From my lodging in Cusco, I look out the window. The sun is setting. The Andean evening air is cold. I check my watch. In Maskwacis, in Alberta, Canada — by the time difference — it is almost the same afternoon. In Seoul it is already deep night. Three time zones overlap in my head.
Three time zones, three homelands. The Korea where I was born. The Canada where my scholarship grew. And the Peru I now stand on. Each meets the same sun at a different hour. But within me — it is the same evening.
Maskwacis is — the land of the Plains Cree (nêhiyawak) in central Alberta, Canada. Four First Nations live there together. Samson, Ermineskin, Louis Bull, and — Montana. This fourth community, Montana First Nation, is called Akâmihk in Cree. "Across the river." A name carrying its geography.
I first visited this community in 1997. From then until 2013 I returned almost every year for about ten days, continuing mission work and community visits. Sharing meals, sharing prayer, sharing sorrow and joy with members of the community — slowly, we drew closer. The accumulation of that time matters to me. The fact that for nearly seventeen years I returned to meet the same people year after year. The fact of seeing a child born then become a young adult. The fact of having attended someone's funeral together.
At one point in that long relationship — about twenty-three or twenty-four years ago — a family received me as kin. One woman of that family became my sister. In this book I call her Debbie. It is her real name — but she has given me permission to use it.
This adoption did not reconstruct my identity. I am still first Korean. I am not fluent in Cree. I do not know every layer of Cree ritual. The adoption was less a declaration that I had become Cree than a public formalization, in the language of the community, of a long relationship over time. What I cherish is not the formal recognition but the time itself, the years of returning. The relationship came first; the moment that honored the relationship came afterward.
I will not lay out in detail the precise legal or ceremonial form of this relationship in this book. That is between me and the community. What the reader needs to know is — the substance. A relationship returned to almost every year for nearly seventeen years. The kinship that naturally formed within it. And, through that relationship — the experience of a Korean learning, in his body, beside the Cree, one strand of their living.
This relationship made this book possible. And this relationship makes this chapter inevitable.
I told my sister Debbie that I was writing this book. Especially that this chapter — the chapter comparing three civilizations — would carry her story and her community's. I could not have written it without her consent. She consulted with the elders of her community and answered — yes, you may write it. On one condition: "Write the truth."
This chapter is my response to that request. Writing as close to the truth as possible. Not inventing fictional scenes. Not exaggerating personal episodes for emotional effect. Recording only the facts, only the weight of those facts.
And among those facts, I place one — the most important — at the spine of this chapter. In the many conversations my sister and I have had about this Inca journey over the years, one expression of hers stayed with me. It echoed the way the elders of her community speak about other peoples who have suffered historical pain.
"They are our people."
Our people. The Inca of the Andes, the Cree of the great plains, the Joseon of the Korean peninsula — those who were struck by the same wave are kin to one another. This sense is the spine of this chapter. And in some sense — the spine of this whole book.
In this chapter I will try to compare the destinies of three civilizations. The Inca, Joseon, and the Cree. All three were struck by the wave of Wetiko. The results differed. One fell. One survived. One — though the precise target of policies of "extinction" — is still alive today.
Why does this comparison matter? Several reasons.
First, to move beyond a fatalist reading. Many popular accounts, including Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel, present the collapse of Indigenous civilizations as an inevitable result. Technological gap, disease, geography. This explanation is partly correct — but it cannot account for the differing outcomes of three civilizations. Why did three civilizations that experienced the same "guns, germs, and steel" meet different destinies? This question pushes us beyond technological determinism.
Second, to understand the possibility of resistance. If we understand why Joseon survived, why the Cree are still alive — we learn the conditions of resistance against the same system. This is not a historical curiosity but an urgent present question. Even in the twenty-first century, in front of the same structure, this comparison offers clues to how we might resist.
Third, and the most personal reason for me — I have walked for a long time on the boundary of two civilizations. I was born and raised Korean, and for nearly seventeen years I returned each year to a Cree community to live close to their lives. In that process I was received as kin into one family, but my identity is still first Korean. I am, however, someone who has long walked between the two worlds. And on this journey I have encountered traces of a third civilization. The Inca. These three civilizations meet in the single channel that I am. To bear witness to that meeting — is the particular place this book occupies.
At the end of our phone call, Debbie said: "My brother, do not forget. Write this well. That we did not die."
I wrote her words in my notebook. This chapter is written remembering that sentence.
I have already reconstructed the forty years of massacre, from the afternoon at Cajamarca to the execution of Túpac Amaru. Here I look at that history again from the "viewpoint of destiny." Why did the Inca fall? And — in fact, how completely did they fall?
The official end of the Inca empire is September 24, 1572, the moment Túpac Amaru was beheaded in the Plaza de Armas of Cusco. From that day the Inca state (Tawantinsuyu, "the four regions") ceased to exist legally and politically. The last royal line was severed. The Neo-Inca state at Vilcabamba was extinguished.
But is the word "fall" precise? More precisely — what fell, and what survived?
What fell:
What survived:
If you read this list, the structure of the Inca fall comes into view. The elite level was destroyed; the popular level survived. The royal house, the nobility, the imperial bureaucracy disappeared. The farmers, the craftsmen, the mothers, the wisdom of communities remained. This is the general pattern of every imperial destruction. The top of the power pyramid is sliced off and the bottom is preserved. Total annihilation is rare.
But the fact that "things survived at the popular level" — does not offset the destruction of the top. Because what the imperial summit possessed mattered. The national record-keeping system. National infrastructure management. Elite art. Systematic astronomical, medical, engineering knowledge. When these vanish — the resources that the people might inherit shrink dramatically.
Today a Quechua farmer cultivates 3,000 varieties of potato. A magnificent inheritance. But the fact that the same farmer's ancestors were members of a vast imperial agricultural system — now remains only as memory. It does not remain as living practice. This gap is the true weight of the Inca fall.
In Chapter 6 I proposed three asymmetries (epidemic, division, asymmetry of humanity). Here I expand the analysis to five factors. Each contributed; together they decided the destiny of the Inca.
Factor 1 — The advance of disease. Smallpox arrived ahead of the Spanish (1524–1526). Mortality of 30–50 percent of the population. Collapse of the leadership. The deaths of Emperor Huayna Capac and his designated heir Ninan Cuyochi triggered the succession dispute. By the time the Spanish arrived, the Inca were already deeply wounded.
Factor 2 — Internal division. The civil war between Huáscar and Atahualpa (1527–1532). Just after Atahualpa's victory, Pizarro landed. The door of division stood wide open for the Spanish to exploit.
Factor 3 — The paradox of strong centralization. The Inca empire was extremely centralized. All legitimacy flowed from the emperor at Cusco. Once the emperor was captured — the entire system was paralyzed. The instant Atahualpa was taken prisoner at Cajamarca, the entire Inca empire was effectively paralyzed. Provincial armies waited for orders from the center. With no orders coming, they could not act.
Factor 4 — The grievance of conquered peoples. The rapid expansion of the Inca empire (over ninety-five years) had forcibly absorbed many peoples. The Cañari, Huanca, Chachapoyas and others bore deep grievances against the Inca. The Spanish strategically exploited these grievances. Tens of thousands of Indigenous allied troops were the actual force that brought down the Inca.
Factor 5 — Theological and ontological asymmetry. The Spanish did not see the Inca as fully human. This perception — meant they did not have to keep their promises. Executing Atahualpa after taking his ransom. Using Manco Inca as a puppet, then humiliating him. Promising peace to Sayri Túpac, then poisoning him. Every one of these betrayals was possible. Beneath them lay an ontology — that what one would not do to a fully human being one could do to a half-human.
These five factors operated together. Removing any one would have changed the result. Without the epidemic — the Inca army would have been overwhelmingly larger. Without the civil war — a unified response would have been possible. With less centralization — the capture of Atahualpa would not have paralyzed the empire. Without the grievances of conquered peoples — the Spanish could not have raised allied forces. Without the asymmetry of humanity — the repeated betrayals would have been impossible.
Of these five factors, four were internal weaknesses. Only the epidemic was external. The rest — were structural fragilities of the empire. The price of rapid expansion, the vulnerability of centralization, the wounds of conquered peoples. Because the Inca empire itself had been built through conquest, that violence returned upon them.
This is an admission that the Inca had their shadows too. The Inca are not to be idealized. They were an empire. They conquered other peoples. They used policies of forced relocation (mitima). This shadow accelerated their fall.
And yet — this does not justify the actions of the Spanish. It is not the logic of "since the Inca were also an empire, it is acceptable that they fell." Even granting the Inca's structural weaknesses, the Spanish massacre was in itself brutal violence. The two are compatible. True history is possible only when the cruelty of the perpetrator and the internal problems of the victim are recognized at the same time.
Sixty years later, on the Korean peninsula, the same wave produced a different outcome.
In Chapter 13 I traced the hundred-year chain from 1492 to 1592. Columbus, Potosí, Tanegashima, the Iwami silver mine, Konishi Yukinaga, Father Céspedes. And the terminus of that chain — was the Japanese landing in the waters off Busan in April 1592. The Imjin War.
In this war, Joseon is estimated to have lost about a third of its population in some regions.¹ Gyeongbokgung, Changdeokgung, and Changgyeonggung were burned. The breadbaskets of Gyeongsang, Jeolla, and Chungcheong were laid waste. Tens of thousands of potters and craftsmen were carried off to Japan. The social structure was shaken. For nearly a century afterward, Joseon would be consumed with economic recovery.
And yet — Joseon survived. The dynasty endured. The language was preserved. The culture continued. There was no "fall" in the same sense as the Inca. The Japanese army eventually withdrew in 1598.
What was different? Look at five factors.
The victories of Admiral Yi Sun-sin and the Joseon navy he led changed the strategic direction of the war. Okpo, Sacheon, Hansando, Busan, Myeongnyang. A series of naval victories cut the Japanese supply lines at sea. As detailed in Chapter 13.
How important was this success? The Imjin War was the first time Japan had attempted a full-scale, prolonged war. As the Japanese army drove deep into the peninsula, it ran into the problem of supply. Local procurement was difficult. The guerrilla attacks of the militias threatened the land routes. The Joseon navy's command of the seas cut off supply by sea as well. Under these conditions the Japanese army could not hold its conquests.
Maritime defense was possible — as we saw in Chapter 13 — thanks to Joseon's panokseon, turtle ships, and cannon technology. That is, the world-class level of Joseon science and technology turned a phase of the war.
After the regular Joseon army collapsed in the early phase of the Imjin War, militias (uibyeong) rose voluntarily across the country. Yangban scholars emptied their family wealth to organize armies. Farmers volunteered. Their numbers are estimated at over 100,000.²
The major militia leaders:
And also the warrior monks (seungbyeong). Buddhist monks took up arms. Seosan Daesa (西山大師, Hyujeong), in his seventies, became a commander of warrior monks. His disciple Samyeong Daesa (四溟大師, Yujeong) organized monks at temples across the country. More than a thousand warrior monks took part in combat.³
The spontaneity of this resistance was decisive. The government did not mobilize them — civilians rose on their own. This is evidence that horizontal solidarity across society was functioning. There was nothing of the kind in the Inca empire. Once the Inca emperor was captured or had fled, there was no tradition of provincial communities organizing resistance forces on their own. Every action waited on orders from the center.
Joseon was different. Even with King Seonjo fleeing to Uiju and the court effectively paralyzed — resistance continued in the provinces. Why was this possible? It is one of the central questions of this chapter.
Joseon was a single-language, single-script, single-people state. This is the largest difference.
The Inca empire was multi-ethnic and multilingual. Quechua was the imperial lingua franca, but dozens of languages — Aymara, Mochica, Atacama and others — coexisted. This linguistic diversity created the possibility of political division. It is why Spain was able to exploit division.
It was not so for Joseon. When Japan entered the peninsula it could find no internal faction to side with. There was no equivalent of the Cañari, no group that could be turned into "Japan's allies." Some local officials surrendered, but there was no structural internal division. The ethnic cohesion of Joseon offered almost no fissure for outside penetration to enter.
Where did this cohesion come from? It was the result of the creation of Hangul in 1443 and the two centuries of cultural integration that followed. As Hangul became the script of every social class — yangban and commoners came to share (within limits) a common writing system. Through the civil service examinations, a common Confucian formation spread across the country. Centuries of shared historical consciousness (the dynastic continuity from Goryeo to Joseon) had formed.
The result — by the late sixteenth century there was a relatively strong "Joseon" identity. The basis on which a Chungcheong farmer and a Gyeongsang yangban could feel "we are the same." On this basis, the spontaneous solidarity of militias and warrior monks became possible.
In late 1592, Ming China dispatched reinforcements to Joseon. A force of about 40,000 led by Li Rusong (李如松) retook Pyongyang in January 1593. Thereafter the Ming army remained in Joseon throughout the war, holding the Japanese army in check.⁴
Why was the Ming decision to enter the war made? It was the workings of the tributary relationship. Joseon lay within the investiture system of Ming, and when Joseon was in crisis Ming had a formal duty of support. But it did not stop at formal duty. Ming's own security depended on Joseon. If Japan took Joseon — its next target was the Chinese mainland. Hideyoshi had explicitly declared this ambition. Ming had to defend Joseon for its own self-interest.
This Ming intervention was — something the Inca did not have. The Inca could receive no reinforcement from outside. The Andes were cut off from the Eurasian system. There was no civilization of comparable scale nearby with which to ally. By contrast, Joseon was part of the East Asian international system. Tributary relations with Ming, diplomatic relations with Japan, frontier relations with the Jurchen. This international network — helped in time of crisis.
This is the difference between international isolation and international connection. A connected civilization has greater survivability. The lesson holds in the twenty-first century.
The geography of the Korean peninsula helped Joseon. The peninsula is narrow and long. As the Japanese army advanced north, its supply lines lengthened. The cold winter came. The Japanese army was not used to severe cold. Katō Kiyomasa's force, which pushed up into Hamgyeong, suffered particularly.
The Inca empire, by contrast, lay across vast space. It was easier for the Spanish to penetrate. And the high-altitude Andean terrain cut both ways. It was familiar to the Inca, but the Spanish horse and cannon — once over the mountains — also worked rather well. Joseon's medium-scale peninsular geography was less favorable to long occupation.
And — Hideyoshi's death (1598). The material foundation of the war was the personal ambition of Hideyoshi. When he died, the Japanese ruling powers no longer had a reason to continue the war. They withdrew swiftly. Without this contingent event, the war might have lasted longer.
Five factors made Joseon's survival possible. But it did not win. Joseon paid an enormous price.
It is hard to call this "victory." Better to call it "survival". The state did not vanish. The language continued. The dynasty endured. In this sense it differed from the Inca. But the wounds were deep. And those wounds cast a shadow over the four hundred years of Korean history that followed.
Now to the third civilization. The Plains Cree (nêhiyawak).
Nêhiyawak in Cree means "the people," or "the real people." A word for oneself. Most Indigenous peoples call themselves something like this — "just the people." What does this mean? It means that to them their own people were "humanity itself." Other peoples were beings requiring separate categorization.
The Cree are a vast linguistic group. They are spread across an enormous area of central North America — Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec in Canada. By dialect they divide into several subgroups:
Among these, the Plains Cree were the largest group. Until the nineteenth century their numbers are estimated at over 100,000. Their traditional economy was the hunting of buffalo (the North American bison). A nomadic hunting culture migrating with the seasons.
The Montana First Nation to which my sister Debbie belongs is one inheritor of the Plains Cree tradition. One of the four Plains Cree nations at Maskwacis.
Maskwacis in Cree means "Bear Hills." Central Alberta, about 90 kilometers south of Edmonton. Low rolling hills and pine forest. The classic plains-forest border country of western Canada.
Four Cree First Nations live together here:
These four communities were signatories of Treaty 6 (1876). One of a series of treaties between the Canadian federal government and the plains Indigenous peoples. The official name is "Treaty No. 6."
In August 1876, at present-day Fort Carlton and Fort Pitt in Saskatchewan, a Canadian government delegation met with several Plains Cree chiefs.⁶ After several days of negotiation, Treaty 6 was signed.
The official content of the treaty — from the Canadian government's perspective — was that the Indigenous peoples "surrendered" their rights to their territories, and in exchange the government would provide reserve allocations, annual cash payments, education, medical care, and agricultural support. The written treaty was drafted in English. There was Cree interpretation, but it was not a complete translation.
The Indigenous understanding of the treaty was entirely different.⁷ In Cree tradition, a treaty was "a promise of peace." Two peoples — as equal sovereigns — would promise coexistence and mutual support. The concept of "surrendering land" did not exist in Cree. The land was life, and life cannot be surrendered.
The Cree chiefs signed the treaty under the pressure of circumstance. As we shall see, the conditions of their survival were collapsing. They needed government support. The treaty promised that support. The chiefs signed the treaty as they understood it — as a promise of peace and mutual aid. They could not have foreseen that the Canadian government would interpret that document as a surrender of land.
This gap of translation is decisive. It is the same structure as Atahualpa not properly understanding Valverde's "Requirement" at Cajamarca. The side with power produces the official document in its own recorded language, and that document holds binding force for centuries afterward. This is how legal asymmetry works.
Before the treaty — and what made the treaty necessary — was the buffalo slaughter.
The North American great plains once held about 60 million buffalo.⁸ The entire survival base of the great plains Indigenous civilization — Plains Cree, Blackfoot, Sioux, Lakota, Cheyenne, Arapaho — rested on this enormous animal. From the buffalo they took meat, hide, horn, bone, sinew — almost everything they needed for life.
By around 1850 the buffalo still numbered in the tens of millions. In the 1870s — a rapid massacre began. The causes were compound.⁹
The last factor matters most. The U.S. military and the Canadian government actively encouraged the buffalo slaughter. The reason: to subdue Indigenous peoples. With the buffalo gone, the Indigenous peoples could be confined to reserves. Stripped of their resource base, the Indigenous peoples would depend on government rations.
The famous remark of U.S. General Philip Sheridan in the 1870s: "These men have done more in the last two years to settle the vexed Indian question than the entire regular army has done in the last thirty years. They are destroying the Indians' commissary. Send them powder and lead, if you will, to kill the last buffalo."¹⁰
The policy succeeded. By around 1890 the buffalo were on the brink of extinction. Only a few thousand remained. The entire way of life of the great plains Indigenous peoples collapsed. They began to starve. They were driven onto reserves. They became dependent on government rations.
The Canadian historian James Daschuk documented this process precisely in his 2013 book Clearing the Plains.¹¹ His subtitle is decisive: "Disease, Politics of Starvation, and the Loss of Aboriginal Life."
His argument: the Canadian government used hunger as a deliberate political tool. They weakened Indigenous peoples and then had them sign treaties. Then, even within the reserves, they limited rations to maintain compliance. This was not "an unavoidable tragedy" but calculated policy.
Look at the logic — it is the same as the logic by which Spain worked Indigenous slaves to death in the Caribbean. The same as the logic by which Indigenous laborers were killed by mercury at Potosí. The same as the logic by which slaves were used up in Caribbean sugar plantations. Different geography and time — but the structure is identical. The same logic returns wearing a different face.
After the buffalo were gone, after the Indigenous peoples were confined to reserves — came the next stage of the system. Cultural annihilation.
The Canadian government enacted the Indian Act in 1876. This law would regulate every aspect of Indigenous life for the next 150 years. One of its provisions was the residential school system.¹²
Indigenous children were forcibly separated from their families and placed in government- and church-run residential schools. There they were made to speak only English (or French), and the use of Cree was forbidden. Their traditional clothing was stripped and replaced with European dress. Their long hair was cut. They were given English names. They were drilled in Christian doctrine.
The goal: "Kill the Indian in the child." The phrase was used as official policy. In both the United States and Canada.
The residential schools operated from 1884 to 1996. Canada had a total of 139 schools. About 150,000 Indigenous children passed through them. Of these, thousands did not return — to disease, malnutrition, abuse, suicide, deaths during attempted escape.
One of the largest schools of this system was — the Ermineskin Indian Residential School. Located in Maskwacis. That is, the school built in Debbie's community.¹³
Opened in 1895. Run by the Catholic Church (the Oblate order). Officially closed in 1975. Eighty years of operation. Thousands of Maskwacis Cree children spent their childhoods at this school. They lost their language, their tradition, their connection to their families.
When this school's name comes up in conversation with Debbie, her voice changes. Her mother, her aunts, attended this school. And their wounds — were passed on, to the next generation, and the one after. What is called intergenerational trauma. This is not merely a psychological term. A great deal of the present problems of Maskwacis — alcohol dependence, suicide rate, poverty — began in this school.
In the twenty-first century this history was thrown into the light again. In 2015 Canada's Truth and Reconciliation Commission released its final report. It officially defined this system as "cultural genocide."¹⁴
From 2021, unmarked graves began to be found at several residential school sites. Thousands of children's graves confirmed by ground-penetrating radar. The discovery shook all of Canada.
On July 25, 2022, Pope Francis visited Maskwacis. At the site of the Ermineskin residential school — he made an official apology. "I humbly beg forgiveness from God for the evil committed by so many Christians against the Indigenous peoples. This evil was committed in the name of evangelization, but it was actually contrary to the Gospel."¹⁵
The meaning of this apology is complex. To many Indigenous people it came too late. It was not enough. An apology cannot bring back what was lost. But — the fact that it happened is a fact. It is rare in the history of the Catholic Church for a pope to issue a formal apology for colonial violence.
Many residential school survivors died without hearing the apology. And their children and grandchildren — stood in their place to receive it. This is a particular form of intergenerational justice. The wound of one generation is taken up in the healing of the next. This delay — is the particular temporal character of this structure.
And one more thing — the recovery of the name.
Maskwacis was called "Hobbema" from the nineteenth century until 2014. The name came from the nineteenth-century Dutch landscape painter Meindert Hobbema (1638–1709). In 1891 the then-president of the Canadian Pacific Railway built a railway station in the area and, on a whim and to his own taste, gave it this name.¹⁶
Why did the Indigenous people get the name of a European painter? Nobody asked. Nobody consented. The name of a region was imposed from outside. For more than a century it was called by that name.
On January 1, 2014, the four communities of Maskwacis officially decided. To return to the original name — Maskwacis, "Bear Hills." The Canadian federal government recognized it. The maps changed. The road signs changed. The postal addresses changed.¹⁷
Is this a small victory? It is small. Changing one name does not undo historical injustice. The buffalo do not return. The dead of the residential schools do not come back. Intergenerational trauma is not healed.
But it is not small. A name is an act of self-determination. To refuse an identity imposed from outside and to call oneself from within. This is the basic unit of the decolonial process. And — it is evidence that the Cree community is alive. If the community had been entirely dismantled, who could have made this decision? There were people to make it. There was a community council. There was a process of decision-making. All living.
I have to make one thing clear at the close of this section. The Cree are alive.
Look at population alone — Canada's official Cree population is currently about 350,000.¹⁸ This is the largest single Indigenous group in Canada. It includes various subgroups, but this is still the number who identify themselves as Cree.
Language — Cree (nêhiyawêwin and other dialects) is one of the most widely spoken Indigenous languages in Canada. About over 100,000 still speak it. Across all generations — though some young people are tilted toward English, Cree is still heard in many homes.¹⁹
Culture — traditional ceremonies continue. Pipe ceremonies, sweat lodges, sun dances, potlatches (with regional variations). Many communities are officially restoring these ceremonies. Things forbidden in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries have been allowed and restored from the late twentieth century onward.
Politics — each Cree nation maintains self-government. Chiefs and councils. Their own education, social welfare, economic development. There remain many constraints in the relationship with the Canadian federal government — but a real space of self-determination exists.
All of this — survived after enduring the harshest 400 years of colonial assault. If the Inca suffered military collapse, the Cree underwent a long, gradual policy of dismantling. But the dismantling was not complete. Debbie's voice is the evidence. She prays in Cree. Her grandchildren learn Cree. The name of Bear Hills has come back.
"That we did not die" — what she said to me. This is the conclusion of this section.
Compare the experiences of the three civilizations structurally. Five criteria.
Criterion 1 — Political structure
| Civilization | Structure | Vulnerability / resilience |
|---|---|---|
| Inca | Centralized empire | Whole system paralyzed when center collapses |
| Joseon | Central dynasty + local autonomy | Provinces functional even in central crisis |
| Cree | Tribal confederation | No center, hence no single point to strike |
The extreme centralization of the Inca was their vulnerability. When one emperor was captured at Cajamarca, the empire was paralyzed. Joseon had a central dynasty, but local self-government was developed. Even when the king fled, provincial yangban and militias organized themselves. The Cree had no centralized power to begin with. This structure — paradoxically — meant there was no "single point to strike". The Canadian government had to deal with each band individually. The process was long and slow. Total destruction was impossible.
Criterion 2 — Internal cohesion
| Civilization | Condition | Result |
|---|---|---|
| Inca | In civil war (Huáscar vs. Atahualpa) | Spain exploited the division |
| Joseon | Ethnic and linguistic cohesion | No internal faction Japan could side with |
| Cree | Cohesion within bands | Government attempted to divide bands (partly successful) |
Criterion 3 — Language and record
| Civilization | Condition | Result |
|---|---|---|
| Inca | Multilingual, no script (quipu) | Loss of records through quipu burning |
| Joseon | Single language, Hangul + Hanja | Continuous written record preserved culture |
| Cree | Cree language (oral-centered), later syllabics | Oral tradition vulnerable, but long-term recovery |
Criterion 4 — Technological gap
| Civilization | Vis-à-vis the invader | Result |
|---|---|---|
| Inca | Decisive technological gap | Direct confrontation impossible |
| Joseon | Comparable or superior in cannon and naval technology | Reversal possible at sea |
| Cree | Decisive technological gap | Direct military resistance limited |
Criterion 5 — Mode of conquest
| Civilization | Mode | Character |
|---|---|---|
| Inca | Military + religion (immediate) | Rapid state collapse |
| Joseon | Military invasion (short-term) | Short duration, state preserved |
| Cree | Treaty + starvation + residential schools (gradual) | Long duration, cultural crisis |
What this table shows. Different modes of conquest produce different results. The Inca underwent rapid military collapse. Joseon took an intense short-term shock. The Cree underwent gradual dismantling across generations.
It is hard to say which of these three is "worse." All three were catastrophe. But the form differed, and the outcome differed.
From this comparison I extract five lessons. All still relevant in the twenty-first century.
Lesson 1 — The decisive role of internal cohesion.
The Inca civil war versus Joseon's cohesion. External penetration enters where there is internal fissure. A fully cohesive society — resists external penetration. Total cohesion is, of course, an illusion, but a minimal shared identity is the basic condition of resistance.
This lesson holds for present-day Korea as well. If we cultivate internal division — the outside exploits it. The stoking of conflict between citizens, the manufacturing of generational opposition, the widening of regional rifts — all of these create entry points for penetration. As cohesion weakens, penetration becomes easier.
Lesson 2 — The relative position of technology.
An absolute technological gap is fatal. But where the gap is not total resistance is possible. Joseon's naval technology was world-class, which is what made Yi Sun-sin's victories possible. The Cree, against guns and railroads, were limited in direct military resistance.
In the twenty-first century — this is a question of technological self-reliance. Korea's holding world-class capability in semiconductors, AI, biotech is not merely an economic question. It is a national survival strategy. A civilization without technology — becomes the dependent of one that has it.
Lesson 3 — The preservation of script and memory.
Hangul contributed to Joseon culture's resilience. The Cree oral tradition was vulnerable, but the Cree syllabics (ᓀᐦᐃᔭᐍᐏᐣ) developed in the nineteenth century became important. In this script Bible translations, newspapers, and letters were written. Imperfect — but a means of recording existed.¹⁹
In the twenty-first century — this is also a question of digital records. Who holds the data? Whose servers store it? How alive is one's own language on the internet? These questions decide the technological foundation of a civilization's survival.
Lesson 4 — The two-faced nature of "treaties".
A treaty = the establishment of a legal relationship. On the surface, peaceful. But a treaty under power asymmetry becomes a deception. Treaty 6 taught the Cree this. Joseon's Treaty of Ganghwa (1876), the Eulsa Treaty (1905), the Annexation Treaty (1910) were of the same structure. Japan claims these were "legal treaties." But the basis of their legality was coercion and inequality.
Domination wearing the face of peace. This is one of the most dangerous forms. Because the language of resistance is hard to find. Where there is military invasion, resistance is obvious. But the framework of "treaty" — turns resistance into "breaking the law."
Lesson 5 — Destiny is not determinism.
This is the most important lesson. The destinies of the three civilizations differed. The Inca and the Cree had similar structural vulnerabilities (the Cree's lack of a center, the Inca's expansionist empire), but the outcomes differed. Joseon was in some ways less prepared (the delayed adoption of the musket, the side effects of two centuries of peace), yet survived.
Structure is powerful, but not total. Within structure, the choices of individuals and groups can change the outcome. Had Yi Sun-sin chosen differently, Joseon's destiny would have been different. Had Manco Inca chosen different tactics, history after Ollantaytambo would have been different. The fact that people like Debbie did not abandon their identity but kept it is one reason the Cree are alive today.
Structure and choice work together. To focus on either alone is to misread history.
Now to the most personal section. To my own location, which has carried this whole chapter.
I was born in Korea. I was educated in Seoul. Korean is my mother tongue. My ancestors — presumably — went through the Imjin War, went through the Manchu invasion, went through the Japanese colonial period, went through the Korean War. Their wounds were passed to me as genetic, cultural, personal memory. This is the ground I stand on.
And on top of that ground — from 1997 onward, for nearly seventeen years — has lain a long companionship with one community on the great plains of North America. Ten days each year. Visits that began as mission work became, with the years, relationships. Sharing meals, sharing prayer, sharing celebration, sharing grief. I learned a portion of the community's language (never reaching fluency), I took part in ceremony, I sat at their weddings and funerals. In one of those years a family received me as kin, and Debbie became my sister. That reception was not a demand that I cease to be Korean. To be their kin while remaining Korean. That is the gift they gave me.
So I am not someone caught between "two identities." My identity is still Korean. There is, however, another community within my life. I cannot speak for them, and they cannot speak for me. We stand in different places. But — there is the relationship of standing beside that nearly seventeen years of companionship has formed. That relationship is why I am writing this chapter.
I have not, in fact, ever been asked to prove anything in the Cree community. Debbie's family received me without conditions. I have occasionally been asked, in Korean society, "Why do you involve yourself with an Indigenous community?" — but that was simple curiosity, not the coloniality of being operating on my body. I want to make this clear honestly.
And yet, precisely because I stood beside, I learned that the very structure of the question is a weapon. Not the question I received, but the questions my sister and her nieces and nephews had received all their lives. "Are you Cree enough?" "Why can you not adapt to modern society?" "Why is your language disappearing?" These look like questions but they already presuppose an answer. Normality lies on the side of the questioner, and the burden of proof falls on the one questioned. This is the structure in which Indigenous people stood at the Council of Valladolid. Five hundred years later, only the names have changed; it is still operating.
This was the structure I saw, standing beside. In the Cree community, in the Indigenous villages of the Andes, in the postwar zainichi Korean community in Japan. The same grammar in different languages.
The reason I can occupy this place is simple. I am inside Korean society. I am inside academia. I am inside the language of Western scholarship. From this position — to expose, from inside, the structure of questions my own society poses — that is the share of the one who stands beside. Not to fight on behalf of Indigenous people. I have no right to do so. Only to speak, from within the world to which I belong, of the traps in the questions that world directs at the other. That is what this chapter does, and what this whole book does.
Debbie's "They are our people." This single sentence opened this chapter — and closes this section.
When she says it — she includes the Inca. That the Cree and Koreans are "siblings" — she and I have known through sixteen years of relationship. She now extends — "our people" — to the Inca descendants of the Andes. Why?
Her logic is not complicated. Those who have undergone the same experience are kin to one another. People who have been hit by the same wave. People who have endured the same kind of suffering. People who have undertaken the same kind of survival. They are — even without shared blood — kin. This is the Cree concept of "kinship." Wahkohtowin. "Everything is connected as kin."
For me this concept has been — the hidden center of the entire book. Why I came to Cusco, why I am writing this book, why I tell the Inca and Joseon and Cree stories together — all is because of Wahkohtowin. To put it in other forms:
These are all the same act. Expressed in different languages. Called by different names. But the structure is identical.
And Wetiko — the system that calls these acts foolish, that classifies them as "superstition," that classifies the people who do them as "less civilized" — this system was the common enemy of all three civilizations.
"They are our people." They are our people. And — at the same time — we are theirs.
While writing this chapter I put down the pen and went outside. I walked to the Plaza de Armas. The center of Cusco. Five hundred years ago Túpac Amaru was tied to four horses in the middle of this square, his body torn, and beheaded. The place where the last Inca royal line was severed. The place of the daily official rituals of colonial administration. Now an ordinary square where tourists and residents mix to drink coffee and take photographs.
The afternoon I arrived — there were people gathered. Some festival. Several groups of young Peruvians were dancing traditional dances. Brightly colored pollera skirts, feathered headdresses, masks, quena flutes and charango strings. At the edges of the square the older people were clapping, the grandmothers were handing out sweets to the children, and tourists were also standing in the circle, keeping the rhythm.
I sat on a stone bench at the side of the square and watched for a long time. And slowly I noticed — what was at work in this square at this moment was the four axes of Buen Vivir.
Ayni — reciprocity. The dancer and the watcher, the player and the clapper. Neither side is one-way. The dance calls forth the clapping, and the clapping pushes the dance up. The give-and-take does not stop.
Minka — collective work. This dance is not the performance of a single person. Dozens are weaving it together. The one who prepared the costumes, the one who led the rehearsal, the one who carried the instruments, the one who arranged the time at the square — invisibly, all of them have made this space together.
Pachamama — relation with the earth. The stones of this square, the line of the Andean peaks above, the cold air — the dance is together with all of them. Not in an indoor theater but on the earth. Each time a sole touches the ground, a prayer repeats.
Tinkuy — encounter. Old and young, locals and tourists, Quechua-speakers and Spanish-speakers, Peruvians and the Korean from Korea. The point where different people meet. Tinkuy in Quechua means "the place where different streams join." The square was, literally, becoming such a place.
Five hundred years ago an Inca king was executed on this spot. On that same spot now — descendants of the Inca were dancing their own culture, of their own free will, gladly, before scores of onlookers. Not on permission. Not for a commemoration. Just on an afternoon, in everyday clothes, as part of their lives.
I will remember this scene for a long time. Because this single moment overturns the argument of this whole chapter. Read by numbers and statistics, the Indigenous peoples lost. But in the square it does not look like loss. The same is true on the northern plains. At the powwow at Maskwacis the same thing happens. Exactly the same four axes — reciprocity, collective work, the earth, encounter — repeat in a different language, at a different rhythm, in the same structure.
"That we did not die." Debbie's sentence was being proven in this square. The descendants of the Inca did not die. The descendants of Joseon did not die. The descendants of the Cree did not die. The three civilizations stood, each in their own way, in the square.
After writing this chapter — I sat for a long time looking out the window. Cusco at night. The cold air of the Andean plateau. The black silhouettes of the mountains in the distance. Beyond them, north — across Panama, Mexico, the U.S. Rockies — lie the Canadian plains. And on their western edge — Maskwacis lies.
And somewhere between the Andes and the plains — my other homeland. Across the Pacific, north, the Korean peninsula. Seoul. The city where I was born.
Beneath the same night sky, three lands. Cusco. Maskwacis. Seoul. Three places that, by latitude and longitude, are different points on the earth. But read by the wave of history — they are different shores of the same current. Three places where the same system arrived in different faces.
And — in each place, people are living. Rising in the morning to work, raising children, remembering their ancestors, loving, dying. The everyday they make — in all three lands — is a continuous quiet resistance against Wetiko. They are not monumental. They are not heroes. But the daily act by which they — remember their own ancestors in their own community's language — keeps this system from total victory.
They are our people.
I write the sentence again. I want it engraved beneath the title of this chapter.
This chapter ends the diagnosis. Even beneath five hundred years of wounds, there were other paths. In the chapters that follow we meet those other paths — the way of dwelling within one another, the way connected to flow. These paths are not forgotten. They have only been buried. Dig them up and they are still there.
In Debbie's language — Wahkohtowin. Everything is connected as kin. This Cree concept becomes the starting point for the story to come.
¹ On estimates of the population loss in the Imjin War, see Lee Tae-jin, "The Imjin War and Joseon Society," Yeoksahakbo 157 (1998): 179–210. A 30–40% reduction is commonly proposed, though estimates vary by researcher.
² On the size of Imjin War militias, see Samuel Hawley, The Imjin War (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), chapter 5.
³ On Imjin War warrior monks, see Choi Wan-su, Seokjeonjip: Master Seosan Hyujeong (Seoul: Jisik Saneopsa, 2001).
⁴ On Ming intervention, see Kenneth M. Swope, A Dragon's Head and a Serpent's Tail: Ming China and the First Great East Asian War, 1592–1598 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2009).
⁵ On the subgroups of the Cree, see James G. E. Smith, "Western Woods Cree," in Handbook of North American Indians: Subarctic, vol. 6, ed. June Helm (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1981), 256–270.
⁶ On the negotiation of Treaty 6, see Sharon Venne, "Understanding Treaty 6: An Indigenous Perspective," in Aboriginal and Treaty Rights in Canada, ed. Michael Asch (Vancouver: UBC Press, 1997), 173–207.
⁷ On the Indigenous interpretation of Treaty 6, see Harold Cardinal and Walter Hildebrandt, Treaty Elders of Saskatchewan: Our Dream Is That Our Peoples Will One Day Be Clearly Recognized as Nations (Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 2000).
⁸ Estimates of the early-nineteenth-century North American buffalo population from Dale F. Lott, American Bison: A Natural History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002).
⁹ On the compound causes of the buffalo slaughter, see Andrew C. Isenberg, The Destruction of the Bison: An Environmental History, 1750–1920 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).
¹⁰ The remark of General Sheridan is quoted in many historical sources. The exact text is from David D. Smits, "The Frontier Army and the Destruction of the Buffalo: 1865–1883," Western Historical Quarterly 25 (1994): 312–338.
¹¹ James Daschuk, Clearing the Plains: Disease, Politics of Starvation, and the Loss of Aboriginal Life (Regina: University of Regina Press, 2013).
¹² On the Indian Act and the residential school system in Canada, see John S. Milloy, A National Crime: The Canadian Government and the Residential School System, 1879 to 1986 (Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 1999).
¹³ On the history of the Ermineskin Indian Residential School, see Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, Canada's Residential Schools: The History (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2015), part IV.
¹⁴ Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, Honouring the Truth, Reconciling for the Future: Summary of the Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (Ottawa: TRC, 2015).
¹⁵ Pope Francis's 2022 visit to Maskwacis and the apology are available as official Vatican documents. Pope Francis, "Meeting with Indigenous Peoples: First Nations, Métis and Inuit," Maskwacis, Canada, 25 July 2022.
¹⁶ On the origin of the name Hobbema, see records of the Geographical Names Board of Canada. Canadian Geographical Names Data Base.
¹⁷ On the official restoration of the name Maskwacis on 1 January 2014, see official announcements of the Maskwacis Cree Nations.
¹⁸ Statistics on the Cree population in Canada from Statistics Canada, 2021 Census.
¹⁹ On the number of Cree speakers, see Statistics Canada, Aboriginal Languages in Canada (2016 Census).