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Jack D. Forbes. Columbus and Other Cannibals: The Wétiko Disease of Exploitation, Imperialism and Terrorism. Rev. ed. New York: Seven Stories Press, 2008. 234 pp. Paper, $14.95.
There comes a time in a generation when it is right and proper to review the wisdom of those who have gone before, to see through their eyes and to treasure their insights. This reissue of Columbus and Other Cannibals is just such an opportunity. It is the opportunity to hear the ideas again and to see the world anew.
Cannibals is a work of philosophy and ideas. It is not a work of history or facts. To do it justice, it must be read as a treatise, an expounding of ideas gathered over a lifetime. It is only in this way that Cannibals can be interpreted fairly.
Professor Forbes's use of the term cannibals to describe Western society in its most rampant form is intentionally off-putting. He contends that arrogance, greed, gluttony, enslavement, terrorism, genocide, and the exploitation of the earth's resources amounts to wétiko psychosis, the disease of cannibalism, and is as awful as it is actual. The term wétiko comes from the Cree (for the Ojibway it is windigo, for the Powhatan wintiko) and is defined by Professor Forbes as "the consuming of another's life for one's own private purpose or profit" (24). He further contends that...