reads like a tempered restatement of Derrick Jensen's grand thesis: there is a cultural quality that has prevented Us from conducting ourselves appropriately (that is to say, even just not being the worst assholes imaginable) lately; then of course applied particularly to the Americas. Lopez makes a nice dichotomous analogy: the Colonists are children run away from home. They have escaped the rule of law and the responsibility to steward their future. They can't restrain themselves from taking anything they want and trashing what's left.
This behavior is contrasted with the natives, and for that matter with the behavior of European society (though that would be contested by Jensen and others), who behaved as though they were in a long-term relationship with the land and their neighbors, who needed to not poison their water supply because they couldn't just go somewhere else, etc.
In the process of colonization, Westerners have destroyed wealth immensely greater than what they selfishly pocketed: they ascribed no value to the cultures, languages, ecologies, species, places, watersheds, and myriad ways of life they interrupted, assaulted, and extinguished.
This book, then, is a very eloquent, and very brief (it took me less than a half hour to read) plea to just stop doing that to North America. It's of course in vain, since the forces that drove that behemoth to rape North America are still driving it forward today, and there is no counter-force in sight that could match it. And that is where Jensen's solutions seem a bit more appealing: they are unrealistic, but they are not quite this earnest.
P.S. I also appreciate Lopez's evaluation of science, as an extension of native ways of looking at the land (right or wrong, I don't know, but this is how I like to think of science), showing that the problem is not as much about innocence of the knowledge as much as willful ignorance of its implications.
The business at hand, in Lopez's terms, can become frustratingly vague, and when I was younger this is what drove me from his philosophy into the more noble romance of Deep Green Resistance: Strategy to Save the Planet. Among the take-home messages from this volume, for instance, are "listen," and "discover the continent again . . . discover the lineaments of cooperation with it." This is of course inevitable: Lopez is trying to point the way to an ineffable knowledge and wisdom that is only obtained through extended experience; he can't just tell us. And he is unparalleled in the art of suggesting this ineffable knowledge (to the extent that I begin to wonder how much he too, is just selling a narrative, this experience of imagining deep and ineffable knowledge of nature).
The message of the book reads like a tempered restatement of Derrick Jensen's grand thesis: there is a cultural quality that has prevented Us from conducting ourselves appropriately (that is to say, even just not being the worst assholes imaginable) lately; then of course applied particularly to the Americas. Lopez makes a nice dichotomous analogy: the Colonists are children run away from home. They have escaped the rule of law and the responsibility to steward their future. They can't restrain themselves from taking anything they want and trashing what's left.
This behavior is contrasted with the natives, and for that matter with the behavior of European society (though that would be contested by Jensen and others), who behaved as though they were in a long-term relationship with the land and their neighbors, who needed to not poison their water supply because they couldn't just go somewhere else, etc.
In the process of colonization, Westerners have destroyed wealth immensely greater than what they selfishly pocketed: they ascribed no value to the cultures, languages, ecologies, species, places, watersheds, and myriad ways of life they interrupted, assaulted, and extinguished.
This book, then, is a very eloquent, and very brief (it took me less than a half hour to read) plea to just stop doing that to North America. It's of course in vain, since the forces that drove that behemoth to rape North America are still driving it forward today, and there is no counter-force in sight that could match it. And that is where Jensen's solutions seem a bit more appealing: they are unrealistic, but they are not quite this earnest.
P.S. I also appreciate Lopez's evaluation of science, as an extension of native ways of looking at the land (right or wrong, I don't know, but this is how I like to think of science), showing that the problem is not as much about innocence of the knowledge as much as willful ignorance of its implications.
September 9, 2016
A passionate call to "rediscover" North America based on a damning retelling of Christopher Columbus's first attack on the new world.
"This violent corruption needn't define us. Looking back on the Spanish incursion, we can take the measure of the horror and assert that we will not be bound by it. We can say, yes, this happened, and we are ashamed. We repudiate the greed. We recognize and condemn the evil. And we see how the harm has been perpetuated. But, five hundred years later, we intend to mean something else in the world."
"This violent corruption needn't define us. Looking back on the Spanish incursion, we can take the measure of the horror and assert that we will not be bound by it. We can say, yes, this happened, and we are ashamed. We repudiate the greed. We recognize and condemn the evil. And we see how the harm has been perpetuated. But, five hundred years later, we intend to mean something else in the world."
December 10, 2016
Yup. I could re-read this every year.
[5 stars, because Lopez at his best is some of the best.]
[5 stars, because Lopez at his best is some of the best.]
Read
January 2, 2016Not a review of the entire book (brief as it is), but noting two misaligned elements, two mistakes often made when discussing Native Americans. Lopez certainly acknowledges and values Native American cultures and experiences, but he also towards the sweeping ending fails to adequately differentiate native peoples from the environment, as though they are one and the same. This creates the illusion that native peoples don't have agency over the land as well.
The second imbalance, let's say, is that while individual native people's words and observations are given, you would think from this essay that Native Americans have all but disappeared. This too is a frequent mischaracterization.
The second imbalance, let's say, is that while individual native people's words and observations are given, you would think from this essay that Native Americans have all but disappeared. This too is a frequent mischaracterization.
March 4, 2016
What if the Europeans who first came to the Americas had come on a voyage of exploration instead of exploitation? What would they have found if instead of asking "what can I take from here?" they had asked "what is this place?" and "who are these people?".[br/]What did their ruthless search for wealth cost us in knowledge, in the landscape, in the wisdom of native peoples? How does the legacy of exploitation effect us today? Barry Lopez takes an honest look at our history as it happened, stripped of the myth of the noble explorer conquering the wilderness. This essay should be incorperated in every High School textbook in America.
March 20, 2013
A must read for all North American residents. We should all know the truth of how this continent was "discovered." Only then can we move forward and start taking steps to appreciate and co-exist with this beautiful land, to eventually live with it in harmony, as a home.
Besides, there's no excuse for refusing to read a 50 page book, especially one so critical to our understanding of our history.
Besides, there's no excuse for refusing to read a 50 page book, especially one so critical to our understanding of our history.
December 31, 2015
Outstanding. Speaking truth to power through a literary work of art.
November 28, 2021
I read this years ago and it impressed me, but so many years have passed that it's time for me to read it again.
3.5 ... The message: 4.5
2021: The first five pages. Those are the pages I remembered. They relate passages from the journal of las Casa, and those passages are horrifying. Lopez makes the case that this first encounter set the stage for how Europeans approached the entire New World.
The rest of this small book complements the message in Kimmerer's Braided Sweetgrass. (Purely coincidental that I read these books back-to-back.)
p 32: ... look upon the land not as its possessor but as a companion. To achieve this, one must I think cultivate intimacy, as one would with a human being.
p 40: A sense of place must include, at the very least, knowledge of what is inviolate about the relationship between a people and the place they occupy, and certainly, too, how the destruction of this relationship, or the failure to attend to it, wounds people.
p 44: One of our deepest frustrations as a culture, I think, must be that we have made so extreme an investment in mining the continent, created such an infrastructure of nearly endless jobs predicated on the removal and distribution of trees, water, minerals, fish, plants, and oil, that we cannot imagine stopping.
I'd replace the word 'frustrations' with 'mistakes.'
3.5 ... The message: 4.5
2021: The first five pages. Those are the pages I remembered. They relate passages from the journal of las Casa, and those passages are horrifying. Lopez makes the case that this first encounter set the stage for how Europeans approached the entire New World.
The rest of this small book complements the message in Kimmerer's Braided Sweetgrass. (Purely coincidental that I read these books back-to-back.)
p 32: ... look upon the land not as its possessor but as a companion. To achieve this, one must I think cultivate intimacy, as one would with a human being.
p 40: A sense of place must include, at the very least, knowledge of what is inviolate about the relationship between a people and the place they occupy, and certainly, too, how the destruction of this relationship, or the failure to attend to it, wounds people.
p 44: One of our deepest frustrations as a culture, I think, must be that we have made so extreme an investment in mining the continent, created such an infrastructure of nearly endless jobs predicated on the removal and distribution of trees, water, minerals, fish, plants, and oil, that we cannot imagine stopping.
I'd replace the word 'frustrations' with 'mistakes.'
September 20, 2022
An incredible lecture. It was nice to read it in book format. This really shows that America has not changed much since the time of Columbus and Spanish conquistadors. It connects violence against people with violence against the earth. Very good oratory techniques too. The way it begins with describing the horrifying actions of Columbus and goes on to list several North American place names and tribe names is something that I feel like would be very powerful during an oral delivery. Very fascinating and enjoyable. Although tragic in some ways, it definitely ends with the idea of hope.
February 21, 2021
Read this as the assigned text prior to Dragons. Lopez's thesis that we need to make this land a "home" rather than continue the tradition of exploitation and incursion was fairly meaningful, yet his instructions to listen, observe, and be in conversation with nature and indigenous people were pretty standard and white bread. The central frustration, then, is that Lopez himself, as far as I can tell, is not indigenous nor is he an expert on the environment. I guess his credentials in travel and literature grant him some credibility, but I can't help but feel that this irony severely weakens his claims.
June 21, 2019
Oof. Because this was originally a lecture given in 1990, the thought of it being delivered to an audience in 2019 that is even *remotely* invested in Indigenous/American Indian studies is so. damn. cringeworthy. Very representative of the old guard version of ecocrit.
June 18, 2016
Published in 1992, this insightful little essay, originally delivered as lectures, challenges us to discard the exploitive thinking that has been “civilizing” the North American continent since 1492.
Lopez critiques the American mind set, which was thrust into motion the moment European explorers discovered their first American island. In short, we’ve built a society founded on exploitation, of peoples, of land, and ultimately of ourselves. By making impositions rather than proposals in our relationships with all these, by asserting rather than listening or learning, our understanding of relationship, community, and personal responsibility remains as advanced as an adolescent’s.
Lopez’s usual eloquence is present, and his argument got me thinking. It seems the stuntedness referenced above is often advertised by our culture and our politicians as a strength, and I suppose it is that too: it is the strength of the visionary and the entrepreneur, as well as the strength of the greedy and many of the powerful. But as Lopez writes, “There is not the raw material in the woods, or beyond, to make all of us rich. And in striving for it, we will only make ourselves, all of us, poor.” To fail to see or to ignore our connection to the place we live and the mutual dependence that, in balance, gives health to both place and people, has been a long-term fault. We must realize that “to acknowledge the interdependence is simply a wise habit of mind” and continue learning a non-exploitive means of symbiosis; this is the responsibility of a community that “no longer need[s] to be supervised,” and we, each of us as individuals, must recognize our part cannot be cast on others but must be accepted and acted on as individuals within the whole.
September 25, 2008
a great little book first given as a lecture in 1992...if that date strikes a familiar chord remember...when columbus sailed the ocean blue...yes, the 500th year celebrations of that occasion...and lopez asks us the re-discover north america envisioning back through that optic of 500 years...he begins and ends the talk/book on columbus' ships as a way of illustrating what the driving impetus behind the whole venture might have been...he doesn't have to say it and neither do i but what the heck!...greed...expansionism related to greed and all that goes along with it... lopez makes us aware of how in the ensuing time since that "discover" we have tried to make things familiar by renaming them negating what was here and yes...destroying what was in the way...which of course also means revising and forgetting history...but it's not all a downer guys!...hey, it's an invitation to open our eyes and reconsider where and who we are...take responsibility for what happened and realize that there is another way to relate to this land and its people (who while decimated segregated and hidden away are not a "vanished race") among whom we now walk...it's a great book to pass on to others to think about and reconsider again and again...keep in mind...and...since some of us are once again after a lull of 30 or so years thinking about the environment again...it's a good read for those issues...isn't it all connected?!...yes, of course it is...can't avoid that!!!
August 4, 2014
This is the second time I've read this book and it remains a strange combination of both dire and hopeful. Barry Lopez takes an unflinching glance at the discovery of North America and the deep roots of "venal greed, a failure of imagination, the reduction of desire to its most banal elements" on which this country was founded. One such action was the cutting off of the legs of children who ran from the Spanish. Another was pouring boiling soap over the people the Spanish encountered. The horrors described are short and to the point and Lopez does this because, "...it is not good to forget, not to face squarely, what happened, the way the world forgot the extermination of Armenians in Turkey twenty-five years before Buchenwald."
Lopez posits the concept of proposing rather than imposing as the Spanish did. He clarifies, "Instead of an encounter with 'the other' in which we proposed certain ideas, proposals based on assumptions of equality, respectfully tendered, our encounters were distinguished by a stern, relentless imposition of ideas - religious, economic, and social ideas we deemed superior if not unimpeachable." Instead, approach others with a profound respect and knowledge of what "true wealth" can be - "sanctity, companionship, wisdom, joy, serenity." And know, even if our past has not approached our earth and its people like this, we do not have to let it define us going forward.
Lopez posits the concept of proposing rather than imposing as the Spanish did. He clarifies, "Instead of an encounter with 'the other' in which we proposed certain ideas, proposals based on assumptions of equality, respectfully tendered, our encounters were distinguished by a stern, relentless imposition of ideas - religious, economic, and social ideas we deemed superior if not unimpeachable." Instead, approach others with a profound respect and knowledge of what "true wealth" can be - "sanctity, companionship, wisdom, joy, serenity." And know, even if our past has not approached our earth and its people like this, we do not have to let it define us going forward.
September 23, 2020
Wow. I had heard that Barry Lopez was one to not miss, but this little tome (the 58 pages really are more like 25, with large type and small pages) has me hooked. The author's poetic language and impassioned connection to, or more like embodiment of, Nature--along with some simple-sounding indictments of the avarice, violence, rape and plunder upon which the USA was founded-- showed me his power to deepen the reader's actual experience and not just persuade. The Rediscovery of North America points to a new way to inhabit the spaces of USA and Canada, by acknowledging the separation from Nature via having thought of and using Her just for our means, to a different foundation upon which to enter the truer values--the aliveness, meaning, and connection of the land and it's inhabitants: flora, fauna, water and air, native human tribes.
He lightly touches upon the many who feel their jobs will be lost by putting environment first. As I read this during the most divisive election year I have ever seen in my lifetime, it gives me food for thought as to how these concerns and livelihoods might be addressed.
A book to be read 2 or 3 times, as is my plan now. Something I don't ordinarily do.
He lightly touches upon the many who feel their jobs will be lost by putting environment first. As I read this during the most divisive election year I have ever seen in my lifetime, it gives me food for thought as to how these concerns and livelihoods might be addressed.
A book to be read 2 or 3 times, as is my plan now. Something I don't ordinarily do.
March 23, 2016
An important book that remains timely. It strikes at an idea that sits at the heart of American society--the tendency to impose our "higher ideals" rather than to propose them to others. People continue to seek after power, and while American democracy involves more people than older monarchies in decision making, the impulse to exert our power over others rather than to live with them in community remains. Lopez extends this argument to include not just people, but all the world we inhabit. Every day people, corporations, and governments make decisions that impact not just other people but also the whole earth. Lopez' rooting of American abuse of the "other" in her history is a compelling point that points to how deeply rooted these kinds of abuses are culturally, and thereby hints at the depth of the work we need to do to change our course. Indeed, that Lopez doesn't just say 'stop,' but suggests a specific course change, is one of the strongest points of the book, for it provides a measure of hope to a rather dire situation.
July 16, 2009
This short poetic manifesto calls out for a conversation between the people and the land as we rediscover the place called North America. Written in commemoration of 500 years of conquest, The Rediscovery of North America asserts that developing a sense of place requires developing a sense of history. To listen to the land today requires not just an understanding of environmental ills but the genocide and atrocities of colonization which Lopez sees as the root of a troubled American culture. The present has its roots in the past and no better future can be found, no idyllic relationship with the land achieved, without a reckoning with imperialism.
June 16, 2008
I found this in the trash at Saint Mike's. If I taught a seventh grade history class, this would be the first thing I would have them read. Take twenty minutes to read it. There are problems with this book, but it would be a good introduction to history for a twelve year old.
I am confused as to why this is being used as a college text book, but I will leave those thoughts behind and just say that it would be good for the kids as a fast alternative introduction to our normal history lesson.
I am confused as to why this is being used as a college text book, but I will leave those thoughts behind and just say that it would be good for the kids as a fast alternative introduction to our normal history lesson.
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August 25, 2008hmmm...i realized that i had read this before (that's how memorable it was :)! not as dreamy and wonderful as some of lopezs' other writing which I really like. a quick read though and an interesting thought that we don't need to continue our society in the same vein as cortez and columbus...overall not tremendously powerful though.
December 14, 2014
A very brief, thoughtful essay on the hard facts of discovering new lands. Lopez is a first-rate nature writer and this work will engross and sadden both. Further comments may be found here: Sects and Violence in the Ancient World.
September 25, 2016
"If we feel wisdom itself is lost, we need only enter a library. We will find there the records of hundreds of men and women who believed in a world larger than the one defined in each generation by human failing. We will find literature, which teaches us again and again how to imagine."
- Barry Lopez
The Rediscovery of North America, p.53
- Barry Lopez
The Rediscovery of North America, p.53
May 28, 2008
Read this in a short afternoon. It was a very enjoyable but a somewhat disturbing read. I already knew that Columbus wasn't the man my teachers taught me about. I didn't know how terrible the conquest of the Americas actually was. It's a good thing we don't rape and pillage like that now.
June 1, 2015
What a brutal retelling of the founding of America. If even half of what Lopez claims actually happened, then all our old social studies books should be taken to the parking lot of elementary schools across the country and burned.
January 5, 2017
I have read this for one of my English classes and wow. I believe it should be required reading for every human being. Lopez has a way of describing the atrocities workout leaving you hopeless. The second half of this book makes you feel as though it is possible to make a change.
August 12, 2018
After noting how the attitudes toward North America were created at early exploration, author Lopez advocates that we develop a healthy philosophy of place as we reside in our homeland. What this notable author wrote decades ago is poignant.
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