northern europe fought a thousand year war to defeat roman/christian colonialism, and ultimately lost, but then undid it's effects from the inside out.

the christian armies were victorious, but pagan science carried the day in the end - in england, in germany, in sweden.

there's a reason the vikings burned the churches, and ignored the granaries: colonialism is a function of catholicism. and, it was northern europe that was it's first victim, not it's primary exponent.

by the time of the colonial era, most of northern europe had undergone a reformation, which reasserted it's sovereignty from rome. and, you see the differences in history. the spanish & portugese were catholics and slaughtered and enslaved, while the protestant english attempted to do things like buy the land and the half-calvinist/half-catholic french had a mixed identity - the church was as bad in the french colonies as it was elsewhere, including in much of canada, but the french explorers were often more interested in trading than colonizing, and this underlies much of the reasoning behind the stronger alliances with french groups.

it's not all white conquistadors conquering and planting flags. there's alliances. there's self-interest, all around. and, you have to understand where they came from to understand what they did.

but, almost everywhere, the root cause of the problems that happened, when they did, is ultimately catholicism. even the slave trade that the english took over was ultimately...it was muslim in construction, but catholic in emulation. the reason africans were enslaved was not because they were black but because they weren't christian, on orders from the pope, and in emulation of the existing muslim practice - for the muslims would enslave christians at any chance they got, including frequent raids into cities like london and paris. yes, that happened. it's why france conquered algeria, to stop the pirates from raiding the coasts.

what i want is to build solidarity between indigenous groups and white europeans on this basis of a shared opponent in messianic religion. and, i think the indigenous groups might be pleasantly surprised about what science really teaches, when separated from industrial capitalism - there's more commonality than apparent. but, we need to talk about ecology, not religion; we need to talk about interdependence, not sovereignty.

i am confident that the descendants of indigenous people will look back at this period and recognize it as a civilizing era, even as they cringe at the dual evils of capitalism and catholicism, much as white people look at the european dark ages and pull out competing and equally correct narratives about the retarding influence of the church, and it's ultimately civilizing impact.

had a native warrior met a german barbarian in the year 300, they would have made a fast alliance in their attack on the romans. that's what i want to emulate, now.