The idea of glamorizing indigenous peoples has always fascinated me.<p>Do those historically connected with a particular place throughout its history never experience cruelty? How does one explain the slaughter in Rwanda and similar places if tribes living in one place are said to be imbued with an innate purity that should exempt them from having the same impulses toward evil and genocide that characterize the rest of the world?<p>As I ponder these things, and consider the lurid facts depicted in this article, my intuition tells me that this might be as much a case of selective reporting as anything else - reporting that seeks to shape a narrative consistent with a particular worldview held by the author of the piece.<p>I know there have been atrocities in the United States and in the Americas generally. But there is undoubtedly something very good as well to be said for the United States in particular, where (whatever its shortcomings and inconsistencies) freedom has been upheld for the benefit of all sorts of people and with which most of the world pales in comparison in terms of opportunities, or at least that is how umpteen generations of immigrations scrambling to get here have seen it.