I was on the BART reading Guns, Germs, and Steel when it came to me: It's not native peoples' faults that they couldn't develop the tools they needed to defend themselves from the Europeans.
Power struggles are visible in human history. Some societies took to big ships, sailed across the ocean and conquered other societies using guns and diseases brought about by close contact with domestic animals. These inequalities are still present.
To truly have an egalitarian society, the dominant culture has the responsibility to learn about the not-dominant cultures. It wasn't the native peoples' fault that they couldn't develop the tools they needed to defend themselves from conquest and subjugation. It wasn't their responsibility to because what would happen to them wasn't built in their narrative until after the fact. The conquest wasn't fair.
However, the conquest is still happening on a subconscious and psychic level. The scars are still there, and we see them with a disproportionate amount of minorities in impoverished communities with a lack of social opportunities. As a member of the dominating group, I think that the advantages given to us, the "Europeans" would mean that we should take responsibility for the "conquered people" and learn about their ways of life and educate them in a way that's culturally relevant.
