by DGR News Service | Oct 18, 2020 | ANALYSIS, The Problem: Civilization
We Indigenous people are fighting to save the Amazon, but the whole planet is in trouble because you do not respect it
by Nemonte Nenquimo / Originally published in The Guardian, Oct. 12 2020
Featured image: Waorani leader Nemonte Nenquimo shows evidence of crude oil contamination in the northern Ecuadorian Amazon rainforest. Photograph: Mitch Anderson / Amazon Frontlines
Dear presidents of the nine Amazonian countries and to all world leaders that share responsibility for the plundering of our rainforest,
My name is Nemonte Nenquimo. I am a Waorani woman, a mother, and a leader of my people. The Amazon rainforest is my home. I am writing you this letter because the fires are raging still. Because the corporations are spilling oil in our rivers. Because the miners are stealing gold (as they have been for 500 years), and leaving behind open pits and toxins. Because the land grabbers are cutting down primary forest so that the cattle can graze, plantations can be grown and the white man can eat. Because our elders are dying from coronavirus, while you are planning your next moves to cut up our lands to stimulate an economy that has never benefited us. Because, as Indigenous peoples, we are fighting to protect what we love – our way of life, our rivers, the animals, our forests, life on Earth – and it’s time that you listened to us.
In each of our many hundreds of different languages across the Amazon, we have a word for you – the outsider, the stranger. In my language, WaoTededo, that word is “cowori”. And it doesn’t need to be a bad word. But you have made it so. For us, the word has come to mean (and in a terrible way, your society has come to represent): the white man that knows too little for the power that he wields, and the damage that he causes.
You are probably not used to an Indigenous woman calling you ignorant and, less so, on a platform such as this. But for Indigenous peoples it is clear: the less you know about something, the less value it has to you, and the easier it is to destroy. And by easy, I mean: guiltlessly, remorselessly, foolishly, even righteously. And this is exactly what you are doing to us as Indigenous peoples, to our rainforest territories, and ultimately to our planet’s climate.
It took us thousands of years to get to know the Amazon rainforest. To understand her ways, her secrets, to learn how to survive and thrive with her. And for my people, the Waorani, we have only known you for 70 years (we were “contacted” in the 1950s by American evangelical missionaries), but we are fast learners, and you are not as complex as the rainforest.
When you say that the oil companies have marvellous new technologies that can sip the oil from beneath our lands like hummingbirds sip nectar from a flower, we know that you are lying because we live downriver from the spills. When you say that the Amazon is not burning, we do not need satellite images to prove you wrong; we are choking on the smoke of the fruit orchards that our ancestors planted centuries ago.
When you say that you are urgently looking for climate solutions, yet continue to build a world economy based on extraction and pollution, we know you are lying because we are the closest to the land, and the first to hear her cries.
I never had the chance to go to university, and become a doctor, or a lawyer, a politician, or a scientist. My elders are my teachers. The forest is my teacher. And I have learned enough (and I speak shoulder to shoulder with my Indigenous brothers and sisters across the world) to know that you have lost your way, and that you are in trouble (though you don’t fully understand it yet) and that your trouble is a threat to every form of life on Earth.
You forced your civilisation upon us and now look where we are: global pandemic, climate crisis, species extinction and, driving it all, widespread spiritual poverty. In all these years of taking, taking, taking from our lands, you have not had the courage, or the curiosity, or the respect to get to know us. To understand how we see, and think, and feel, and what we know about life on this Earth.
I won’t be able to teach you in this letter, either. But what I can say is that it has to do with thousands and thousands of years of love for this forest, for this place. Love in the deepest sense, as reverence. This forest has taught us how to walk lightly, and because we have listened, learned and defended her, she has given us everything: water, clean air, nourishment, shelter, medicines, happiness, meaning. And you are taking all this away, not just from us, but from everyone on the planet, and from future generations.
It is the early morning in the Amazon, just before first light: a time that is meant for us to share our dreams, our most potent thoughts. And so I say to all of you: the Earth does not expect you to save her, she expects you to respect her. And we, as Indigenous peoples, expect the same.
Nemonte Nenquimo is cofounder of the Indigenous-led nonprofit organisation Ceibo Alliance, the first female president of the Waorani organisation of Pastaza province and one of Time’s 100 most influential people in the world.
by DGR News Service | Jul 22, 2020 | Agriculture, Biodiversity & Habitat Destruction
Deforestation rate climbs higher as Amazon moves into the burning season
10 July 2020
- Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon climbed higher for the fifteenth straight month, reaching levels not seen since the mid-2000s, according to data released today by Brazil’s national space research institute INPE.
- INPE’s satellite-based deforestation alert system detected 1,034 square kilometers of forest clearing during June 2020 bringing the twelve-month total to 9,564 sq km, 89% higher than a year ago.
- The extent of deforestation over the past year is the highest on record since INPE started releasing monthly numbers in 2007.
- The 12-month deforestation rate has risen 96% since President Jair Bolsonaro took office in January 2019.
Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon climbed higher for the fifteenth straight month, reaching levels not seen since the mid-2000s, according to data released today by Brazil’s national space research institute INPE. The news comes as the region moves into the dry season, when deforestation and forest fires typically accelerate.
INPE’s satellite-based deforestation alert system detected 1,034 square kilometers of forest clearing during June 2020 bringing the twelve-month total to 9,564 sq km, 89% higher than a year ago. The extent of deforestation over the past year is the highest recorded since INPE started releasing monthly numbers in 2007.
The 12-month deforestation rate has risen 96% since President Jair Bolsonaro took office in January 2019.
Under pressure from big companies and the E.U. over rising deforestation and fire risk in the Amazon, the Bolsonaro Administration on Wednesday decreed a 120-day ban on fires in the Amazon. The administration had already deployed the army to the region to try to rein in burning, but fires are already well underway despite it being early in the dry season, according to analysis of satellite data by Amazon Conservation’s MAAP project.
MAAP found there are have been 14 major fires in the Amazon this year through July 2nd. MAAP’s analysis excludes fires in pasture and scrub lands, providing a clearer picture on fires associated with recent deforestation and in existing forest.
Deforestation has been trending upward in the Brazilian Amazon since 2012, but the rate of loss has dramatically accelerated over the past year-and-a-half as the Bolsonaro Administration has relaxed law enforcement, stripped conservation areas and indigenous lands of protection, promoted mining and industrial forest conversion, and tried to pass policies weakening environmental safeguards in the region.
Scientists have warned that the Amazon rainforest may be approaching a tipping point where the forest shifts toward a drier, savanna-like ecosystem. Such a transition could have significant and sustained impacts on local and regional rainfall patterns, while triggering the release of vast amounts of carbon into the atmosphere.
Published on the 10th July 2020, you can read the original and full article, with associated graphs and images here:
by DGR News Service | Dec 18, 2019 | Agriculture, Biodiversity & Habitat Destruction, Climate Change, Mining & Drilling, The Problem: Civilization, Toxification
A series of headlines from around the world, compiled by Max Wilbert and Mark Behrend. Featured image by Max Wilbert.
2019 Was the 2nd Hottest Year on Record
Global average temperature reached the 2nd highest annual level ever recorded, according to preliminary data for 2019. While the data is not yet finalized, it’s almost certain 2019 will go down as the 2nd hottest ever. The hottest five years on record have been the last five years, and we are in the final days of the hottest decade in the record.
https://twitter.com/ClimateOfGavin/status/1206608106819661826
70,000 Children Have Been Detained at the U.S. Border in 2019
As climate crisis and ecological collapse drives ever more migration, abuse at the southern border of the U.S. is escalating. One recent report finds that nearly 70,000 children have been detained in 2019:
The story lays out in excrutiating detail the emotional pain of victims of President Donald Trump’s child separation policy, focusing on, among others, a Honduran father whose three-year-old daughter can no longer look at him or connect with him after being separated at the U.S. border and abused in foster care.
“I think about this trauma staying with her too, because the trauma has remained with me and still hasn’t faded,” the father told AP.
The 3-year-old Honduran girl was taken from her father when immigration officials caught them near the border in Texas in March 2019 and sent her to government-funded foster care. The father had no idea where his daughter was for three panicked weeks. It was another month before a caregiver put her on the phone but the girl, who turned four in government custody, refused to speak, screaming in anger.
“She said that I had left her alone and she was crying,” said her father during an interview with the AP and Frontline at their home in Honduras. “‘I don’t love you Daddy, you left me alone,'” she told him.
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/11/12/causing-profound-trauma-trump-administration-detained-record-breaking-70000-children
Koalas Declared “Functionally Extinct” After Fires Destroy 80% of Remaining Habitat
Experts believe the long-term outlook for the species is bleak, after centuries of habitat destruction, overhunting, and culling.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/trevornace/2019/11/23/koalas-functionally-extinct-after-australia-bushfires-destroy-80-of-their-habitat/#4dfb62fc7bad
Light Pollution is Key ‘Bringer of Insect Apocalypse’
Light pollution is a significant but overlooked driver of the rapid decline of insect populations, according to the most comprehensive review of the scientific evidence to date.
Artificial light at night can affect every aspect of insects’ lives, the researchers said, from luring moths to their deaths around bulbs, to spotlighting insect prey for rats and toads, to obscuring the mating signals of fireflies.
“We strongly believe artificial light at night – in combination with habitat loss, chemical pollution, invasive species, and climate change – is driving insect declines,” the scientists concluded after assessing more than 150 studies. “We posit here that artificial light at night is another important – but often overlooked – bringer of the insect apocalypse.”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/nov/22/light-pollution-insect-apocalypse
Sea Ice Update:
Arctic sea ice extent for November 2019 ended up at second lowest in the 41-year satellite record. Regionally, extent remains well below average in the Chukchi Sea, Hudson Bay, and Davis Strait.
October daily sea ice extent went from third lowest in the satellite record at the beginning of the month to lowest on record starting on October 13 through October 30. Daily extent finished second lowest, just above 2016, at month’s end. Average sea ice extent for the month was the lowest on record. While freeze-up has been rapid along the coastal seas of Siberia, extensive open water remains in the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas, resulting in unusually high air temperatures in the region. Extent also remains low in Baffin Bay.
https://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/
Gemeni Solar Project Threatens Important Habitat in Nevada
The US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) recently released a document identifying the severe impacts that would be inflicted on the Mojave desert tortoise (Gopherus agassizii) from the Gemini Solar Project, located in southern Nevada. The agency, tasked with recovering rare species headed for extinction, wrote a Biological Opinion for the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), the agency in charge of permitting the 7,100 acre Gemini Solar Project which will be located on public lands near Valley of Fire State Park, as part of its consultation process. BLM is reviewing an Environmental Impact Statement for the project.
Although the document claims that mitigation measures will make up for the impacts, the FWS claims that the Gemini Solar Project could kill or injure as many as 1,825 federally threatened desert tortoises in its 30-year operational lifespan. While the Biological Opinion assures us that the project would be heavily mitigated, it still raises dire concerns about these impacts.
The Mojave desert tortoise had declined so drastically decades ago that in 1990 the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service listed the species as federally threatened. In the year 2000 the FWS began systematically surveying desert tortoise population numbers across its range using the latest scientific methods. What they saw was continuing declines of tortoise numbers, and even population crashes. Based on these surveys the Desert Tortoise Council has recently recommended up-listing the status of the Mojave desert tortoise from a threatened status to a higher endangered status–which means an emergency to stave off extinction.
The vegetation would be mowed using 23,000 pound Heavy Duty mulchers. Because not all individual tortoises will be detected by biologists or project staff, the agency is concerned that death and injury of desert tortoises could result from excavation activities such as clearing of vegetation, and entrapment in trenches and pipes during construction. Tortoises could be crushed by heavy vehicles. The FWS claims tortoise burrows would be avoided during all this constriction and maintenance activity with equipment and vehicles over years, but we have seen tortoise home burrows crushed and caved in by such activities on other development projects.
After solar project construction is complete and hundreds of tortoises are dug up and raided out of their burrows, the agencies are proposing to then release them back on to this disturbed habitat. The presence of re-occupied desert tortoises on the solar site, with vehicle traffic, may result in injuries or death during routine maintenance of facilities such as vegetation trimming. Tortoises outside of the fenced solar site may also be injured or killed due to truck traffic along the transmission lines and associated access roads.
Capture and translocation (moving) of desert tortoises may result in death and injury from stress or disease transmission associated with handling tortoises, stress associated with moving individuals outside of their established home range, stress associated with artificially increasing the density of tortoises in an area and thereby increasing competition for resources, and disease transmission between and among translocated and resident desert tortoises.
Translocation has the potential to increase the prevalence of diseases, such as Upper Respiratory Tract Disease (URTD), a major mortality factor for desert tortoises. Stresses associated with handling and movement could exacerbate this risk in translocated individuals that carry diseases. Equally, desert tortoises in quarantine pens could increase their exposure and vulnerability to stress, dehydration, and inadequate food resources.
The Gemini Solar Project represents an unacceptably large threat to tortoise populations, connectivity, and high-quality habitat in the northeastern Mojave Desert. FWS appears to us to be minimizing the threat of this project and recommending mitigation measures that will fail to halt tortoise mortality and further cumulative habitat degradation.
http://www.basinandrangewatch.org/
Australia Bushfires Rage
3900 square miles of Australia (an area more than 3 times the size of Yosemite National Park) were burned during a single week of November. – New York Post, 11/26/2019
Rice Farming is Major Source of Methane Emissions
Rice farming, long believed responsible for 2.5% of carbon emissions, is now believed to emit up to twice as much — due to new farming methods that only burn the fields intermittently, rather than annually. Leaving the fields in standing water has been found to stimulate bacterial growth that adds the equivalent of 1200 coal-fired power plants in carbon emissions. – Independent (online news magazine), 09/10/2018
The Plastic Pollution Explosion
A deer found dead in rural Thailand recently had 18 pounds of plastic in its stomach. – CNN, 11/26/2019
Consumer Culture Metastasizing Across the Globe
France says that Black Friday is the worst ever American import, topping Halloween and McDonald’s. The one-day shopping frenzy is said to produce the equivalent of a truckload of textiles being dumped every second, across France. – France 24, 11/30/2019
E-Waste is Growing Fast
Electronic waste worldwide is expected to exceed 50 million tons annually by 2020. Before it becomes e-waste, producing a single computer and monitor requires 1.5 tons of water, 48 lbs. of chemicals, and 530 lbs. of fossil fuels. – “The Balance SMB (balancesmb.com), 10/15/2019
Amazon Deforestation Accelerating Under Bolsonaro
Amazon deforestation in 2019 (so far) is estimated at more than 1130 square miles, an area equal to 97% of Yosemite. – CNN, 11/14/2019
Another estimate puts Amazon deforestation at 3700 square miles thus far this year.
Sea of Okhotsk Warming Rapidly
Parts of the Sea of Okhotsk, between Siberia and Japan, are now 3° C. warmer than in pre-industrial times. Oxygen levels in the sea are down, and the Okhotsk salmon population has declined 70%, just since 2004. With colder areas of the planet reacting fastest to climate change, scientists fear that what is happening around Okhotsk is a warning for seas and sea life globally. – Washington Post, 11/12/2019
Air Pollution in India
Forty percent of school children in four of India’s largest cities have lung capacity described as “poor” or “bad,” following breathing tests. Air quality in Indian cities is consistently rated among the worst in the world. – India Times.com, 05/05/2015
Niger is Desertifying Rapidly
In Niger, an area of grasslands equal to 110,000 football fields is lost every year to desertification and erosion. Nomadic herdsmen, who have followed this lifestyle for centuries, blame climate change. Some report losing half of their herds in recent years, and say they are now being driven into cities to look for work. – France 24, 12/05/2019
30-40% of Food is Wasted for “Cosmetic Reasons”
Thirty to forty percent of American farm produce never makes it to market, due to inefficient distribution, and to discarding for cosmetic reasons. – France 24, 11/30/2019
Alaska Temperatures Caused Salmon to Have Heart Attacks
Record high temperatures across portions of Alaska caused thousands of salmon to have heart attacks and die last summer.
by DGR News Service | Sep 23, 2019 | Biodiversity & Habitat Destruction
By Derrick Jensen
This article was originally published in the Fair Observer, and is republished here with the authors permission. Featured image by NaveenNkadalaveni, CC BY-SA 4.0.
The Amazon is burning. This is what the end of the world looks like. Oh, and there’ll be more forests burned, more forests felled by chainsaws, more wetlands drained, more rivers dammed, more grasslands plowed, oceans further toxified and emptied of fish.
And each of these is what the end of the world looks like.
The end of the world looks like factory trawlers pulling in net after net full to bursting with fish — the fish’s eyes popping out from the pressure of all those bodies squeezed together. It looks like puffins starving to death. It looks like emaciated polar bears. It looks like whales washing up on shore and walruses not finding ice on which to rest.
The end of the world looks like plows digging into grasslands, turning over soil and killing all who live there, even down to bacteria. It looks like rows of monocrops, as far as the eye can see.
The end of the world looks like humans staring at screens, clucking their tongues at the destruction of forests far away, never noticing that they themselves — whether they’re in London, New York, Paris, Rome, Athens, Beirut, Beijing or Baghdad — are standing in clear-cuts.
The end of the world looks like cities, with most of their residents never giving a thought to who and what was killed to build that city, never giving a thought to who and what was killed to mine, manufacture and move everything they consider necessary to their lives, and never thinking about what is necessary to life and what is not.
The end of the world looks like humans turning the planet to human use. Or rather attempting to, because it’s not possible to turn this wild and fecund Earth totally to human use, and this attempting is itself what is causing the end of the world.
From the beginning of this culture, it has been so. When you think of Iraq, is the first thing you think of cedar forests so thick that sunlight never touches the ground? That’s what it was like, prior to the beginning of this culture. The first written myth of Western civilization is Gilgamesh deforesting the hills and valleys of Iraq to make a great city.
Have you heard of Mesopotamian elephants? Most of us haven’t. They were exterminated to make way for this culture. And when you think of the Arabian Peninsula, do you think of oak savannas? These forests were cut for export to fuel the economy, to build cities.
The Near East was heavily forested. We’ve all heard of the cedars of Lebanon. They still have one on their flag. The great forests of North Africa were felled to make the Phoenician and Egyptian navies. Greece was heavily forested. So was Italy. So was France. The great forests of Britain came down to make the navy that allowed the sun never to set on the British Empire.
This is what this culture does. Forests precede us and deserts dog our heels.
The end of the world was not written into human existence. For most of our species’ time on Earth, we’ve lived sustainably. The Tolowa Indians lived where I live now for at least 12,500 years, and when the dominant culture arrived, salmon still ran so thick they turned entire rivers “black and roiling” with their bodies. There was no such thing as “ancient redwood forests.” There was only “home” — a home filled with trees thousands of years old, a home filled with nonhumans in abundance most of us literally cannot conceptualize.
Can you imagine — and this moves us across the continent — flocks of passenger pigeons so large they darken the sky for days at a time, flying 60 miles per hour and sounding like rolling thunder? Can you imagine so many whales that the air looks foggy, just from their breath? Can you imagine fish in such abundance that they slow the passage of ships? Can you imagine entire islands so full of great auks that one European explorer said they could load every ship in France and it would not make a dent? Well, they did, and it did, and the last great auk was killed in the 19th century.
How did the world get to be so full of life in the first place? By each creature making the world richer by living and dying. Salmon make forests stronger by their lives and deaths. Redwood trees do the same. Buffalo make grasslands stronger by their lives and deaths. Wolves do the same. And humans can do the same. But not living the way we do.
The Tolowa were not alone in their sustainability. There have been sustainable cultures the world over. The San of southern Africa, for example, evolved in place. They have lived there, in human terms, forever.
And how have humans lived sustainably in place? Simple. By not destroying the places where they lived, and by not destroying other places either. By improving the habitat on its own terms by their presence. The Tolowa made land-use decisions, just as all other beings on the land do, and just as we make land-use decisions. But the Tolowa made these land-use decisions on the assumption they would be living in a place for the next 500 years. That assumption changes everything about how you make decisions and how you live. It is the difference between life and death, between sustainability and the end of the world.
The end of the world was not written into human existence. It was, however, written into the story of Gilgamesh. The end of the world is written into this way of life of converting the Earth solely to human use. It was written into existence with the plow, and with the cities the plow makes possible.
The logic is simple and inescapable. If you convert the land that previously grew bushes and trees that fed elephants into wheat that feeds humans, you can grow more humans per hectare. Many of these humans can become a standing army. And you can use those trees you cut down to build ships of war. You now have a competitive military advantage over those who live sustainably, over those who do not destroy their land base. Further, because you’ve degraded your own land base, you must expand into other land bases. But fortunately for you, you’ve got a standing military.
This is the last 6,000 years of history. This is the story of the end of the world.
More than 90% of forests on the planet have been destroyed. The same is true for wetlands, grasslands, seagrass beds, large schools of fish, wildlife populations in general.
This culture is killing the planet. It doesn’t have to be this way. Not every culture has lived this way. Not every culture has killed the planet.
Recently, more and more people are talking about the possibility of human extinction. That possibility has entered our consciousness enough that, in December 2018, The New York Times published an op-ed asking whether it would be better for the Earth if humans went extinct.
As the Amazon burns, here’s the thing that haunts me. How is it that this culture can contemplate the end of the Amazon rainforest, contemplate the end of elephants, great apes, insects, fish in the oceans? How is it that it can blithely destroy life on Earth? How is it that it can with not much horror contemplate human extinction, but cannot contemplate stopping this way of life?
If aliens came from outer space and did to Earth what this culture is doing — change the climate; burn the Amazon; deforest the planet; vacuum the oceans and put dioxin in every mother’s breastmilk; and bathe the world in plastics, endocrine disrupters and neurotoxin — we would know exactly what to do. We would resist. We would fight as though our lives depend on it. We would destroy the aliens’ infrastructure that allows them to wage war on the planet that is our only home.
Or, put another way, if the Amazon could take on human manifestation, what would it do? If salmon could take on human manifestation, how long would dams stand? If humans from the future could come to our time, how would they act?
As the writer Lierre Keith often says, “If there are any humans left 100 years from now, they are going to ask what the fuck was wrong with us that we didn’t fight like hell when the world was going down.”
Many of us who know history might have fantasies of how we would have acted were we alive under German occupation in World War II or under British colonial rule. Right now, we are facing the end of the world. We have the opportunity and the honor to protect the planet that gave us our lives.
The time is now. Roll up your sleeves and get to work. Life on this planet needs you.
by DGR News Service | Sep 2, 2019 | Biodiversity & Habitat Destruction, Indigenous Autonomy, The Solution: Resistance
By Max Wilbert
The Amazon Rainforest is on fire. But the fire is merely a symptom of deeper problems, not root cause. Therefore, simply putting out the fires does not solve the problem. To protect the Amazon rainforest, we need a deeper understanding of threats to it. For this, we turn to the indigenous people, the guardians of the Amazon, to learn from them.
The Kayapo Nation
The Kayapo (or Xingu) are an indigenous nation in the northwestern Amazon rainforest, who live on roughly 27 million acres of rainforest and savannah territory claimed by Brazil and currently subject to the rule of American ally and genocidal fascist Jair Bolsonaro.
The Kayapo, who are split into many different groups, live a largely traditional lifestyle, hunting and gathering and practicing small-scale agriculture. They use at least 900 species of plants as food an medicine. They live in small villages which are periodically abandoned to return to forest. Beauty is highly valued in the Kayapo culture, as is oratory. Each tribe has different colors, and leaders often wear a headdress made from the birds of native feathers.
The Kayapo are threatened by mining, logging, and hydroelectric dams which are rapidly destroying their way of life. This conflict has simmered for decades as a clandestine war, with farmers, loggers, miners, and ranchers murdering Kayapo people and the Kayapo protesting, lobbying, and violently fighting back in self-defense of their forests, rivers, and people.
The Altamira Conference
In 1987, the Brazilian government announced plans to dam the Xingu River, the largest tributary of the Amazon. As Survival International explains, this project was “a central part of Brazil’s Accelerated Growth Programme, which aims to stimulate the country’s economic growth by building a huge infrastructure of roads and dams, mainly in the Amazon region.”
In response, 26 indigenous nations led by the Kayapo organized the Altamira Conference in 1989, in what was then the small frontier town of Altamira.
“Some of the tribes present at the meeting had not encountered each other previously while others were traditional enemies,” wrote observer Jeff Gibbs. “Each tribe could be identified by their unique body paint and beads, distinct feathered headdresses, particular chants and songs, and even their weapons of choice (ironwood clubs, machetes, bows and arrows). Some arrived in small chartered bush planes from far-flung dirt airstrips while others had traveled by river in canoes for days or weeks.”
Representatives from government, industry, and indigenous nations spoke in front of the crowd. Engineer José Antônio Muniz Lópes (later president of Eletronorte, the state power company in charge of the dam) addressed the room, arguing in favor of the dam and the “benefits” it would bring—jobs, electricity, civilization.
As he finished speaking, a woman named Tuira Kayapó rose to her feet, brandishing a machete. Kayapo women are powerful and direct, and do not defer to men. As Gibbs writes, “The tension in the room was immense as Brazilian military officers with automatic weapons watched on, along with arrow-clad indigenous body guards charged with protecting their people.”
Kayapó walked towards Lópes, and running the blade of her machete three times over his cheeks, then slapped him with the flat of the blade. She proclaimed his act on her people and on the entire Amazon as an act of war. She then stated in Kayapo:
“You are a liar – We do not need electricity. Electricity is not going to give us our food. We need our rivers to flow freely: our future depends on it. We need our jungles for hunting and gathering. We do not need your dam.”
Another chief brought his daughter with him. Embracing her, he said “What I am saying is not for me – it is for her, and for my grandchildren. We want the waters of the Xingu to be clean, and full of fish.”
After the Altamira Conference, the World Bank cancelled a $500 million loan and the Xingu Dam proposal was shelved.
The Undead Wetiko Returns
However, capitalist and colonial forces of civilization wouldn’t be thwarted that easily. In 2011, permits were again granted and construction began shortly thereafter on the Belo Monte Dam on the Xingu River, over the protests of the Kayapo and countless others.
The Belo Monte project, which is the fourth largest dam in the world, is largely completed now. The dam has been built, flooding some 6500 km² of rainforest and destroying more forest with roads, building construction, worker housing, transmission lines, supply dumps, and more.
The result is devastation. Hundreds are species are now committed to extinction as a result of this dam. Greenhouse gas emissions from the dam and the reservoir are estimated to be at least 110 million metric tons. Twenty thousand indigenous people are now refugees from the land their ancestors have lived on for a thousand generations.
It is expected this project is bringing 100,000 migrants to this area, triggering a wave of “development” that will utterly destroy the intact rainforest that remains.
Civilization’s War Against the Planet
The electricity from the Belo Monte Dam will be largely used to power aluminum smelting, an extremely energy intensive industry in which one smelter can use as much energy as a small city. Aluminum production is dependent on bauxite mining, which is it’s own atrocity.
Across the Amazon, we see the same story. Iron ore and gold mining. Logging. Grain and soy agriculture. Factory farming. Industrial production. Pollution, destruction, despoiling. The greatest rainforest in the world is being murdered before our eyes.
The Belo Monte Dam is one battle in civilization’s war on the planet. The dominant culture is murdering all life for economic profit. It is a death cult perpetuating a murder-suicide of the entire world.
In his book Columbus and Other Cannibals, the Powhatan-Renapé and Delaware-Lenápe writer, scholar, and activist Jack D. Forbes expanded on the ancient idea of the wétiko.
Now, were Columbus and his fellow European exploiters simply “greedy” men whose “ethics”were such as to allow for mass slaughter and genocide? I shall argue that Columbus was a wétiko, that he was mentally ill or insane, the carrier of a terribly contagious psychological disease, the wétiko psychosis. The Native people he described were, on the other hand, sane people with a healthy state of mind. Sanity or healthy normality among humans and other living creatures involves a respect for other forms of life and other individuals, as I have described earlier. I believe that is the way people have lived (and should live). The wétiko psychosis, and the problems it creates, have inspired many resistance movements and efforts at reform or revolution. Unfortunately, most of these efforts have failed because they have never diagnosed the wétiko as an insane person whose disease is extremely contagious.
The wétiko disease is a defining characteristic of modern civilized culture.
It is long past time that we gave up our illusions and understood reality. We are living in a time of war. To stand on the sidelines is to remain complicit. Once we know the truth of this war, it’s our responsibility to fight back on behalf of the living world and sanity.
The destruction of the Amazon rainforest is thousands of miles away. But the system that makes that destruction possible is global, and it is vulnerable. We must work to expose these vulnerabilities and call all warriors to arms in defense of the planet. It is time to fight and dismantle the economy of destruction by any means necessary.
