The Wide Range of Human Potential: Humanity vs. Objectification in History

Traditional American histories have reflected the European mindset. More recently, Native authors have begun the process of correcting those views of specific events. This book takes a different approach. It identifies the aggressive Nation-State Axial paradigm that drove colonialism and the relationship-based Native American value system that responded to it for a more accurate view of specific historic events.

The main arguments include that:

• The Nation-State drive for conquest skewed our understanding of the sophistication of Native American cultures
• Indigenous cultures' inclusive value systems blinded them to an enemy who came to destroy them and take their homeland
• Historic half-truths have blocked understanding of our history
• We are still caught in the five-thousand-year Axial patterns and philosophies that drove colonization
• Native wisdom could help us with today's serious challenges

The Wide Range of Human Potential incorporates anthropological and historic Western philosophical processes. It explains how and why the historic development of European materialism doomed the sophisticated and starkly different Native American thought processes and value systems. It also corrects current views of specific historic events to explain Indigenous responses for a better understanding of what really happened.