February 7, 2010 by Jay Taber.

In February 2001, Yakama Indian Nation cultural leader and CWIS Board Member Russell Jim spoke about the insidious goals of the US government toward the indigenous peoples of the world, including the Nuclear Attack on the Yakama Culture by the atomic energy industry.

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February 5, 2010 by Rudolph Ryser.

I wish to let all of our readers know that two new contributors have now been added to the Fourth World Eye roster. Tiffany Waters, Deputy Director and Research Associate at the Center for World Indigenous Studies will now add her insights, observations and analysis to these pages.  Renee Davis, Research Associate at the Center will also add her words and thoughts to these pages.

I believe they will provide interesting reading, new insights and information from and about the Fourth World that will ensure you remain up to date, and involved in the key issues of the day.

Welcome to you both.

Tiffany Waters, Renee Davis, Fourth World Eye

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February 5, 2010 by Jay Taber.

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights has agreed to hear a land claim petition from First Nations on Vancouver Island. Seeking due process in the international arena, after frustrated attempts to negotiate with the governments of Canada and British Columbia, will likely reveal Canada’s standing in the Organization of American States as a result of its vote against UNDRIP, the preeminent international accord on the rights of indigenous peoples.

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February 4, 2010 by Jay Taber.

Mayans in Guatemala liberate activist from police, a model of resistance for us all.

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February 3, 2010 by Rudolph Ryser.

After losing one friend it appears I have lost yet another.  Dr. Miquel J. Alfonso Martinez, one Cuba’s most outstanding diplomats who in my experience played a dominant role in the development of the United Nations Working Group on Indigenous Populations (as one of its active members). Alfonso had been, as he told me, a speech writer for Fidel Castro just as I told him I had been a speech writer for the great Quinualt Nation leader Joe DeLacruz. We found common ground and experiences quickly. As we got to know each other I told him that I was actively engaged in efforts to facilitate peace talks between the Miskito, Sumo and Rama and the Nicaraguan government in the middle 1980s. Meeting in Genevé, Switzerland Alfonso and I talked about this for some time and I suggested to him that Fidel Castro was known to have a favored spot for North American Indians because Indians in Eastern Cuba had protected him and his troops during his battles with Batista during the revolt in the 1950s. I asked if he would carry a message to Fidel asking him to send a message to Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega.  The message was to ask Ortega to cease the war with the Indians and engage in peace talks to bring the “third front” to an end. Alfonso, said in his graceful English, “I will try, but I can’t promise anything.” (Nicaragua was then fighting against attacks from Honduras and from Costa Rica at the same time the Nicaraguans were attacking Indian villages all along the east coast using helicopter gun ships and missiles.)

Within a short time, Ortega invited Miskito leader Brooklyn Rivera to engage in peace talks. While there had been a round of talks in Columbia they had failed to move the process. These talks were subsequently convened in Mexico City at the Mexican Foreign Ministry. A temporary halt of hostilities was agreed to. Though it took five more years before the war between the Miskito, Sumo and Rama with Nicaragua came to an end and several more rounds of peace negotiations, it was Miguel Alfonso Martinez’s quiet diplomacy that helped bring that messy war to an end.

Alfonso had served as the UN Special Rapporteur for the Study on Treaties, Agreements and Constructive Arrangements between States and Indigenous Peoples, having been a former Chair of the UN Working Group on Indigenous Populations.  His work as the Special Rapporteur produced a monumental analysis contributing to our collective understanding of the existing and past legal relationships between indigenous nations and states. His report became an important contribution to the development of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples adopted by the UN General Assembly in 2007. For this work he was both praised and condemned. I for one remain among those who hold him in high praise.

I shall not forget this genteel intellectual from Cuba who worked tirelessly for peace, and as a member of the UN Working Group he was a gentle but firm diplomat. I am grateful to this modest man with whom I sipped many coffees in Switzerland and elsewhere.  I shall miss him.

miquel alfonso martinez, UN Working Group on Indigenous Populatons, Cuba, Fidel Castro, Daniel Ortega, Brooklyn Rivera

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February 3, 2010 by Jay Taber.

Intercontinental Cry examines the connection between diabetes and persistent organic pollutants like PCBs and DDT.

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February 3, 2010 by Jay Taber.

Palestinian filmmaker Elia Suleiman discusses the global regression of the status quo, what he has termed an occupation of the souls. As Suleiman observes in this interview by Electronic Intifada’s  Sabah Haider,

The powers that are trying to shrink our aspiration for democracy are greater than our imagination.

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February 2, 2010 by Jay Taber.

Defending democracy from the philanthropists was the topic of an interesting post by a friend of mine, but you probably get the gist of it: there are those who do what needs to be done, and then there are those who do what can get funded. In the process, those seeking funding over effectiveness usually contribute to misperceptions about the problems we face, often distorting them to suit their self-interest. Which leaves us fighting both the thieves who stole our wealth and the career activists who frequently do their dirty work.

With both integrity and consciousness in such short supply, accomplishing anything worthwhile means accepting that we are likely fighting a lost cause, but taking consolation in the possibility that whatever battles we manage to win means things aren’t as bad as they could have been. Not denying hope, but neither promoting undue optimism.

What I try to convey is that there is great satisfaction in torpedoing bad guys, even if you don’t acquire either fame or fortune. Making a living is a separate problem. My friends and I have brought down corrupt media, governments, and domestic terrorist networks, put people in prison, and shut down criminal enterprises through investigative research and strategic communication–without a paycheck for our efforts. We’ve even written about our work, and made it available free online.

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February 1, 2010 by Rudolph Ryser.

Viktor Kaisiepo, died on Sunday 31 January 2010 at the age of 61. A Papuan nationalist who vigorously represented his own tribal community as well as the hundreds of communities in West Papua to preserve their right to self-determination from control by Indonesia. Viktor’s work was not finished.

Viktor and I first met in Amsterdam in 1984 when both West Papua and the Chittagong Hill Tracts were being violently attacked by both the Indonesian government (West Papua) and the Bangladesh (Chittagong Hill Tracts).  Both governments were carrying forward a World Bank policy of “Transmigration,” only the World Bank did not see itself as supporting invasions of indigenous territories with armed forces.  Transmigration was supposed to be an “economic and humanitarian” program aimed at moving crowded populations of 20 million from small areas (Java in Indonesia) (the Delta region in Bangladesh) into indigenous territories.  The problem with this scheme was that armed forces were being used to kill, rape, pillage and displace hundreds of thousands of indigenous peoples in both West Papua and the Chittagong Hill Tracts.

How to bring this carnage to an end?  Viktor and I and many others began working on a plan to use a “pocket book strategy” against each of the states to force them to stop killing indigenous people, and stop their invasions. The effort was aimed at stopping funds from flowing out of the World Bank and thus bankrolling the wars against Papuans and against the Hill Tract Tribes. Viktor became a strong advocate and tireless speaker on behalf of the peoples of West Papua and stressed peaceful separation of West Papua from Indonesia.  An organizer, thoughtful philosopher, diplomat, and political leader, Viktor Kaisiepo made a huge mark on the future of West Papua and he taught many to think proactively for a peaceful world.  Thank you Viktor.  It was great to know you. Now others must pick up the spear and the peace offerings to continue your work.

Viktor Kaisiepo, West Papua, Papua, Chittagong Hill Tracts, Hill Tracts, Indonesia, Bangladesh, World Bank, self-determination, transmigration

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January 31, 2010 by Rudolph Ryser.

Afghanistan and Pakistan stand as two semi-organized states with Pashtunistan and other nations astride their mid-sections. Violently attacked by the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in the 1980s, undermined by the United States government that busily supported and financed the rise of the Taliban in its opposition to the USSR, viciously attacked by the Taliban seeking to destroy tribal structures and replace them with Wahhabi Fundamentalism the peoples of Pashtunistan persist as the central political reality of west Asia.  While all around the Pashtun there are bankrupt, unstable, collapsing and failed states the nation of Pashtunistan continues to resist external violations of its leadership, communities and families.  When state leaders in Pakistan, the United States, Britain, and Russia claim the Pashtun territories are “lawless,” they are really saying the surrounding states do not and cannot enforce their laws in Pashtunistan–a country that has legal structures that predate virtually all of those states.

Ruhulla Khapalwak and David Rohde penned a well informed essay for the January 31, 2010 New York Times (Wk 3) making the important point: Pashtunistan is the key to the successful stabilization of both Afghanistan and Pakistan, and it is essential as an ally to defeat the Taliban and Al Qaeda.  Led by the Americans, NATO forces must finally come to recognize that the work of a peaceful western Asia is only possible with the support of Pashtunistan. Neither Pakistan nor Afghanistan has the capacity, political will or historical credibility to defeat the American invented Taliban and their cousin al Qaeda.

Central to the persistence of Pashtun is the family and its extended tendrils. The cultural reality is that Pashtun are of the land and cannot be displaced. They are the bedrock nation of the region.

I noted in a posting several years ago that al Qaeda would seek to divide and dismember indigenous nations and then replace the cultural reality of these nations with their brand of distorted Islam.  They are indeed attempting to do just that in Pashtunistan and in the neighboring nation of Baluchistan.  They are also attempting to undo indigenous nations in Yemen, Somalia, Saudi Arabia, the Philippines, Indonesia, India, as well as Uzbekistan, Tadjikistan, Turkestan, Ingushitia and the Russian battered Chechnya.

Indigenous nations are the subject of the September 13, 2007 General Assembly Resolution of the United Nations entitled the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.  The Russians abstained and the Americans voted against the declaration.  Both states are guilty of doing violence against indigenous nations inside their own territories and in the territories of other states.  The United States government is the source of the principle of Self-determination as expressed in President Wilson’s famous 14 points aimed at settled Central Europe - particularly the former state of Yugoslavia–at the end of World War I. The United States also served as the original base and principal author of the United Nations and she gave us the UN Declaration on Human Rights under the leadership of Eleanor Roosevelt.  Despite these notable contributions to peaceful development in the world, the United States has led wars essentially against indigenous nations in Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Somalia…all in the name of fighting the Taliban and al Qaeda.

The United States  must take heed of its own internal analysis by the US Department of Defense (the DoD Quadrennial Defense Review) that will publish a report that finds Climate Change to be the source of major security threats in the next fifty years. At the center of these security threats are massive population movements as a result of adverse climate conditions. Indigenous nations are in the forefront of the emerging security conditions. Colin Fleming echoes this warning in his Huffington Post article when he writes: “If America’s leading military think tanks are correct, climate change will, in addition to wreaking havoc through environmental disaster, become one of the greatest national security threats of the 21st Century.” While there are detractors from this analysis (see Justin Logan and Christopher Preble of the Cato Institute) the weight of evidence over the last forty years clearly shows a growing trend toward growing security problems.

This means that indigenous nations will have to become a major factor in the foreign policy of the United States and other states.  This also means the United States government must reverse its opposition to the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.  If it fails to do so, it cannot be considered a credible ally or partner for indigenous nations who ultimately decide the stability or instability of major parts of the world.

Pashtunistan provides the United States an opportunity to receive lessons it must successfully learn. The conventional wisdom that all foreign policy must be “state oriented” is now obsolete. The Pashtun are offering the lessons for the 21st century foreign policy. States’ governments have much to gain by sitting down at the same table with indigenous nations, entering into a dialog and begin creating new institutions that joins states and nations in a common effort to define best approaches to peaceful settlement of present and future conflicts.  The Pashtun know about war and peace. Learn from them.

UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, Pashtun, Pashtunistan, United States of America, USSR, Russia, Tadjikistan, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Somalia, Saudi Arabia, the Philippines, Indonesia, India, Uzbekistan, Turkestan, Inguishitia, Chechnya, bedrock nations, indigenous peoples, indigenous nations, self-determination, human rights, Taliban, al Qaeda.Wahhabi Fundamentalism, Islam, Britain

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