by DGR Editor | Nov 18, 2017 | The Problem: Civilization
Let’s expose the structure of violence that keeps the world economy running
by Derrick Jensen and Frank Joseph Smecker / Truthout
With an entire planet being slaughtered before our eyes, it’s terrifying to watch the very culture responsible for this – the culture of industrial civilization, fueled by a finite source of fossil fuels, primarily a dwindling supply of oil – thrust forward wantonly to fuel its insatiable appetite for “growth.”
Deluded by myths of progress and suffering from the psychosis of technomania complicated by addiction to depleting oil reserves, industrial society leaves a crescendo of atrocities in its wake.
A very partial list would include the Bhopal chemical disaster, numerous oil spills, the illegal depleted uranium-spewing occupations of Iraq, Afghanistan, mountaintop removal, the nuclear meltdown of Fukushima, the permanent removal of 95 percent of the large fish from the oceans (not to mention full-on systemic collapse of those oceans), indigenous communities replacement by oil wells, the mining of coltan for cell phones and Playstations along the Democratic Republic of the Congo/Rwanda border – resulting in tribal warfare and the near-extinction of the Eastern Lowland gorilla.
As though 200 species going extinct each day were not enough, climate change, a direct result of burning fossil fuels, has proved not only to be as unpredictable as it is real, but as destructive as it is unpredictable. The erratic and lethal characteristics of a changing planet and its shifting atmosphere are becoming the norm of the 21st century, their impact accelerating at an alarming pace, bringing this planet closer, sooner than later, to a point of uninhabitable ghastliness. And yet, collective apathy, ignorance and self-imposed denial in the face of all this sadistic exploitation and violence marches this culture closer to self-annihilation.
Lost in the eerily comforting fantasy of limitless growth, production and consumption, many people cling to things like Facebook, Twitter, “Jersey Shore” and soulless pop music as if their lives depended on it, identifying with a reality that’s artificial and constructed, that panders to desire rather than necessity, that delicately conceals the violence at the other end of this economy, a violence so widespread that we’re all not only complicit in it to a degree (e.g., if you’re a taxpayer, you help subsidize the manufacturing of weapons of mass destruction), but victims of it as well. As Chris Hedges admonished in his books, “Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy” and the “Triumph of Spectacle,” any culture that cannot distinguish reality from illusion will kill itself.
Moreover, any culture that cannot distinguish reality from illusion will kill everything and everyone else in its path as well as itself.
As the world burns, as species die off, as mothers breastfeed their children with dioxin-tainted breast milk, as nuclear reactors melt down into the Pacific while the aerial deployment of depleted uranium damages innocent lives, it is perplexing that so few people fight back against a system that has horror as a reality for most living on the planet. And those who fight back, who stand in opposition to the culture behind such wholesale abuse and call it what it is – a genocidal mega-state (especially if you believe that the lives of nonhumans are as important to them as yours is to you and mine is to me) – are met with hostility and hatred, scoffed at, harassed, even tortured. With so much at stake, why aren’t more people deafening their ears to the nutcases who preach a future of infinite-growth economies? And why do so many people continue to put “the economy” first, to take industrial capitalism as we know it as a given and not fight back, defend what’s left of the natural world?
“One of the reasons there aren’t more people working to take down the system that’s killing the planet is because their lives depend on the system,” author and environmental activist Derrick Jensen told me from his home in California when I interviewed him on the phone recently. “If your experience is that your food comes from the grocery store and your water comes from the tap, then you are going to defend to the death the system that brings those to you because your life depends on them,” Jensen explained. “If your experience, however, is that your food comes from a land base and that your water comes from a stream, well, then you will defend to the death that land base and that stream. So part of the problem is that we have become so dependent upon this system that is killing and exploiting us, it has become almost impossible for us to imagine living outside of it and it’s very difficult physically for us to live outside of it.
“The other problem is that fear is the belief we have something left to lose. What I mean by this is that I really like my life right now, as do a lot of people. We have a lot to lose if this culture is to go down. A primary reason so many of us do not want to win this war – or even acknowledge that it’s going on – is that we materially benefit from this war’s plunder. I’m really unsure how many of us would be willing to give up our automobiles and cell phones, hot showers and electric lights, our grocery and clothing stores. But the truth is, the system that leads to these things, that leads to technological advancement and our identity as civilized beings, are killing us and, more importantly, killing the planet.”
Even in the absence of global warming, this culture would still be murdering the planet, bumping off pods of whales and flocks of birds; detonating mountaintops to access strata of coal and bauxite, eliminating entire ecosystems. All this violence inflicted upon an entire planet to run an economy based on the foolish and immoral notion that we can sustain industrial societies, all while trashing the planet’s land bases, ecosystems and life. And the fantastic rhetoric those who insist on adapting to these changes promulgate – that technology will find a fix, that we can adapt, that the planet can and will conform to fixes in the market – is dangerous.
“Another part of the problem,” Jensen told me, “is the narratives behind this culture’s way of living. The premises of these narratives grant us the exclusive rights and privileges of dominion over this planet. Whether you subscribe to the religion of Science or of Christianity, these narratives tell us that our intelligence and abilities permit us exclusive rights and privileges to work our will on the world that is here for us to use. The problem with these stories, whether you believe in them or not, is that they have real effects on the physical world. The stories we’re told about the world shape the way we perceive the world and the way we perceive the world shapes the way we behave in the world. The stories of industrial capitalism – that we can sustain infinite-growth economies – shapes the way this culture behaves in the world. And this behavior is killing the planet. Whether the stories we are told are fantasies or not doesn’t matter, what matters is that these narratives are physical: the stories of Christianity may be fantasy – let’s pretend for a moment that God doesn’t exist – well, the Crusades still happened; the notion of race or gender may be up for debate, but obviously, race and gender does matter and this postmodern attitude drives me crazy because, yeah, race and gender is not an actual thing, but it all has real-world effects – African Americans comprise 58 percent of the prison population and one-third of all black men between the ages of twenty and twenty-nine are under some sort of criminal justice supervision; as for gender, well real males rape females.
“Another example [of how things that truly aren’t real still have real-world effects],” Jensen continued, “is there was this serial killer a while back who was killing women in Santa Cruz. Voices in his head were telling him that if he didn’t kill these women, then California would slide off into the ocean. It’s apparent this guy was delusional, a total nut job and sick in the head, but his delusions still resulted in real-world effects. Hitler too had the delusion that Jews were poisoning the race. That delusion had real-world effects. And we can sit around and discuss whether Weyerhaeuser truly exists, but forests still get deforested. Or better yet, it’s pretty clear that it’s silly to really believe that the world won’t run out of oil … and then it’s suddenly clear that it’s not so silly – there is a physical reality. In the real world, you can’t have a nature/culture split, but in this culture you do and it has real effects on the physical world. You can’t live on a planet and kill it at the same time.”
You find the problem with an industrial production economy when you unpack the word “production.” As Jensen makes clear in his book “The Culture of Make Believe,” production is essentially the conversion of the living to the dead: animals into cold cuts, mountains and rivers into aluminum beer cans, trees into toilet paper, oil into plastics and computers (one computer uses ten times its own mass in fossil fuels). To go paperless is not to go green, or maybe it is, depending on what shade of Green we’re talking about here. Basically, every commodity one comes in contact with is soaked in oil, made from resources, marked by, as Jensen puts it, the turning of the living to the dead: Industrial production.
And with conflicts and wars that are waged or instigated by this culture to access (steal) the resources needed to fuel this economy’s colossal machines, this culture winds up butchering entire non-industrialized communities of people … the elderly, children who cling to their mothers as drones hawk over staggered onlookers … the innocent and vulnerable written off as “collateral damage.” Himmler used a similar epithet for Jews, Gypsies, Poles, Serbs, Belarusians, and other Slavic peoples in a pamphlet he edited and had distributed by the SS Race and Settlement Head Office: “Untermenschen.”
This is an acceptable price we must pay it, so we are told.
In the US, more lives are lost weekly from preventable cancers and other illnesses than are lost in ten years from terrorist attacks. And the corporations this culture fights for overseas are the very organizations culpable for these domestic deaths every week.
The list of victims whose lives are subject to violent assault and extinction to feed this culture’s “production” is as long and as diverse as you want to make it.
“An infinite-growth economy is not only insane and impossible,” remarked Jensen, “it’s also abusive, by which I mean that it’s based on the same conceit as more personal forms of abuse. It is, in fact, the macroeconomic enshrinement of abusive behavior. The guiding principle of abusive behavior is that the abuser refuses to respect or abide by limits or boundaries put up by the victim. Growth economies are essentially unchecked and will push past any boundaries set up by anyone other than the perpetrators. And a successful abuser will always ensure that there are some ‘benefits’ for the victim, in this case, e.g., we can watch TV, we can have computer access and play games online – we get ‘benefits’ that essentially keep us in line.
“Furthermore, according to the stories of industrial capitalism, this economic system must constantly increase production to grow and what, after all, is production? It is indeed the conversion of the living to the dead, the conversion of living forests into two-by-fours, living rivers into stagnant pools for generating hydroelectricity, living fish into fish sticks and ultimately all of these into money. And really, what is gross national product? It’s a measure of this conversion of the living to the dead. The more quickly the living world is converted into dead products, the higher the GNP. And these simple equations are complicated by the fact that when GNP goes down, people often lose jobs. No wonder the world is getting killed.
“And if we take global warming into consideration here – oh and I believe the latest study on global warming mentioned something along the lines of the planet now being on track to heat up by 29 degrees in the next eighty years … if that isn’t curtailed immediately, no one will survive that … And so all the so-called solutions to global warming take industrial capitalism as a given. And here we see the same old abusive behavior: the narratives are not only created around the perceptions of the perpetrators, i.e. those in power, but are forced upon us by them as well, so we come to believe the narratives and accept them as a given. And, essentially, to take industrial capitalism as a given when it comes to solutions to global warming is absolutely absurd and insane. It’s out of touch with physical reality. Yet it has disastrous effects on the real physical world. If you force a planet to conform to ideology you get what you get.
“A while back I had a conversation with an anarchist who was complaining that I was ‘too ideological,’ and that my ideology was ‘the health of the earth.’ Well, actually, the earth is not and cannot ever be an ideology. The earth is physical. It is real. And it is primary. Without soil, you don’t have a healthy land base and without a healthy land base you don’t eat, you die. Without drinkable clean water you die.”
And this is one of the problems with our culture: its lack of ability to separate ideology – the kind that accommodates maximizing pleasure and domination – from the needs of the natural world. And, so, if solutions to global warming do not immediately address the basic needs of the planet, well … we’re fucked.
“One has to ask,” pressed Jensen, “if hammerhead sharks could provide solutions, if the indigenous could give solutions and if we would listen to the solutions they are already giving, would these solutions take industrial capitalism as a given? The bottom line is that capitalist solutions to global warming are coming from the capitalist boosters, from those in power who are responsible for exploiting and destroying us and more importantly, the planet.”
By the 1940s, in Germany, Arthur Nebe’s gassing van was in wide use. Those who drove Nebe’s death vans never thought of themselves as murderers, just as another somebody getting paid to drive a van, to do a job. Today, those who work for Boeing, Raytheon, Weyerhaeuser, Exxon Mobil, BP, the Pentagon … will always see themselves as employees, not murderers. They will always see themselves as working a job that needs to be done.
Those members of this culture who blindly go along without interrogating the culture’s narratives, who identify with the pathology of this culture, will always see themselves as just other members of society. For these people, the murder of a planet feels like economics; it feels normal after having been pushed out of consciousness by careers, styles and fashions; it may not even feel like anything at all after being psychically numbed by pop radio, sitcoms, smart phones, video games … But at the other end of all these glittery distractions is an unremitting array of violence, poverty, extinction, environmental degradation.
“I saw this right-wing bumper sticker the other day that read, ‘You can have my gun when you pry it from my cold, dead fingers,’ but it’s not just guns: we’re going to have to pry rigid claws off steering wheels, cans of hair spray, TV remote controls and two-liter bottles of Jolt Cola,” cautioned Jensen. “Each of these individually and all of these collectively are more important to many people than are lampreys, salmon, spotted owls, sturgeons, tigers, our own lives. And that is a huge part of the problem. So of course we don’t want to win. We’d lose our cable TV. But I want to win. With the world being killed, I want to win and will do whatever it takes to win.”
When Adolph Eichmann stood before the Jerusalem District Court and was asked why he agreed to the task of deporting Jews to the ghettos and concentration camps, his response was, No one ever told me what I was doing was wrong. Today, 200 species have become extinct; another indigenous community will disappear from this planet forever; an entire forest will be removed; and millions of human lives will be forced to endure the agonies of famine, war, disease, thirst, the loss of their land, their community, their way of life. Not enough people have stepped forward to say that what this culture is doing to the planet is wrong.
Well, here it is folks: What this culture is doing to our very selves, what it’s doing to the planet, is wrong. So damn wrong. And the sooner we replace this economy, the sooner we can dissolve these toxic illusions and their formative narratives. Only then, can we begin to live the free lives we were born to live and win the fight.
Images from 11 Thought Provoking Images Show what Humans are Really Doing to the Planet
Read more of Derrick Jensen’s essays here.
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Nov 15, 2017 | Colonialism & Conquest
by Brett Spencer / Intercontinental Cry
On Saturday, Nov. 11, members and supporters of the Miskitu indigenous party, Yapti Tasba Masraka Nanih Aslatakanka (YATAMA) crowded into their burnt down compound to celebrate their thirtieth anniversary. Over one thousand people were present, including many from surrounding villages that came to listen to the party’s political leader and congressman, Brooklyn Rivera.
The celebration came just days after riot police and military were flown in from Managua to control dissent following Nicaragua’s municipal elections. YATAMA and its supporters roundly denounced the election results on Nov. 5 that deposed them of control of the municipalities of Bilwi, Waspam, Prinzapolka and Awaltara.
YATAMA’s supporters, who took to the streets in protest of the results—which YATAMA deemed fraudulent—were met with violence by military and paramilitary forces carrying automatic weapons.
“We were protesting electoral fraud,” said the party’s leader, Brooklyn Rivera. “We were protecting our people. We were not expecting the military or the police to attack. Our youth tried to resist the attack, but you cannot fight back with rocks when they have machine guns.”
The violence in Bilwi reached a new low when YATAMA’s headquarters was set on fire Monday night. At least part of the event was caught on film, but no one has taken responsibility for setting fire to the compound.
YATAMA and many residents of Puerto Cabezas-Bilwi say that local residents are not responsible.
Brooklyn Rivera, who was in his office when the building was set ablaze, insists that it was the police and army. “I was inside there when they attacked. It was not the Sandinista youth or local Sandinista members. It was the army and the police who did this, not our local people. This violence was organized from Managua,” he said.
IC confirms that party leadership has been harassed, attacked and threatened by military and paramilitary personal as government forces laid siege to the city. “The burning of the YATAMA house, the radio station and the destruction of the Indian statue came directly from the special forces of the police, not from some local Sandinista group,” said Mr. Rivera. “The leadership of YATAMA is not fighting, we are here accompanying our people.”
These allegations suggest that the post-election unrest in Bilwi is not a local conflict of “Miskitu versus Miskitu,” but rather a government crackdown on indigenous resistance. There are currently one hundred and three political prisoners in Bilwi following the municipal elections, and the arrests of protesters throughout the country show that distrust of the democratic process in Nicaragua is not isolated to the Atlantic Coast.
Mr. Rivera was pleased to have peace during the party’s celebration, and he is already planning a path forward to remain a pillar of support for the indigenous population. “We must rebuild, it is important that our people have staples of communication and resistance like our radio station to keep unity in our communities.”
It has been a difficult week for the party, as it comes to terms with the iron grip of militarization. The aftermath of the election has left many questioning if YATAMA should direct itself away from a political agenda, when each election is met with allegations of fraud and violence.
Mr. Rivera understands this sentiment and frustration, citing a recent resolution by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, he commented, “We are violating our own rights by participating in this election.”
When asked why the national government has exhausted so much power to prevent YATAMA from succeeding, Mr. Rivera did not hesitate. “They are trying to colonize our people and our land to control our natural resources. We resisted, and now they are trying to totally destroy indigenous organization.”
As relations between YATAMA and the Ortega administration continue to deteriorate, residents are beginning to accuse the government of resorting to the same kind of reactionary violence seen in the 1980s. For now, the city remains peopled with military personnel, as YATAMA plans to reopen its radio station and reconstruct its pillars of resistance.
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Nov 11, 2017 | Colonialism & Conquest
Featured image: Amid reports the Sandinista army has ordered his capture or execution; historic political and spiritual leader of the Indigenous political party of Yatama, Brooklyn Rivera, prepares to brave a public appearance. Photo: Lloyd Lopez
by Laura Hobson Herlihy / Intercontinental Cry
Since the elections on Sunday Nov. 5, Yatama has lost far more than the municipalities of Waspam, Bilwi, Prinzapolka, and Awaltara. At least four people have been killed, dozens have been injured, and 50 have been taken as political prisoners; Yatama’s Miskitu-language radio station and sacred headquarters was burned down; the “indio guerillero” (warrior Indian) statue was destroyed; and Yatama’s own flag was replaced by the flag of the Sandinista nation-state. Their backs are to the wall.
Yatama leaders’ feelings of helplessness does not fit within the Miskitu world-view, however. The Miskitu Peoples still see themselves as successful warriors. They fought alongside the British during the colonial era and were not conquered by the Spanish until 1894, when their Muskitia homeland was incorporated into the Nicaraguan state. As fighters in the US-backed Contra War within the Nicaraguan revolution (1979-1990), the Miskitu were awarded a pluri-ethnic homeland, almost half of the country, with two politically autonomous regions.
So why now in 2017 do the Miskitu feel helpless? In the past, the Miskitu aligned with the British and US governments. Today, they have no international alliances. Only Russia and China are current players in Nicaragua. Chinese mega-projects and Russian military bases and armory, including a recent purchase of 50 tanks, fortify the Ortega government.
On Tuesday, Nov. 7, the Miskitu Yatama sympathizers placed a road block in Sisin, blocking passage of vehicles and haulting commerce between Waspam and Bilwi. Rumors began that Yatama men were arming themselves in rural communities and planned to fight in Bilwi and burn down the entire town of Bilwi (pop. 50,000), the capital of the North Caribbean Autonomous Region. The US Embassy evacuated its Fulbright scholar in Tuapi. Bilwi residents experience anxiety and PTSD.
Speaking with Brooklyn Rivera by phone on the evening of Friday, Nov. 10, IC asked him directly if Yatama is planning to cause violence. He told us, “No, we are the victims of violence. The state is committing violence against us. We are poor indigenous people. We don’t have guns, we have rocks and they have automatic weapons. We can’t fight that.”
When asked if his troops are arming in communities, he responded, “That is just gossip.”
We also asked if Yatama plans to burn down Bilwi. He told us, “No, how can we burn down our home?”
Rivera continued, “Thousands of Miskitu people were not allowed to vote in the municipal elections. Then, the Riot Police from Managua backed by the local Bilwi Police burned down the Yatama radio station and headquarters.”
Rivera, now 65 years old, has served as the highest leader of the Miskitu people since the early 1980s. On the Monday following the 2017 municipal elections, Rivera had a busy day—he escaped from Riot Police and later, the devastating fire at the Yatama house.
Rivera interjected, “Tomorrow at 1:00 in the baseball stadium, we will celebrate Yatama’s 30-year anniversary.” He is the founder and long-term Yatama director. We asked if he plans to attend the celebration. Rivera replied quickly, “Sure, I have to celebrate along with my people.” We pointed out that he may be arrested. He demured, “I am ready for anything that comes. I am the leader of my people, I have done nothing wrong. I haven’t killed anyone.”
Meanwhile, Bilwi sleeps lightly tonight, with the Yatama celebration planned for mid-day. Bilwi is highly militarized, with over 100 riot police roaming the streets along with rogue neighborhood gangs. Any gathering could easily turn into a violent confrontation. The stage is set for a showdown.
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Nov 10, 2017 | Colonialism & Conquest
by Laura Herlihy / Intercontinental Cry
The Nicaraguan Sandinista (FSLN) government of Daniel Ortega and the indigenous Miskitu people are repeating their own history. Resembling the Cold War era of the 1980s, violence is playing out again along the Caribbean Coast. At least four indigenous Miskitu men are dead, several are missing, and many more have been taken as political prisoners and prisoners of conscience in the violent anti-indigenous riots that followed the municipal election in Bilwi-Puerto Cabezas on Sunday, Nov. 5.
A few hours after polls closed, officials from the indigenous political party Yatama (Yapti Tasba Masraka Nanih Aslatakanka/Children of the Mother Earth), calculated having nearly 3,000 more votes than the opposition FSLN party. While Yatama officials awaited the arrival of ballot boxes from their loyal communities, the FSLN claimed victory and celebrated shortly after 10:00 PM. The following day, Yatama officials denounced the FSLN for lack of transparency in the election; they also claimed to have documented electoral fraud and voter suppression, through the manipulation of voter data, multiple voting by FSLN sympathizers (by using removable ink on their thumbs); and the purchasing of votes.
Yatama held a protest march on Monday afternoon but were confronted by Riot Police brought in from Managua, backed by Sandinista youth gangs. The Riot Police reportedly turned a blind eye to the gang’s destruction of property belonging to Yatama sympathizers, including costly vehicles.
A car set on fire during the massive riot lights up the night
Later, both the Yatama headquarters (a sacred temple of indigenous identity) and Radio Yapti Tasba (Yatama’s indigenous language-based, community radio station) were destroyed by fire.
Rampant destruction across Biliw (also known as Puerto Cabezas) included the YATAMA Indigenous party headquarters and both of their radio stations, leaving the Sandinista radio station as the only operating, on-air station in a region which relies on community radio as a prime source of information
The FSLN flag was then mounted high upon the surviving radio tower, replacing Yatama’s flag.
Raising of the FSLN flag
Perhaps most symbolically, the iconic statue of the Indian (“El Indio”) was demolished in Bilwi’s town center. The statue, erected decades ago, represented the indigenous struggle. Caribbean coastal residents lost a significant amount of their cultural patrimony in one volatile day.
The iconic statue before it was destroyed
Local intellectuals claim this election and its aftermath symbolize the final conquest and domination of the Muskitia region, finishing off what Rigoberto Cabezas initiated in 1894, when he incorporated the Muskitia territory into Nicaragua and ousted the last Miskitu King, Robert Henry Clarence. Today, in a similar way, the Sandinista state attempts to eliminate the long-term spiritual and political leader of the Miskitu people, Brooklyn Rivera, and the Yatama organization he founded almost 30 years ago to the day, on Nov. 11, 1987.
Para-military forces apprehended Rivera the afternoon of Monday, Nov. 6, but he escaped when Yatama youth fought his captors. Rivera and other top Yatama leaders (Reynaldo Francis, Bilwi’s 2017 Yatama mayoral candidate, and Elizabeth Henriquez) are now in hiding, threatened by arrest warrants and the burning of their houses by FSLN sympathizers. Their children also remain in hiding, along with many Yatama officials and their family members.
Since 2008, a new wave of colonization has occurred in the Nicaraguan Muskitia by mestizo agricultural and cattle-ranching colonists from the Pacific. Colonists cut down trees in ancestral, indigenous rainforest lands, illegally settle in the region, and vote Sandinista.
To date, in their fight with the colonists, 44 Miskitu men have been killed, 22 have been kidnapped, and dozens have been injured. These indigenous environmental activists are protecting their rainforest lands for the global good. The IACHR (Inter-American Commission on Human Rights) passed two resolutions in 2015 and 2016, urging the state to protect the Miskitu people, but the Nicaragua state has not complied.
Accused Sandinista aggressions since the Municipal Elections include:
- Arbitrary repression and imprisonment of indigenous people.
- Burning of indigenous community radio station Yapta Tasba of the Yatama organization.
- Burning of the Yatama headquarters that served as a scared temple for its indigenous supporters.
- Criminalization of Yatama leaders, including the detainment of long-term leader and national congressman Brooklyn Rivera, who escaped from para-military police.
- Destruction of monuments: the Indian statue in the town’s center that stood as a symbol of indigenous resistance for 30 years.
- Suppression of the Yatama flag by the FSLN flag.
- Militarization of communities with Riot Police, who voted in local elections although not residents.
- At present, the Riot Police from Managua are fighting with automatic weapons against indigenous Yatama youth armed with mainly mortar, rocks, handguns, and knives.
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Oct 30, 2017 | Gender
Featured image: Crosses marking the mass grave of femicide victims in Chihuahua (Wikipedia)
by Raquel Rosario Sanchez / Feminist Current
These are hard times for women. The feminist movement of the 70s and 80s raised awareness about violence against women on a global scale. As a result, today, we are able to identify the murder of women and girls as systemic under patriarchy. In Latin America and the Caribbean, where violence against women is an epidemic, we even have a term for this: femicide (or “feminicidio’” in Spanish), meaning, “the murder of women on account of their sex.”
Despite this, women’s lived reality has become unspeakable today. Those who acknowledge that females are oppressed as a class, under patriarchy, are labeled phobic and worse. In other words, feminist analysis of systems of power is set aside in order to accommodate the idea that womanhood is nothing more than a “feeling.”
Over at Equality For Her, journalist Katelyn Burns writes:
“So what does it mean to feel like a woman? It means that if you are a woman, it’s whatever you are currently feeling. Women are so diverse in their experiences that there can be no universal model of womanhood.”
Apparently, womanhood is now so all-encompassing it can be experienced by anyone, based on “feelings.” Yet, at the same time, within this analysis, womanhood is rendered meaningless and without structural roots.
“What is a woman?” is a question asked by those privileged enough to never have had to suffer the answer to this question. No one asks women what womanhood “feels” like, because, for us, being “women” is simply our reality. Most womenaround the world learn early on that, under patriarchy, their opinions about their subordination are irrelevant. As a structural force, patriarchy continues to degrade and violate women and girls, whether we like it or not, whether we agree with it or not — women’s feelings be damned.
Male violence against women ensures our compliance. Femicide is the lethal extreme of this, but violence against women and girls manifests in a myriad of ways. In feminist circles, we talk about male violence against women often. Indeed, ending male violence is the most pressing point in the agenda for women’s liberation. But how can we eradicate male violence against women if we ignore the centrality of women’s bodies under male supremacy? How can we move beyond a patriarchal society if we refuse to acknowledge that women are a class of people, whose status is determined by their sex?
On August 31st, this reality was laid bare in a Chinese hospital. A 26-year-old woman named Ma Rongrong started labour a week ahead of schedule. She was advised by the medical team at the Yulin Number 1 hospital, in the Shaanxi province, that the girth of her baby’s head was too big for her to give birth naturally. Ma and her husband, Yan Zhuangzhuang, signed a document, against medical recommendations, stating that Ma still wanted to try a vaginal birth.
The Chinese newspaper Caixin reports that, as the labour pains intensified, Rongrong changed her mind and requested a cesarean section, multiple times. The problem was that, under Chinese law, a patient’s family must approve of all major surgeries their relative is to undergo. Rongrong’s family denied her the c-section.
The article explains: “Hospital records showed that both the woman and the hospital requested permission from the family three times to perform the operation, but her relatives allegedly refused and insisted on a natural delivery.” There’s video footage of Rongrong trying to walk, but kneeling in excruciating pain, surrounded by half a dozen family members.
Today, the family and the hospital staff blame each other for denying Rongrong the c-section she needed. But it seems that the last word laid with her family — specifically Rongrong’s husband, who had her written permission to decide on the method of medical treatment for his wife (after consultation with medical staff), but who still didn’t approve the surgery.
In her desperation, Rongrong even tried to leave the hospital, but was caught and brought back inside. Eventually, she made a drastic and tragic decision: Ma climbed out of a window on the fifth floor, and jumped to her death.
Why did Rongrong die? I’d argue that Rongrong died, ultimately, because of her sex.
Nobody asked Rongrong if she “felt” like a woman, patriarchy simply treated her as one — governing her female body against her will, ignoring her thoughts and feelings. A nationwide policy dictating that all surgeries have to be approve by family members affects every patient in China. But, as Rongrong’s death shows, this policy has particular repercussions for those with female bodies.
A similarly gruesome case took place around the same time in the Dominican Republic. A 16-year-old girl named Emely Peguero Polanco had been missing for over 10 days. Her disappearance and the search efforts were breaking news, in part because Peguero Polanco was five months pregnant in a country that fetishizes pregnancy. For almost two weeks, it seemed the country could talk of little else.
As many people suspected, Peguero Polanco had been murdered. Her final hours and the manner of her death were ghastly. She had been ambushed by her boyfriend, an older guy named Marlon Martinez, who told her he would take her to a doctor’s appointment. Instead, he took her to his apartment where he (probably with the aid of other people) performed a forced abortion on her.
The investigation is still open but the crime is both misogynistic and vile. Marlon’s mother, Marlin Martinez, was an influential politician in the community and actively helped her son cover up the crime. Marlin paid multiple employees to move Peguero Polanco’s body around the country so that the authorities couldn’t find it. Marlin even appeared with her son in a video recording where they pled with Peguero Polanco — who had already been murdered — to return to her loved ones, addressing her as though she were a runaway.
The forensic report states that Peguero Polanco was a victim of psychological and physical violence, as well as torture and barbaric acts:
“Inside the cadaver, there were pieces of the fetus that she was carrying in her womb, concussion to the uterine wall and vaginal canal, a perforation of the uterus, meaning that great force was applied in the area and various organs relating to a forced abortion.”
The report also explains that she had “a blunt concussion with cerebral hemorrhaging, meaning the trauma was inflicted while she was alive.”
Regardless of the “motives” her murderer and his accomplices might have had (some analysts argue that there was a class element because Peguero Polanco was poor and Marlon was upper class, so his family didn’t want a working class girl carrying his child), Peguero Polanco was killed because of her pregnant, female body. And I am certain that none of those who performed the forced abortion that killed her asked Peguero Polanco if she “identified” with the biological realities of her womanhood.
Rongrong and Peguero Polanco are merely two recent examples, but the ways in which women are killed because they are women, under a patriarchal system, are infinite. But today’s queer theory and its advocates are casting aside this brutal reality in order to depict womanhood as abstract. Reducing “womanhood” to feelings, clothing, and personal identities is a slap in the face to most women and girls whose oppression is forced on them, regardless of how they dress or identify.
Recently, British singer Sam Smith came out as “non-binary,” saying, “I feel just as much woman as I am man.” This newfound identity appears to be based solely on the superficial. He explains:
“There was one moment in my life where I didn’t own a piece of male clothing, really… I would wear full makeup every day in school, eyelashes, leggings with Dr. Martens, and huge fur coats — for two and a half years.”
Determining that you “feel like a woman” because you like to wear high heels, makeup, and dresses is deeply misogynistic, as these are merely the trappings of femininity — a projection of male fantasies about women — yet this idea appears to be gaining traction.
Much like the upper class loves the aesthetic of the working class and similar to the way male authors fetishize women in the sex trade, hoping to appear “hip,” as Kajsa Ekis Ekman argues, this watering down of womanhood is a form of gentrification. In this case, womanhood is desired and coopted by those who benefit under patriarchy (males), while the uncomfortable and violent realities of womanhood remain relegated to the underclass, who don’t have a way out.
In Being and Being Bought, Ekman writes:
“A man who romanticizes the working class applauds the physical labourer and hopes that he has some of those attributes, but it is stereotypical masculinity he admires, not a living person trying to survive under difficult conditions. The ‘wigger’ feels like he is part of the black community, but is not upset about violence in the ghetto. What he fails to understand is that by fetishizing someone’s everyday life, he shows how distant he is from it. Living conditions become and identity, and then a fetish.”
The gentrification of womanhood takes the gender stereotypes forced on women and presents them as though they define womanhood. This offers a subversive facade that functions only on an individual level, rather than a structural one, ignoring the suffering and oppression of women. Rather than advancing the rights of women and girls, this form of gentrification obscures them, erasing the reasons women need sex-based rights in the first place.
Ekman argues:
“The oppressed is keenly aware of the humanity of the privileged. For the privileged, on the other hand, the oppressed is an enigma living in a magical, half-human world. The fantasy of the privileged is having the ability to wallow in this world.”
Indeed, men may wallow, but they will never be forced to exist within the constraints of womanhood, as they were not born with female bodies. Through superficial choices like clothing and make-up, women’s oppression is transformed into something liberating… For everyone but us.
The casual cruelty of these nonsensical, circular arguments is playing out while girls and women around the world bear the brunt of what, for them, is a reality, not an identity.
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Oct 22, 2017 | Biodiversity & Habitat Destruction, Mining & Drilling
Featured image: Red Butte. Located just 6 miles from the south rim of the Grand Canyon, this sacred site is in danger because of the Canyon uranium mine that operates adjacent. Photo Garet Bleir
by Garet Bleir / Intercontinental Cry
More than five million people visit the Grand Canyon each year. It’s one of the world’s most popular tourist destinations, yet the public knows next to nothing about the indigenous nation living on its floor.
Geography has a lot to do with it: the territory of the Havasupai Tribe is only accessible by helicopter–or, for those more daring, through an arduous 10-mile walk to the canyon’s floor. But it’s also by choice: even though the Havasupai now survive on tourism, they don’t make most of their knowledge and customs available to the public.
Unfortunately, that isolation has failed to protect them from the threat of uranium mining. According to officials in the Sierra Club and USGS, the Canyon Mine has already contaminated millions of gallons of clean drinking water beneath the tribe’s sacred site of Red Butte and directly above the aquifer that feeds the tribe’s main source of water.
The uranium mine represents a major threat to the tribe’s cultural practices and the traditional ecological medicine knowledge held by the nation’s medicine people.
Historically, Havasupai medicine people served as an advisory council to the chief. “Any decisions that affected the entire tribe were sent through the medicine people for spiritual input before decisions were made,” Uqualla, a Havasupai medicine man and spiritual traditionalist, told IC. “There is no longer direct guidance over political decisions, but there is still a constant flow of spirituality held by individuals, which is reinforced, reignited, rejuvenated, and re-divined by a source.”
Uqualla, a Havasupai Medicine Man and Spiritual Traditionalist, stands in front of Red Butte. Photo Garet Bleir
Medicine people continue to serve as emissaries for the Mother Earth in their practices today, Uqualla said. The tribe seeks to protect the specifics of Havasupai medicinal collections and spiritual practices from the public to avoid misunderstandings and potential dangers that come from incorrect replication by non-spiritual practitioners. Unlike Western medical traditions, the Havasupai’s spiritual medicine practices do not solely focus on applying generic treatments for anyone that suffers from a specific ailment. Rather, in spiritual medicine, the individual “patient” informs these practices and use of medicines.
For example, juniper berries might be considered good for urinary tract infections (UTI’s), kidney stones, and joint pain; the sap of pinon pines can be effective for coughs and sore throats or used externally for wounds, and sage can be used to help with digestion problems, reduction of over-perspiration, depression and memory loss. While the Havasupai recognize these facts, they believe that these medicines also interplay with the individual.
“There is an alchemy with the preparations of medicines,” Uqualla explained. “The alchemy is inclusive of the person in ailment. The collection and preparation of plants is directly connected to the person being healed. It is dependent on the patient’s openness and beliefs to what is coming in during the process. So, the key for spiritual medicine is that it come from a pure place, a pure collection method, and a pure intention.”
Havasupai horse grazing beneath Wigleeva, a sacred sandstone rock formation overlooking Supai village in the Havasupai Reservation. Photo: Garet Bleir
In sharing this wisdom, Uqualla hopes to benefit the broader, non-indigenous or non-spiritual population and to communicate how these lands continue to serve the indigenous peoples in the area.
Throughout his practices, Uqualla uses a variety of sage, juniper and pinon pine, as well as berries, acorns, talons, bones, feathers, cones, rocks, and plants that are found in the region of Red Butte, while incorporating the essence of these objects and other elements to bring strength to the healing process, he explained.
In Havasupai culture, the desire to safeguard stories and practices is also born from a concern that their practices will be appropriated and applied in an inappropriate manner. “When it comes to sharing information, you want to share elements that will bring clarity, illumination, healing, and well-being for people,” Uqualla said. “Because our practices are very individualized, it comes with risk when a major non-indigenous or non-spiritual demographic sees or reads something and [tries] to replicate, because they are likely to make an incorrect interpretation of it.”
Instead, Uqualla urges those searching for this kind of healing to locate an expert. “Every place in the Mother Earth has a medicine people, and it is important for those looking to benefit from these practices to be able to recognize them.”
Another reason the Havasupai guard their sacred places and practices is due to the greed of those who appropriate their culture.
The Havasupai have experienced their fair share, like most other Native American nations. For instance, the Havasupai now only have access to “traditional use sites”after being forced at gunpoint from their traditional grounds within the Grand Canyon National Park. In a broader context, Indigenous Peoples have been repeatedly subjected to acts of “biopiracy” at the hands of pharmaceutical companies, biotechnology firms and even universities.
Indian Gardens, Grand Canyon National Park. This land was a traditional area for farming and medicine collection until the Havasupai were forced out, twenty years after the Grand Canyon was declared a national monument. Photo: Garet Bleir
“We have found the only way we can protect a thing that we do not want disturbed is by being very, very silent,” said Rex Tilousi, former Havasupai Chairman. “Not speaking about that painting, that rock, what is behind that rock, because we know what is going to happen to these things if we talk about them. They are going to be destroyed.”Red Butte serves as a critical example of this appropriation, given that this unique and sacred space in Grand Canyon’s biocultural landscape, is now occupied by a uranium mine.
Owned by Energy Fuels, the Canyon Mine has already contaminated millions of gallons of once clean drinking water beneath the grounds surrounding Red Butte. Now, this contaminated water is being sprayed into the air, trickling into the nearby forest, according to the president of the Sierra Club’s Grand Canyon Chapter, Alicyn Gitlin. All of this is occurring upon traditional and current medicinal collection sites within the sacred land of Red Butte.
The destruction of this land has a history that dates to the late ‘70s, when the Canyon Mine was first being developed by Energy Fuels Resources (EFR). “Without letting us know, EFR had already scraped the ground, the sage, and underneath the dust they destroyed ancient grinding stones, baskets, the pottery work our people traded with other tribes, and even bones,” said Tilousi. “They had scraped away everything getting that place ready for mining.”
After being accused of desecrating sacred land and failing to communicate with the Havasupai before the company started working, EFR denied the sacred nature of the area.
Some 30 years later, Mark Chalmers, the President and COO of EFR, stands behind his company’s claim. When IC interviewed Chalmers last month he commented,
“You know it’s interesting…I built the mine in the ‘80s, and it was interesting because the Red Butte was never brought up as a cultural site back when they built it, but now it has emerged as a cultural site.”
Chalmers said he spoke with a local rancher who ran cattle in the area for 20 or 30 years. “He’s the one who said it.“And I’m not saying this to be derogatory against the Havasupais, because I do respect the Havasupais, but he had never seen Havasupai in that ground until the mine was approved.” [sic]
Chalmers went on to say that he had given some of the Havasupai their first rides to the Canyon Mine, because they had never seen it before. “I’m not saying that some Havasupais wouldn’t consider Red Butte sacred, but it received very little or no attention that I knew of.” [sic]
The Canyon uranium mine. Photo: Garet Bleir
Whether he was aware of it or not, Chalmers’ comment echoes back to a time when the legal doctrine of terra nullius became a popular tool to justify territorial conquest.
The doctrine, which eventually became international law, establishes that any land can be legally obtained if it is found to be unused or unoccupied. The doctrine has been used extensively by governments and companies seeking to take ownership of indigenous lands.
Chalmers’ comment also fails to acknowledge historical transgressions against the tribe. The Havasupai used to have easy access to Red Butte, but that changed when the Havasupai were forcibly removed to make way for the Grand Canyon National Park. Now, they must take a three-hour drive from their reservation to Red Butte…and that’s after a helicopter ride or 10-mile hike out of the canyon.
Regardless of outsider’s interpretations of their own cultural practices, the Havasupai maintain their spiritual connection to Red Butte.
“People complain that we have no documentation of being in the [area], and say such things like, ‘we have never seen them here,’ Uqualla observed. “But animals and plants are still a very profound part of the survival of the Havasupai people and we have been constantly utilizing these lands over generations.”
Due to the way that these collections take place, by one medicine man or woman and at various times of day or night, it is understandable why the rancher would not have noticed any Havasupai.
“Within our tradition and spirituality, these gatherings are not a show of being there to collect in grand ceremony,” Uqualla explained. “It is being there in those private moments to go in and have to communicate with Mother Earth to have permission to take, permission to use, permission to be able to bring in what it is meant for. The whole Grand Canyon rim is a giant apothecary of medicine and this is known by every spiritual group that is in the Colorado River Plateau region.”
The Havasupai still go into the Red Butte and Canyon Mine area too. “Individual medicine entities go out and collect what is needed at times when it is intimate for the Mother Earth and the harvester. This is done in such a subtle way that only an appropriate amount is taken. They wouldn’t see a whole field leveled or harvested,” Uqualla said.
The Canyon Mine could change everything. Even if contaminated water from the mine is somehow unable to make it into the deeper aquifer, several new studies have demonstrated that the mine can still have a negative ecological impact on local plant and animal life.
Medicine people have been in constant concern for the Mother Earth. They bring healing to her, which will bring healing to the people she watches over, Uqualla continued. But, according to many members of the tribe, these collections and practices are now in danger. “How can we get there? If we do get there, do we need special new ceremony? How can we be sure that our sacred spring water isn’t poisoned?”
Havasu Falls on the Havasupai Reservation. Areas such as these are fed by the aquifer directly beneath the Canyon Mine. Photo: Garet Bleir
Uqualla also told us that the Havasupai aren’t the only Native American tribe affected by the mine. The grounds in question are also sacred gathering lands for the Navajo Nation, the Hopi Nation, the Hualapai, and other tribes on the Colorado River Plateau.
He maintains that, in the future, medicine people will have to be even more discerning as to what is collected and when it is collected. They will also have to consider alternate preparations and other options to eradicate any negative effects the mine might have on medicine in the area.
Looking toward the future, Uqualla left us with this final thought:
“Everyone that is birthed on this mother earth has dark and light, good and bad, masculine and feminine. Learn how to bring that into a magnificent balance. The Mother Earth stated at the beginning, ‘I will give you what it is that you ask for. Not what you ask for from the language or the voice, but what you put forth in your actions.’
“Everything about Mother Earth speaks in symbolism. Learn how to pull from the information given by the surroundings. The medicines of wind, the medicines of the water, the medicines of fire, the medicines of rock. The Mother Earth knows how to take care of itself. And it will take care of itself. It’s going to be the greatest teacher for all of us so go out to her daily and allow for yourself that connection in whatever way you wish that is comfortable for you do so. Even if it is just a step out there. That one moment of total blankness will allow for that infusion of Mother Earth to come through. Allow for yourself to make a connection with the Mother Earth and have her be a constant watcher, healer, teacher, and leader for you.
“We are the children of the Mother Earth and every single one of them walk and trash and abuse the earth beneath them. It’s a surface that gives us the ability to walk, talk, breath, sing, dance. And that is important for us to understand. Without that where would we be? We would not be.”
