World Views

Relationships involve perspectives, opinions, and assumptions. The Tainos people met Christopher Columbus in 1492 with perspectives, opinions, and assumptions based on their world view. Jacques Cartier came ashore with assumptions he held about the Innu people he met in 1534. What personal assumptions do you bring into meeting with someone the first time? What is the basis of your assumptions? Was world view the basis of Columbus’s and Cartier’s assumptions?

A world view is a collection of ideas, values, and beliefs that has developed over time within a group of people who share a common history and experience. Your shared world view influences how you see your place in the world and your relationship with nature. It involves understandings that may be religious, spiritual, both, or non-religious of how your place in the world began and possibly ends. It promotes ideas and beliefs about what is valued the most in society. World view determines the ways people in the group behave. In this Explore you will begin by examining your own assumptions and then the values and beliefs that formed the foundations of Aboriginal and European world views.

Quote

“I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. As a result of the war, corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed.”

Gather and discuss your own personal assumptions. Examine the quote and reflect on your assumptions about the speaker. Share with two or more people and examine the assumptions all of you have. Discuss on what basis you made these assumptions. Reveal the identity and context of the speaker (by Googling the quote!) and discuss how close or far your assumptions were to reality.

Read

Examine the two diagrams of Aboriginal and European world views on page 116 of your textbook, Perspectives on Globalization.

An assumption is a belief or value that is applied to an event and/or a person, his or her appearance, values, beliefs, and behaviour, and perceived as valid by the individual or group.

What assumptions did Europeans have?

• For many Europeans the territory to the west was undiscovered.
  
  

• Europe was the Old World and the new territories would be New Worlds, reflections of the best that European society and civilization held.
  
  

• The Indigenous population was often labelled as heathen because of their non-Christian faith.
  
  

• The Roman Catholic Church proclaimed itself as the one universal faith of humanity. Contact became a religious opportunity. The Church sent many missionaries along with the explorers. The pope at the time endorsed the travels to new territories with the goal of converting non-Christiansto what was considered by many Europeans as the one true faith—Catholicism.
  
  

• Portugal and Spain were countries that believed land expansion was achieved through conquest by strong military kingdoms over weaker peoples.
  
  

• For many Portuguese at this time, the pursuit of a policy of overseas expansion was an answer to poverty.
  
  

• Jacques Cartier was one of the first to refer to the Indigenous peoples of North America as sauvage. He used it in reference to the Indigenous relationship to the land. This term was later equated to heathen and the opposite of the perspective of a European civilized society.
  
  

• Reciprocity was the social, economic, and political foundation of many Pacific Coast nations. They encouraged trade for European goods to accumulate goods that would reflect higher prestige and wealth in their potlatch ceremonies.

Read

Select one of the following read options in your textbook, Perspectives on Globalization.Add notes on values and beliefs into your Exploring World Views chart below.

• “Different World Views,” pages 119 to 121; then examine the world views in the cartoon on page 132
  
  

• “The Effects of Cultural Contact on North American Society,” pages 127 and 128, about the Six Nations Confederacy and how their political structure is influenced by their world view

Reflect

Now Exploring Worldviews for the readings above. 

World Views, Perspectives, and Relationships Review your Exploring World Views chart. Take a position on the following statement: World views have a relationship on the perspectives and relationships between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples.   Choose the position that best reflects your views.    - World views have a significant relationship on the perspectives and relationships between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples.   - World views have some relationship on the perspectives and relationships between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples.   - World views have a limited relationship on the perspectives and relationships between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples.