October 29, 2007 by Jay Taber.

Disheartening as our absence of communal relations is in America, it does help to explain our persistent affection toward institutions, as well as our attachment to their recognition and acknowledgment in validating our self-worth — indeed, in bestowing on us the right to exist.

Unhealthy as this institutionalized relationship is for us, both individually and socially, it is comprehendable; institutions — for better or for worse — are presently the only enduring loci of collective memories for our rootless society, disconnected from the land and lives that surround us. Until we construct more functional alternatives, institutions — despite their repeated betrayals and systematic exploitation of every aspect of our daily lives — will maintain their grasp on our lonely psyches in this perverted exchange for a sense of belonging.

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October 27, 2007 by Jay Taber.

If communication in its myriad forms of expression is what comprises a culture, then the particular architecture or design of communicating is what determines that culture’s level of human consciousness. An emphasis on beauty in art, song, dance, and storytelling will produce a very different consciousness than one inclined toward ugliness.

It almost seems trite to say so, but when one’s primary input is from mass media, it’s hard to imagine a beautiful mind.

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October 26, 2007 by Rudolph Ryser.

There is a saying that when a country like Mexico, United States, Nigeria or Indonesia “sneezes,” indigenous people get the “flu.” While this is really just a variation on the actual saying, I think you will get the point. Indigenous communities the world over live in environments where there is a fine balance between prosperity and disaster. This condition causes most indigenous peoples in the world to be more sensitive to changes–more able to make adjustments and adaptations too–especially those peoples still close to the natural world.

For as long as I can remember, my community of Tietnapum-Cowlitz and neighboring peoples have consistently expressed concerns about slow and sometimes rapid changes in the environment. These environmental changes were always dismissed by state and federal authorities as unimportant or simply too expensive to address. When a salmon grows from a small fingerling to a small fish it gets ready to travel to the ocean an become a big fish after five or so years. Tribal fisherman began to notice some time ago that those small fish would try to swim through the waters of Puget Sound past Seattle and before they could get to the ocean…they died. Pollution in the water killed these small fish.

When visiting with Cora people in western Mexico a few years ago they told me that it was no longer possible to catch “good fish” in the bay off of Puerto Vallarta. “The fish just aren’t there anymore,” they people would say.

Meeting with the Nuxalk, Wuikinuxv, and Kitamat peoples last summer I learned that the oolichan (small smelt) that used to swarm in February and March up the rivers of the Pacific Coast “aren’t coming up the river any more.” The rivers in western Oregon State no-longer receive oolichan that used to fill the river from bank-to-bank they were so abundant. These rivers have “collapsed” a biologist explained to me.

“Rockfish, salmon, crabs and other fish just washed up dead on the beach,” one old Salish speaking man told me just the other day. There are now “dead zones” in the ocean where there isn’t enough oxygen in the water for the fish to breath–they just die when they are swept into these pockets of “dead zone” water.

The water, I was told by a Navajo woman, in some places is so “rancid” that it is undrinkable. Temperatures have changed significantly, reported a biologist.

The weather is changing and clearly big changes are underway in the environment. One doesn’t need to have Vice President Al Gore tell us that.

This morning I watched a US Senator expound on the differences in opinion held by various scientists concerning whether their is such a thing as global warming. The Senator demonstrates his complete disconnection from on-the-ground realities. No dispute between scientists with computer models help the Senator. When the fish begin to die you know the ocean is sick. If the ocean is sick, everything in the world faces very big changes. Indigenous peoples are already making adjustments to adapt to the new environmental circumstances. It doesn’t really matter too much why all the changes are taking place. Things are changing. It’s time to pay attention to the changing weather alert.

(c) 2007 Center for World Indigenous Studies

(Dr. Ryser is the author of Fourth World Geopolitics and the forth-coming book Nationcraft, and actively participated in the twelve-year effort to draft the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.)

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October 24, 2007 by Jay Taber.

The social practice of walkabout by the world’s oldest indigenous culture serves many purposes, one of which is acquiring perspective through the literal travel through time and space at a pace that allows continuous connectivity to one’s environs, dreams, ancestors, and sense of place. Traveling slow for those of us severed from our ancestral roots by time and space, is one technique for initiating access to storehouses of knowledge imprisoned by the imaginative taboos excluded by fast relocation — providing a terrestrial means of getting one’s mind around ideas new to us but old to others.

Walking around an idea or cosmology as an ancient practice has now merged with digital technology in the form of aboriginal knowledge centres where oral histories, visual landscapes, and three-D conceptual artistry combine the attributes of modern library and information science with the dreamtime culture. Learning houses that simultaneously nurture the intellect, the soul, as well as one’s sense of identity are bridges to the future for us all.

Imagine that.

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October 23, 2007 by Rudolph Ryser.

When Kurds use violence to pursue an independent Kurdistan from Turkey, the American government calls those fighters “terrorists.” When Kurds use violence in the name of an independent Kurdistan against Iran, the American government does not label those fighters “terrorists.”  When Kurds use their Peshmerga fighters to fight insurgents in Iraq, the American government calls those fighters “allies.”

According to an article published in The New Yorker** (November 20, 2006) the United States government has been providing aid and assistance to the Kurds when they attack Iran in pursuit of their political aim of independence. American officials in Iraq deny providing aid to the Kurdish fighters on the Iranian border. By providing such aid, the increasing number of reports charge that the United States is carrying on a clandestine war against Iran by way of the Kurds.

There are more than twenty-five million Kurds whose territory was carved into five pieces after the breakup of the Ottoman Empire.  The decisions made by European and American diplomats in the early part of the twentieth century left Kurdistan divided and placed under the forcible authority of five different states (Syria, Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Russia [now Armenia]).  Kurds have been seeking to recombine their peoples and their territory into a united Kurdistan ever since.

US policy makers have stepped into a long-standing conflict that rivals the Israeli/Palestinian dispute over territory and the political status of the parties.  Turkey claims Kurdish territory as does Iran, Iraq and Syria. The existence of Kurdistan goes without question.  What stands out as a major, unresolved territorial and political dispute created in large part by the British with the breakup of the Ottoman Empire must be resolved. Without a solution the festering aspirations of the Kurds and the fears of the states that claim their territory will continue to threaten and even cause a major, regional war.

The European Union, United States of America, Russian Federation, Iran, Iraq, Turkey and Syria, and all of the states that depend on Middle East oil for their economic security have an interest in the peaceful transformation of Kurdish territories into a politically stable nation. Kurdish peoples should be reunified according to their own choice and Kurdish neighbors have a right to feel secure in relations with the Kurds.

An international conference on Kurdistan should be called to specifically resolve the Kurdish claims to the right of self-determination.  The proposed international conference concerning the stability of Iraq in December can well serve as one venue where side-bar discussions can take place to lower the temper of different contending parties (read: Turkey, United States and Iran).  The United States government has a duty to the region and the world, (having unlawfully invaded Iraq in 2003) to make an effort with all parties to resolve the Kurdish dilemma.  The US is now sitting on all sides of the Kurdish table. It will have to resolve its own ambivalence and settle on a more impartial role. If the US government is providing encouragement and aid to Kurds to attack Iran, then the United States should pull back and stop efforts to threaten Iran. The United States government has a great deal to say to the Kurds in the north of Iraq, it should support that stable government in its efforts to restrain the Kurds who are defending their territories in Turkey.  The Turkish government is a NATO member, the United States must provide assurances of maintaining respect for Turkish territorial integrity.  For these types of decisions US policy leaders will need to exercise the greatest flexibility, maturity and discipline diplomatically.

All of these steps involve the United States government because it inserted itself in the affairs of Middle Eastern states. It must resolve its dilemma in favor of regional stability and collective security. If an international conference provides for self-determination for the Kurds and regional stability and collective security regional peace will have been strongly endorsed. While the United States government is a significant irritant in the Middle East, it has now become an essential party to resolving the question of Kurdistan, the Israeli/Palestinian dispute, the Israeli/Hezbola dispute,  the Iraqi civil war and the nuclear power question in Iran.  Colin Powell’s message: “You break it, you own it.” My message: “Fix it and stop acting like a religious zealot and stop acting like a teenager on steroids. Act like an adult…US government!”

(** The New Yorker: ABD, PKK’nın İran kolunu destekliyor”, Hürriyet, November 20, 2006. (Turkish) )

(c) 2007 Center for World Indigenous Studies

(Dr. Ryser is the author of Fourth World Geopolitics and the forth-coming book Nationcraft, and actively participated in the twelve-year effort to draft the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.)

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October 22, 2007 by Jay Taber.

The primary mission of institutions charged with protecting the public health is to contain outbreaks and to prevent epidemics associated with infectious disease. The first order of business in the public health regime is to isolate and study the various pathogens that pose such a threat to society, in order to determine the most effective means of prevention and containment. Through research, essential characteristics of the disease can be determined. Through analysis, options for intervention are continually reviewed, tested, and revised with an eye toward the development of prophylactic measures, treatment, and medicines, as part of the array of intervention methods at the disposal of public health professionals. In addition to the biological and infrastructural investigations conducted, committees, divisions, and departments are established for the purpose of interdepartmental communication and coordination engaged in developing appropriate legislation, budgets, and operational manuals for all the ancillary public agencies necessarily involved in implementing the mission of public health administration.

In the body politic, social pathogens of aggression that surface in the form of such things as racism, fascism, homophobia, and xenophobia can be viewed and approached in a similar manner. Each of these ideological cancers have origins, histories, distinct characteristics, and can be studied, monitored, and analyzed asking the same basic questions used by the Centers for Disease Control and the Institutes for Public Health:

• Where does it come from?
• What conditions allow it to prosper?
• How is it transmitted?
• What is its life cycle?
• What causes it to become dormant?
• Can it be eradicated?

Through such a methodical approach to understanding social pathogens, we are best able to mobilize with economy and effectiveness the resources available. Beginning our quest for human dignity with an attitude of respect for the process and results of research and analysis enables us to avoid inappropriate responses to outbreaks while we advance our pooled knowledge and experience.

(Read more about the Public Health Model.)

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October 21, 2007 by Mirjam Hirch.

“The Stone Age may return on the gleaming wings of science” warned Winston Churchill in his Sinews of Peace Address in 1946. This statement seems to ring as true in contemporary times as back then.
Diverse contemporary so-called western sciences are not open but very much closed systems, seemingly becoming more and more so.

Science and education in Europe can start to pride itself for being more and more “pro-minority”, that is serving and available for the well-to-do at the upper end of society only. One of its main current goals being, “elite competition”, strengthening “elite research”, “elite school”. Proper education and access to science is increasingly granted to a caste of a chosen few only.
Universities are made to compete for future concepts and extra funds. Well equipped universities and research institutions thus becoming richer still. This tendency, called excellency initiative, in Germany, very well reflects the overall thinking and social concepts predominant not only in science and education but bearing down into all sectors of our lives. This increases the inequality at European universities and in society- the effect is wanted.

How could scientists act in the best interest of the world’s population and posses the openness which implies freedom when they are formed by and representing only a very small group of society? How many of these scientists are voluntary slaves of the personal hunt for success and wages, imposing tyrannically upon the rest, in the disguise of progressive theories, their ideology?

What is the thinking of contemporary western science? A thinking that suppresses, manipulates, restricts, bereaves, reduces makes cynical and egoistic, thoughtlessly and irresponsibly depersonalizes our world?
Does science serve understanding or dominance and control? Used as a means of power? Is more research focussing on the destruction of life or rather aiming to preserve life?

The more elitist science gets, the more often western scientists are only confounded by holistic cosmologies which intertwine elements that are social, ecological, empirical as well as spiritual. In the area of orthodox medicine the bias is so great that the fact that a therapy or medication was developed in different thought processes is a reason to refuse to accept it. Even the unbiased testing of the according therapy or medication in such cases is considered unnecessary. Through the exclusive use of funds and describing adverse thinking or remembering processes simply as “unscientific” and thus invalid, nothing is to intrude these established scientific systems. And this despite the fact that (even though science, undoubtedly, had and has great beneficial potential), time and again in history as well as nowadays, science completely failed morally, inventing the destructive potential of the world.

The ongoing reductionist and exclusivist world view of science leads to a one sidedness and hubris of scientific thinking- a threat for our survival.
When are we to overcome the barbaric aspects of our scientific technical times which become ever more elitist and monopolistic and realize the driving force behind research and knowledge- to find truth and to be for the good of humanity?

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October 19, 2007 by Rudolph Ryser.

The United States government is attempting to “put in the fix” on an Indian nation once again. A little more than fifty years ago Senator Henry M. Jackson (D. Washington) promoted the establishment of the Indian Claims Commission to resolve territorial claims by Indian nations that arise from “US government land takings.”  This was a polite way of then saying that the United States government had engaged in forced occupation of Indian territories and was willing under its laws to make “financial restitution” for taking the land to successor Indian nations.

In 1863, while fighting its own civil war, the US government wanted a treaty with the Western Shoshone to allow passage of American’s across Shoshone Territory in search of gold in California. The Shoshone had presented stiff opposition to American military incursions and prevented Americans from crossing their territory unmolested. A treaty, officials in the US government reasoned, was necessary.  The Treaty of Ruby Valley was the result.  This is a treaty of “peace and friendship” and of “passage.” Way stations for resting were permitted, but no permanent American settlements were allowed. Shoshone and the United States concluded no other treaties that would permit the United States to claim or occupy any lands inside Shoshone Territory.

After the US Civil War the gold rush to California accelerated contributing to massacres of Indians up and down California Territory and it accelerated movement of American settlers into Shoshone Territory.  US occupation of Shoshone Territory had begun in earnest. The American military moved into Shoshone Territory to defend the illegal settlers. Eventually the Americans had enough people occupying Shoshone lands they employed the US law, Northwest Ordinance, to declare the creation of the state of Nevada. That is occupation by a foreign power by any measure. An act recognized in the “law of nations” to be an act of war, and certainly and act in violation of the peaceful relations between states and nations.

The forcible “taking” of Shoshone Territory for the benefit of the United States was confirmed in 1979 by the United States Indian Claims Commission under docket Docket 326K.  Using currency it prints for itself, the US government now wants to “pay” individual Shoshone for their “taking” at a per acre rate a thousand times smaller than the current value of Nevada land. At one point, there was a suggestion that the United States pay individual Shoshone a combined amount equal to the value of 24 million acres at 10 cents an acre.

Carrie Dann (a Shoshone cultural leader and adamant protector of Shoshone territorial prerogatives), former Western Shoshone National Council Chairman Ray Yowell and hundreds of other Shoshone refuse to accept payment for land the United States agrees it essentially stole by occupation.  The US government plans to “divide and conquer” the Shoshone by enticing individual members with “land claims payments.”  Not only is the very idea of “payments in US currency” for stolen land a foul smelling concept, but to deliberately interfere in the internal affairs of the Shoshone by manipulating individuals with money is even fouler.  The whole sordid story of American government double dealing and manipulations for the private gain of a few of their citizens is beyond foul. (More on individual and corporate interests in Shoshone Territory in another piece at another time.)

The Shoshone have been violated by more than 150 years of American deceptions. Shoshone Territory extends throughout all of Nevada, the southern tip of Idaho, a piece of western Utah and a piece of southern California. Of this the United States Indian Claims Commission agrees.

The Shoshone wish to keep their lands and use them for their own benefit. The lands have one of the most valuable properties now in the country: Las Vegas. These lands now have the United States nuclear testing sites of major US strategic importance.  Five US military basis are now located in Shoshone Territory. Towns have been created by non-Shoshone occupying some of the best lands.  In today’s currency values (let’s use the US dollar now), rental of these properties could exceed $40 billion a year.  In other words, if the United States paid rent for the lands it has come to occupy, it would owe the Shoshone Nation billions of dollars…not the 10 cents on the dollar it now wants to give for the land it presumably believes it is purchasing.

The Western Shoshone National Council is correct to refuse the United States government’s offer as they have since 1979. The Council should now turn to the Organization on Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) under which the United States government has obligations to avoid violating the human rights of Indian Nations (The US signed the Helsinki Final Act in 1975 confirming its obligations under what would become the OSCE with 56 European states and the Russian Federation.)

The Western Shoshone National Council is correct to demand their land and not US money.  But they should demand that the United States government pay rent for its occupation.

Finally, the Western Shoshone National Council must reject US government attempts at internal interference by informing its members that the Shoshone must deal with the United States on a government-to-government basis to resolve their dispute. The OSCE should be advised of US government interference and demands made for OSCE intervention.  At the same time, the Western Shoshone National Council should file a petition to the Council on Human Rights at the United Nations charging the United States with violations of their rights to land, culture and freedom from coercion in recognition of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP).

Is it any wonder why the United States government took the obstructionist position it did when it voted against the UNDRIP along with Australia, Canada, and New Zealand on September 13, 2007?  The United States government has current crimes against the Shoshone to cover up that demand Shoshone rejection and violations of international standards of conduct that demand international attention.

(C) 2007 Center for World Indigenous Studies

(Dr. Ryser is the author of Fourth World Geopolitics and the forth-coming book Nationcraft, and actively participated in the twelve-year effort to draft the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.)

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October 18, 2007 by Jay Taber.

The European Court of Justice might soon choose to consider an application by the Cornish Stannary Parliament. Citing discriminatory treatment by England in the Duchy of Cornwall — also known as the nation of Kernow — the Cornish petitioners’ case sounds in part like a British version of Cobell v Norton (the Indian Trust Fund case) combined with Western Shoshone v United States of America.

In fact, it’s possible all three of these disputes might eventually end up being heard by the International Court of Justice. Either way, we expect an increasing number of opportunities for public education on the rights of indigenous peoples in the near future.

Indeed, given recent rulings against the United States for violating ICERD, the International Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination, we anticipate the precedent set by the Shoshone Nation will land the four member states opposed to the UN Declaration of Indigenous Rights ( Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the US ) increasingly in international judicial fora.

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

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October 17, 2007 by Rudolph Ryser.

Dr. Leslie Korn of the Center for Traditional Medicine (an agency of the Center for World Indigenous Studies) began a three-year study of Community Trauma in a western Mexico comunidad in 1996. This ground-breaking study concluded that there are serious chronic health conditions (diabetes, heart disease, obesity, mental health problems, alcoholism, drug addictions and drug abuse, etc.) that arise from persistent and sustained violence resulting from pressures of development in Fourth World nations. Community members under persistent development-trauma exhibit greater tendencies toward family violence, sexual violence and group violence themselves. Dr. Korn described a remedy to community trauma through the restoration of cultural norms while significantly slowing and even stopping development to permit cultural institutions to regain the capacity to slowly absorb or reject introduced change. When a community regains its ability to choose its social, economic, political and cultural present and future, the levels of disease and the internalized violence subsides. Violence, in other words, breeds disease and violence.

Professor Daya Somasunderam, a Sri Lankan psychiatrist conducted on a study on the mental health of Tamils (Collective trauma in northern Sri Lanka: a qualitative psychosocial-ecological Study) in Jaffna city inside Tamil Eelam claimed territory releasing his conclusions today. Somasunderam’s conclusions from studying the affects of a persistent and sustained war on Tamil communities is virtually the same as Dr. Korn’s findings in Mexico.

Repeated threats to life and personal security acted out and reenacted by Sri Lankan military occupying Tamil territories over a period of more than 20 years create collective trauma or as Dr. Korn’s terms it: community trauma.

The pattern of militant action, cease fire and renewed violence instills in individuals and the community as a whole heightened vigilance that is never at rest. The Korn Community Trauma Study in Mexico compared physiological quantitative data with psyco-social qualitative documentation to explain the physical exhaustion experienced by traumatized community members. Normal responses to stressful circumstances cause an increase in cortisol levels (the hormone that regulates natural fight-or-flight responses) and cause other hormones to excrete. These hormones natural restore when the cause of the stress are removed. Persistent vigilance with the expectation of additional threats causes these hormones to become exhausted–leaving the victim without natural capabilities to react to new stresses. Trauma results in the form of hyper vigilance, psychological and a physiological damage and hyper-reactivity. When a whole community no-longer has the capacity to rest and restore normal behaviors and normal life it becomes traumatized, suffers a strong sense of powerlessness and consequently becomes a threat to its own safety and becomes a threat to others.
Tamil Eelam

The Tamil Eelam seeks to exercise the power of self-determination and to become self-governing. Sri Lanka sees this aspiration as a threat to the continuity of the Sri Lankan state. The Tamil possess a bedrock culture that extends into the mist of history by 5000 years and more. Tamil culture defines the harmonious relations between community members, families and relations with outsiders. The spiritual life, economy, social life and political life of Tamil communities have been profoundly important to the continuity of this ancient civilization. Violent disruptions of this culture by military intervention from Sri Lanka for what ever reason contributes to the traumatization of the Tamil population as well as the Sri Lankan populations.

Community Trauma is pervasive in Tamil Eelam, in the development pressurized indigenous communities of western Mexico, in Palestine, the war-torn tribal communities of Iraq, and in the native communities of Canada and the United States living under persistent threats of relocation, assimilation and development. These communities are injured both physically and psychologically. No amount of conventional medicine will heal the deep wounds introduced by generations of violence in these communities. Only the restoration of cultural norms and traditional healing can do.

The Sri Lankan violence on the Tamil must come to an end. Both sides must know that twenty-years and more have demonstrated that violence cannot resolve the differences. Unless culture is permitted to heal the deep wounds neither the nation of Tamil Eelam nor the Sri Lankan state will achieve healthy and prosperous societies. Tamil Eelam must be permitted to exercise self-determination. The Sri Lankan state must know that could mean that Tamil will want to be a separate people. It is equally possible that Sri Lanka and Tamil Eelam could form a kind of condominial state where Tamil Eelam will freely govern itself. Tamil community trauma must be healed or it will return in the future to strike out against others in terrifying forms.

(c) 2007 Center for World Indigenous Studies

(Dr. Ryser is the author of Fourth World Geopolitics and the forth-coming book Nationcraft, and actively participated in the twelve-year effort to draft the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.)

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