In this piece, Suresh discusses the impact of civilization on endemic communities and their right to live in isolation. Suresh tells us how these indigenous people have had their land, rights and identities stripped by encroaching industrial civilization.
In a world characterised by information, there are issues that have been made so invisible that the great majority of people do not even know that they exist. This is the case of the ethnic communities living in voluntary isolation. Most are not even aware that some of these people have not yet been contacted by the predominating society and in other cases, have resisted integrating it in spite or as a result of having been contacted.
To this ignorance is added a second one: that the very existence of these people is seriously threatened by the destructive advance of ‘development’. Roads penetrating into the forests to extract timber, oil, minerals or to promote land settlement for agriculture and cattle ranching, can be labelled ‘inroads of death’ for these people. They bring unknown diseases their bodies are incapable of coping with, destroy the forests that provide for their livelihoods, pollute waters, where they drink, bathe and fish. There are encounters with those who intend to take over their territory, the death of their millennia-old cultural heritage.
To understand the problem we need to divest ourselves of our ‘truths’ and try to put ourselves in their place.
All of us live in territories with precise limits. They do too. All of us are jealous custodians of our frontiers when faced with potential or real external aggression. They are too. All of us have our feelings of nationality, with a specific language, culture and wisdom. They have too.
What would we do if a group of armed foreigners entered our territory without our permission? The same as they do; we would resist in every possible way, including armed resistance. However, while we may be considered to be ‘heroic patriots’, they are classified as savages. Why is this? Simple, because we are the ones to legitimize resistance (violence).
It is important to emphasize that these people were never asked if they wanted to be Indian, Asian, African, American or European. Each government – colonial or national – simply drew up a map of straight lines and determined that all the territories included within its frontiers ‘belong’ to the corresponding country or colony – irrespective of these people having been there much before the very idea of even the concept of state. They have been ‘nationalised’.
Again this begs the question: what would we do if we had to face a similar situation? Would we accept the imposed change of nationality or would we resist it ?
Surely, we would do everything possible to continue being what we are and what we want to be. The difference, of course, is that these people are in no position to, ultimately, resist the devastating advance of modernisation (industrialisation). For this reason, all of us who believe in justice and dignity, have an obligation to provide them with the support they need– although they do not ask for it– to defend their liberty and rights, and, finally, prevent the silent or invisible genocide that they are being subject to.
We should not be surprised thatthere are people who do not want to either assimilate or integrate into the kind of life that we live; a system that pauperises millions, destroys whole ecosystems – land, water, forests, fisheries, space and atmosphere. These people are neither poor nor ignorant. They are most certainly different and have demonstrated the most uncommon wisdom, whose history is a mystery even today.
When the first ‘conquistadores’ travelled down the combined drainage basin of the rivers Amazon and Orinoco, in the 16thcentury, they found populous settlements, hierarchical chiefdoms and complex agricultural systems all along the two rivers. The ‘Indians’, they reported, raised turtles in ponds/freshwater lagoons, had vast stores of dried fish, made sophisticated glazed pottery, and had huge jars, each one capable of holding a hundred gallons. They also noted that these people had dug-out canoes and traded up and down the Andes. Behind the large settlements, they noted many roads leading to the hinterland. These stories were later discounted as the puff of promoters trying to magnify the importance of their ‘discoveries’, as the banks of the rivers have been almost devoid of people since the 18thcentury. All through the 20thcentury, the archetypal Amazonians were ‘hidden tribes’, hunter-gatherers and jhum cultivators, who lived mostly upstream, at the headwaters, away from even the settlers within.
With the benefit of hindsight and new insights from history, social anthropology and archaeology, we can nowsee that these two opposing perceptions of Amazonia are strangely and tragically related. Archaeology now teaches us that lowland Amazonia, even in areas of poor soil and brackish water like the upper Xingu, was indeed once quite densely populated. Regional trade and dynamic synergies among and between the Amazonians had led to the sub-continent being thickly populated by widely differentiated, but inter-related groups or communities, who specialised in local skills to both work and use their unique environs in diverse and subtle ways.
The onslaught of modern/western societies brought about much of this complexity/diversity to an end. Warfare, conquest, religious missions, and the scourge of old world diseases reduced whole populations to less than a tenthof the pre-Columbian levels. Slave raids, by European invaders traded the ‘red gold’ of enslaved ‘Indians’ for the goods of western industries, stripped the lower rivers/reaches bare of any remnant groups. Raiding, enslaving and competition for trading opportunities with the whites created turmoil in the headwaters. The myth of the empty Amazon became a reality as the survivors moved inland and upstream to avoid these depredations.
In the late 19thcentury, overseas markets and advances in technology created new possibilities of exploitation/extraction. In particular, the discovery of the process of vulcanisation, led to a global trade in non-timber forest produce, such as, rubber and other plantations almost exclusively for military-industrial-commercial use. The onerous task of bleeding the climax vegetation and the land rich in deposits, linked to global trade and finance, yielded fortunes for entrepreneurs prepared to penetrate the headwaters and enslave local communities to serve the global marketplace.
Tens of thousands of indigenous people perished as a result of forced contact, labour and disease.
This forced them to flee even deeper into the jungles, to break contact completely with a changing world that brought them death and destruction of life and ‘property’.
Of course, not all the indigenous people at the headwaters are environmental/ecological refugees escaping the brutalities of contact. However, the impact of the outside world on even the remotest headwaters is often underestimated. For many, not only in Amazonia, the search for isolation has been an informed choice – the logical response of a people who have realised that contact with the outside world almost certainly brings only ruin, not benefits.
This century’s industrialised societies are being further drawn into the last reaches of the Amazon, where these people now live in voluntary isolation, for timber, minerals, oil and natural gas. If we deplore the consequent horrors of the earlier invasions, can we now really say that the advanced industrial society is more civilised? Can we respect the choice (rights) of other communities to avoid contact and leave them alone in their homeland, undisturbed?
The ‘Last’ Frontier – The Case of the Negrito in the Andamans.
Outsiders are invading the reserve of the isolated Jarawas (Sentinelese, Onges and others) in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands of India. They are stealing the game on which they depend for their life and livelihood. Women and children, in particular, seem to face the brunt of this invasion. Despite a Supreme Court order to the local administration to finally close, for example, the highway which runs through the reserve, it remains open, bringing death, disease and dependency.
The Jarawa are one of the four Negrito communities who are believed to have travelled to the Andamans from Africa some 60,000 years ago. Two of the local communities, the Onge and Andamanese, were decimated following the colonisation of their islands – first by the British and later by India. The present population of the Andamanese is a ridiculous 40. Both the communities are now dependent on government handouts. The Jarawas resisted contact with the settlers from mainland India until 1998. The fourth, the Sentinelese, live on their own island and continue to shun all contact.
The Jarawas are hunter-gatherers and even their population size is far below the critical mass (270). They use bows and arrows to hunt small game. Today, hundreds and thousands of Indian and Burmese settlers and poachers are hunting along the coast, depriving the Jarawas of their vital game. The issue has become so acute that in many areas the once abundant game has almost become extinct. The same is true vis-à-visthe other communities as well.
The main highway which runs through the Jarawa reserve, known as the Andaman Trunk Road, has thrown open their homeland for exploitation and extraction. As a result, foreign or alien goods and exotics are being introduced into the region. Although the local administration is trying to restrict contact, which may be a step in the right direction, it is by no meanssufficient to secure the future of the communities at stake. All the same, opinion is still divided within the establishment to both assimilate and integrate the communities into the mainstream.
The Consequence ofImposed or Involuntary Contact – The Case of the Malapandaram in the Southern Western Ghats of Kerala.
The Malapandaram are a nomadic community numbering about 2000 people who live in the high ranges of the Southern Western Ghats along the south-west coast of the state of Kerala in South India. Early writers described them as the primitive tribes of the jungle and saw them as socially isolated in a pristine environment. But, the Malapandarams have a history of contact with the caste Hindus settled in the plains and have been a part of a wider mercantile economy. They are basically collectors of minor forest produce, such as, spices, honey and medicinal plants. They, therefore, combine subsistence food gathering –small game and birds – with the collection of other usufructs.
The majority of Malapandarams spend most of their life living in forest encampments occupied by one to four families. These encampments consist of two to four leaf shelters, made of mud (clay) and thatch. These ‘settlements’ are obviously temporary as they reside in a particular locality only for about a week before moving elsewhere.
The Malapandarams see themselves and are described by outsiders as ‘Kattumanushyar’forest people. They closely identify themselves with their living space, which is not only a source of livelihood, but also an environment where they can sustain a degree of cultural autonomy and social independence (inter-dependence). Hence, they tend to live and constantly move around the margins of the forest ecosystem. This enables them to engage in a barter system, while avoiding control, harassment/exploitation and even violence as a result of conflicting interests. In short, the verdant canopy is their only refuge.
With the establishment of colonial rule – the British (imperial) Raj – and the artificial creation/formation of the state of Travancore, the Southern Western Ghats became a property for the very first time. In the annuls of their history, owned and abused with impunity by the state through its extensive network of forest bureaucracy. Since1865, a number of Acts (laws) were enacted and enforced periodically in order to‘manage’the forests, as well as, its residents (biotic and abiotic), almost exclusively for politico-economic reasons (profit). A majoroutcome: the sedantarisation of the nomadic communities as fixed or permanent settlements. They were, thus, denied any rights, customary and/orotherwise, tolife and livelihood based on their renewable natural resource base. The ultimate manifestation of this involuntary transition has resulted in an identity crisis due to the economics of intimidation. That is, today, they are no more forest dwellers, but rather have been forced to become agriculturists (bonded, landless and marginal agricultural labourers/farmers).
’Independent’ India has only increasingly, ever more aggressively, moved from feudalism to neo-feudalism, colonialism to neo-colonialism and, now liberalism to neo-liberalism.
Suresh Balraj is an environmental anthropologist and social ecologist based in South India. He has been working in forestry, agriculture, and fisheries for several decades with a focus on community-based renewable management. He is a guardian forDeep Green Resistance.
Featured image: Cave of the Hands in Santa Cruz province, with indigenous artwork dating from 13,000–9,000 years ago, by Mariano, CC BY SA 3.0.
We Need Your Help
Right now, Deep Green Resistance organizers are at work building a political resistance resistance movement to defend the living planet and rebuild just, sustainable human communities.
In Manila, Kathmandu, Auckland, Denver, Paris—all over the world—we are building resistance and working towards revolution. We Need Your Help.
Not all of us can work from the front lines, but we can all contribute. Our radical, uncompromising stance comes at a price. Foundations and corporations won’t fund us because we are too radical. We operate on a shoestring budget (all our funding comes from small, grassroots donations averaging less than $50) and have only one paid staff.
Current funding levels aren’t sustainable for the long-term, even with our level of operations now. We need to expand our fundraising base significantly to build stronger resistance and grow our movement.
All around the world, indigenous people are on the front lines of fights to protect the land. For those asking “how to do indigenous solidarity work,” these Indigenous Solidarity Guidelines developed by Deep Green Resistance are a first step.
Land is central to indigenous culture. By aligning ourselves with indigenous peoples, especially traditional and radical indigenous people, we take important steps towards preserving a living planet and stand in solidarity with oppressed groups, including women and people of color.
How To Do Indigenous Solidarity Work
It is important that members of settler cultures ally themselves with indigenous communities who are fighting for their rights and survival.
There are right and wrong ways to express solidarity. The following guidelines have been put together by Deep Green Resistance members with the help of indigenous activists.
They are not a complete ‘how-to guide‘ – every community and every situation is different – but they can hopefully point you in a good direction, to enable you to act effectively and with respect.
Guidelines
First and foremost we must recognize that non-indigenous people are occupying stolen land in an ongoing genocide that has lasted for centuries. We must affirm our responsibility to stand with indigenous communities who want support and give everything we can to protect their land and culture from further devastation; they have been on the frontlines of biocide and genocide for centuries, and as allies, we need to step up and join them.
You are doing Indigenous solidarity work not out of guilt, but out of a fierce desire to confront oppressive colonial systems of power.
You are not helping Indigenous people, you are there to join with, struggle with, and fight with indigenous peoples against these systems of power. You must be willing to put your body on the line.
Recognize your privilege as a member of settler culture.
You are not here to engage in any type of cultural, spiritual or religious needs you think you might have, you are here to engage in political action. Also, remember your political message is secondary to the cause at hand.
Never use drugs or alcohol when engaging in Indigenous solidarity work. Never.
Do more listening than talking, you will be surprised what you can learn.
Recognize that there will be Indigenous people that will not want you to participate in ceremonies. Humbly refrain from participating in ceremonies.
Recognize that you and your Indigenous allies may be in the minority on a cause that is worth fighting for.
Work with integrity and respect, be trustworthy and do what you say you are going to do.
Examples of Indigenous Solidarity Work
Deep Green Resistance has been involved in solidarity work with our indigenous friends and comrades for many years. Here are a few examples of campaigns we have conducted.
The indigenous community of Didipio on the island of Luzon in the northern Philippines has been resisting foreign gold mining for decades. The gold mine, owned by Oceana Gold Philippines, Inc. (OGPI), has destroyed massive areas of jungle, poisoned the land and water, and displaced hundreds of villagers.
Two resistance figures were shot and killed by anonymous gunmen in 2012, but resistance has continued.
In June 2019, a key mining permit expired. The local community has been fighting this whole time and sensed an opportunity, so they erected a roadblock to stop OGPI from accessing the mine. Last month, the company tried repeatedly to access the site but were rebuffed by non-violent protests.
On April 6th, 2020, Philippine police forces violently dismantled the roadblock, as this video shows. One leader, anti-mining advocate Roland Pulido, chairman of Didipio Earth Savers’ Movement Association (Desama), was arrested and others were beaten.
The Oceana Gold and Copper mine, located in Barangay Didipio, Nueva Vizcaya, was the first mining project awarded a Financial Technical Assistance Agreement (FTAA) by the Philippine government, allowing the company to operate large-scale mining explorations, 100% owned by foreign investor OceanaGold Corporation.
The mine is located in an area in which the majority of people are indigenous. It has become a much contested site due to large complaints over human rights violations as well as environmental destruction. The company has been alleged to have obtained a Free Prior Informed Consent (FPIC) of affected communities by creating a ‘council of elders’ comprised by people that either did not belong to the affected communities, or received rewards in exchange for their consent.
Awarded with the FTAA in the 1990s, the company started project [in the year] 2000. Formal petitions against the FTAA were lodged in 2006 but dismissed. On October 2, 2009, it was reported that the company forcefully evicted local villagers without prior consent, bulldozed and burned 187 houses, assisted by private security forces, using teargas and violence against villagers and neighbors who resisted leaving.
In relation to the tension surrounding the mine, Kalikasan reported that in December 2012, two opponents of large-scale mining; both members of the Didipio Earthsavers’ Multipurpose Association (DESAMA), were killed by unidentified assailants in Didipio, Nueva Vizcaya. Cheryl Ananayo, was shot dead along with her cousin-in-law Randy Nabayay as they were riding to Didipio at 6:00PM on December 7, 2012.
DESAMA is a people’s organization opposed to the ongoing implementation of the 17,626-hectare Didipio gold-copper project owned by Australian large-scale miner OceanaGold Corporation. Nabayay was a small-scale miner who had differences with OceanaGold over his property. Ananayo was with her 4 year-old child and carrying her 3 month-old baby, both unharmed.
The Commission for Human Rights (CHR) of the Philippines urged the government to withdraw the FTAA due to large evidences of rights abuses. However, the government apparently sided with the company, which claimed to do “ethical, responsible, and sustainable mining.”
Construction was completed in 2012 and commercial production started on April 1, 2013. Since production started, increasing contamination of rivers by heavy metals has been recorded, significantly exceeding the standard safety limits, thus, strongly affecting the environment and the livelihood of local communities. People living next to the river, as well as downstream, are concerned about declining fish stock and irrigation of nearby agricultural fields. Increasing noise and air pollution adds to the situation, while the company was further accused of avoiding tax payments.
Nowadays, petitions and protests against the Didipio mine, targeting the company and the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) issuing the permits, go on. On the national level, the OceanaGold mine is one of many mines, causing severe tensions between corporate interests in search of new commodity frontiers and indigenous communities, aiming to preserve their identities, opposing these trends which they call “development aggression.”
The Philippines is a dangerous place for indigenous land defenders and environmentalists. Thirty were murdered in 2018 alone (number aren’t yet available for 2019).
The following is a statement made on the Alyansa Tigil Mina (ATM) Facebook Page. ATM is an alliance of mining-affected communities and their support groups of NGOs/POs and other civil society organizations who are opposing the aggressive promotion of large-scale mining in the Philippines.
Press Release: Condemnation of violent dispersal of peoples’ barricade in Nueva Vizcaya
April 6, 2020, Quezon City – Alyansa Tigil Mina (ATM) strongly condemns the violent dispersal by the police against indigenous community leaders in Brgy. Didipio, Kasibu, Nueva Vizcaya, late afternoon today.More than 100 personnel of the Philippine National Police from the regional and Quirino provincial units escorted a diesel tanker and forcibly entered the premises of the Didipio mine of Oceana Gold Philippines, Inc. (OGPI).
Violence erupted when local residents resisted the entry and stood their ground to prevent the entry of the diesel tanker. A barricade has been set-up by local groups in July 2019, when the mining contract of OGPI expired. Financial and Technical Assistance Agreement No. 1 (FTAA #1) expired last June 20, 2019, and has since been left pending at the Office of the President.
Reportedly, the mining company and its escort brandished a letter dated January 2020 from the Office of Executive Secretary Salvador Medialdea endorsing the entry of fuel trucks inside the mining area.
This forced entry of the diesel tanker is illegal and against the people of Nueva Vizcaya. The mining contract has expired so there is no activity allowed inside the mine. The local governments have not given any permit for the mining company to operate. The area is part of the Enhanced Community Quarantine (ECQ) order of Pres. Duterte, therefore no work activity is permitted.
This is a clear violation of the work-stoppage, the physical distancing and the quarantine procedures imposed by the ECQ in the whole Luzon island.More importantly, the barricade set-up by local organizations DESAMA, BILEG, AMKKAS and SAPAKKMI is a clear indication of the rejection of the people to the continued illegal operations of OGPI in Brgy. Didipio.
We call on the Commission on Human Rights (CHR) to immediately conduct an investigation to this tragic and unnecessary confrontation. We demand that DENR urgently issue a cease-and-desist order to OGPI on their illegal operations in Didipio. We insist that the DILG conduct an investigation on the conduct and performance of PNP elements in Region 2, Quirino Province and the Municipality of Kasibu, but specifically violations of the quarantine rules by the OGPI itself.
The use of violence by the police today is a reflection of the blind and draconian measures that this government is willing to use to pursue the greedy interests of the mining industry. The local leaders sustained injuries when the police used unnecessary force in dismantling the barricade. Our alliance strongly denounces this ferocious and aggressive behavior of the PNP against a non-violent and legitimate protest action of Didipio residents.
We note with anger similar instances in the past few weeks of illegal mining activities in the town MacArthur (Leyte), the island of Homonhon in Guiuan, Eastern Samar and clandestine drilling operations in Tampakan, South Cotabato.
We support the continued resistance of the people of Kasibu against the mining operations of OGPI in Didipio. The recent quarantine procedures have harshly impacted the people there when they lost income and livelihoods. Their access to food and health supplies were severely constrained. This violent dispersal has only added more misery to their fragile lives.
For details:
Jaybee Garganera, ATM National Coordinator – (+63) 9175498218 / nc@alyansatigilmina.net
The United States of America was founded on stolen land. The legacy of violence, discrimination, and criminal disregard for indigenous people continues today.
April 7, 2020
The undersigned Indigenous peoples and organizations write this letter to denounce the discriminatory response to COVID-19 and express our deep concern of the situation faced by hundreds of thousands of diverse Indigenous peoples of the immigrant community in the United States (U.S.), those in detention centers under the custody of U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), those survivingin makeshift camps on the northern Mexico border under the U.S. government’s Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), who are being systematically excluded in the COVID-19 pandemic response mechanisms.
We recognize that the global COVID-19 pandemic is affecting people indiscriminately. However, we highlight that the most vulnerable are the most affected and devastated by this pandemic: those living inextreme poverty and chronic malnutrition who are unable to access or pay for medical care, the undocumented, and those with limited English and/or Spanish languages, as they cannot understand the information about COVID-19 and/or express their medical and financial needs during this pandemic.
The lack of recognition of our Indigenous identity and the exclusion of our languages at the local, national, and international levels puts our lives at risk, threatens the survival of our People, and violates our rights of self-determination, autonomy and to be free from any kind of discrimination.
Language exclusion is illegal due to Executive Order 13166 regulating access to services provided to Persons with Limited English Proficiency (LEP) by federal departments, their agencies and the organizations contracted by them.
The Departments of Homeland Security (DHS), Health and Human Services (HHS), and The Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) of The United States Department of State (DOS) program etc., are excluding our peoples and communities at the Southern border and throughout the U.S.
Specifically, the rights established in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), describe the minimum human rights standards such as the right to revitalize and use our languages (Art. 13), establish and use the media in our own languages (Art. 16), the right to better economic and social conditions, such as health, (Art. 21) and the right to determine and develop priorities in all areas, including health (Art. 23).
We are deeply concerned that these minimum standards are not met and as a result, our peoples are being excluded from essential information and services to survive the Pandemic.
The continued lack of information in Indigenous languages predisposes our peoples, an already extremely vulnerable group, to more difficulties and health impacts. We face the exclusion of our Indigenous languages, as well as the lack of recognition of our existence, resulting in dangerous consequences for our peoples and our survival. As background, the deaths of five Maya children at the facilities of the Border Patrol (BP) and U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) before the pandemic indicates, unfortunately, what wecan expect.
Faced by this situation, we Indigenous peoples and organizations are organizing and articulating efforts to respond to the needs and priorities of our peoples in our own geographic regions and at the national level. Asan example, we are creating materials in Indigenous languages with Public Service Announcement videos on notices, public services, and information about COVID-19, printed materials, and cards that identify our primary language (I speak cards).
However, we are deeply concerned that our peoples, who constitute a large majority in the public services sector in urban and rural areas (for example, agriculture, construction, domestic services, and cleaning); mostly undocumented, without health insurance and those living in poverty, are not being adequately informed about resources and services at this time. For example, being informed of where to find food and health centers and/or access to computers for distance learning for their sons and daughters in their respective locations. We are concerned that most members of our community are unable to benefit from local, regional and national programs and services due to their legal status.
We express our outrage because in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, our community continues to suffer deportations, family separations, immigration raids, and the lack or null attention in cases of people in detention with contagion of the virus under the responsibility of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
The criminalization of our communities will only increase fear and panic and will unnecessarily contribute to dangerous conditions resulting in the further spread of COVID-19 perpetuating genocide against Indigenous peoples, a genocide that has a long and dark history in the United States, and throughout the Americas.
FACED BY THIS SITUATION, WE REQUEST THE SUPPORT TO INDIGENOUS PEOPLES AND ORGANIZATIONS, ANDTOOUR INDIGENOUS PROPOSAL BEFORE COVID-19
First, that the local, municipal, state and federal governments consult with our organizations and peoples to learn about our existence and needs.
Second, that the different government agencies support strategies already led by Indigenous peoples rooted in our experience and knowledge of the needs and priorities identified by our own peoples and communities.
Third, financial support:
Any legislation to provide COVID-19 relief and the benefits derived from such legislation must be accessible to Indigenous peoples.
The Interpretation of COVID-19 services and benefits legislated by Congress at the end of March 2020 in Indigenous languages.
Technical support to our organizations for our Educational Campaigns on COVID-19.
The creation of a communication mechanism / platform such as a telephone line and a website aimed for Indigenous peoples in priority languages so that they are aware of the resources available to them.
Fourth, the assignment of contact people between government agencies and our organizations to support prevention, mitigation, and monitoring of COVID-19, and the exchange of community and government resources.
During this time of crisis for humanity, we unite as one voice and express our concerns, but also our recommendations to meet the needs of our peoples, who survive their respective realities based in our languages, traditions, worldview and experiences.
Together, valuing and respecting the diversity of all our communities, peoples and cultures, we will be able to respond to the needs of our peoples and future generations.
LA Comunidad Ixim, Maya Collective in Los Angeles, CA
Alianza de Organizaciones Guatemaltecas de Houston
Red de Pueblos Trasnacionales/Transnational Villages Network (Pueblos Nahuas-Tlaxcalteca, Mixteco y Nahua/ Nahuas-Tlaxcalteca, Mixteco and Nahua Peoples)
Red de Intérpretes Indígenas/Network of Indigenous Interpreters (Pueblos Mixteco, Tlapaneco, Nahua, Mam, Cuicateco, and Kichwa)
Colectivo de Intérpretes Comunitarios Pixan Konob’de Champaign IL
What is decolonization? What does the term mean, and what is entailed? In this conversation, we discuss the question of decolonziation with Sakej Ward.
Sakej (James Ward) belongs to the wolf clan. He is Mi’kmaw (Mi’kmaq Nation) from the community of Es-gen-oo-petitj (Burnt Church First Nation, New Brunswick).
Having taught, organized, advised and led various warrior societies from all over Turtle Island down into Guatemala and Borike (Puerto Rico) Sakej has made warrior-hood his way of life.
This conversation is excerpted from a recent episode of The Green Flame, a Deep Green Resistance podcast.
What is Decolonization?
Max Wilbert: Can you help define Decolonization for us and help us understand what this entails? I think a lot of people when they hear the term Decolonization, they think of a process that occurs primarily in the mind and that seems like a part of it to me, but I think there’s more to it. I’m just wondering if you can help us unpack that idea.
Sakej Ward: I don’t know what’s happening in the States, but here in Canada the term Decolonization is being hijacked, so we see institutions like even government institutions or universities in particular that are trying to redefine it and like water it down and use token measure of indigenous inclusion and then call it like a decolonizing initiative and it really isn’t right. So, let’s talk about this, what we really mean.
Now, to explain Decolonization I’ll do it in a simple way, I would just simply say it’s the undoing of the destruction of colonialism and it’s the undoing of colonial influences. So I’m talking about things like the undoing of the destruction of our lands, the destruction of indigenous culture, the destruction of even our governments, destruction of our population, our people, and as you mentioned even our minds, individual minds and our spirits.
Two Sides of Decolonization: Anti-Colonial Action and Cultural Resurgence Action
So I’m talking about reversing all that. So if Colonization was about the destruction of the indigenous way of life in our indigenous world, Decolonization is about ridding ourselves of all those efforts, initiatives, and influences. So the way I usually talk about it, there is basically two efforts or two actions that we could look at these broad spectrums of actions, and the first one is ANTI-COLONIAL ACTIONS and the other one is CULTURAL RESURGENCE ACTIONS.
So the ANTI-COLONIAL ACTIONS are actions we take to disempower or eradicate colonialism. CULTURAL RESURGENCE ACTIONS are the opposite; these are actions we take to rebuild indigenous nations, right? So we do some examples like, for instance, ANTI-COLONIAL ACTIONS, you know, right at the top of my head, here I would say anti-industrial initiatives.
Dismantling the Colonial Economy: Anti-Industrial Actions
So anything that is about destroying our homeland, and so, you know, opposing pipelines like in Wet’suwet’en they’re doing a great job taking on the pipelines, they’re opposing logging, commercial fishing, mining, all these destructive processes to the land and that’s ANTI-COLONIAL EFFORTS, right? Because, like I said, at the core of Colonialism is the idea of extracting the resources of another country or the benefit gain of what used to be referred as Motherland, a Metropole, nowadays is just a particular family or a particular group or particular corporation, right?
And also, anti-colonial actions do also include things like opposing colonial political authority, that’s where we really get down to the things like challenging colonial assertions of sovereignty, so these become actions where you help raise awareness around things like the Doctrine of Discovery and that’s where Europe particularly through the Vatican gave themselves permission to seize all non-Christian lands. So the idea of discovering the land and then claiming it as their own, now belonging to France or Britain or Spain or Portugal, with a colonial construct, right? This was something that the Vatican in their papal bulls Had said go ahead and do this and I’m giving you permission to go out and claim lands for the sake of the Christian Empire, right?
MW: Right
Dismantling Colonial Culture
SW: So we have to challenge those things like the Doctrine of Discovery, because that is at the heart of colonial assertion of sovereignty, when we say sovereignty we’re talking about absolute power, absolutely like governing power over land, and we’re talking about the idea of these Doctrines of Discovery are completely illegitimate, we know it’s based on racism, it’s based on the idea also that Christianity has security over the world or our right to rule the world, so we have to challenge these.
Another anti-colonial action could be like opposing dominant culture ‘cause right now dominant culture is European, Eurocentric-based culture, right? So things like Western Liberalism which focuses on the individual. Indigenous culture was focused on the collective and the next generations, right? It wasn’t about the individual, so it was about thinking about externally, thinking about other people, your community, your nation, and generations yet to come.
Dismantling the Philosophy of Colonization
We also need to get away from things like Capitalism, Christianity, you know oppose all that stuff, as well as something that kinda throws people off is the idea of rights, right-based conflicts. Rights, at least from the dominant culture comes the idea, you could go back to critical theorists like Locke and Hobbes and you see that what they’re saying is rights come from the crown, that means the government, right?
And particularly Hobbes is saying that the crown owns all your rights in order to create a society, and they will tell you what rights you have to be able to function in a society, so you know your rights and your freedoms are all owned by the government and they’ll let you know which ones you can exercise in this model society they create, right? “So indigenous people talk about fighting for rights”, no, we’re really saying that we’re just fighting for the little morsels of political freedoms that the government will give us, right? We’re acknowledging that they have the right to even take them from us to create their society, right?
And, so a lot of times I talk about “no, we have to be more conscious of the idea of INDIGENOUS RESPONSIBILITIES not RIGHTS”, and our responsibilities are the idea of how we relate to the land in a good way, how we relate to the life of the land and our people and our next generation in a good way. Rights is something I can go my entire life without never exercising. The right to, say, “go fish”, and I never have to exercise it at all. A responsibility is a different thing, it’s an obligation, I have a duty to go out and protect that land, I have a duty to go and protect the next seven generations.
So, the dominant culture is really focused on this idea of rights, but really indigenous thinking should be more about responsibilities, and we have to be able to oppose these things. So, on the ANTI-COLONIAL ACTIONS think about imposing industrial initiatives, colonial political authority, dominant culture, we’re gonna oppose all that and that’s anti-colonial actions.
The Necessity of Cultural Resurgence
But, the CULTURAL RESURGENCE ACTION that’s more like indigenous nation building and that’s what we’re talking about healing our homelands, that’s, you know, obviously the ecology, and the environment that’s been utterly decimated under the last five hundred years of Colonialism.
So, we have to talk about how do we rebuild that, how do we rebuild the life in the lands, how do we re-establish a connection and the relationship with our homeland. And it’s understanding that being on indigenous land isn’t just a physical experience, it’s also a cultural-spiritual experience that we have with the lands and the life of those lands. How do we rebuild our ways of governance and how do we empower our traditional government.
Reclaiming Identity
Another thing we could look at in terms of CULTURAL RESURGENCE is reclaiming our identity and we spoke a little [about that] earlier because as colonial subjects or colonial citizens we are utterly controlled by their laws, and this was imposed on us, you know, there was never a vote for indigenous people to say “yes, we want to become part of the colonizer”, there was never a self-determining action to say we want to be part of that, it was always imposed.
Here in Canada, the word Aboriginal was used because after the repatriation of the Canadian Constitution in 1982, Aboriginal became a legal definition when they talk about indigenous people, and what happens is because it’s a legal definition, they have to define the scope of what it means to be Aboriginal. So, they’re controlling the identity, and basically what it comes down to is an Aboriginal persona can practice non-threatening culture and you could go sing, you could dance, you could tell stories, you can entertain the colonizer as much as you want. You could put on what they always referred to as “our customs” are regalia or cultural clothing.
We could put that on and put on a show for the Queen when she come in to visit Canada and they love that, but the minute we say being indigenous means occupying our land, have access to our land, have a relationship with our land, that becomes threatening to the colonizer, that becomes threatening to the idea of private property.
So the concept, the legal definition of Aboriginal, it’s really about limiting the scope of what it means to be indigenous. So we don’t really have these political rights to access land, and we again we see this happening in Sudan, where the hereditary Chiefs who really are the legitimate leaders of that land are being challenged and faced with conflict of the Colonial States who are telling them by way of the Canadian definition of Aboriginal that they have no real power or no real consent over the land.
So we see in this idea of Indigenous versus Aboriginal being played out in the Wet’suwet’en, and then also in terms of the Cultural Resurgence, we have to talk about rebuilding our culture itself, the language, our history, our ceremonies, our rituals, our customs, and what it amounts to is rebuilding the framework that makes up a worldview, and within our culture, our culture was very spiritual, so we are talking about rebuilding that spiritualism that was part and parcel of our worldview.
Summary: What is Decolonization
And finally, by rebuilding our connection to the land, rebuilding our government and rebuilding our culture hopefully that will remind us about the need to rebuild our sacred responsibility to that land. I hope it fills in all those pieces so we understand how important that really becomes again and that’s what I think of when I think of Decolonization, it’s the Anti-colonial actions as well as these cultural resurgence actions that go on simultaneously.
The Green Flame is a Deep Green Resistance podcast offering revolutionary analysis, skill sharing, and inspiration for the movement to save the planet by any means necessary. Our hosts are Max Wilbert and Jennifer Murnan.
Please contact us if you can help transcribe this podcast, or want to get involved.
Throughout the history of human civilization, imperialism has driven the conquest and colonization of indigenous communities, cultures, and land. The land that they hold sacred is turned into commodities and resources to be “managed” by the settlers. Colonization of the indigenous people continues to this day and will continue until serious political resistance is undertaken with solidarity from non-indigenous people. DGR has developed Indigenous Solidarity Guidelines for any non-indigenous people supporting the decolonization of indigenous people.
Columbus and Other Cannibals provides an indigenous perspective of violence and destruction caused by the dominant culture. For Indigenous Eyes Onlyhelps indigenous communities in the process of decolonization.
“Traditional communities do not often voluntarily give up or sell the resources on which their communities are based until their communities have been destroyed. They also do not willingly allow their landbases to be damaged so that other resources—gold, oil, and so on—can be extracted. It follows that those who want the resources will do what they can to destroy traditional communities.” (Premise 2, Endgame, Derrick Jensen)
Colonialism is the brutal act of greed taking from indigenous people on their own land. Unfortunately, not much has changed in the Western Hemisphere since 1492.
The latest came just yesterday, as the United States Secretary of the Interior David Bernhardt ordered the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe’s reservation “disestablished” and its lands taken out of trust.
Tribe Chairman Cedric Cromwell confessed bewilderment about the reason for the federal government’s crusade against the tribe, while also affirming a long-standing commitment to resist and fight for their lands in a post on the tribe’s website:
“…we the People of the First Light have lived here since before there was a Secretary of the Interior, since before there was a State of Massachusetts, since before the Pilgrims arrived 400 years ago. We have survived, we will continue to survive. These are our lands, these are the lands of our ancestors, and these will be the lands of our grandchildren. This Administration has come and it will go. But we will be here, always. And we will not rest until we are treated equally with other federally recognized tribes and the status of our reservation is confirmed.”
Taking Native Lands Is Top of the U.S. Agenda
Colonialism has always been about greed and taking. The wealthy settlers have never stopped trying to take all they can from native lands. This particular administration has been no different, and especially helpful to the cause, especially as it eyeballs all the energy reserves buried under native lands.
Native American reservations cover just 2 percent of the United States, but they may contain about a fifth of the nation’s oil and gas, along with vast coal reserves. The Trump administration has commissioned a coalition of advisors to take away as much of that land as possible for private use.
Trump’s Web Of Self-Interests Against Mashpee Wampanoag
If that wasn’t bad enough, the casino-mogul president is particularly interested in stopping the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe from building a casino just 18 miles from Rhode Island where Twin Rivers has two casinos riddled with Trump loyalists, lobbyists and investors. You can read all about this intricate connection between Trump and Twin Rivers here if you really want to.
A decade old Court decision Carcieri v. Salazar established that the federal government cannot take land into trust for tribes that weren’t “under federal jurisdiction” in the year 1934.
House Bill 312 was heading through with little opposition to settle the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe’s land issues once and for all, that is until Trump tweeted.
“Republicans shouldn’t vote for H.R. 312, a special interest casino Bill, backed by Elizabeth (Pocahontas) Warren. It is unfair and doesn’t treat Native Americans equally!”
PREMISE TWO: Traditional communities do not often voluntarily give up or sell the resources on which their communities are based until their communities have been destroyed. They also do not willingly allow their landbases to be damaged so that other resources—gold, oil, and so on—can be extracted. It follows that those who want the resources will do what they can to destroy traditional communities.
Regardless of how you might feel about the construction of a casino, native people have been subjected to genocide; the robbing of their lands upon which their ancestors lived for millenia; and to the continual dismantling of their culture and murder of their people up to this present moment. Instead of in any way making reconciliation for these past wrongs, the U.S. continues the trampling of native people.
The issue of reservations and trust status has been a contention of radical indigenous people for a long time. In Hawaii, for example, the Kanaka (indigenous) community is divided over the issue of official U.S. government recognition. Some in the community wish to gain access to funding for health care, housing, education, and so on. Others see these as petty bribes. They contend that the Hawaiian nation was unjustly overthrown by the U.S. government, and that accepting “tribal” status would only legitimize an ongoing occupation that is entirely illegal and unjustified.
This is just one story from one day among many stories among many years. These conditions have never been tolerable, and they aren’t tolerable today. Colonization is not something from the past. It is an ongoing, everyday process. This is but one of the many reasons why we must build a real resistance.
