After 500 years, the world's huge debt to the wisdom of the peoples of the Americas has finally been explored by anthropologist Jack Weatherford in his book Indian Givers: How The Indians of the Americans Transformed The World.

Weatherford traces crucial contributions made by Indians to our system of government, modern medicine, agriculture, and ecology.

While this book shows how the Indians of the Americas transformed the consciousness and health of the world in myriad ways starting 500 years ago, this enormous debt has been ignored. These cultures have been mislabelled "primitive" and the destruction continues.

Yet, the world is finding itself again in the debt of Native America as it searches both for health cures and for an alternative to the values that are leading us to the brink of the Sixth Great Extinction.

World leadership has shifted to Native America as Chief Oren Lyons calls for Values Change For Survival and President Evo Morales of Bolivia recognizes The Rights of Mother Earth. Westerners flock to the Amazon to drink ayahuasca with shamans trying to recover their physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual health.

Physicists are discovering in Native American languages the best means for expressing the ideas of quanum physics. Scientists are partnering with shamans to learn their vast botanical knowledge.