Pardon my sarcasm as I speak as an "Imperialist" American. I sometimes wear a shirt that I found which depicts several American plains Indians and says, "Homeland Security: Fighting terrorism since 1492." The cynical (and humorous) message was that since Columbus (hence the 1492 year number), the "locals" have struggled with invaders. At some point, each of the Native American tribes have had to resign themselves to their loss of country and way of life. But some don't give up as easily and as definitely as others.

Elsewhere in the world there are people who press for their national independence. Some more recently have lost that standing. Tibet was one of those countries that lost their statehood in comparatively recent times. Just as Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia held out hope for regaining their independence from the annexation by the Soviet Union, there are people in Tibet who likewise desire their national determination once more. The Basques of northern Spain or the Tamil of Sri Lanka are still other examples. Taiwan also has internal pressures, for there are people indigenous to the island, before it was swamped by refugees from the Republic of China when Mao's communists militarily routed them on the mainland.

Even more, far more, than as there are American Indians who still hold a glimmer of hope that someday non-Indian Americans might move off to new worlds and let them regain their own states, there are people in Tibet who still think of themselves as Tibetans, not Chinese. Part of the problems faced in Iraq today are because of the forced amalgam of different people living in one artificial nationality. The United States formed because they wanted to be together. The Tibetans didn't exactly ask to become Chinese.

Learn more about this author, Larry Swinford.
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