have persevered have done so by forcing themselves to remember that they will have that land back someday. Their sense of place is not some "heaven" attainable only after death, but an earth-bound, real-life geographic entity that, for whatever reason, gave birth to their particular character.
A more dangerous sense of displacement exists today than ever before, though. It is the threat of displacement through destruction of the environment. It is more identity-threatening than that of geographic displacement because it is permanent.
Mentioned above was inclusion of Native Americans as victims of an uprooting diaspora; it is impossible to say at this moment whether or not they will persevere as a people. The history of the Native American in the United States provides parallels with our present dilemma. They were gradually deprived of their homelands and, through ill-conceived treaties and war-wrought reservations, forced to live in connections with the earth both distant physically and psychologically from the needs of their core culture. At this stage in Native American history, there is no hope of regaining those lands,
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