Just finish watching The West- an excellent documentary by the historian and academy award nominee Ken Burns. I’d like to recommend these 5 DVD set to anyone who is interested in the history of the United States before it became a super power. Ken Burns magnificently creates this film with all precious and old photographs, maps, letters and newspapers to bring to life of the people in the 19th century.

The West is a story of the struggles and challenges the Americans had during the westward expansion. The West was a land of hope and redemption. It was a place that people who were dreaming of a better life rushed to or those who were running away from failure or crime to find a new life. On one side, it is a story of a glorious hope and a spirit of those people who did not give up on the hardships. However, another side of the story portrays the ugliness of the Americans that destroyed millions of life of those native Indians.

It is a heartbreak story for the native Indians that no matter how long it has happened or it will be, they will never forget. Even at present, there are millions of Indians who cannot get over with this deep wound. Some Indians in those reservations still find drugs and alcohol as an outlet to forget their pain. Some turn the gun to their heads.

How many times they were lied by the Washington? How many treaties they made with the Whites were torn when the Americans wanted their land?

Millions of Indians were pushed out of their beloved land that held their ancestors’ bodies. The Trail of Tears and the massacre at Wounded Knee were the scars that the American will not forget for what they had done to those helpless people.

It is sad that most of those whites sailed across the Atlantic to escape the broken system of those monarchy and feudalism that produced the lack of equality just to create one here in the new world. Perhaps, as long as you have the same skin color as theirs, you will receive that equal rights as they have. However, if you don’t, you have to sacrifice whatever you have to make their life better. Black people were brought to be slaves. Native Indians were mercilessly slaughtered. The Chinese were excluded from the society after their hardworking of building the railroads was done. The Mexicans were driven out of their homeland in order to sacrifice their land to the new comers.

The West is very rich with the story of hopes and tragedies. It portrays the Darwinism theory of only the strongest and most adaptive species will survive.

This documentary also makes me think that even though most of the conflicts derive from the economics reasons it is the human nature that they tend to be able to create conflicts no matter where they are. If they have the same skin color, they will kill each other because of a difference of ethnicity. If they have the same ethnicity, they will kill each other because of a difference of religions. When they are in a homogeneous society, they will kill each other for the political reason.

Perhaps, deep in our genes, we are created to destroy each other whenever we can.