September 28, 2007 by Jay Taber.

My friend Paul de Armond once remarked that it seemed life in America was like a giant broken record in the sky that kept playing the same segment of a song he never really liked.

At the time he made this observation, Paul and I were up to our necks in sorting out the anti-Indian vigilantes from the run-of-the-mill bigots and real estate opportunists who inhabit the waterfront Indian reservations on Puget Sound. Our immediate task was trying to prevent lethal violence over treaty rights and environmental protection. As time went on, we discovered (with the help and guidance of people like Rudolph Ryser, Daniel Junas, and Tarso Luis Ramos) the anti-Indian movement to be a multi-tiered interlocking network of politicians, trade and industry executives, and white supremacy demagogues.

Reading in the news this week about a spokeswoman for one of the national anti-Indian associations based in Washington state, I was reminded how the anti-Indian movement manages to recycle its anti-sovereignty propaganda time and time again as new issues crop up in Congress, corporate board rooms, or racist rendezvous. I was also reminded how the racist rhetoric always seems new to young journalists, activists, and social scholars. It’s as though there is no institutional memory in our country, no community voice to supplant this broken record.

Rudolph, Paul, and I wrote about this phenomenon, as did Daniel and Tarso. Anti-Indian Movement on the Tribal Frontier is the classic text on the topic.
Wise Use in Northern Puget Sound is available online as is Reign of Terror. Yet despite the documentation of how anti-Indian bigotry is systematically organized, funded, and conducted, mainstream media shows little improvement in its understanding or historical consciousness. Perhaps they just don’t care.

Whatever the reasons for this widespread neglect of our collective memory, which might act as a community safeguard were it properly exercised and maintained, two obvious remedies to this sad situation are for humanitarian philanthropies to consistently fund archival repositories and indigenous media. Research and education rely on them, and curating knowledge is no less demanding a task than preserving more tangible artifacts used to help us comprehend where we’ve been and where we’re going. Haphazard, erratic support only guarantees that the anti-Indian movement will be able to continue exploiting public ignorance and forgetfulness.

Maybe the problem is in how philanthropies conceive social conflict, organization, and evolution. If they have no sense of continuity, then short-term campaigns and intermittent events make sense. Unfortunately, history betrays that notion.

(Jay Taber — recipient of the Defender of Democracy award — is an author, columnist, and research analyst at Public Good Project.)

Posted in Artby - Jay Taber, People, Political, Daily | Print | No Comments »

September 27, 2007 by Rudolph Ryser.

Hydroelectric dams have since the beginning of the twentieth century fueled industrial development and economic expansion of states like Egypt, Indonesia, the Philippines, and of course the industrial powers of Canada, the United States of America, and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (Russia). While the result has indeed been economic expansion and the formation of moneyed wealth and power in oligarchies, Fourth World peoples and the natural world have suffered. Real negotiations between Fourth World nations and states’ governments are now required to avoid adverse affects.

During the Ferdinand Marcos regime (early 1980s) in the Philippines the president and his cronies conspired to get the World Bank to provide funds for the development of a series of dams in the Luzon province on the Chico River to generate electricity for sugar plants. The Kalinga and Bontoc nations reacted in opposition because their rice terraces and villages were going to be drowned under vast lakes created by the dams. Using weapons and stealth Kalinga warriors attacked road builders in an effort to prevent dam construction. The American government transferred funds to President Marcos to support his military to “defend against communists” in Luzon. The American government paid twice to ultimately kill many Kalinga by first allocating funds to the World Bank in support of the Philippine dam projects and then appropriating funds to provide military aid to defend against communists who were in reality Kalinga warriors defending their territories from certain destruction. The United States-based National Congress of American Indians campaigned in 1983 to force the US Congress to withhold funds from the Philippine project and that effort with the pressure of many others combined to halt dam construction in the Cordillera region.

During the same period, the World Bank considered providing funds to construct dams in Costa Rica on rivers that would flood Boruca and Bribri nation communities. Members of the Bribri publicly protested construction of dams that were intended to provide power for an aluminum plant on the Lemon coast. The World Council of Indigenous Studies and the Center for World Indigenous Studies worked with other Fourth World organizations to block funding for the project.

These two projects were initiated to secure funding from the World Bank even though the Bank had written and put in place an indigenous peoples policy: Tribal Peoples and Economic Development: Human Ecologic Considerations designed to require states’ government negotiations with Fourth World peoples before development of dams, roads, high power facilities and more projects could be funded. The World Bank policy generally failed and has served to shield states’ governments from criticism.

Fourth World nations are being duped into accepting dam construction plans when states’ government officials provide partial or misleading information about their intentions when they negotiate. They get signatures from nation representatives and claim they have consented though the agreements are based on a tissue of lies.

The Cree of James Bay in Canada are now opposed to construction of a massive dam project now that they have become informed that grave environmental damage will be done by Hydro Quebec. Canada’s company wants to construct the dam not because Canada needs electricity. The sole purpose of the dam is to generate electricity for New York and New York City in the United States. They want to sell the power outside Canada. The Cree now say they will: “…stand up to Hydro Quebec because the economic benefits do not reflect the ecological consequence.”

In Chile, the government promotes the Spanish energy company Endesa and Colbun, the Chilean energy company to construct a massive hydroelectric power station on the Baker and Pascua rivers. HidroAysén, as the project is known is expected to flood 5,910 hectares of wilderness and lands originally occupied by the Pehuenche (a branch of the Mapuche). The Pehuenche were relocated to higher land based on an agreement with the dam builders and the government. The agreement between the Fourth World peoples and the dam builders required provision of jobs, housing and road improvements, “student scholarships, health centres and technical advice for production of the families’ new lands.” The Chilean government had already made an agreement with the companies BEFORE negotiations with the Pehuenche.

Oil, dams, communications facilities, roads–all of these development projects have an affect on Fourth World peoples and the environment. Fourth World nations must be provided third party guarantors for agreements being promoted by states’ governments and their development partners BEFORE a project moves from the initial planning stage. The World Bank is owned by states’ governments so it is probably only realistic to believe that institution will defend state members and give lip service to Fourth World nations. Nations must take the initiative to force strict negotiation procedures to avoid being lied to, to avoid conflict in the future.

(c) Center for World Indigenous Studies

Technorati Tags: hydroelectric dam, Chile, development, world bank

Powered by ScribeFire.

Posted in Artby - Rudolph Ryser, Political Economy, Environment, Daily | Print | No Comments »

September 27, 2007 by Jay Taber.

I was looking over the posts at Native America this morning, and thought about the vast amounts of time and money expended by Indian tribes in the last half-century to hold federal agencies like the Indian Health Service accountable. Almost without exception, the Bureau of Indian Affairs and Bureau of Land Management and Mineral Management Service have been proven in court to be in breach of their trust obligations, but within the U.S. bureaucracy, little seems to change.

So why, one might ask, continue to pour tribal funds into a system of justice that yields so little? The short answer is that something is better than nothing, but even that fails to take into account the matter of perspective acquired over longer time frames than isolated disputes argued in court can provide. Rather, it is as a whole that the preponderance of evidence and patterns of injustice — established through a body of law over time — that point to a need for broader, more systemic remedies. And, indeed, this has been achieved. Self-determination, environmental restoration, indigenous rights—these are happening.

But there is another facet to indigenous litigation in federal and international courts of law that is often overlooked. And that is communication. Communication changes culture, ways of thinking and acting, our customs and morality. With luck, our consciousness. Bridging the gap between indigenous and colonial cultures and consciousness is accomplished in part by making the differences clearly visible, and few venues portray them more dramatically than the courts.

So while American Indian nations may not get the attention they deserve from Congress, the White House, or the Supreme Court, their grievances made manifest as plaintiffs serve a long-term purpose. That purpose is to eclipse the culture of dominion and supplant it with a culture of mutual respect, that with good will might lead to a meaningful reconciliation. But first, we need to know the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

For some, that requires being under oath.

(Jay Taber — recipient of the Defender of Democracy award — is an author, columnist, and research analyst at Public Good Project.)

Posted in Artby - Jay Taber, Political, Daily | Print | No Comments »

September 26, 2007 by Rudolph Ryser.

Bolivian president Evo Morales, an Aymaran, spoke before the United Nations General Assembly as a head of state. Before speaking Morales met with Haudenosaunee, Oglala Lakota and Cree leaders at a U.N. Permanent Forum for Indigenous Issues hosted meeting requested by President Morales. The meeting of Bolivia’s president with Fourth World nation leaders in New York City came within days after the U.N. General Assembly approved the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

The Assembly of First Nations and the National Congress of American Indians scheduled and convened an international assembly in 1999 to sign a co-operation agreement to “confront common issues such as treaties and protecting native lands from government intrusions.” These rapid-fire events suggest a new effort to internationalize Indian Rights.

An international agreement concluded in August 2007 by nations in Canada’s British Columbia and the USA’s Washington State will establish an international alliance called a United League of Indigenous Nations initialed by representatives from eleven nations. This agreement is aimed at mutual assistance and cooperation particularly in connections with cultural property, trade and treaty rights.

Agreements between Fourth World nations are not new, but the recent events suggest a renewed interest in international cooperation and collaboration. The National Congress of American Indians and the National Indian Brotherhood (predecessor to the Assembly of First Nations) concluded agreements of cooperation in 1971 leading to the eventual formation of the World Council of Indigenous Peoples in 1977. A similar effort had been undertaken earlier to form the International Indian Treaty Council and the Inuits formed another international body called the Inuit Circumpolar Conference.

Notable alliances between Fourth World nations that have endured include the All Indian Pueblo Council and the Haudenosaunee. Treaties and agreements have been struck for mutual support as well as common defense.

The greatest difficulty experienced by Fourth World nations has been sustaining and enforcing treaty agreements. Indian nations in the United States concluded more than 450 treaties with the United States government from 1620 up to the present. The United States has violated virtually all of them. There has been no serious effort at enforcement except occasional appeals to the US court system. Indian nations in Canada have experienced the same pattern of treaty relations with that government. In Mexico, agreements made between Indian nations and the Spanish Crown have frequently been violated and commitments made by the Mexican governments have too often been violated (consider the 1994 repeal of the ejido system of land tenure first established in the Constitution in 1934 that was to guarantee land rights to Indian peoples).

Agreements struck between Fourth World nations have suffered a fate similar to those concluded with Canada, Mexico and the US. Not long after agreements have been made, limited resources, uncertainty about leadership tenure and complicated issue schedules have combined to undermine inter-nation agreements.

International agreements involving Fourth World nations, to be effective, must be specific, contain provisions for successive political administrations, include provisions for enforcement and must be guaranteed by an external party. Without such conditions having been met, Fourth World international agreements will fail to protect and advance the rights of Indian peoples. Such agreements can and will constitute a new body of law in the international arena if and only if Fourth World nations take the initiative todefend and promote such agreements with strict conditions.

President Morales can do more by offering to have Bolivia serve as an external guarantor for Fourth World treaties and agreements. If Bolivia played such a role, then internationalizing Indian Rights will be fully achieved. If Morales can hold onto his seat as President, there is a possibility that this new dimension of international relations can be achieved.

(c) 2007 Center for World Indigenous Studies

Technorati Tags: international, agreements, treaty, Morales, NCAI

Powered by ScribeFire.

Posted in Artby - Rudolph Ryser, FW Geo-Politics, People, Daily | Print | No Comments »

September 25, 2007 by Rudolph Ryser.

Perhaps one of the greatest ironies of the modern era may be recognized when it becomes commonly known that ancient knowledge possessed by Fourth World nations can solve modern problems like global warming. As scientists are beginning to realize, forest practices and jungle management developed more than 2000 years ago in the jungles of Brazil and the forests of the Pacific Northwest and Atlantic Northeast of the United States. Complex Fourth World societies in the Rio Negro (upstream of the Amazon) employed a technique now popularly labeled “slash and char” to manage and grow the jungle in a fashion that balanced carbon releases with carbon sequestration. The terra preta–rich dark soils created by the Manacapuru about A.D. 400 and continued in use by the Paredão from A.D. 700 is  made to include charcoal. Charcoal is made from slow. smoldering burns of wood instead of rapid burning. Folding charcoal into otherwise depleted jungle soil adds a binder that allows the soil to retain potassium and phosphorous as well as other minerals and nutrients. At least half of the carbon produced from burning a forest using the charcoal method goes into the soil–a form of carbon sequestration.

By improving the nutrients in the jungle soil, the makers of terra preta so enriched the soil that new trees grew faster and healthier. The dark soil also provided a powerful, highly nutritious substrate for growing food plants as well.

This “cooperative management” of the jungle appears to be responsible for the successful development of a great portion of the Brazilian jungle. Yes! Human created jungle.  Cooperative management of the jungle produced more jungle, stronger jungle and nutritious foods for sizable populations along the Amazon River centuries before Europeans set foot on the hemisphere’s coasts.

Cooperative management appears to have been as important in the Pacific Northwest of the United States-Pacific Southwest–of Canada. While conventional scientists suggest that the peoples of this region use slash-and-burn techniques for managing the forests, it is possible that slash-and-char may also have been employed.  Partial burns of forests in the Atlantic northeast by Haudenosaunee, Micmac and others  created garden forests that were sustained over long periods of time–benefiting the earth and the people.

The Kyoto treaty signators have a great deal to learn from Fourth World nations. And, Fourth World nations have a great deal to contribute to the debate over global climate change. Fourth World nations that still draw on their ancient knowledge should now apply that knowledge in their own territories; and the Kyoto signators should ask to be invited to the table of negotiations for a new global climate change treaty.

Pacific  coastal nations like the Quinault Indian Nation, the Nuxalk Nation and the Wuikinuxv Nation have the potential for contributing substantially to the reduction of carbon emissions simply as a result of their forest management practices.  Like the Menominee Nation that so successfully grew a forest in their territory while the remainder of Wisconsin is denuded, the Haudenosaunee and the nations of Brazil have practiced holistic environmental management–balancing human need with the environment’s capacity to reproduce. All should be seated at the table to engage states’ governments on cooperative environmental management.

Some leaders in the Fourth World now call this process Holistic Environmental Management. As a body of knowledge, Holistic Environmental Management is an accurate description for the process of creating terra preta and balancing environmental pressures to growing a jungle and a garden.

(c) 2007 Center for World Indigenous Studies

Technorati Tags: holistic environmental management, terra preta, rio negro, climate change

Powered by ScribeFire.

Posted in Artby - Rudolph Ryser, Environment, Daily | Print | 2 Comments »

September 23, 2007 by Rudolph Ryser.

The Flemish are not sure they want to be in the same independent country–Belgium–with the Walloons.  After centuries of living together, these two peoples may decide to go on their own. Like the dissolution of Czechoslovakia in 1993 creating the two separate states of the Czech Republic and the Slovak Republic the two main nations inside Belgium are engaged in an increasingly intense debate about the dissolution of Belgium. The Flemish and the Walloons are two of the more than 120 Fourth World nations in Europe–sometimes called

The Romans called them Belgae and conflicting peoples in Europe called their territory “the battlefield of Europe. These Celtic and Germanic peoples called themselves Flemish and Wallons. This strip of land in the low lands south of what is now The Netherlands was in circa first century BCE dubbed Gallia Belgica. In 1830 the Belgian Revolution formed the independent constitutional monarchy side-by-side with a parliamentary democracy. Now the major partners of Belgium may split up.

At the core of growing disenchantment is the distribution of wealth. The Flemish have benefited from the “information economy” with their commitment to digital technology. The Walloons are an agrarian society that is not attracting new development investments. The Flemish want out of the relationship.

This is not a new debate. These two peoples have expressed disenchantment before. Now, however, it seems there is a real chance of divorce.

If the Walloons of Walloonia and the Flemish of Flanders do go on their own, they will demonstrate the continuing political dynamic of states breaking up. In the last twenty-five years twenty-one new independent states have come into being as a result of the breakdown of states.

Several states’ governments (United States of America, Australia, New Zealand and Canada) expressed their opposition to the possibility that Fourth World nations might be recognized under the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples as exercising the right of political self-determination: the right to freely choose a political status without external interference. Instead of trying to hold together states where the constituent parts no longer wish to remain together–risking low intensity insurgencies–states’ governments ought to recognize the natural process of state-breakup.

When the League of Nations (1920) was formed there were, but few states and mostly empires in the world. When the United Nations was formed in 1945 to replace the League there were no more than 50 modern states. There are now 200 states and territories in the world of which 192 are now members of the United Nations.

If the Walloons of Walloonia and the Flemish of Flanders decide to break up the state of Belgium, the world will have 201 states. In the future there may be scores more drawn from the Fourth World nations distressed about unhappy associations inside states they did not choose to join. The peaceful example of Walloonia and Flanders may help ease the transition to more states.

(c) 2007 Center for World Indigenous Studies

Technorati Tags: independence, League of Nations, states, nations,

Powered by ScribeFire.

Posted in Artby - Rudolph Ryser, FW Geo-Politics, Daily | Print | No Comments »

September 21, 2007 by Jay Taber.

With the advent of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, the world indigenous resurgence will require the linking of national, regional, and local movement resources through a process of dialogue and integration. The involvement of moral authorities and organizations will help to assure the proper movement emphasis on moral sanction central to constructing new relationships between nations and states. But moral sanction alone is insufficient to constrain reactionary political violence and official repression. That will require continuous research, analysis, and investigation — the civil society equivalent of wartime intelligence operations — in order to weather the psychological warfare associated with the disease of dominion.

Psychological warfare, according to Paul Linebarger of the School of Advanced International Studies, is a continuous process not controlled by laws, usages, and customs of war — covert, often disguised as the voice of institutions and media — a non-violent persuasion waged before, during, and after war.

Most countries, notes Linebarger, suffer from ideological confusion—an instability of basic beliefs. “In states anxious to promote a fixed mentality, the entire population lives under conditions approximating the psychological side of war. Allegiance in war is a matter of ideology, not of opinion.” Coordinated propaganda machines, he observes, include psywar, public relations, general news, and public education. “Psywar,” he warns, “has in private media facilities, in an open society, a constantly refreshed source of new material that, when selectively censored, can prevent non-governmental materials from circulating.”

As Kalle Lasn, publisher of Adbusters Magazine said when interviewed in the July 2001 issue of The Sun, “It’s impossible to live a free authentic life in America today …Our emotions, personalities, and core values have become programmed.” Lasn, a former advertising executive for thirty years, understands the power of propaganda as advertising. He also understands the keys to undermining this corrupting influence—persistent ridicule, and appeals to conscience.

Antonio Gramsci, writing in Prison Notebooks, observes that, “Civil society operates without ‘sanctions’ or compulsory ‘obligations’, but nevertheless exerts a collective pressure and obtains objective results in the form of an evolution of customs, ways of thinking and acting, and morality. The eclipse of a way of living and thinking cannot take place without a crisis.” Civil society today, I would argue, exists in a perpetual state of crisis — some fabricated and some real — that, with the advent of alternative media, desktop publishing, and Internet communication, offers an unprecedented opportunity to begin this eclipse.

As Gramsci observed from prison in 1930s Fascist Italy, “If the ruling class has lost its consensus, i.e. is no longer leading but only dominant, exercising coercive force alone, this means the great masses have become detached from their traditional ideologies and no longer believe what they used to…[thus] the exercise of force to prevent new ideologies from imposing themselves leads to skepticism and a new arrangement—a new culture.” If the world indigenous movement is to succeed in creating a new culture based on mutual respect, the ways of thinking of the old culture must be strategically challenged.

In doing graduate research for the thesis included in my second book, I developed a curricular proposal that incorporated the study of psychological warfare as a key component of effective social activism. The more I observe discussion online about social conflict now taking place on the Internet and public airwaves, the more I realize how widespread and entrenched the misunderstanding of the nature of this conflict is, and in turn how important it is for those engaged in this war of ideas to acquaint themselves with at least the basic principles if not tactics of psywar. For those unable to access the classic texts on this topic — Psychological Warfare by Paul Linebarger, and The Science of Coercion by Christopher Simpson — I’ll try to recall them here.

For starters, there are two things to always keep in mind: the target audience, and the purpose of the message. In a theater of war — physical or psychological — there are combatants and non-combatants and at least two sides, as well as many interests. In communicating social transformation, psywar will be employed at different times and in different ways depending on the audience targeted and what the message transmitter is attempting to affect.

In recruiting the uninvolved or uncommitted, the message might convey an urgent threat, a righteous cause, a juicy opportunity, or a chance for revenge. In retaining the involved, a message would likely include an appeal to pride and expectations of victory. In undermining the resolve of the enemy, messages generally try to create doubts about all the above.

One area often overlooked by novices to psychological warfare, however, is the use of messages crafted and delivered for the purpose of preventing the enemy from effectively mobilizing audiences potentially supportive of its views, goals, and objectives. These strategically-developed messages — sometimes overt, sometimes covert — are those most-commonly associated with gray and black ops, white being forthright, gray misleading, and black counterfeit.

Understanding these techniques of mass communication — deployed in abundance in politics and advertising today — is essential for those who care about where the world is heading, even if in the end they decide to avoid the field of social conflict themselves. Once educated on the topic, they can at least refrain from unwittingly undermining those with whom they agree. Manuel Castells, in his paper Communication, Power and Counter-power in the Network Society, has a lot more to say on this.

The first principle of psywar is never repeat the talking points of your enemy. The second principle is to deny them a platform to misinform.

(Jay Taber — recipient of the Defender of Democracy award — is an author, columnist, and research analyst at Public Good Project.)

Posted in Artby - Jay Taber, Daily | Print | 1 Comment »

September 20, 2007 by Rudolph Ryser.

Shortly before Spanish, Dutch and English sponsored ships arrived on the western hemisphere’s shores more than five hundred years ago, infectious disease rubbed out between 50% and 95% of the human inhabitants. Jerad Diamond’s sweeping effort to explain (in his book Guns, Germs and Steel) how it was possible for a few conquistadors to subdue the Mexica and the Inkas  pointed to the dominant role germs–alien bacteria and viruses–played. His point was that Europeans weren’t in any way superior to populations in the western hemisphere. Their germs preceded them and like wildfires decimated whole nations generations before European boots touched the soil.

Not only did germs play the dominant role in the destruction of nations throughout the western hemisphere, the consequences for all of human kind has been a disaster from which recovery is apparently tenuous at best. Charles Mann’s well written book entitled 1491 (2005, 2006 Vintage Books) reveals the pre-European settlement story of complex and rich civilizations that mostly figured out how to manage the environment without destroying the environment.  Mann’s narrative describes the hemisphere’s original peoples with huge populations far greater than 15th century Europe with cities five - ten times the size of Europe’s London or Paris. 1491 describes a world where forests in Atlantic Coastal Canada and the United States, jungles in the Amazon and dry areas of Yucatan were exploited intensively, but in a manner compatible with the environment. Not all societies were particularly good managers. Some like those on the Mississippi River, in the souther Yucatan and in what is now southern Peru failed and their societies collapsed.

The greatest loss from disease, other than the people themselves, is the knowledge hemispheric civilizations developed over several thousand years.  That knowledge could benefit human kind now. An example of lost knowledge that could benefit human kind now is given the modern name of terra preta–the dark soil of the upper Amazon created by ancient occupants of the River. Terra preta is rich soil that, according to Mann, was developed more than 2000 years ago and is responsible for the development of large parts of the Amazon jungle.  That’s right! Jungle we think of is actually a product of human management.

One of the most startling aspects of terra preta is its effectiveness as a method of carbon sequestration–a concern of great importance to scientists, environmentalists and politicians interested in the reduction of carbon emissions and the prevention of ecologic collapse from global climate change.  Peoples living in the western hemisphere long before Europeans arrived had developed a method for reclaiming carbon for the soil while exploiting the forest.  The most important point is that the soil reclaims more carbon than is generated in the exploitation of the forest. A healthy balance between carbon emissions and carbon sequestration was achieved in the Amazon jungle, but introduced diseases killed the people who know about how to produce terra preta. Modern scientists are generally mystified about how terra preta is made (it contains pottery chards, charcoal, organic matter and is able to sustain high levels of productivity over centuries).  Terra preta increases plant productivity enormously while retaining fertility.

There are numerous examples of knowledge like that which produced terra preta either lost or hidden still in native communities.

Fourth World nations are the “wild seed of humanity” the preservation of which is essential to the survival of human kind. No, native peoples in the hemisphere are not Rouseau’s “Noble Savage.” Romantic notions about lost tribes and “natural environmentalism” are nonsense. Fourth World peoples have among them inventors and creative problem solvers. They are human beings with failings and achievements.

Agricultural methods developed long ago by peoples in Mexico, Peru, the Atlantic coast of the United States, the south west and Mississippi regions and forest and fisheries management in the Pacific Northwest should serve human kind now. Terra preta is clearly an achievement the understanding of which is probably essential for the resolution of global climate change. We cannot afford to lose any more knowledge when global problems demand answers from past successes.

Technorati Tags: terra preta, global climate change, introduced disease

Powered by ScribeFire.

Posted in Artby - Rudolph Ryser, Environment, Daily | Print | 3 Comments »

September 19, 2007 by Rudolph Ryser.

It is our observation at the Center that there are from 6,000 to 7,000 nations that speak original languages and generally occupy territories in virtually every continent in the world. The UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (PFII) claims that indigenous peoples come from some 70 countries and have a combined population of some 370 million. The PFII has a fairly limited interpretation of who are the indigenous peoples. In the Peoples Republic of China alone there are nearly 300 million indigenous people—not counting the dominant Han. In northeastern India—in the so-called tribals area-there are more than 25 million not to mention the millions more indigenous people living in the subcontinent proper. There are more than 11 million Mayan related peoples in Mexico, Belize, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. The PFII is not apparently conscious of the different peoples in Eurasia (Komi, Evenk, Even, Chuckchi, etc.) or the more than 129 indigenous nations in Europe. We have estimated the number of people who might be identified as indigenous people world-wide at a minimum of 750 million and perhaps as many as a billion. This number may be too small.

All indigenous populations are located inside the boundaries of existing states (we don’t use the inaccurate term “nation-state” since there are really only a few such states in the world—Vanuatu for example. The United States, Brazil or Australia are not nations, but rather they are actually states. A nation is “a people” that shares a common culture and/or language, heritage, history, etc. Alas, the United States is a state with decedents of settlers and immigrants established on top of the territories of the original nations. A modern state originates with the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648 when the Catholic Church defined the state as having a centralized authority that is “sovereign,” has recognized boundaries, exercises universal laws within those boundaries, has a policing force or military, and is an entity recognized by other states.

The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples is properly referred to as a “Declaration.” Just as the United Nations adopted the University Human Rights Declaration December 10, 1948 it has now adopted a Declaration concerning the rights of indigenous peoples. The United Nations uses such “declarations” as a device to facilitate international consensus on a controversial topic. “Declarations” are used to education and change opinion, or focus attention on a subject to elevate it to a level of international importance. The present UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples is a statement of “minimal standards” and specifically states that it is not intended to limit present or future rights. What this means is that the international community is now encouraged to formulate new international laws based on the principles contained in the Declaration. States’ governments are encouraged to adopt new domestic legislation that takes into account the principles contained in this Declaration. Indigenous nations are encouraged to adopt new laws that take into account the principles contained in this Declaration.

In other words, the UN Declaration is a statement of principles on which there is wide consensus. It does not confer rights or authorities, it merely notes that the principles best state the international community’s understanding of the standards that should guide formulation of new international law and conduct. A great deal of work lays ahead to give meaning to the principles on which consensus has been established.

In 1994 I served a a Special Rapporteur in the development and initialing of the International Covenant on the Rights of Indigenous Nations. This document has been circulating in the indigenous world ever since as a commitment between nations.

I look upon the Declaration (on which I worked with perhaps a thousand other people from 1985 onward) as a very minor first step toward a much more fruitful, but difficult period of political conflict between indigenous nations and states’ governments. The central conflict is over land (wealth) and control (power). The United States and Canada have objected to the “consent clause” in the present Declaration and as these terms were promoted because they assume original ownership of territories and resources in indigenous peoples. This requires that each state “negotiate” in good faith with indigenous populations over access to land and resources the state assumes it already owns by virtue of it’s state identity. This rather weak state claim is only challenged by indigenous peoples and their original occupation of territories predating the existence of the state.

I anticipate a major struggle between nations and states over control and use of lands and resources. Violence has been the response of many states or their surrogates (corporations or militias) to indigenous nations obstructing access to land and resources (oil, timber, gold, diamonds, bauxite, and you name it). The whole “terrorist” conflict appears to be transforming into the nation and state conflict. Nations will need to carefully advance their political power to avoid the violence. It is already apparent with the conflicts raging in the world involving “tribes” (read: Iraq, Israel-Palestine, Sudan-Darfur, Bruma-Karen, Indonesia-West Papua, Nigeria-Ijaw, Russia-Chechnya, etc) that “oil” is a major bone of contention. The UN General Assembly’s adoption of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples signals the expansion of land and resource wars between states and nations. It is to be hoped that negotiations informed by a better understanding of Fourth World Geopolitics will be substituted for violence. War will be evidence of human failure.

Powered by ScribeFire.

Posted in Artby - Rudolph Ryser, FW Geo-Politics, Daily | Print | No Comments »

September 19, 2007 by Jay Taber.

Media and think tanks on the payroll of the US government or military understandably have a state-centric bias when it comes to describing or analyzing conflict between tribes, nations, and states. In fact, it is not at all unusual to hear indigenous peoples’ resistance to colonial states described as “savage tribalism.” Sadly, while such inflammatory rhetoric might sell books or garner defense industry contracts, none of this academic hyperbole contributes to either greater understanding or conflict resolution.

Perhaps the best example of this bias is in defining terrorism. Terrorism is a tactic of conflict where violence is used against non-combatant civilians to undermine the will of an opponent to fight. This is as true for massive aerial bombardment by the U.S. Air Force as it is for the 9/11 hijackers. Terrorism takes multiple forms, and is used by diverse sponsors, but the principles are universal—whether used by tribes, nations, states, or other forms of political organization.

One thing that is not terrorism, though, but is often described as such, is the use of improvised explosive devices against an invading military by the indigenous population. That is resistance. Perhaps guerrilla warfare, but still resistance.

Creating the impression in media and academia that terrorism is only carried out by civilians, especially those living in tribal societies, is an achievement of psychological warfare using the tool of propaganda. When one stops to think, which few actually do in the age of TV, it’s readily obvious that terror has been widely used by many states around the world. While tribes and original nations have often been the target of such collective punishment by modern states, defending tribal societies and national territories per se is no more terrorism than Shock and Awe was liberation.

Tribes themselves — whether Inca, Kurd, Maasai or Saami — are extended families that comprise ancient nations; disparaging this form of political organization because it is more cohesive and coherent in meeting its members’ needs than many modern states, only reveals the perverted hostility of modern society held hostage by the state/market nexus. Mobilizing this misguided resentment by scapegoating tribalism is a disingenuous practice, even when well-intentioned, which it rarely is.

(Jay Taber — recipient of the Defender of Democracy award — is an author, columnist, and research analyst at Public Good Project.)

Posted in Artby - Jay Taber, Daily | Print | No Comments »