Interview with Dr. Vandana Shiva on sustainability, seed banks, organic agriculture, and spirituality

Uploaded by DedanZumbi on Jan 9, 2012

This is what the male interviewer says about the interview:

Dr. Vandana Shiva and I speak on sustainable ecological agriculture and how it relates to the environmental, culture, nationality and spirituality. I was a bit nervous meeting my heroine and kinda sick from the new Indian environment.

2 Spirits: Native Lesbians and Gay Men : Osa Hidalgo de la Riva for Royal Eagle-Bear Productions

image is from here

I support Indigenist struggles to regain land and everything else that was and continues to be stolen from Indigenous people worldwide, including the means and methods to name their own experience and struggles without those names and efforts being colonised and controlled by whites. I also think for those of us who are not Indigenous or Two Spirit, it is important to be responsible allies in the struggles of multiply oppressed and genocidally threatened people.

Please click on the link, *here*, to view and listen to a video on Two-Spirited Activists and spokespeople.

Harold Camping: Another 15 Minutes of Rapture

These white Christian fundamentalist evangelists are violent. Their heterosexism, sexism, racism, and moralistic CRAP is a form of social violence against many groups of people: women, people of color, the poor, Indigenous people, and LGBTIA (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Intergender, Intersex, Asexual) folks. That means their violence harms most of us. And, contrary to some of their beliefs, they aren't leaving some time today. They may well be packed and ready. But they're unfortunately not going anywhere.

One day, perhaps, these white racist, heterosexist, pro-patriarchal paliens will be taken from Earth leaving the non-human animals, non-Christian fundamentalist evangelists, air, plant life, sea, and land to live together in peace. This gay, intergender, profeminist Jew will pray this to happen sooner than later.

***Here is more on this from HuffPo***.

How WHM supremacists protect one another's privileges and entitlements. Cases in point: The Roman Catholic Church, Ken Wilber, Andrew Cohen, and David Christopher Lane

photo of Andrew Cohen and Ken Wilber is from here

With thanks to theoreticalgrrrl for inspiring this post.

Whatever men's ages, if men serially prey on other people for their own sexual, political gain, out of a sense of entitlement to do so, this behavior--the rapist's behavior, the child molester's behavior, the incest perpetrator's behavior, will be called "childish" and "immature" (read: not only not adult behavior, but not at all gendered behavior) and many other things that deny a crucial component of how it is men abuse so many times with so little accountability: it's because they are adult, grown men. They aren't boys if they're men, and I wish other men would stop excusing men's oppressive adult actions as if they were happening only because there's some inner child acting out, who only needs therapy, not permanent removal from society. Case in point: David Christopher Lane's pro-patriarchal analysis of serial abuser Andrew Cohen, who posed as a spiritual leader in order to gain intimate access to many victims.What has Andrew's colleague, and very well-followed author and god-figure to many, Ken Wilber, got to say about Andrew's abuses?

Ken? What have you got to say?

For more on Ken's chummy relationship with Andrew, please see *here*. For critical discussion about their work, including their work together, please see *here*, and please check if there is any discussion at all about both men's many forms of privilege, and their many entitlements to abuse because of those privileges.

It should not be too difficult to get this:

Men consuming pornography of raped and incested girls and women, men committing all manner of heinous political/spiritual violations and social degradations of girls and women, and some boys and men too, are not being boys, folks. They're behaving as men, if and when they're men, unless it is the case that they truly do not have the cognition and mental functioning of an adult, in which case they still are not boys, but are impaired men--regardless of their level of functionality, their behavior is generally registered by victims as occurring from a grown man, not a boy-child.

If a boy was doing what they were doing--sexually assaulting many other children and assaulting young or older adults too, they wouldn't get away with it. Men usually get away with it, because they have the status of being both males and adults, and also because they do very adult things to accomplish their decades of crimes, such as plan and execute financially or socially successful careers which place them in close proximity to the people they wish to abuse. (Children don't do that.) Raping people isn't a "childish" activity. It's a male supremacist adult man's activity, far too often.

See below to read one small example of how this patriarchal protection racket works. It's a White Boy's Club, all right, except that the adult members are all men. It's the same damned deal with the adult male preachers who the Catholic Church wants to pretend were not abusing children. The Church--a huge institution of patriarchal men of varying sexual orientations--has recently attempted to avoid the term "pedophile priests", claiming the victims' ages don't place the perps in that category--because the Church, which protects such abuses of children, of minors, says so. Got it.

I'm all for banning the term "pedophile" as I've stated on this blog before. We don't call rapists "woman-lovers" and we ought not call rapers of children "child-lovers". But I'm not for pretending that people who are legally children are called "not children" only when it serves a vastly criminal Catholic Church (led overwhelmingly by white male supremacist men) to do so.

Reality check:

"Bishops ignore and conceal child sex crimes because they can," said David Clohessy of the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests (SNAP). "So any 'reform' that doesn't diminish bishops' power and discretion is virtually meaningless." (source: *here*)

It's no different with any man who abuses serially. He does it because he can, and society won't do anything to lessen his social-political power to abuse others both interpersonally and institutionally. Men form institutions inside which they can and do abuse people with less power than they support one another having. If an institution is patriarchal--whether religious, legal, political, cultural, medical, or academic--the fact of it being patriarchal means abuse against women and children is happening there, and that exact abuse is being protected by fucked up, if normal, brotherhoods of men.

Everything that follows is from IntegralWorld.net.

David Christopher Lane, Ph.D. Professor of Philosophy, Mt. San Antonio College Lecturer in Religious Studies, California State University, Long Beach Author of Exposing Cults: When the Skeptical Mind Confronts the Mystical (New York and London: Garland Publishers, 1994) and The Radhasoami Tradition: A Critical History of Guru Succession (New York and London: Garland Publishers, 1992). For the reviewed book and its author see: www.americanguru.net

Andrew Cohen
Exposed

A Review of "American Guru"

David Lane

After reading William Yenner's edited volume, AMERICAN GURU: A Story of Love, Betrayal and Healing—Former Students of Andrew Cohen Speak Out, I felt a number of emotions, ranging from depression, to anger, to frustration, to disbelief, to finally gratitude.

My first encounter with an Andrew Cohen devotee occurred several years ago when one of the editors of their slick magazine, What is Enlightenment? (now called, EnlightenNext), wrote me a personal letter asking for my appraisement of her guru. She had read a book I had co-authored with Professor Scott Lowe (University of Wisconsin) entitled "DA: The Strange Case of Franklin Jones" (Walnut, MSAC: 1995), which harshly criticized the late American guru. She clearly saw problems with Da Free John and I got the impression that she felt that Andrew Cohen was different and perhaps a genuine spiritual master.

I hesitated in writing back because I had read enough about Andrew Cohen to almost immediately realize that he, like Da Free John, suffered from an acute case of adolescent narcissism. In other words, both of these so-called spiritual teachers had yet to grow-up and act like mature adults. When they don't get their way and cannot control the behavior of their fawning devotees (which happens a bit more frequently than one might at first suspect), they have hissy fits. Da Free John would invariably go into one of his spiritual sulks or lash out in an indignant rage if he felt that his disciples didn't "get" his teachings.

In Yenner's explosively revealing book, American Guru, we learn that Andrew Cohen displays all sorts of loutish behavior when his disciples don't kowtow to his every neurotic whim. Women devotees especially receive harsh treatment from Andrew Cohen, including his own mother who eventually left him and exposed her son in her ironically titled book, The Mother of God.

What an outsider might find both unbelievable and astounding is how so many very bright and men and women can be so hoodwinked by a guru like Andrew Cohen who has never impressed me (unlike Da Free John, for instance) as being particularly intelligent or insightful. He reminds me of someone I knew in high school who got picked on and perhaps roughed up a bit by other students (for maybe not being athletic enough in gym or sharp enough in algebra class), and who vowed early on to someday get his revenge.

Andrew Cohen doesn't at all act like an enlightened guru passing on valuable gems of wisdom. Rather, he acts like a spoiled brat who suffers from a chronic case of high school insecurity and has finally discovered a way to get even.

And who does he get even with? Those spiritual seekers who are naïve enough to transfer over to Andrew Cohen their deep-seated yearnings, their love, and, finally, their wallets and purses. Even Andrew Cohen's obvious infatuation with Ken Wilber is indicative of Cohen's chronic intellectual insecurity. Cohen's and Wilber's tete-a-tete is grounded in their own self-interests, but the fact that Ken Wilber has aligned himself once again with an abusive self-proclaimed guru, such as Andrew Cohen, speaks volumes about Wilber's so-called "integrity".

Ken Wilber has never fully admitted how mistaken he was about Da Free John and his nefarious actions (lamely back-peddling, albeit slightly, only after the New York born guru was exposed in the national media). It is all too clear that Wilber hasn't a clue about the gurus he associates with or endorses. Or, to put it in a darker [read: whiter] light, it seems as if Ken Wilber will chummy up with any guru provided he or she will give him a featured section in their monthly journal.

I have read a large number of books that have exposed modern spiritual leaders and their organizations, including The Bare-Face Messiah (L. Ron Hubbard), Monkey on a Stick (the Hare Krishna movement, Life 102: What To Do When Your Guru Sues You (John-Roger Hinkins), etc. I think that American Guru is a valuable addition to the growing literature devoted to exposing fraudulent gurus.

American Guru is not a mean-spirited book. It is, rather, a refreshingly honest one. I think American Guru should be required reading for all of Andrew Cohen's past and present students. Hopefully, it will be read by every spiritual seeker before they make a choice of becoming a student of this so-called master who cannot even reconcile with his own mother.

I personally think Andrew Cohen is in deep need of long term therapy. The first step in his recovery process should be for him to sit down and read American Guru closely line by line. After doing such, he should apologize first to his mother and then to every student he has ever taken under his wing. Hopefully, he will then refund whatever money he has manipulatively gathered in his name.

I don't think any of this is likely, but I do have confidence that anyone who reads American Guru will be properly forewarned not to buy into any of Andrew Cohen's childish antics.

If you are on the fence about Andrew Cohen and his methods, American Guru will help you get off it and provide you with enough telling detail (and, hopefully, some confidence) to walk away from this spiritual poser. His mother did and so should we all.

William Yenner, American Guru: A Story of Love, Betrayal and Healing-former students of Andrew Cohen speak out, Epigraph Publishing, 2009.

Indigenist Action Alert: Civil Rights and Civil Liberties don't apply to All People: PROTECT GLEN COVE (Vallejo, CA).

Photo Corrina Gould. Photo is from here

Tribal members fulfilled their part of what was thought to be an interim agreement, including taking down tents used for sleeping during the around the clock ceremonies. GVRD however has now refused to do anything they had agreed to do, while stepping up the police presence and monitoring of the ceremony.

Support for the efforts of tribal members to protect the site continues to grow. Last night over 50 people gathered for ceremonies and to welcome Mohave and Chemehuevi visitors from the Colorado River Indian Tribes who came to express their solidarity and encouragement.

Sunday evening begins Yom HaShoah, or Nazi Holocaust Remembrance Day. Which means we who are U.S. Jews--as well as non-Jews--ought not forget the genocides happening all around us.

Genocide has lots of components: stopping specific groups of people from living their lives is part of it. Also: occupying their land, preventing people from practicing their religion, from being able to gather and protest. And threatening specific groups of people with cultural and physical extinction is also part of it. How it is that we allow genocide in this country--this allegedly GREAT country that portrays itself as against things like genocide and racism--is beyond me.

I see this move by the Greater Vallejo Recreation Re-destruction District as a violation of people's civil rights and civil liberties to gather peacefully and to protest, and to practice their religion. This is part of a genocidal war against Indigenous people in the U.S. 

Please support the protest.

What follows is being cross-posted from Censored News with thanks to Brenda.

 

Protect Glen Cove Day 15: More Civil Rights Claims Filed

Sacred Site Protection & Rights of Indigenous Tribes (SSP&RIT).

For Immediate Release: Thursday, April 28, 2011
Contact: * Corrina Gould 510-575-8408 * Morning Star Gali (510) 827 6719 *Norman “Wounded Knee” Deocampo 707-373-7195 * Mark Anquoe (415) 680-0110

Day 15 : Spiritual Vigil and Gathering to Protect Glen Cove Sacred Site Enters 3rd Week as Greater Vallejo Recreation District Breaks Agreement to Negotiate in Good Faith

SSP&RIT Files More Civil Rights Claims Against GVRD for New Violations as Threats Against Spiritual Ceremony and Sacred Site Escalate

By Protect Glen Cove
http://protectglencove.org/

Vallejo, California – As the spiritual gathering and vigil being held by local tribal members and supporters at the sacred burial site at Glen Cove in Vallejo entered its third week, Native Americans working to protect Glen Cove filed more complaints this morning with the Attorney General of California in response to new and serious violations of civil rights by the Greater Vallejo Recreation District.

The organization Sacred Site Protection & Rights of Indigenous Tribes today filed an addendum to the civil rights complaint filed on April 13, 2011 with the State Attorney General in response to GVRD’s attempt to intimidate and limit the number of participants in the spiritual ceremony, attempts to restrict certain ceremonial practices including songs, and GVRD’s refusal to negotiate a resolution of the dispute. The new complaint also further documents the presence of cremations as well as burials at the site, highlighting the risk that bulldozing the hill poses to the ancient human remains.

In a major development, GVRD has informed the United States Department of Justice that they will not sign a proposed agreement allowing the ceremony to temporarily continue without threat of arrest, and GVRD has failed to follow through on their agreement to meet with tribal members to try to resolve the burial site dispute.
Tribal members fulfilled their part of what was thought to be an interim agreement, including taking down tents used for sleeping during the around the clock ceremonies. GVRD however has now refused to do anything they had agreed to do, while stepping up the police presence and monitoring of the ceremony.

Support for the efforts of tribal members to protect the site continues to grow. Last night over 50 people gathered for ceremonies and to welcome Mohave and Chemehuevi visitors from the Colorado River Indian Tribes who came to express their solidarity and encouragement. Hundreds of Native Americans and their supporters have pledged to peacefully defend the sacred site in response to any attempt to desecrate the site or remove the ceremony. “I dont believe any of our tribal people would agree to outright grave robbery and disturbing sacred sites. We will not allow it to happen,” said Fred Short, Spiritual Leader of the American Indian Movement and a participant in the spiritual gathering at Glen Cove.

Glen Cove is located near the intersection of South Regatta and Whitesides Drive in Vallejo. For more information and directions: www.protectglencove.org

A copy of the Civil Rights Complaint and Addendum is available by contacting Bradley Angel at Greenaction for Health and Environmental Justice

(415) 722-5270 or bradley@greenaction.org

Earth Day: March or April? And who is truly working to Take Back The Earth?

photograph of Winona LaDuke is from here

Winona LaDuke is an activist, writer, and the founding director of  WELRP. See *here* and below for more:

We work to continue, revive, and protect our native seeds, heritage crops, naturally grown fruits, animals, wild plants, traditions and knowledge of our indigenous and land-based communities; for the purpose of maintaining and continuing our culture and resisting the global, industrialized food system that can corrupt our health, freedom, and culture through inappropriate food production and genetic engineering.

From the WELRP website:

Winona LaDuke is an Anishinaabekwe (Ojibwe) enrolled member of the Mississippi Band Anishinaabeg who lives and works on the White Earth Reservations, and is the mother of three children. She is also the Executive Director of Honor the Earth, where she works on a national level to advocate, raise public support, and create funding for frontline native environmental groups.

In case you haven't noticed, there are patterns and systems at work in the destruction of the Earth. Wealthy white men, corporate capitalists, and government leaders are all key power-brokers working very hard to kill everything on Earth in order to earn profits and gain power for the very short term.

What you are likely to see in corporate media news is how whites do good things to help decrease pollution or trash. What you are not likely to see in the same media is how white men do atrocious things to Indigenous people, women and girls of all colors and nations, and the Earth.

*Here* is a discussion of the history of Earth Day by Adam Monroe, which seeks to keep the idea that it is white men who care about the Earth: a blatant lie if viewed on the collectivist level. On the systemic and collectivist level it has been Indigenous People globally who have always fought for the Earth's survival, and their own; living sustainably with the Earth traditionally, historically, is not a white cultural tradition. The white tradition is to consume everything in and on the Earth, giving back nothing but poisons, toxins, and pollutants.

*Here* is the promotion of a book that also makes the case it is the White Man who can rescue the Earth from white men. Work for the Earth by promoting and supporting the efforts of Indigenous people around the world, including by advocating for land being returned to the Indigenous people from whom it was stolen by European men. Support and remember Indigenous Feminism and Indigenist Feminists in the U.S.

End the myth of the White Male Hero. His time to lead has passed. Promote the Indigenous Woman Hero Reality. Her time has never left.

Join the Anti-Genocide Action: Religious Ceremony at Sogorea Te (aka, Glen Cove). Help Block and Stop the White Man's Bulldozers Destroying Sacred Ground

image is from here

What follows is from Censored News, with thanks to Brenda Norrell. Please click on the title below to link back.

Glen Cove: Native Americans occupy sacred place

As Bulldozers May Arrive Any Day at Ancient Burial Site, Native Americans To Occupy Sacred Land at Glen Cove in Vallejo

Spiritual Ceremony and Occupation Beginning Friday, April 15, 2011 at 8 am

Press statement

Vallejo, California (April 14, 2011) – Faced with the imminent arrival of bulldozers at the Native American sacred burial site at Glen Cove, Vallejo, members of the local Native American community will hold a religious ceremony to commence an occupation of Sogorea Te, otherwise known as Glen Cove, in the City of Vallejo beginning at 8 am on Friday, April 15, 2011. Native Americans and their supporters have vowed to physically block bulldozers or any other work that would desecrate the burial site.

Native American activists consider this to be the last stand in a struggle that has been going on for over a decade, since the Greater Vallejo Recreation District (GVRD) first proposed plans for a “fully featured public park” including construction of a paved parking lot, paved hiking trails, 1000 pound picnic tables and a public restroom on top of the 3500 year old burial site.

On Wednesday, April 13th, Sacred Site Protection and Rights of Indigenous Tribes (SSP&RIT), a Vallejo-based community organization, filed an administrative civil rights complaint to the State of California alleging that the City and GVRD are discriminating on the basis of race in threatening to destroy and desecrate significant parts of the Glen Cove Shellmound and burial site, for harming Native Americans’ religious and spiritual well-being, and effectively excluding Native Americans from their right to full participation in decision-making regarding the site.

The history and cultural value of the site has never been disputed. Human remains have been consistently unearthed as the area around the site has been developed.  Native Americans continue to hold ceremonies at Sogorea Te just as they have for thousands of years. The Glen Cove Shell Mound spans fifteen acres along the Carquinez Strait.  It is the final resting place of many Indigenous People dating back more than 3,500 years, and has served as a traditional meeting place for dozens of California Indian tribes.  The site continues to be spiritually important to California tribes. The Glen Cove site is acknowledged by GVRD and the City to have many burials and to be an important cultural site, yet they are moving forward as early as Friday with plans to build a toilet and parking lot on this sacred site and to grade a hill that likely contains human remains and important cultural artifacts.

SSP&RIT have asked GVRD to reconsider their plans to grade the hill and build toilets and a parking lot at the site.

Glen Cove is located near the intersection of South Regatta and Whitesides Drive in Vallejo.
For more information and directions: www.protectglencove.org
                                                                                               
Contact:
Norman “Wounded Knee” Deocampo 707-373-7195
Corrina Gould 510-575-8408
Mark Anquoe (415) 680 0110
Morning Star Gali (510) 827 6719
 

Posted by brendanorrell@gmail.com

The First Gay or Transsexual Caveman??? WHUCK????

image is from here

This is one of those "how about that?" stories that makes the rounds on and offline. A gay caveman?? A transsexual caveman?? It appears, verbatim, on about two and half pages--at least--of Google links.

Let's do a little bit of cultural anthropological and social-political analysis, shall we? "Caveman" and "gay" and "homosexual" and "transsexual" are all VERY white, Western, Anglo-English terms and concepts. They exist in a time and a place that is more or less "now" and "here" if you live in places where English is a first language, a mother tongue. They are all anti-Indigenous, or woefully ignorant of Indigenous societies and traditions.

Those English-language terms have no meaning outside this Anglo world. None. At all. 

The whole story pretends that these terms transcend time and place, culture and worldview. Here's one bit of proof: it doesn't occur to those who are promoting this story to wonder if the remains of the person was Two-Spirit. Why? What about asexual? What about intersex? What about intergender? What about "none of the above"? 

It doesn't occur to the people promoting this story that heterosexuality didn't exist yet. Because in so many places, it didn't exist. That term and reality is also culture-bound and is contemporary. Whether or not males and females have sex, had sex, or will have sex, is not an indication of "sexual orientation". Nor is it an indication of anything else--certainly not of what any individual welcomed or wanted regarded "sex". 

"Gender orientation" is also a contemporary concept, bound by culture and time. "Transsexual" is a new phenomenon. So is "being Gay". There's no such thing as a transsexual or gay "caveman", folks. And "caveman" is not likely a term anyone used to describe himself, if there even were people who differentiated themselves by what we now call "gender". The term "third gender" assumes there were two in a given society. Guess what? In many there were none at all. And in many Western societies it was assumed there was one--yes, one--male/man, and that female/woman was simply an inverted and inferior version of the perfect HIM. (For much more on that, see the book Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud, by Thomas Laqueur.)

The whole story is really just another racist, anglo-centric essentialising effort by some contemporary people wanting some form of attention and acclaim to pretend they can appropriate the remains of past people, disrupting and invading and violating graves and sacred spaces, into the present white Western worldview that pretends how we are now is how we all have been, everywhere. Guess what? That's not even true about NOW. Even NOW there are many ways of being, roles, duties, and preferences that don't match up at all with any English-language terms that approximate gender or sex. In some societies you do what you do--childcare or warfare, and what you do is determined by social-economic-political realities, such as how many people are there to do what needs to get done; the issue isn't "identity" as Westerners think about that, at all; it's about getting shit done.

Here's something that's much more likely in 2900-2500BECD (Before the Era of Christian Domination):  

The way that the people of that region and era conceived of things like "sexuality" and "gender" are not knowable to us. Westerners and whites ought to stop violating sacred burial sites. Period. End of story.

What follows is all from the Telegraph, *here*.

How about that?

First homosexual caveman found

Archaeologists have unearthed the 5,000-year-old remains of what they believe may have been the world's oldest known gay caveman.

Archeologists believe they have discovered a 'transsexual' or 'third gender grave' in the Czech Republic Photo: ALAMY

10:00PM BST 06 Apr 2011

 

The male body – said to date back to between 2900-2500BC – was discovered buried in a way normally reserved only for women of the Corded Ware culture in the Copper Age.

The skeleton was found in a Prague suburb in the Czech Republic with its head pointing eastwards and surrounded by domestic jugs, rituals only previously seen in female graves.

"From history and ethnology, we know that people from this period took funeral rites very seriously so it is highly unlikely that this positioning was a mistake," said lead archaeologist Kamila Remisova Vesinova.

"Far more likely is that he was a man with a different sexual orientation, homosexual or transsexual," she added.

According to Corded Ware culture which began in the late Stone Age and culminated in the Bronze Age, men were traditionally buried lying on their right side with their heads pointing towards the west, and women on their left sides with their heads pointing towards the east. Both sexes would be put into a crouching position.

The men would be buried alongside weapons, hammers and flint knives as well as several portions of food and drink to accompany them to the other side.

Women would be buried with necklaces made from teeth, pets, and copper earrings, as well as jugs and an egg-shaped pot placed near the feet.

"What we see here doesn't add up to traditional Corded Ware cultural norms. The grave in Terronska Street in Prague 6 is interred on its left side with the head facing the West. An oval, egg-shaped container usually associated with female burials was also found at the feet of the skeleton. None of the objects that usually accompany male burials  such as weapons, stone battle axes and flint knives  were found in the grave.

"We believe this is one of the earliest cases of what could be described as a 'transsexual' or 'third gender grave' in the Czech Republic," archaeologist Katerina Semradova told a press conference on Tuesday.

She said that archeologists had uncovered an earlier case dating from the Mesolithic period where a female warrior was buried as a man.

She added that Siberian shamans, or latter-day witch doctors, were also buried in this way but with richer funeral accessories to appropriate to their elevated position in society.

"But this later discovery was neither of those, leading us to believe the man was probably homosexual or transsexual," Semeradova said.

The Corded Ware culture takes its name from the frequent use of decorative cord impressions found its pots and covered much of North, Central and Eastern Europe.

It is also known as a single-grave and battleaxe culture due to separate burials and the Mena s [sic] habit of being buried with stone axes.

Photos of Radical Feminist/Conservative Indigenist Winona LaDuke with Apache Activists, Protesting the Destruction of a Sacred Mountain

Winona LaDuke's religious philosophy and political practice is a key part of this blog. I'm happy to bring you these images, but not happy for the circumstances: on-going genocide of the Apache. Winona is Anishinaabekwe (Ojibwe).

From Censored News, *here*, with thanks to Brenda. 

 

Photos Winona LaDuke with Apaches: No to telescopes on Mount Graham

San Carlos Apaches met with Winona LaDuke at Northern Arizona University to protest NAU's involvement in the telescope project on Mount Graham, which has led to destruction on the sacred mountain. Photos copyright Rick Johnson, published with permission.


Also see: 'Public records request: Did NAU dupe Indian donors?' by Center for Biological Diversity'
http://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2011/02/mount-graham-public-records-request-did.html


'Protesters NAU get off Mount Graham' by Klee Benally and MT Garcia
http://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2011/02/protesters-nau-get-off-mount-graham.htmlml

Dakota Activist, Writer, Professor: Waziyatawin and her pro-liberation politics. Please find ways to support her efforts!

photograph of Waziyatawin is from here

Free Speech is assumed to mean that people are free to speak, as individuals. But to speak and be heard as a member of an oppressed class one needs a few things beyond a voice, such as class-credibility and status, privilege, and access to dominant media. Indigenous people across North America have none of the above and that's how the White Man wants it. If you are shut out of dominant media, is that called Censorship? If it isn't, why?

Genocide in the U.S. is probably the least discussed and least reported on atrocity in the U.S. It's been going on for hundreds of years and is not over. The genocide isn't defined only in terms of mass murder. It is defined by systematic governmental and industrial destruction of cultural, economic, social, and spiritual systems required for a People's survival. The Dakota, among many other nations inside the geographic boundaries of the U.S. of America, are under siege. When will U.S. white folks give a damn, I wonder? And stop hanging Dream Catchers in their windows and from their vehicle's rear view mirrors. Here's a dream worth catching: stopping the genocide against Indigenous People globally, and against the Dakota locally.

What follows are two posts linked together supporting the activist work and values of Waziyatawin (Dakota). With thanks to Brenda, from Censored News, for the first portion. Please click on the title just below to link back.

Native America Calling: Free Speech and Censorship

Thursday, January 20, 2011– Free Speech & Censorship

Inflammatory rhetoric on the radio and in politics is in the spotlight, with public officials calling on everyone to “tone it down” to avoid confrontations. While Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin can say anything they want, it seems that an Indian scholar doesn’t enjoy the same rights to free speech. Professor, historian and activist Waziyatawin (Dakota), also known as Dr. Angela Wilson, received calls from the FBI after she gave a speech in which she told students “It’s time for American Indians to abandon symbolic demonstrations. We're going to need to take a different kind of action…we're going to need to recover our land base, by any means necessary." What is free speech in America? Guests include Waziyatawin and talk radio host Jay Winter Nightwolf (Cherokee/Taino/Shoshone).

*          *          *

What follows next is from Waziyatawin's website: http://waziyatawin.net/commentary/

Waziyatawin is a Dakota writer, teacher, and activist committed to the development of liberation strategies that will support the recovery of Indigenous ways of being, the reclamation of Indigenous homelands, and the eradication of colonial institutions.Waziyatawin comes from the Pezihutazizi Otunwe (Yellow Medicine Village) in southwestern Minnesota. After receiving her Ph.D. in American history from Cornell University in 2000, she earned tenure and an associate professorship in the history department at Arizona State University where she taught for seven years. Waziyatawin currently holds the Indigenous Peoples Research Chair in the Indigenous Governance Program at the University of Victoria in British Columbia. Her interests include projects centering on Indigenous decolonization strategies such as truth-telling and reparative justice, Indigenous women and resistance, the recovery of Indigenous knowledge, and the development of liberation ideology in Indigenous communities.She is the author, editor, or co-editor of five volumes including: Remember This!: Dakota Decolonization and the Eli Taylor Narratives (University of Nebraska Press 2005); Indigenizing the Academy: Transforming Scholarship and Empowering Communities (University of Nebraska Press 2004); For Indigenous Eyes Only: A Decolonization Handbook (School of Advanced Research Press 2005); In the Footsteps of Our Ancestors: The Dakota Commemorative Marches of the 21st Century (Living Justice Press 2006); and, her most recent volume, What Does Justice Look Like? The Struggle for Liberation in Dakota Homeland (Living Justice Press 2008).

Waziyatawin is also the founder and director of Oyate Nipi Kte, a non-profit organization dedicated to the recovery of Dakota traditional knowledge, sustainable ways of being, and Dakota liberation.

"Beyond Vietnam", link to full text and audio of speech by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

portrait of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. is from here

I will begin to think that a bud resembling justice and liberation for African Americans is blossoming in the United Rapes of Amerikkka when the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. is remembered in white male supremacist communities across this not-so-great nation as the person who delivered many stirring messages to this country on how to become great, in part by dismantling all systems of racism, capitalism, and militarism. His "I Have A Dream" speech, in and of itself, is never delivered in full to the public. Only the least threatening portions, very cutely represented on this day on Google's search engine page, get recited with white eyes sometimes welling with tears that would surely dry up, or intensify, if those eyes and the white mind behind them dared to consider what is truly wrong with this country or what the professed values were of this one Great U.S. American. We are not likely to hear any portion of "Beyond Vietnam", which is linked to below. Except, well, please DO take time to read and listen to that speech.

For the entire speech, audio and text, please click *HERE*.

An excerpt from that speech appears below:

As we counsel young men concerning military service, we must clarify for them our nation's role in Vietnam and challenge them with the alternative of conscientious objection. I am pleased to say that this is a path now chosen by more than seventy students at my own alma mater, Morehouse College, and I recommend it to all who find the American course in Vietnam a dishonorable and unjust one. Moreover, I would encourage all ministers of draft age to give up their ministerial exemptions and seek status as conscientious objectors. These are the times for real choices and not false ones. We are at the moment when our lives must be placed on the line if our nation is to survive its own folly. Every man of humane convictions must decide on the protest that best suits his convictions, but we must all protest.

Now there is something seductively tempting about stopping there and sending us all off on what in some circles has become a popular crusade against the war in Vietnam. I say we must enter that struggle, but I wish to go on now to say something even more disturbing.

The war in Vietnam is but a symptom of a far deeper malady within the American spirit, and if we ignore this sobering reality...and if we ignore this sobering reality, we will find ourselves organizing "clergy and laymen concerned" committees for the next generation. They will be concerned about Guatemala -- Guatemala and Peru. They will be concerned about Thailand and Cambodia. They will be concerned about Mozambique and South Africa. We will be marching for these and a dozen other names and attending rallies without end, unless there is a significant and profound change in American life and policy.

And so, such thoughts take us beyond Vietnam, but not beyond our calling as sons of the living God.

In 1957, a sensitive American official overseas said that it seemed to him that our nation was on the wrong side of a world revolution. During the past ten years, we have seen emerge a pattern of suppression which has now justified the presence of U.S. military advisors in Venezuela. This need to maintain social stability for our investments accounts for the counterrevolutionary action of American forces in Guatemala. It tells why American helicopters are being used against guerrillas in Cambodia and why American napalm and Green Beret forces have already been active against rebels in Peru.

It is with such activity in mind that the words of the late John F. Kennedy come back to haunt us. Five years ago he said, "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." Increasingly, by choice or by accident, this is the role our nation has taken, the role of those who make peaceful revolution impossible by refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investments. I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin...we must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.

A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. On the one hand, we are called to play the Good Samaritan on life's roadside, but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho Road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.

A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa, and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say, "This is not just." It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of South America and say, "This is not just." The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just.

A true revolution of values will lay hand on the world order and say of war, "This way of settling differences is not just." This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Beyond Vietnam -- A Time to Break Silence

Delivered 4 April 1967, Riverside Church, New York City

Come to the Tenth Annual Bayard Rustin - Audre Lorde Breakfast!! Monday, 17 January 2011, Atlanta, GA, USA

 

10th Annual Bayard Rustin - Audre Lorde Breakfast
M.L.K. Day 10 a.m. January 17, 2011
St. Marks United Methodist Church
781 Peachtree St. Atlanta, GA 30308
For more info contact Craig Washington 404 870-7760
or Facebook Page - Rustin/Lorde Annual Breakfast

Learn more: www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=131839083542875

On Fascism, Forests, and Freedom, including an essay by Dr. Vandana Shiva

image is from here

When we consider the Earth and its many disappearing ecosystems, and the many plants, waterways, animals, and human societies dependent on them, let us keep front and center the hundreds of Indigenous societies and nations within which lives are far more directly connected to matters of pollution, colonisation, and globalisation than are the non-Indigenous people of the white Western/Northern World. Increasingly, along with every other population that lives away from unsustainable cities, Indigenous people who have historically relied on the fertile land and flowing water directly, are being relocated and/or forced into urban areas, far from their sacred sites, alienated from their then-trampled homelands, and away from their ways of surviving as a society. The dominant capitalist invaders come and take over; use up and destroy. That's what they do; that's all they know how to do.

What upsets me about the white het male-led environmental movement is how most of its leaders still assume everything exists for whites, including Indigenous, Black, Brown, and Asian people. It still centers white racist and white supremacist ways of being and thinking as pivotal in creating arguments for why the destruction of the Earth is a bad thing. When I hear whites speak about human "population control" as a necessary condition for achieving eco-justice and relative peace on Earth, I never hear whites calling for a reduction in the white-only population even though it is primarily whites who, over the last few hundred years, have consumed far more resources than any other racial group. And committed more genocide. And committed more ecocide. The malignant cancer of the Earth, culturally and politically, not biologically or genetically, is white and male supremacist, and is upheld most fiercely and lethally by white men.

When whites speak of "population control", I hear the pro-genocidal contempt, disrespect, or disregard for people of color. I hear white voices with thick German accents to my Ashkenazi Jewish ears, white voices feeling oh-so-entitled to tell other (darker) people what they should be doing "for the betterment of all". And, surprise: the not-so-novel idea is for those people of color to stop reproducing so much. Again.

So when whites call for a reduction in human population, in their inspired rallying speeches on behalf of the Earth, let whites call for an end to whiteness (white supremacy), which, along with manhood (male supremacy), are the two deadliest forms of social-cultural-political ideology-as-existence known to humanity. To understand how it is that the White Man came to be so dominant and oppressive, and murderous, please read Yurugu, by Dr. Marimba Ani.

What follows was found by me on ZCommunications but is originally from Asian Age. *Here* is the Asian Age link.

Forests And Freedom

---

By Vandana Shiva

Source: Asian Age

Wednesday, January 05, 2011

   

Vandana Shiva's ZSpace Page

2011 is the year of the forest. It is also Rabindranath Tagore’s 150th birth anniversary.

Forests were central to Tagore’s works and institution building as they have been for India’s creative expressions through the centuries.

As Tagore wrote in The Religion of the Forests, the ideal of perfection preached by the forest dwellers of ancient India runs through the heart of our classical literature and still dominates our mind. The forests are sources of water as the women of Chipko showed in the 1970s. They are the storehouse of biodiversity.

The biodiversity of the forest teaches us lessons of democracy, of leaving space for others while drawing sustenance from the common web of life. (In his essay Tapovan, Tagore writes: “Indian civilisation has been distinctive in locating its source of regeneration, material and intellectual, in the forest, not the city. India’s best ideas have come where man was in communion with trees and rivers and lakes, away from the crowds. The peace of the forest has helped the intellectual evolution of man. The culture of the forest has fuelled culture of Indian society. The culture that has arisen from the forest has been influenced by the diverse processes of renewal of life, which are always at play in the forest, varying from species to species, from season to season, in sight and sound and smell. The unifying principle of life in diversity, of democratic pluralism, thus became the principle of Indian civilisation.”

It is this “unity in diversity” that is the basis of both ecological sustainability and democracy. Diversity without unity becomes the source of conflict and contest. Uniformity without diversity becomes the ground for external control. This is true of both nature and culture.

In Tagore’s writings, the forest was not just the source of knowledge and freedom it was the source of beauty and joy, of art and aesthetics, of harmony and perfection. It symbolised the universe. In The Religion of the Forest, the poet says our attitude of mind “guides our attempts to establish relations with the universe either by conquest or by union, either through the cultivation of power or through that of sympathy”.

The forest teaches us union and compassion.

For Tagore, our relationship with the forest and nature is a relationship that allows us to experience our humanity. Humans and nature are not separate we are one.

“In our dreams, nature stands in her own right, proving that she has her great function, to impart the peace of the eternal to human emotions”.

It is this permanence, this peace, this joy of living not by conquest and domination, but by co-existence and cooperation that is at the heart of a forest culture. The forest also teaches us “enoughness” as equity, enjoying the gifts of nature without exploitation and accumulation. In Religion of the Forest, Tagore quotes from the ancient texts, written in the forest:

“Ishavasyam idam sarvam yat kinch jagatyam jagat
Yena tyak tena bhunjitha
Ma gradha kasyasvit dhanam”

(Know all that moves in this moving world as enveloped by god, and find enjoyment through renunciation not through greed of possession)

No species in a forest appropriates the share of other species to nutrients, water, and the sun’s energy. Every species sustains itself in mutual cooperation with others. This is Earth Democracy.

The end of consumerism and accumulation is the beginning of the joy of living. That is why the tribals of contemporary India from Kalinganagar to Niyamgiri and Bastar are resisting leaving their forest homes and abandoning their forest culture. The conflict between greed and compassion, conquest and cooperation, violence and harmony that Tagore wrote about continues today. And it is the forest which can show us the way beyond this conflict by reconnecting to nature and finding sources for own freedom. For the powerful it means freedom from greed. For the excluded it means freedom from want, from hunger and thirst, from dispossession and disposability.

Diversity is at the heart of the living systems of Gaia, including her forests. Tagore defined monocultures as the “exaggeration of sameness” and he wrote: “Life finds its truth and beauty not in exaggeration of sameness, but in harmony.”

Harmony in diversity is the nature of the forest, whereas monotonous sameness is the nature of industrialism based on a mechanical worldview. This is what Tagore saw as the difference between the West and India.

“The civilisation of the West has in it the spirit of the machine which must move; and to that blind movement human lives are offered as fuel, keeping up the stream power” (The Spirit of Freedom).

Globalisation has spread the civilisation based on power and greed and the spirit of the machine worldwide. And the global spread of the “passion of profit-making and the drunkenness of power” is spreading fear of freedoms.

A civilisation based on power and greed is a civilisation based on fear and violence.

“The people who have sacrificed their souls to the passion of profit making and the drunkenness of power are constantly pursued by phantoms of panic and suspicion, and therefore they are ruthless. They are morally incapable of allowing freedom to others” (The Spirit of Freedom).

Greed and accumulation must lead to slavery.

Today the rule of money and greed dominates our society, economy and politics. The culture of conquest is invading into our tribal lands and forests through mining of iron-ore, bauxite and coal.

Every forest area has become a war zone. Every tribal is defined as a “Maoist” by a militarised corporate state appropriating the land and natural resources of the tribals. And every defender of the rights of the forest and forest dwellers is being treated as a criminal. This is the context of Dr Binayak Sen’s life sentence.

If India is to survive ecologically and politically, if India has to stay democratic, if Indian citizen is to be guaranteed, we need to give up the road of conquest and destruction and take the road of union and conservation, we need to cultivate peace and compassion instead of power and violence.

We need to turn, once again, to the forest as our perennial teachers of peace and freedom, of diversity and democracy.

Dr Vandana Shiva is the executive director of Navdanya Trust

World AIDS Day Blog: The Honourable Dora Byamukama, Ugandan Feminist Activist, Addresses the Crisis

photograph of Ugandan feminist activist Dora Byamukama is from here

Women continue to be at particular risk of exposure to HIV/AIDS. The reasons why women are hardest hit by HIV/AIDS are mixed and hinge on economic challenges, social attitudes, and the need for sustained political intervention.

Economic challenges stem from limited opportunities. For example the Makerere Female Scholarship Initiative that supports girls from disadvantaged backgrounds has only seen 600 girls graduate. It was clear that most of the applicants could not be availed with an opportunity to access higher education.

One beneficiary narrated that she would have already been married if she had not got the scholarship. Much as there is nothing wrong with getting married, the fact is that women’s economic dependence on men deprives them of the ability to refuse sexual practices that expose them to AIDS. And therefore when women get married at a point when they are not in a position to earn a living, they are doomed to economic dependence and this in most cases perpetuates a cycle of marrying off their daughters at an early age too.

Indeed, women’s dependence on men also stems from cultural and religious beliefs that treat women as inferior to men. These cultural and religious beliefs lead to widespread practices like wife inheritance, which increase women’s likelihood of contracting HIV/AIDs. There is therefore urgent need to review and restate cultural and religious principles so that they take into account prevailing circumstances. 

-- The Honourable Dora Byamukama, Ugandan feminist's statement*, Wednesday, December 1, 2010

[*See also the end of this post for a source link.]

From Avert.org:

Started on 1st December 1988, World AIDS Day is about raising money, increasing awareness, fighting prejudice and improving education. The World AIDS Day theme for 2010 is 'Universal Access and Human Rights'. World AIDS Day is important for reminding people that HIV has not gone away, and that there are many things still to be done.

According to UNAIDS estimates, there are now 33.3 million people living with HIV, including 2.5 million children. During 2009 some 2.6 million people became newly infected with the virus and an estimated 1.8 million people died from AIDS.1

The vast majority of people with HIV and AIDS live in lower- and middle-income countries. But HIV today is a threat to men, women and children on all continents around the world.

Also from Avert.org:

“This epidemic unfortunately remains an epidemic of women.” - Michel Sidibé, Executive Director of UNAIDS¹

At the end of 2009 it was estimated that out of the 33.3 million adults worldwide living with HIV and AIDS, more than half are women.2 It is suggested that 98 percent of these women live in developing countries.3 The AIDS epidemic has had a unique impact on women, which has been exacerbated by their role within society and their biological vulnerability to HIV infection.

Generally women are at a greater risk of heterosexual transmission of HIV. Biologically women are twice more likely to become infected with HIV through unprotected heterosexual intercourse than men. In many countries women are less likely to be able to negotiate condom use and are more likely to be subjected to non-consensual sex.4 5

Additionally, millions of women have been indirectly affected by the HIV and AIDS epidemic. Women’s childbearing role means that they have to contend with issues such as mother-to-child transmission of HIV. The responsibility of caring for AIDS patients and orphans is also an issue that has a greater effect on women.

There are a number of things that can be done in order to reduce the burden of the epidemic among women. These include promoting and protecting women's human rights, increasing education and awareness among women and encouraging the development of new preventative technologies such as post-exposure prophylaxis and microbicides.

Also from Avert.org:

Both HIV prevalence rates and the numbers of people dying from AIDS vary greatly between African countries.

In Somalia and Senegal the HIV prevalence is under 1% of the adult population, whereas in Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe around 10-15% of adults are infected with HIV. Southern Africa is the worst impacted by AIDS; in South Africa the HIV prevalence is 17.8% and in three other southern African countries, the national adult HIV prevalence rate now exceeds 20%. These countries are Botswana (24.8%), Lesotho (23.6%) and Swaziland (25.9%).3

West Africa has been less affected by HIV and AIDS, but some countries are experiencing rising HIV prevalence rates. In Cameroon HIV prevalence is now estimated at 5.3% and in Gabon it stands at 5.2%. In Nigeria, HIV prevalence is low (3.6%) compared to the rest of Africa. However, because of its large population (it is the most populous country in sub-Saharan Africa), this equates to around 3.3 million people living with HIV.4

Adult HIV prevalence in East Africa exceeds 5% in Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania.5

Overall, rates of new HIV infections in sub-Saharan Africa appear to have peaked in the late 1990s, and HIV prevalence seems to have declined slightly, although it remains at an extremely high level. History of AIDS in Africa has more information about how HIV prevalence has changed over time.

*Source for opening passage in blockquote is from *here* @ NewVision.

CNN Anchor Don Lemon reveals he's a survivor of child sexual abuse, to make a point about perpetrators that needs to be heard

(For more on that interview on CNN, see this article at dailymail.co.uk.)

There are three main points I'd like to highlight here, regarding the video above.

1. It is really glaring to me how and to what degree whites with class-privilege don't get how much more difficult it is for African Americans to publicly address the issue of sexual abuse in African American communities. If your sexuality and your personhood are both demonised by whites, then to discuss how some people in your community abuse people sexually is usually not going to be discussed in a public that has a white audience, if at all. Across race, the same phenomenon exists in identifying adult gay perpetrators of child sexual abuse. Because gay men are pre-stigmatised as "child molesters" those of us who are gay are often unwilling to discuss the issue of predation by gay adults in heterosexual, heterosexist, and homophobic environments. So, imagine being Black and gay in the U.S. and how different that is than being white and a heterosexual male, in terms of how much stigma there is on you, the survivor, and on the perpetrator as well.

2. It's sad that the reason people need to disclose on air, live, that they have survived an atrocity is because too many of us would prefer to be in denial about predators and perpetrators in our communities. Let's be clear here: predators, perpetrators, rapists, and child molesters are not "them". They are us. They look like "us" not like a "them". They behave like "us" not like "them".

If perpetrators and predators were only a "them" then "we" could spot 'em a mile away. We can't. They live with us and therefore are us. They are our doctors, priests, and fathers. They are, in some cases, our mothers. They are our step-dads, our grandfathers, our uncles, our older siblings. They are, usually, men known by us and trusted by us because they are known.

What most predators and perpetrators are NOT is "strange". What they are not are "strangers" most of the time. That's why the abuse happens so much: because the abusers are trusted and well-known adults who victims care for and, often, don't know how to say "NO" to.

That was the case with me. I didn't know how to say no to someone who was an adult who I was supposed to show regard and respect for. No one taught me it would be okay for me to fight back, to scream, to yell, to kick the perp in the nuts, to do whatever it took to get away. No one told me. What I was told instead was "always respect your elders".

Fuck that CRAP. Adults deserve no more respect than children, and no less. But when an adult violates another human being in atrocious ways, their "right to privacy" and their right to be held in high regard goes right out the door, as far as I'm concerned. I'm not at all in support of demonising abusers. But nor am I supportive of protecting them from consequences that they might avoid as long as their crimes are kept hidden.

3. If a Christian priest sexually abuses a child, they are a Christian terrorist. Plain and simple. If you don't get that, you don't get much.

For the Tule People of NW Colombia, WHM Supremacist Imperialism and Colonialism, along with Militarism and Drug Wars, Ecocide through Pesticide Poisoning and Forced Relocation = Genocide

the Tule are a displaced group of Indigenous Peoples forced out of ancestral land in NW Colombia into Panama

The problem is genocidal violence against the Tule people, their land, their culture, and genocidal violence against many other Indigenous peoples from Northwestern Colombia, who have been engaged in resistance by European colonists and their descendants who are forcing them out of their homeland in Colombia. The murderous policies are entirely a product of Western white male supremacist civilisation and are completely bound to the past and present policies and practices of the U.S. government and covert operations overseen by it.

Indigenous people the world over are militantly well-organised and organising against the many assaults against them from many sources: the Western Civilisation, the Global North, militarism, white het male supremacy, capitalism, drug wars, pesticide pollution, and other ecocidal practices. Indigenous people are being actively murdered. Extinction = Genocide.

Below are two articles describing some of the conditions the Tule refugees are facing. The Tule comprise many Indigenous ethnic groups working to survive the practices of the dominator nation of Colombia which has many ties to the unfathomably terroristic and genocidal dominator nation called the U.S.A.

We may note that the first article gives historical context and identifies many conditions that have been long-standing genocidal practices since the 1600s; this links the current atrocities to a rapist, pillaging lineage of white male supremacist invasion and terrorism. The NYT piece the ignores the history of imperialist, rapist colonisation and genocide that directly implicates the U.S. government as a key ruling body of a well-functioning terrorist nation which practices genocide against Indigenous people globally, through corporate control, military force, and white het male supremacist worldviews and values. The video which is part of the first article explains more of what is going on. The NYT simply shows one photograph, noting that men and women are separated, which isn't relevant here, although Western WHM terrorism functions especially brutally when Western male invaders gain access to the women and girls of a colonised population.

The first article is from Intercontinental Cry, an Indigenist activist website. You can link back by clicking on the title.

Colombia: Indigenous Peoples Under Threat

August 7, 2010

In Colombia, over two decades of conflict between the government and paramilitary groups has uprooted more than 3 million people. Today the conflict poses an even greater threat of extinction to 34 distinct Indigenous Peoples in Colombia. Among them, in the Uraba region of northwest Colombia, the Tule.




Living close to the border with Panama, the Tule have long considered abandoning their ancestral lands and heading into Panama to escape the constant threats and intimidation by Colombia's paramilitary groups.

There are about 70,000 other Tule, who are also known as Kuna, living in northern Panama--and nearly half of them are living under their own constitution in the Comarca de Kuna Yala or district of the Kuna.

But how do you walk away from the land of your ancestors, the land you know and love, the land that you believe you are here to protect? Beliefs and obligations can run deeper than any real or perceived danger, no matter how great it is.

Then there's the Tule's long history. It runs contrary to some popular academic beliefs, but the Tule say they were born in the jungles of Colombia. And a series of devastating wars in the 1600s forced the vast majority to seek refuge in Panama.

Less than 600 Tule remain in the land of their ancestors.

Context, courtesy of UNCHR:

* Colombia’s internal armed conflict that started in 1964 has pitted Colombia’s armed forces against two main guerrilla groups – the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Columbia (FARC) and the National Liberation Army (ELN). Clashes also routinely involve organized crime gangs and narcotics traffickers that have links to guerrilla and paramilitary groups.

* Colombia has one of the highest numbers of internally displaced people (IDPs) in the world. There are about three million registered IDPs in Colombia, of which an estimated 41,000 are indigenous. However, indigenous displacement often goes unregistered – due to the remoteness of indigenous territory, lack of access to state services and cultural barriers.

* Out of Colombia’s total national population of 43 million there are an estimated one million indigenous people comprising about 90 indigenous groups.

* At least 27 indigenous groups are at risk of disappearing as a result of armed conflict, according to Colombia’s Constitutional Court. The National Indigenous Association, ONIC, says 18 groups are at acute risk of extinction.

* Indigenous people have suffered an increase in violence linked to armed conflict during the past 10 years. ONIC has reported the murders of about 1,980 indigenous people during the period 1998-2008.

* Colombia in April 2009 signed the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, a landmark declaration that outlines the rights of the world’s estimated 370 million indigenous people and outlaws discrimination against them. The declaration upholds the rights of indigenous people to stay on their lands and duties of the State to protect them.

* Under Colombian and international law, members of indigenous groups are entitled to special protections from forced displacement.

Also see:
Documents (in Spanish and English) on Indigenous Peoples in Colombia (pdf) courtesy of Rights & Democracy

Video: An important 60-minute discussion on the situation of Indigenous Peoples in Colombia by Federico Guzman, a Specialist in Colombian constitutional law and legal advisor to Indigenous organizations: http://streaming.dd-rd.ca/Saskatoon/Part3_Guzman.wmv (more videos available here)

Websites: Information site on Colombia’s ethnic groups www.etniasdecolombia.org (in Spanish); The National Indigenous Association of Colombia, http://www.onic.org.co/ (in Spanish)

*          *          *

What follows next is cross-posted from *here* at The New York Times.

When a Drug Battle Spells Extinction

By JOHN COLLINS RUDOLF

 

B. Heger/United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. A traditional gathering of the Tule people of Colombia. Men and women sit on different sides.

The drug trade and other domestic strife are wreaking havoc on Colombia’s dwindling population of indigenous peoples while also threatening the integrity of the country’s biologically diverse forests, the United Nations High Council on Refugees reported this week.

More than 40 percent of the country’s 84 distinct indigenous groups are now at risk of extinction, the United Nations said, because of the pressures of the country’s long-running internal armed conflict, which is fueled partly by the cocaine trade.

With only 1,200 remaining members, the Tule tribe of northwestern Colombia is considered uniquely threatened. In recent months, armed groups have overrun traditional Tule lands, killing and terrorizing villagers and forcibly recruiting young people into their ranks.

Tule leaders fear that if they are driven off their lands, the forest that they have inhabited for generations will be ruined by development. “The Tule are an ancient people and their value is that they protect the environment,” one community’s chief and spiritual leader told United Nations representatives during a recent visit.

Meanwhile, the Colombian government’s coca eradication measures continue to draw criticism from some quarters for collateral damage to the environment and indigenous and rural people.

In August, the Guardian newspaper in London published an open letter by nearly 50 academics, many of them from Colombian universities, to the newly elected president, Juan Manuel Santos, protesting the fumigation of coca crops. In the letter, the professors claim “confirmed knowledge” that Colombia’s antinarcotics police established a base earlier this year in the Cauca region along the Pacific coastline that they are using to lead fumigation operations.

“The impact of the widespread spraying on the local communities has been devastating,” the letter states. “The planes have targeted not just illegal coca plants, but all vegetation, including staple crops that local populations depend upon.”

The Cuaca region is one of several areas identified as a hot spot of biological diversity by a World Bank-financed study in the 1990s, the Proyecto Biopacifico.

“It is in utter disregard of the recommendations drawn up by this acclaimed study that the Colombian government has undertaken a massive, indiscriminate fumigation campaign in the region, hoping to eradicate illegal coca cultivation,” the professors wrote.