Imagine that your survival depended on defending your right to live where you are standing right now.
Any day, the government could decide to start extracting oil or constructing a highway, exactly where your family goes to sleep every night, without consulting you. Just picture the mine or highway polluting the water you drink and poisoning the soil so completely that crops can’t even grow. On top of this, every day you are pushed to speak a foreign language in a country that endangers your culture and way of life.
This scenario is not fictitious. It is a reality for many of the 370 million people worldwide who identify as Indigenous Peoples. If there could be a simple way to define them, we can agree that they are the living descendants of the pre-colonized inhabitants of lands now dominated by others.
The adoption of this declaration has been a breaking point, given the fact that 144 countries reaffirmed that Indigenous Peoples are entitled without discrimination to all human rights recognized in international law. Since 2007, the UNDRIP has guided global efforts to overcome and repair the historical denial of their most fundamental rights, including the most basic right to self-determination.
UNDRIP brought the concept of collective rights to the table. This means that as a group, Indigenous Peoples possess rights that are indispensable for their existence, well-being and integral development as a distinct society. This is perhaps the reason why many find it difficult to relate to their struggles, since dominant societies base policy making and development actions on the protection of individual rights, such as the right to property or privacy.
Maya Weavers holding a proposal for the recognition of collective intellectual property, February 2017. Photo: AFEDES
Representing 5 percent of the world’s population, today many Indigenous Peoples are still excluded from society and deprived of their rights as equal citizens of a state. Living in 70 countries and speaking more than 4,000 native languages, they have gained increasing visibility for raising their voices on aggressive development policies that threaten the world’s remaining ecosystems and the biodiversity that depends on them.
As the world moves fast to explore and exploit these ecosystems to meet increasing consumption, Indigenous Peoples are at the top list of those murdered for defending their land.
Almost 130 environmental activists have been killed so far in 2017. Another four are expected to be killed in the next week.
This global trend is not a coincidence. Indigenous territories are the richest in biodiversity and today more than ever they are becoming the new battleground for human rights and the environment.
“Even though violence against Indigenous Peoples is increasing, the Declaration should be celebrated. Without this Declaration, Indigenous Peoples wouldn’t have a chance to fight”, describes Julie Koch, Director of International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs (IWGIA).
The main driving force for the global assault on indigenous land is that state governments have largely failed to establish constitutional rights and protections for Indigenous Peoples. UNDRIP provides states with a legal framework to establish these rights and protections.
The increasing rates of criminalization of indigenous leaders and the murder of environmental defenders shows us just how much work states have to do for the Indigenous Peoples of the world. It is also a strong reminder that the world’s Indigenous Peoples are key to saving our planet.
The global trend of attacks on Indigenous Peoples takes different shapes on different continents. Let’s go through some of it.
Latin America: Where the Extractive Agenda Threatens Indigenous Victories
Even though Latin America has a favourable legal framework to rely on, it is often reported as the most dangerous continent for environmentalists. Many of the reported killings were of people trying to combat illegal logging in the Amazon.
It only takes a quick look into Brazil to understand what the fight is all about. Here is where the highest number of environmental defenders have died on Earth. Since 2013, 900 indigenous leaders have been killed for defending their lands, despite legally owning 12.2 percent of the country’s territory and living peacefully in 704 collective territories.
Another eye-opening case is Venezuela, where actually the land demarcation process has only met 13 percent of the cases in the last 17 years, neglecting the urgent call to action stated in the Constitution. Just to make things more complicated, the government recently approved the creation of the AMO (Orinoco Mining Arc) region, a mega mining project that will give 150 companies from 35 countries access to 12 percent of the national territory. Once again, national policies seem to forget how illegal mining has already driven aggressions and threats towards the Yabarana, Hoti and Panare peoples close to the border with Brazil.
The race for water is also affecting Guatemala, where hydroelectric projects are quickly on the rise. Groundwater recharge areas are located on indigenous land and indigenous communities have constantly denounced the theft of river water. Various companies and private landowners illegally divert rivers to sugar cane, banana and palm oil plantations and cattle ranches during dry seasons.
Surprisingly, Bolivia does not escape from this pattern. With a controversial political decision, Evo Morales gave the green light to construct a highway on indigenous land. This development project has for several years been opposed by environmentalists and the indigenous movement since it cuts through Isiboro Sécure National Park and Indigenous Territory (well-known as TIPNIS). The construction of this highway is part of a bigger plan. The highway aims to extend the existing Brazilian-led effort commonly known as IIRSA (Initiative for the Regional Integration of South America). This entails a network of 531 mega-projects that include hydroelectric dams, highways, bridges, and electrical power systems that seek to ease the flow of transportation of soybeans and coca across the region. But the impacts are not only economic. The highway will considerably affect the traditional way of life of three indigenous groups: the Tsimanes, Yuracarés and Mojeño-Trinitarios.
But the fight back seems promising. Indigenous autonomous governments are representing much more than a trend in the region. Self-governance is one of the most significant claims made by Indigenous Peoples in this part of the world and it seems to be on its peak of realization with the two first indigenous governments settled in Peru and Bolivia. The Wampís Nation’s Parliament and the Charagua government took office last year and made their goals clear: they aim to control how to administer the future of their ways of life within the territory they inhabit.
Wampis Nation mapping territory in Peru. Credits Jacob Balzani Lööv
Asia: Where Discrimination Pairs with Militarization
Asia is home to 260 million Indigenous Peoples, making it the most culturally diverse region in the world. The land dispute pattern in this region is significantly worse due to heavy assimilation pressure and violent repression by state security forces. As Indigenous Peoples in other countries, they face the routine denial of self-determination, loss of control over their land and extreme discrimination.
One of the most clear examples of the lack of respect for indigenous land rights is the conflict in the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) region in Bangladesh, where approximately 600,000 Indigenous Peoples live. Ever since the creation of Bangladesh, the elected representatives of the CHT have demanded regional autonomy. Being trapped between demilitarization and displacement, gross human rights have been committed and documented over the last 10 years. The most affected by the conflict are indigenous women. Being under the review of the UN Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), several reports highlight cases of gender-based violence against indigenous women connected with land grabbing.
Indigenous Peoples and minority populations in the Philippines are also hit by militarization. The “war on drugs” and the fight against Maoist rebels now led by President Duterte has led to many political extrajudicial killings in their communities. Indigenous Peoples are also cornered by the aggressive expansion of monocrop plantations, especially oil palm plantations in Mindanao. Community members from the municipalities of Bataraza and Española in Palawan have reported how their rights had been violated by several companies that continue to expand on community lands with the complicity of government officials.
The situation in Nepal follows the course of aggressive development. During 2016, many protests against road expansion and electricity transmission lines intensified. The common picture that local indigenous communities paint is that bulldozers enter their land to ensure infrastructure developments go according the plan.
Perhaps the most illustrative situation of discrimination comes from Japan. The huge gap in public awareness shows the long lasting effects of systematic discrimination. A national survey released by the government in 2016 showed that 72.1 percent of Ainu people agreed that “discrimination against the Ainu people exist”, meanwhile 50.7 percent of the general public stated that “discrimination does not exist”.
Africa: Where Evictions are Driven by Conservation and Agribusiness
Laws protecting Indigenous Peoples are weak or nonexistent throughout continental Africa. With very little political support and space for critical NGOs and media that can effectively report on human rights violations, conservationist and agribusiness agendas frequently push Indigenous Peoples from their homelands.
In Loliondo village in Tanzania, indigenous communities suffer from a systematic attack that aims to reduce their number of livestock, which is vital for their survival. Increasing tensions and clashes with farmers and ranchers are usually driven by recurrent drought. Another common tactic used by the military is to burn houses, which speeds up illegal evictions.
Just last month, Serengeti National Park and Ngorongoro Conservation Area Authority rangers, with the support of Loliondo police, burned down about 185 Maasai bomas (homesteads). The evictions left approximately 6,800 people homeless, with most of their property destroyed.
Evictions are also a current challenge for Indigenous Peoples in Kenya, where the definition of community lands is not in place to allow the urgent need to formalize land ownership. Earlier this year, drought caused traditional herdsmen to steal pasture from landowners, burning down tourist lodges and grabbing the attention of the world media in the process. Laikipia, meanwhile, has experienced unprecedented grazing pressure and the Maasai have been forced to endure limited access to water. This is not the first time that climate shock has systematically triggered violence over land rights in Northern Kenya. The chain of events is pretty straightforward: when there is no water, no grass grows and pastoralists’ cattle starve to death.
The other side of the coin is that Indigenous Peoples are gaining recognition in the courts. Against all odds, we saw an historic land ruling in Kenya this year in the hands of the Ogiek. The African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights set a vital precedent, recognizing that as Indigenous Peoples the Ogiek have the right to reparations from the Kenyan government for the suffering they have endured from forced evictions.
We Are All Fighting the Same Fight
If Indigenous Peoples remain unprotected, it will continue to have a direct impact on the shape of our planet and its capacity to sustain life. Many would think this gap has nothing to do with protecting the environment, but it absolutely does.
The fight for indigenous land rights is not just about rights, but about securing a sustainable future for everyone.
If states and corporations fail to protect those who are putting their lives on the line to defend the diversity we depend on, it may only be a matter of time before resource scarcity leads them to turn on everyone else.
Indigenous Peoples have pursued environmental justice since long before climate change became a mainstream issue. Ten years after their biggest victory, it is time we take indigenous land rights seriously to ensure we all continue to have water to drink, air to breathe, and even land to call home.
Today, we traditional council chiefs from the 1st and the 7th Districts of Mi’kma’ki have gathered at the Junexit Banquet organized by the Camp by the River. We are here not only to support the occupation that has been set up on August 7th against Junex but also to assert our inherent rights and title over our unceded and unsurrendered territory, as affirmed by the 1763 Royal Proclamation. We assert our presence here to protect our territory under the Protection clauses for unceded lands, as protected by Constitutional Rights, Charter Rights, Human Rights, and International Rights.
The Chief of Mi’kam’ki 1st District, Unamaki, which is currently involved in its own struggle against oil and gas exploration by Alton Gas, as well as the 2011 historic and victorious struggle against fracking in Elsipogtog (6th District), thus adds her support to the 7th District’s current opposition to exploration and extraction on its land by Junex.
After the dismantling of the blockade, the struggle is just beginning, and coalitions are being formed between Mi’kmaq District Chiefs from the northern and southern ends of our Nation, as well as with land and water protectors from other nations.
As Traditional Mik’maq council Chiefs, we affirm our complete and inviolable sovereignty over the land Junex is illegally attempting to destroy. We are not concerned by the Indian Act (INAC) leadership, who’s authority lies exclusively within the border of the Federal Indian Reserves as stated in the Chapter 91.24 of the Constitution of Canada (Indians and land reserved for Indians). INAC describes only boundaries of reservations, and not traditional hunting and fishing territories. Outside of Federal Indian Reserves, the authority and jurisdiction lies with the rights holders, i.e. traditional district chiefs.
We demand an immediate moratorium on all exploration and/or development of oil and/or gas on traditional mik’ma’ki territory, District 7.
As Mi’kmaq peoples, we have a duty and obligation to defend and protect our Ancestral District territory. We cannot remain silent and condone any oil drilling within our territory that will poison our lands, waters, fauna and wildlife. We call all groups and individuals concerned by the protection of water and land on Gespegawagi territory to voice their support, take action, and join the struggle on site.
It’s hard to imagine right now that winter is not very far away, but it comes quickly to Yellowstone country, and not too long from now the home fires will be burning. At Buffalo Field Campaign, wood is our only heat source for our living quarters and it takes a lot to keep our many lodges heated. Much of our wood has been gathered, cut, and stacked, but we still have a ways to go and we need your help!
Our annual Wood Cut Week is September 1-4, and we welcome you to join us. Come help BFC finish our wood gathering for the up coming field season. BFC could not exist in this cold climate without our wood and it is tremendous work to get it all in. Mike, Pat, Don, Hanmi, Greg, Scott, Daniel, and Nick have done a lot already and they could sure use some extra hands. If you like hard work and hauling large logs please come help. Room and board will be provided. If you have your own chainsaw, please bring it along, too. Please write to Mike if you plan on attending. The more the merrier! Thank you!
Buffalo Field Campaign
PO Box 957
West Yellowstone, Montana 59758
The massive “Canada 150” celebrations of July 1 are finally over, leaving little in their wake but hangovers, a multi-million dollar price tag and mountains of trash.
But for some Indigenous peoples in Canada, the festivities remain a visceral reminder of their continued dispossession from ancestral lands and waters. That’s especially true for those on the frontlines of megaprojects — pipelines, hydro dams, oil and gas wells, liquefied natural gas terminals and mines — that infringe on Indigenous land rights.
DeSmog Canada caught up with three Indigenous people directly involved in local struggles to resist such projects.
Beatrice Hunter
Beatrice Hunter is an Inuk woman living in Labrador. In May, she was arrested and jailed while defending ancestral territories threatened by Nalcor’s Muskrat Falls project. Hunter was released after 10 days in a men’s prison following a decision by the Supreme Court of Newfoundland and Labrador.
Have you returned to the site since thecourt ruling?
Yeah, I returned on Canada Day. It was my way of saying that I am not Canadian, I am Inuk. It was my way of saying that what the government is doing is not right.
How was the experience being back there?
It was good to be back there. It was excellent. Ever since I went to the gate last year with other Labradorians, it’s almost felt like a calling. It feels like you’re actually doing something and you’re not just sitting around waiting for stuff to happen. You’re trying to change it yourself. It was excellent to be with other Labrador Land Protectors.
Obviously there’s been a lot of talk about Canada 150. What do you make of it in the context of Muskrat Falls?
It’s very upsetting and heartbreaking when the Canadian government doesn’t listen to you when obviously the natives of this land were the first peoples here. It shows a lack of respect for Indigenous nations across the country and for them to not admit the wrongs that have been done through the years. It’s another slap in the face.
The federal government has also been talking a lot about “reconciliation.” Do you feel there’s been any progress on that in the last few years?
I feel personally that nothing has actually been happening. It’s the same old story: they make promises and then don’t follow through with them.
What outcome do you and other land protectors hope for?
The best outcome will be to shut Muskrat down. And I still feel the same way. Everybody talks about it being too late, but I feel it’s never too late. The damage is already done but we can try and fix the damage. There’s been billions of dollars been done on the project. Why aren’t government officials and leaders and politicians being audited for it? They obviously have something to hide. If they didn’t have anything to hide, they would just come out with all the information.
Do you plan to keep going to the site?
Yes! Of course! I’m not going to stop. We can’t stop. We have to try to change it. We can’t let big corporations and politicians get away with this because it’s always going to happen if we let them.
Any last words?
I just want to let everybody know that I’m going to keep fighting. That’s what I want everyone to know. Myself and the Labrador Land Protectors are going to keep fighting. We can’t give up. It’s the future. We’re fighting for those who can’t fight for themselves. We’re fighting for our children. We’re fighting for our grandchildren. We’re fighting for our ancestors that weren’t strong enough to go up against the big corporations and governments. I feel it’s like white supremacy. That’s what it feels like to me. Everywhere you look: on TV, on radio, you hear white supremacy. Everywhere. It has to change.
Sadie-Phoenix Lavoie
Sadie-Phoenix Lavoie is an Anishinaabe woman living in Manitoba. She is a student at the University of Winnipeg, co-founder of Red Rising Magazine, previously served as the vice-president of external affairs for the students’ association and has been involved with the campaign to pressure the institution to divest from fossil fuels.
What do you make of Canada 150 in the context of pipelines and ongoing extraction projects in Manitoba?
I definitely think that Canada 150 is trying to instill this pride of ‘who we are?’ and ‘what is the Canadian identity?’ The fact is that part of the Canadian identity is that extraction of natural resources in their economy. Now, they’re instilling this pride where you have to be prideful of being Canadian which also includes being protective of these types of industries. That’s where it gets really convoluted. We need to dismantle that narrative.
What would you say to settlers and settler politicians?
You have to share responsibilities to these communities and respect Indigenous rights. You’ve done a horrible job historically on this. And you can’t just be approving pipelines using the Canadian identity as a justification of infringing on those Indigenous rights, and therefore having to present that to the Canadian public and government. It’s all fine and dandy that you want to celebrate who you are. However, we still have a lot of conflict that needs to get resolved.
What does that look like specifically for you?
Part of that is respecting Indigenous rights to the land and UNDRIP: free, prior and informed consent in terms of any development on our traditional territories. Even though Justin Trudeau is saying ‘yes,’ there’s no ‘yes’ from the actual majority of Indigenous communities that are going to be directly affected. I’m not going to say that there is 100 per cent consensus within the Indigenous communities on pipelines.
But part of the fiduciary duty to the best interests of Indigenous peoples is you actually having to see there’s a huge demographic of Indigenous peoples that are saying ‘no.’ We have a right to say ‘no’ and a consultation with us isn’t about getting to a ‘yes.’ It’s about meaningful dialogue and respecting the fact that we can say ‘no’ and that doesn’t change with consultation and engagement.
There are other procedures and other things that need to be in place to ensure that pipeline is able to go through. And they haven’t met those. They haven’t met Indigenous rights or the court challenge that’s going on. To assume this pipeline’s going to be jammed down our throats is highly disrespectful on the part of a government that says they want to reconcile with Indigenous communities.
Any final thoughts?
Canada 150 isn’t a celebration for me, as an Indigenous woman. I see it as a celebration for them, to instill pride in their identities. But part of their identity is still being a colonizer, and colonizing me. The historical understanding of taking pride in Canada for all the “good” things it’s done does not erase the actual history of genocide in this country. I think that’s a big thing that Canadians need to accept.
Caleb Behn
Caleb Behn is an Eh-Cho Dene and Dunne Za/Cree man living in British Columbia. He was the focus of the 2015 documentary “Fractured Land” and previously worked as a lawyer. Behn has frequently criticized the Site C dam — which, if built, would greatly impact the West Moberly First Nation, where his mother is from.
What do you make of Canada 150?
People have to recognize — and it should be quite obvious — that Canada 150 is a brand. Behind the superficial and contrived nature of Canada 150, you see something darker and more painful for Indigenous people.
It’s like from Calvin and Hobbes: they throw down the transmogrifier on colonization and genocide and missing and murdered Indigenous women and rape of the land and chronic representation of Indigenous people in the justice system and massive dispossession of lands and resources. And that becomes — through this magic rebranding exercise — some series of images and motifs and memes that sanitize and normalize what is abuse of relationships and law and land and people.
How does this tie in with the struggles over Site C?
From my perspective in northeast B.C. looking at Site C: behind this sanitized, non-abusive narrative that brands Canada and this 150 year grand experiment of colonization, you have actual tangible violations of good accounting principles, representation in the political process, systemically problematic and dangerous developments.
This urgency that Indigenous people are feeling is an urgency that the dominant colonial society should have felt from its very inception 150 years ago because it was grounded in the deployment of extractive technology and the violation of appropriate relations with human and non-human beings and environments.
That is hyper-relevant for the 21st century. That’s why Site C, Muskrat Falls, Line 3, fossil fuels, violation of law, disrespect of treaties, abuse is all interconnected.
There’s a lot of talk about acknowledging Indigenous rights to land. What do you think this looks like?
Land is such a weak word. It’s the violation of something truly sacred. But then to dress that up as something to be celebrated or unquestionably adopted and marketed within this decaying, decrepit, spiritually and physically contaminated time: that should be the clarion call for all human beings, especially in Canada.
Any final thoughts?
I hope your readers appreciate that as you celebrate the nation-state of Canada and somehow ignore the genocide and the rape and the violation of peoples, principles and land: even if you can get that far internally colonized and simplistically adopting a mindset and model, it’s in your best interest individually and collectively to still question what it is that’s being sold to you and what it is you’re witnessing.
I know what the red stands for in that flag. And I know what the white stands for in that flag. You see so many people unquestionably celebrating. It was really sad. And to see how many Indigenous people and other solid settler allies with their head firmly extracted from their ass are criticizing and engaging that — to me, that was the only real hope in that.
This month, I had the fantastic opportunity to speak to Robert Jensen while he was in Australia to launch his new book, The End of Patriarchy: Radical Feminism for Men (2017, Spinifex Press). As a feminist in my early 20s, I was interested to hear how he thought his book would connect with young men, his thoughts on watering down radical feminism to reach a wider range of people, and how his pro-feminist politics relate to his climate change activism.
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Zoë Goodall: You’ve written extensively about various aspects of feminism and patriarchy. What made you decide to produce a more all-encompassing work that examined patriarchy as a whole?
Robert Jensen: I wrote a book on pornography that was published in 2007 (which has since gone out of print), and the publishers wanted me to do a new edition of it. I didn’t have the emotional energy to go back, specifically, and do new research on pornography, because it’s exhausting to have to look at the misogyny and the racism. I was thinking a lot about how radical feminism has been so marginalized and that there aren’t that many concise explanations of radical feminism in plain language. I also started thinking about how little is written specifically with a male audience in mind.
I’ve always thought that my role in the world is not to tell women what to think about sex/gender/power, but to speak to men, informed by feminism. It just simply seemed to make sense to write, after nearly 30 years of experience, the best plain language account I could of the feminism that helped me to understand the world.
ZG: Did you write The End of Patriarchy for any particular demographic of men, or do you think it’s broadly applicable to all age groups and classes of men?
RJ: I think that the distinctions between men that are important are not primarily among different demographic groups, but internal to them. So, white middle-class men of my age range — some of them are the most sexist human beings I’ve ever met and some of them are the most progressive. The same is true of black urban youth.
Because I teach in a university with a fairly diverse student body, and because I’m out in the world a fair amount, I do see a lot of different men. So I think it’s not that old men are worse than young men, it’s not that white people are worse than black people, that professional men are better than working-class men, you know? I’m sure that there are patterns, but I don’t know enough to know how to describe them. But I’m speaking to anybody within any demographic who wants to think about a radical critique of the sex/gender dynamic, that’s it.
ZG:Over the years, both liberal and radical feminists have expressed sentiments along the lines of “we shouldn’t care what men think — their views aren’t important to us.” Do you think it is important for women in feminism to care about what men think and their viewpoints?
RJ: On one level, the question answers itself. If you were a civil rights activist trying to create an anti-racist society, you should probably think about what white people think, because white people are the source of white supremacy and racism. So in some ways, all women who are feminist and concerned about creating gender justice are thinking about men.
The question is: What role do men have in feminist movements? That is a more difficult question. In the radical feminism that I was exposed to, going back to the late 1980s, rooted in the anti-pornography movement, the understanding was that men had a role in the anti-pornography movement — not to take leadership positions, but to contribute to feminist organizations that were speaking to women as well as to men, specifically about ending the use of pornography, but also about using men’s resources. In terms of contributions to the movement, those resources mean money, time, and energy. That always seemed pretty sensible to me. I was quickly clear that my role was to speak to men and use whatever resources I had, which at this point in my life are a university position which gives me status, some amount of money, and my writing skills.
What I’ve always understood about my own writing is that I’m not the smartest person in the room. I’ve been aware of that for a long, long time. What I also came to understand is that I don’t need to be the smartest person in the room to say something clearly that can be useful, especially to men. And the reason I emphasize that is, in academic life you’re conditioned to always be striving to be the smartest person in the room. In a way, I’m glad I started my academic career in feminism, where clearly my role was not to originate new theory — nobody needed me to start pontificating. My role was to take the existing research, theory, and activism of women — which was considerable — and speak about it in a way that men could understand. And to, where possible, add to research. So I’ve done a lot of interviewing of men, for instance, which is something I can do.
So, instead of, like many academics, trying to figure out how I can get out in front and be the big thinker, I’ve always been comfortable with being an interpreter of the really important ideas of other people, including of all these feminist women who’ve done so much amazing work, and especially Andrea Dworkin. You know, the first feminist work I read was by Andrea Dworkin [pause]. I get really emotional about her, because she had such a huge influence on my life that sometimes when I say her name, I stop and I think, “Oh my god, she’s dead,” you know? And she died so young. But I read Andrea’s work first, and am I going to improve on Andrea Dworkin’s understanding of men and pornography? Not likely. But I can take those insights of hers and ask how I can explore them and how I can talk to men about them. So that’s what I do.
ZG: What are your thoughts on the watering down of radical politics to make them more palatable to more people, versus retaining the ideological purity of the movement? Do you think radical politics are still useful even if they are somewhat defanged?
RJ: I would first of all distinguish between “watering down,” which is always dangerous, and “dejargoning,” if you’ll accept that term. Like any other intellectual, political movement, people can develop an insider language — jargon. And I think jargon is destructive, both to our ability to communicate with others, but also to our own understanding. The minute people start relying on jargon instead of argument, the quality of the intellectual and political position erodes. So I’ve always tried to write without jargon, but to write radically.
I don’t feel a need to water [radical ideas] down, for two reasons. One is I’m an intellectual in the big sense — that society gives me enough money that I don’t have to grow my own food. I get to sit around and think about things. It’s my job, in that sense, to do that. And two, at this point, liberal institutions — capitalism, traditional governance structures, the industrial model for how human beings should operate — aren’t working. At some level, a lot of people know they aren’t working. If you give people only a new version of the same old institutions that people know aren’t working, you’re not going to activate and inspire people. I think what people are looking for, increasingly, is something that is radical. And by that I don’t mean posturing radically — I mean a truly deep critique that goes to the root and speaks to people.
Now, you put a hundred people in a room, a radical analysis is not necessarily going to resonate with [all of them]. But I would rather speak to the percentage of them that are ready for that than to try to create some message that appeals to the broadest possible segment of that room, because that will inevitably lead to a message that doesn’t inspire and won’t be embraced by very many people. At this moment, I’m more convinced than ever that we need to be more radical. But to be radical in plain language.
ZG:Many feminists who are critical of the sex industry refute the accusation that their analysis is based on moralism, most likely because this has been used as a reason to discount their arguments. However, in The End of Patriarchy, you embrace a moral critique of pornography and prostitution, arguing that your position is based, in part, on moral judgments. Were you worried that this statement might create a backlash, not only from defenders of the sex industry, but also from feminists who have rejected claims that their criticisms are based on morals? Why was articulating a moral basis to your objections important to you? Do you think that other men should feel the same?
RJ: I think everybody should feel the same. What I would distinguish is between moral claims and moral principles versus a kind of a moralism used to signify people who assert — with moral certainty — the way you should behave or the way you should use your body, for instance. So I try to avoid being moralistic in that sense — that pejorative sense — but to recognize that we are always, constantly, inextricably moral beings.
Politics is always based on a moral theory of some sort, about what it means to be human. So I use the term “moral” in that larger sense, and I think because the right wing — especially the religious right — has captured the term “morality” and defined it in such narrow ways, many people in the liberal, left, and secular world are afraid of it. I think we need to reclaim it. And the reason is twofold:
1) Principles. Because I don’t think there is a way to develop a politics without basing something on foundationally moral claims.
2) Because everybody really wants moral answers. It’s part of being human.
When the left and the liberals cede that moral turf to the right, the right fills it. And they fill it with what I think are bad answers. So rather than give up that territory and say, “Well we’re not making moral judgments,” I say, “Yes, I’m making moral judgments, and I can articulate them and I can defend them.” Because I think, at some level, people understand there is no decent human community without moral principles. By moral principles I don’t mean, “You can’t use your penis in a certain way,” I mean, “What does it mean to be a human being in relation to other humans? What do we owe ourselves? What do we owe others? How do we understand ourselves in the larger living world?”
All those are profoundly moral questions. Because they have to do with what it means to be a human being. So I embrace that, on both practical and principled grounds.
ZG: Have you noticed men’s attitudes towards women and/or feminism change over the decades? Do you think it’s gotten better or worse?
RJ: I’m going to speak only in the U.S. context, because that’s what I know. In the nearly 30 years I’ve been paying attention to this, the general cultural climate for feminism has gotten better, it’s gotten worse, and it’s stayed the same. Depending on the kinds of issues we’re talking about, all of those things are true.
Let’s take the presence of women in existing institutions: education, government, business. That’s better. We just had an election in which, for the first time, a woman was a major contender for the top political office. That’s an improvement. It doesn’t mean I like Hillary Clinton’s politics, but it’s an improvement — that got better. On some things — take general household relationships, your average heterosexual married couple — I think that’s pretty much the same as it was 30 years ago. I don’t think there have been great improvements in the deepening of a real feminist presence in people’s everyday lives. On the sexual exploitation industries — pornography, prostitution, stripping — it’s far worse, we’ve lost ground. There’s more pornography, there’s more of an acceptance of prostitution than there’s ever been.
So, all of those things are true — that’s the complexity of modern society.
ZG: Do you think young men today have more or less hope of understanding the messages in The End of Patriarchy? Because on the one hand, we’re the generation that’s grown up in a porn culture. But on the other hand, we’re the generation where feminism of a certain kind has become relatively mainstream.
RJ: With experience, there’s the possibility of deeper insight. Yet age and experience can also make it difficult for us to see new ideas. Both things are true. I think my experience suggests that, again, there’s no predicting. Young men who will identify as feminists, but identify with a very kind of weak, liberal, tepid feminism are in some ways as much — maybe even more — of an impediment to making progress than older, lefty guys who may not know how to speak about this so much, but have a more intuitive notion of “justice has to include something around a critique of patriarchy.”
Younger men are growing up in a world that is both more corrosive and also more open to feminism. So how does that balance out? Here’s one way to say it: Are members of fraternities at U.S. universities any more feminist-friendly than they were 40 years ago? Well, they might have learned a certain language. But the fact is, fraternities are still rape factories, and there’s been no significant shift to change that. So, both things are true. Fraternity men know the language, but they don’t care.
ZG: In the concluding chapter of The End of Patriarchy, you talk about the ever-worsening damage to the planet enacted through human activity. Climate change is essentially the definitive crisis of our generation; we’ve been made aware that it’s a problem since we were born, and it’s our generation who needs to fix things before it’s too late. How do you see radical feminism as part of the solution to these ecological crises?
RJ: The connection is twofold: one is intellectual, and the other is more embodied. The two foundational hierarchies in human history, you could say, are the human claim to own the world and men’s claim to own women. After the invention of agriculture, human beings started routinely saying “we own the world”, eventually expanding to “we own every inch of the world and we can do what we want with it”. Patriarchy begins in men’s claims to own women’s bodies, especially reproduction and sexuality. There’s something about this that’s very important, that the two oldest oppressions, in a sense, of patriarchy and human domination of the world, both share this pathological belief that we can own things. And eventually that developed into slavery and believing you can own other humans for labour, and you know, that nation-states can own other territories.
For the last couple of years I’ve really been thinking about how pathological the concept of ownership really is. So if we’re going to deal with reversing the human destruction of our own ecosystem, it’s got to be with rethinking what it means to own. Which to me, among other things, means there is no human future in capitalism, which is premised on the market and the ownership of all.
That’s kind of an analytical answer. There’s always an analytical component to politics, but there’s also an embodied and emotional component, and for me, the feeling is the same. When I listen to women describing their experiences of being prostituted, it’s not just an intellectual response, it’s something deeply human and empathetic in my response in that. I’m from the state of North Dakota, in the U.S., and North Dakota is largely an agricultural state. But in western North Dakota, fracking has opened up an oil industry. I’m not from that part of the state, but it feels like home, in a sense, and when I see pictures of what fracking has done to the land in North Dakota, I cry. There’s a connection, and it’s not because it’s “my land,” it’s because that feels like my part of the world, and there is something being done to destroy that world. It’s a very similar embodied and emotional reaction.
I think there’s something to that. If we are going to deal with the ecological crises, it can’t simply be by analytically deciding we can’t burn fossil fuels anymore, or we need to get solar panels. There’s got to be some way that we transcend our isolation from the larger living world. Modern society keeps you isolated: stay in front of a screen, stay in an air-conditioned house.
We’ve got to deal with that. My first entry into feeling with my own body and understanding my own body was feminism, which told me that all that pornographic culture I had been seduced by was keeping me from myself. There was something profound about that. And I begin the book talking about the bodily experience of coming into feminism.
Zoë Goodall is a student and writer based in Melbourne, Australia. She is currently completing her Honours at RMIT University, examining discussions relating to Indigenous women that occurred during the deliberations on Canada’s Bill C-36. She tweets infrequently at @zcgoodall.
Springfield, LA – Following legal victories for the Tribes at Standing Rock, Water Protectors in Southern Louisiana will open the L’eau Est La Vie (Water is Life) Camp tomorrow. The launch marks the next fight to protect Indigenous rights, life-giving water and to stop Energy Transfer Partners from committing acts of environmental injustice.
The Indigenous Environmental Network announced the opening of the camp with a video, highlighting, Cherri Foytlin who represents IEN’s interests in the Bayou. The video explains the connection between the Bayou Bridge and Dakota Access Pipeline, the Houma tribe, and all people who will be impacted by these pipelines, and why completion of the Bayou Bridge pipeline must be stopped.
Watch the video below, and learn more about the L’eau Est La Vie (Water is Life) Camp and the lead organizers rising up on the frontlines of the fighting for environmental justice to protect Indigenous rights, clean water, and rapidly disappearing wetlands on the Gulf Coast.
The following is a statement from Monique Verdin, councilwoman of the Houma Nation:
“I’m not sure if we are at the head or the tail of the black snake; But we already got enough pipelines, 83,000 miles running through Louisiana. Miles of old infrastructure, built across the Mississippi River Delta’s coast decades ago, surrounded by a disappearing landscape in some of the most vulnerable territories in the world, enduring rising tides and more frequent, powerful and unpredictable weather conditions. Louisiana has sacrificed enough, we don’t need another risk of oil in our waters. It’s one thing if you can’t fish. It’s another thing if you can’t drink water. Over 300,000 people depend on the Bayou Lafourche, for their drinking water in the heart of Houma territory. We don’t need another pipeline. We need clean water.”
The following is a statement from Cherri Foytlin, of BOLD Lousiana:
“The corporation Energy Transfer Partners (ETP) has proven themselves to be untrustworthy in regards to their moral responsibility to preserve both human and ecological rights. Whereby they have obfuscated the truth, sabotaged democracy, destroyed our lands and water, and even hired mercenaries to injure our people, we have but one recourse, and that is to say ‘you shall not pass.’ No Bayou Bridge! We will stop ETP. They are not welcome here – not in our bayous, not in our wetlands, not in our Basin, not under our lands or through our waters. Period.”
