One Family, Many Cultures

When the salutation, “All my relations” is spoken or written these days, many people think this quaint and perhaps a little presumptuous. But, the expression has always expressed a deep and timeless connection between people that celebrates relationships between people, places and other beings. “All my relations” also speaks to a collective memory among people that extends back deep into the beginning.

In the western hemisphere including Greenland and the far eastern part of the Eurasian continent that touches Alaska and Japan we recognize a human family spread out, living in different climates and ecosystems.  The differences are responses to the place, plants, animals and view of the sky. The sameness of members of a vast family bespeaks a distant root branched out over the continents. There is one family of native peoples making up the whole, but many cultures with different languages, social practices, economic activities, and ways of praising grandmother and grandfather.

Long told in stories and remembered in numerous ways, the connection between native peoples in the western hemisphere have remained a constant. Origin stories, legends, songs and dances reach into the distant past and give in metaphor the details of the passage into this world.  Now, according to Science News the biological tracers have been identified by deductive science to affirm what has long been known among the original peoples in the western hemisphere: We are all related.

There are many important differences between native peoples throughout the hemisphere and virtually all have to do with culture; though it is often the case the customs, cultural practices are often similar if not always exactly the same.  The use of song, dance, stories, hunting methods, transportation and even sometimes eating habits are the same or very similar.

It is and always has been true that we have connection between peoples in this hemisphere even as it is true for peoples on other continents. With respect and dignity we salute our friends and family with “All my relations.”

relations, science news, culture, Greenland, Eurasia, North America

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BINGOs, wars and Indigenous Refugees

Big International NGOs (BINGOs) like the Worldwide Fund for Nature, Conservation International and the Nature Conservancy directly cause the displacement of Fourth World peoples from their territories resulting in large numbers of native peoples living as refugees.  Former Publisher and Editor of the magazine Mother Jones Mark Dowie writes in his new book Conservation Refugees that conservation organizations succeeded in establishing 108,000 officially protected conservation areas world-wide since 1900 and that half of these resulted in expelling indigenous peoples–forcing them into permanent refugee status. Displaced in the interest of conservation many indigenous peoples have been forced into poverty, assimilation and “trespassing” on their ancestral lands for food and sustainance. Dowie describes in his book the experience of the Maasai and the San of northeastern Africa and the Kalahari Desert; and the Karen forced into of Thailand and the Adevasis of India.  Native peoples in North and South America have continued to experience the same adverse relations with conservation groups seeking to expell native people while “conserving the land.”  These “conservation” groups fail to recognize that the native peoples are an essential part of the biodiversity in the very areas they seek to conserve. Instead of achieving balanced conservation areas, the BINGOs have succeeded in creating human misery, unbalanced territories and unthinkingly contributed to the adverse effects of climate change.

Mature cultures help ensure the biological diversity of ecological niches all around the world.  It is the forced removal of indigenous peoples from their ancestral lands that contributes to the degredation of ecological areas and the violent displacement of whole peoples into destitution and dependency. Forcing indigenous peoples into refugee status contributes to the imbalances that promote the destruction of forests, increased carbon emissions and wider releases of green house gases.  The result: climate change and its adverse effects on all life on the planet.  While it is true that the BINGO effect is only a small part of the climate change dilemma, there is no doubt that conservation without a balance between culture and the natural environment produces mutliple disasters–none of which are healthy for humans.

The United Nations reported at the end of 2008 there are more than 42 million refugees world-wide. Of these people forcibly pushed from their ancestral lands as a result of conservation, conflict and persecution perhaps half or 21 million are indigenous peoples. These are peoples forced from their territories like the Far pushed by the Sudaneese supported Arab tribesmen into Chad from Darfur. Indigenous peoples in Pakistan, Tanzania, Thailand, Somalia, Republic of the Congo, Lebanon and in Columbia are among those now forced into refugee status.  There are native peoples refugees still in the United States, Canada and Mexico resulting from wars against the various indigenous peoples from the 19th century through to the present.

Indigenous peoples forced from their ancestral lands by violent clashes with invading forces continues as it has for more than four centuries. Conservation groups and their big brothers in the non-governmental organization arena should be natural allies to native peoples, yet they persist in their efforts to close off ancestral lands to the very people who balance the ecosystem with their cultural practices. BINGOs failure to fully appreciate the importance of balanced cultural and biological diversity in nature reflects the kind of narrow minded actions of those who would displace native peoples through conflict and oppression. This type of thinking is also responsible for the growing disaster we now recognize as climate change. BINGO conservation efforts and violent conflicts combined with the stupid production of poisonous chemicals and overuse of carbon-based energy sources will make all people refugees one day, but refugees with no place in which to seek refuge.

BINGO, Worldwide Fund for Nature, Conservation International, Nature Consevancy, indigenous peoples, Mother Jones, Mark Dowie, Maasai, Darfur, biological diversity, cultural diversity, United Nations, refugees, climate change

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War Crimes are War Crimes

After reading and listening to columnists and television and radio commentators twist and turn their words to argue against holding US officials accountable for torturing of detainees under the control of the CIA and the US Defense department I now understand how it was possible for Germans to turn their attention away from the genocidal policies of the Adolph Hitler government during the 1930s and 40s. The US government put in place laws against torture and signed international agreements (authored by US representatives) after World War II.  I was born just after the end of World War II. I grew up learning that the decisions at the Nuremberg trials holding German officials high and low accountable for war crimes and crimes against humanity was the moral and judicious thing to do. A government’s policy that authorizes war crimes and crimes against humanity is not protection, and must not be a protection, against prosecution and punishment.  The German people know this now. The Japanese people who also saw the US commit to trial and punishment violators of war crimes laws and crimes against humanity understand this concept too.

Now, for eight years, the United States government policy was to authorize the commission of a crime–violate US laws and international laws which are required to be made a part of the “Law of the Land.” The law is the law and must be administered by the chief law enforcement officer in the United States. There is no political decision to be made here.  Acts of torture were committed against individuals in violation of US law. No one who authorized, authored, directed or directly committed the acts of torture must be relieved of their responsibility.  If the “law” means anything then it must be enforced.

Uygurs from East Turkistan (northwest China) have been held in Guantanomo prison for no crime they committed.  Other indigenous peoples are being killed and tortured for no crime they committed acts against indigenous peoples are crimes against humanity.  US policy has sanctioned such acts.

Americans have a strange notion of their “exceptional” position above all other peoples. Not only is this an ignorant assertion it is dangerous.  With such an attitude Americans allow themselves to behave in bestial ways while seeking to condemn and punish others for bestial acts. Stalin’s Russia behaved the same way and Americans condemned Russians and Stalin for acts of torture, gulogs, mass killings and population removals. Countless other horrific actions have been taken by other governments containing individuals who were “following policy” — said another way: “following orders.”

Nuremberg established the rule that “following orders” in the commission of a crime is no defense. Individuals are supposed to make a judgment about the moral good and the immoral. Individuals are suppose to be able to decide good and evil unless they are judged “crazy.”

Stop with the apologies, rationalizations suggesting that “we just move on!” Stop with the suggestion that “the world is in crisis, we don’t need a distraction.” I am sorry, but a crime or crimes have been committed. If the US is to be civilized and exist as a state that acts in accord to laws and not from human emotion, then the laws must be enforced.

As European jurists have already announced, and the authorities in the United Nations responsible for dealing with torture and war crimes suggest…if the US government does not fulfill its legal obligations under domestic and international law to put to trial and convict those deemed responsible for war crimes and crimes against humanity then others must take direct action to seek prosecution of US officials.

That is a determination the US government made long ago when the international torture agreements were made.  The US must live by the laws all humanity now subscribes to and seeks to enforce. President Barak Obama does not have a political choice.  He should step aside and let the US Justice Department perform its duty as prescribed by the US Constitution.

war crimes, crimes against humanity, uygurs, east turkistan, Obama, US Justice Department

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