"First they had the bible and we had the land; now we have the Bible and they have the land" Timothy Egan- NYT article
2010-02-25, 9:36 a.m.

I really liked this op-ed about the Silsby case. Especially this part;

"Of course, no one moved by genuine concern should ever be discouraged from acting. And in Haiti, we�ve seen some of the best impulses of the human heart at work in life-saving triage.

Still, the damage by zealous amateurs has been done to legitimate adoption services, and to relief agencies with long and noble histories of helping the desperate, the poor, the unloved. Blame it on the missionary impulse, a lingering personality disorder of Western culture.

Most Native American tribes have three basic stories: a creation myth, a trail of tears out of the homeland and indignities suffered at the hands of Christian missionaries.

Some of the worst damage was done, the tribes will tell you, long after the Indian wars were over, when missionaries moved in. They broke up families, shipping children off to boarding schools where they were shorn of their language, their hair and their culture. They banned tribal customs like the potlatch � where Indians compete to give away gifts � and spirit rituals that had been passed on for centuries."

and this part;

"As the African saying put it: �First they had the Bible and we had the land; now we have the Bible and they have the land.� Of course, there are more Anglicans by far in Africa now than in England, so in a sense the missionaries got both the land and the Bible."

Christian "do-goodism" is not always a bad thing, but the entitlement people expect to go with it is conceited and egocentric.