Even today, the navigators of Polynesia can name 250 stars in the night sky. These are sailors who can sense the presence of a distant group of islands beyond the horizon simply by watching the reverberation of waves across the hull of their vessels. These are men and women who, in the hulls of their sacred canoes, can identify a dozen distinct wave patterns, distinguishing waves caused by local weather systems from the great currents that pulsate across the ocean and can be followed with the same ease that a terrestrial explorer can follow a river to the sea. Indeed, if you took all the genius that allowed us to put a man on the moon and applied it to understanding the ocean, what you get is Polynesia.

Culture is not trivial. It is not decorative, it is not feathers and bells. It is not even the songs we sing or the prayers we utter, all of which are symbols of our culture. Culture is a body of ethical and moral values wrapped around each individual that keeps at bay the barbaric heart which history teaches us lies just beneath the surface of every human being. It is culture that allows us to make sense out of sensation, to find order and meaning in a universe which has none. It is culture that allows us as individuals to reach always, as Lincoln said, for the better angels of our nature.

As cultural roots wither, individuals often remain shadows of their former selves, caught in time, unable to return to the past yet denied any real possibility of securing a place in the world whose values they may seek to emulate and whose wealth they long to acquire. The fate of the vast majority who sever their ties with their traditions will not be to attain the prosperity of the West but to join the legions of urban poor, trapped in squalor, struggling to survive. This is a very dangerous and explosive situation. Anthropology teaches that when people and cultures are squeezed, extreme ideologies sometimes emerge, inspired by strange and unexpected beliefs. Al Qaeda, the Maoists in Nepal, the Shining Path in Peru, the Khmer Rouge of Pol Pot—all these malevolent groups emerged out of chaotic conditions of cultural disintegration and disenfranchisement. So the plight of indigenous peoples' cultural survival is not only a matter of human rights but also of geo-political stability.

This is not to suggest that cultures should be reduced to zoological specimens in a rain forest park of the mind. Change is the one constant. All peoples are always dancing with new possibilities for life. Neither change nor technology is a threat to culture. The Lakota Sioux didn't stop being Sioux when they gave up the bow and arrow for the rifle any more than American farmers stopped being farmers when they gave up the horse and plow for the tractor.

No one should be denied the brilliance of modernity. If I rip my arm off in a car accident, I don't want to be taken to an herbalist, and nor does anyone else. Our goal should not be to freeze cultures in time but to find ways to allow all peoples to engage in the brilliance of modernity without that engagement demanding the death of their ethnicity.