November 29, 2007 by Rudolph Ryser.

In Canada and the United States about 5% of tribal economies are so-called “informal.” In Mexico about twenty percent of the indigenous community economy is considered by conventional economists as “informal.” In various other parts of the Americas, like Honduras, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Columbia, and Peru that portion of indigenous communities that is not specifically measured or accounted for in the state economy–the informal economy–may reach as high as sixty percent in some communities.

What is this informal economy? It is the economy of life. Members of the community produce from their own efforts the foods, clothing, shelter and other of life’s necessities themselves. This is the ancient economy which balances human need with the capacity of nature to restore itself. The so-called informal economy provides for the subsistence of all members of these small societies.

Once with I traveled with Chief George Manuel, Quinault President Joe DeLaCruz and Yakama Councilman Russel Jim to Peru we visited several communities–communities where most of the people lived some distance from the “main town.” It was the town that was used to redistribute the production of foods, building materials, clothes, etc. We were invited into a home to have a meal with one of the families living on the inskirts of town. Chief Manuel turned to no one in particular and exclaimed in English: “Look at the poverty! These people have nothing!”

We were invited to sit down on some wool blankets. Each of us was handed a substantial bowl of clear soup with what appeared to be cabbage, rice and meat floating around. Chicha, a sweet corn beer, was poured for every one and as I looked at the one light bulb hanging from the ceiling on its long cord, I said to Chief Manuel: “This is really good food and look at the weave in this blanket.” And Chief Manuel turned to me and said, “But look at the poverty! They need our help”

Chief Manuel was then the President of the World Council of Indigenous Peoples and considered this organization he founded a beacon of political and economic hope for indigenous peoples. I asked Chief Manuel: “Can your people in British Columbia make their own clothes, there own blankets, their own shelters, and produce their own food without the Canadian economy?” After a long silence he responded “No, I guess not.” “Then who is impoverished, your people or the people who just gave us a wonderful meal from their own hands?”

Self-sustained, user economies are clearly closer to life and sustaining life than the exchange economy that focuses on only one thing: money. You can’t eat money. Money won’t replace a destroyed forest. The single minded drive for money is destructive of life, and when a Fourth World nation gives up its self-sustaining ways in exchange for the chase for money gives up life in exchange for death.

(c) 2007 Center for World Indigenous Studies

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November 24, 2007 by Jay Taber.

In his December 1990 report Right Woos Left, Chip Berlet of Political Research Associates examined neo-fascist overtures to antiwar activists, and the need to confront rightist ideologies and bigotry by discussing the dilemmas posed by the transfusion of right-wing theories and research into progressive circles. Based on these discussions, Mr. Berlet wrote the book Right-Wing Populism in America, which focuses on the roots of scapegoating conspiracism in the U.S. and how it is used to mobilize social and political movements. In November of 1993, he developed an analysis of the relationship between various forms of populism and fascism and the relevance of these movements to the candidacies of Buchanan, Perot & Le Pen.

A decade later, these same problems resurfaced in American antiwar circles whose academic discussions had been penetrated by poisonous ideas promulgated by LaRouchians and other anti-Jewish groups. More recently, organizations like Sierra Club went through soul-searching shakedowns as a result of White Christian Nationalist infiltration attempting to subvert their board into supporting anti-immigrant legislation. All of which points up the need for greater academic rigor and integrity in the face of the ongoing onslaught of fascist propositions promoted by nativists such as Pat Buchanan and the bastions of pseudo scholars that support him.

As author Sara Diamond observed, “After years of living as an anti-administration anti-establishment subculture, many in the progressive movement know what they are against, but have lost sight of what they stand for. This leaves persons susceptible to allying with anyone else that attacks the government. This happened against a backdrop of political illiteracy.”

By exposing irrationalist philosophies, racialist aesthetics, and anti-capitalist demagogy, writers like Berlet and Diamond assert we can have this discussion without uncritically circulating the conspiratorial scapegoating fantasies of the far right. As Monique Doryland of the Bay Area Pledge of Resistance noted, “We have to be clear as progressive people that fascists, no matter what their camouflage, are not our friends.”

“The dilemma for left activists,” says Berlet, “is to sort out the various strains of fascist ideology circulating in the United States and the world. It is a dangerous folly to ignore the threat to democracy posed by critics of the current administration who also promote fascism.”

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

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November 23, 2007 by Mirjam Hirch.

Famous Roman myths and legends are considered true reality, historic facts in Europe.
On the Palatine Hill, the centermost of the Seven Hills of Rome, Italy, archaeologists have discovered one of the most sacred mythological places of Western Civilization: The holy cave. There, as legend has it, Romulus and Remus the two founders of the city of Rome were raised and nourished by the famous lupa (she-wolf) after washed ashore the Tiber River in a wooden basket.

What the discovery of the sanctuary clearly reveals is that the founding myth of Rome undoubtedly contains true stories. The events related in the legend can be precisely located. In ancient times everyone familiar with the places could find and recognize the sites which vouched for the truth of the stories told.

The emperor Augustus (63 BC-14 AD) must have known about the actual existence of the cave. He turned the cave of Romulus and Remus into a sacred place and built his house on top of it, considering himself the refounder of Rome. After times of civil war Augustus wanted to achieve stability based on old traditions and reintroduced ancient customs. One of which was celebrated in honour of the cult of the founding of the city.
Amongst the most famous Roman festivals, originating long before the Trojan War in the remotest antiquity and then observed in commemoration of Romulus and Remus, the kings of shepherds, was the ancient fertility festival, Lupercalia. It was held in a cave on the Palatine Hill. Originally a shepherd festival it was celebrated in honour of Lupercus, the god of fertility. It took place every year in the last month of the early Roman calendar, on the 15th of February (the name of the month is derived from Latin februare which means to purify). The ceremony was probably a symbolical fertilization and purification of the shepherds the city and the land.
The worship at the Lupercalia was led by priests called Luperci who began by sacrificing goats and a dog, animals remarkable for their strong sexual instinct. After a ceremonial meal the Luperci dressed in goat skins and raced around the Palatine brandishing goat-hide whips with which they hit passersby. Women who wanted to have children often stood in the path of the Luperci because their lashings were thought to encourage fertility.
The Lupercalia festivals were celebrated until the end of the 5th century AD when the rites of fertility incurred the strong displeasure of the popes who ended the practice. Nowadays, Rome, the formerly holy site of fertility cults is the ´first seat`, the Roman Catholic Church.

The discovery of the sanctuary certainly, as Andrea Carandini a renown Italian archaeologist states, “is one of the most important discoveries of all time.” 
And could turn out to be especially important for the indigenous fight for right and justice.
What about we see the reality and truth in indigenous songs and origin stories for what they are and use more the wonderful and precious knowledge conveyed in indigenous mythology the world over in education, self-determination struggles and the settlement of indigenous claims and disputes?

Technorati Tags: indigenous Europe, culture, myths, archaeology

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November 22, 2007 by Jay Taber.

You can not be creative in a system that is very unjust, like the system we live in, unless you are a dissident. Because when you are creative you are for justice, for freedom, for love. It’s by nature like that. You feel that you want to do something. You can not accept injustice. You become angry, if this injustice is happening to you or to others.

You discover it’s not national only, it’s international. So I make the connection, I open up to understand the connection between international, national and family oppression. And why we have poverty. It’s social, political. It’s not a natural disaster. It’s made by the political system, internationally and nationally.

So you find yourself active. So I do not separate between writing and fighting. So what I do is make the connections. To undo the fragmentation of knowledge. Because the knowledge we receive in university is very fragmented. So I try to undo this fragmentation.

—Nawal el Saadawi

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November 19, 2007 by Rudolph Ryser.

                                                                                        19th November 2007

The West Papua National Coalition for Liberation (WPNCL) has called on the President of Indonesia, Dr. Haji Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, to enter into peace talks aimed at resolving the long standing problems of human rights abuses and related problems in West Papua.

On 12th October 2007, Secretary General of the WPNCL, Dr. Otto Ondawame, wrote directly to President Yudhoyono, as well as presented a letter of request for dialogue to the Indonesian delegates to Pacific Islands Forum Dialogue Partner Meeting on 18th October this year in Tonga.

The WPNCL was established at a meeting of leaders of West Papuan political and social groups in September 2007. It is the sole and legitimate representatives of the people of West Papua and gives a single voice to the shared aspirations of the people of West Papua.

Since 1998, Indonesia has undergone a process of transition from authoritarianism and militarism to democracy and, for the most part, peace. However, West Papua has been largely excluded from that process. The Secretary-General of the WPNCL, Dr. Otto Ondawame said the WPNCL now seeks to bring democracy, justice, peace and freedom to the people of West Papua.

‘As a part of Indonesia,’ Dr. Ondawame said, ‘our beloved land of West Papua has had neither peace nor freedom. The attempt by the Government of Indonesia to resolve this problem by establishing Special Autonomy for West Papua has failed, being too little, inadequately applied, and effectively dismantled. For these obvious reasons, the Special autonomy has been rejected by the people of West Papua and demanded for new just and democratic referendum’.

‘There continues to be human rights abuses by the TNI and police, including the murder, torture and disappearance of West Papuan political activists, and the regular intimidation of ordinary West Papuan people. There are also the continuing problems of very low levels of development, the illegal expropriation of many West Papuan people from their hereditary lands, the lack of adequate compensation, and the destruction of the West Papuan natural environment,’ Dr.Ondawame said.

‘When the people of West Papua have attempted to express concern over these legitimate issues, they have been beaten, arrested and tortured, and often murdered and disappeared, Dr. Ondawame said. ‘It is time for the people of West Papua and Indonesia to work out a better way to address these problems’

To this end, the WPNCL has formally invited President Yudhoyono, or a delegation on his behalf, to enter into meaningful dialogue to seek a resolution to these and related issues.

For further information, contact:                                                                                                                     

Dr. Otto Ondawame, Tel: +678 23614, +678 75832 (Mb).                                                                               
Paula Makabory, +61(0)402547517;   Fax: +61(0)395435843                                                                                     Octovianus Mote +1 203 5203055

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November 19, 2007 by Rudolph Ryser.

As I looked out of my window flying from  Monterey, Mexico to Houston, Texas one afternoon two weeks ago I looked out on a landscape that once contained hundreds of ejidos, now vacant…emptied out under the pressure of the North American Free Trade Agreement with Canada and the United States. Ejidos were guaranteed under the Mexican Constitution to return land to indigenous Mexicans as a part of a massive land reform program fought out in a revolution led by Emilio Zapata.

Since the Mexican Revolution descendants of the original peoples of this land produced their own food, shared benefits in common and sold the excess of their produce to earn some money for things they could not make–largely a subsistence economy that ensured life and happiness. Indigenous Mexicans were once again–since the Spanish invasion of the 1520s–living as producers and consumers of their own self-sustaining goods and services.  That all came to an end when under pressure from the United States, the World Trade Organization and the North American Free Trade Agreement, the Mexican government repealed the ejido system guarantees against land alienation.  In 1997 25% of the ejidos were sold mainly to large corporations and the community members became consumers and low wage workers (about 35 cents US per hour) (mainly in American companies along the northern border of Mexico) producing products for the world market.  Self-sufficient people were once again turned into dependent consumers…unable to feed and house themselves.  Is it any wonder that mostly Mexican Indian people cross the US border to secure jobs that pay substantially more to help feed family members back home?

I am sitting in the city of Puerto Vallarta today looking out across the skyline filled with derricks with pulleys and long cables lifting cement, tiles, windows and other building materials to new hotels and office buildings.  Workers from the country-side now come into town on buses, in the back of pickups and in dump trucks to sweat and labor to build the new city growing on top of the old village that was located on the east shore of Banderas Bay.

A few people in Mexico, mostly those descendant from Spaniards, have become fabulously wealthy and others moderately wealthy while the vast majority of Mexico’s indigenous peoples (about 70% of the population) try to play catchup economics–the possibility of which remains illusive at best.  Indeed, the trickle down doesn’t and hasn’t trickled down.  Mainly those who once produced the food, clothing, housing and other life supporting goods have been alienated from their role as producers–forced now to become laborers and consumers rushing into Wal-Mart to gather up moderately priced goods manufactured in China.

While Mexico is experiencing a building boom is several cities, and a few have become fabulously rich, the vast majority, the descendants of Mexico’s Aztec, Zapotec, Mixe, Maya and other nations have rapidly lost their main food source (maize) to Monsanto Corporation, their livelihood to corporations buying up their land for massive farms to produce export soybeans and their capacity to determine their own future.  The only exception to this general rule is the choice and the risky effort on the part of many Indian people to cross the US/Mexico border to perform back breaking work in the United States for wages that help sustain their families back home.

The Americans helped create this mess in the last twenty-five years.  This is not the new economy.  This is the old economy of the 19th century writ in the 21st  century.

The irony is that as I write today, siting in a Mexican city that is booming, this is a day Mexicans celebrate their Revolution that was to bring new freedoms and self-reliance back to the majority of the people.  Today, however, there is less to celebrate in Mexico as the people, mostly the Indian people, suffer.

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November 19, 2007 by Jay Taber.

“I will tell you something about stories. They aren’t just entertainment. Don’t be fooled. They are all we have, you see, all we have to fight off illness and death.”

—from Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko

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November 16, 2007 by Mirjam Hirch.

To be healthy means to be rich. This reality is widely understood and accepted within contemporary western society. The trend is towards a healthy and sustainable lifestyle. Aspects that have been associated with traditional, alternative beliefs are turning into an exclusive “postmodern“ way of life which is uncritical of consumption and consumerism.
Not to save the world but to show that one belongs to the upper classes more and more people buy natural and organic products. These traditional goods are becoming the most expensive ones available. And, in a world where environmental pollution seems rampant everywhere, the most coveted, because safest products. 

Adherents of this fashion are called LOHAS (acronym for lifestyle of health and sustainability). And there is quite a few of them all over. The market segment related to sustainable green living and ecological initiatives is immense. In the year 2006 it was estimated at $300 billion in the USA, about  30% of the country’s consumer market.
For many years we used to think and live in terms of modern versus traditional. It was a matter of either or. But not any more. Advertisement strategies radically aim at subverting our beliefs.
With the aid of systems of collective symbols change is symbolically integrated. Discrepancies and contraditions are  bridged, plausibility is created.

One example for this strategy is Bionade a young German company which says to concoct the world’s first and still unique non-alcoholic organically produced refreshment drink, borrowing from age-old brewing techniques. The company advertises Bionade to be the official drink of a better world and sells the bottles mostly in organic food stores. The succcess in sales is incredible. Already the word is out about the Bionadization of society.
The company uses the silence of symbolic language as a powerful strategy to address its upper scale target group and to get away from the typical long-haired, unkempt image of a natural food store customer, wearing Birkenstock sandals. The secret of the company’s  story of magic success lies in the symbol printed on the crown cap. The symbol is the mods target symbol which acts like a secret code by which to recognize each other.
The symbol is circular in form. Found in all cultures the circle is the most common and universal sign. It is the symbol of completeness, eternity and infinity. The circle is associated with the perfect, ideal or the divine universe. It is a symbol of democracy and the preferred shape for an assembly of equals.

The Bionade symbol looks like the roundel (red-white-blue from center to rim) used by the British Royal Air Force (RAF) since World War I after it replaced the Union Flags to avoid confusion with the similar looking German cross. What makes the symbol so special to use for the organic drink producer Bionade is the fact that in the 1960s the mods (originally modernist- a subculture which originated in London) co-opted this roundel, making it part of the pop consciousness and their mod ethos. The term mod contrasted with the term trad at the time. The motto of the mod was appearance determines being. The typical mod therefore was very elegantly dressed, wearing a parka and driving on a scooter. This made him much more hip than his contemporaries.
Nowadays this roundel and mods’ target sign symbolizes the relatively upscale and well-educated population segment of the Bionade drinking LOHAS.

Sure, symbols surround us. They are an intricate part of our everyday lives. Cultures communicate their beliefs, dreams, and reality in symbols. Many of us who do not know the mods and like symbols do not perceive these symbols. Other symbols like the Mercedes star communicate to us a national or corporate identity. Many archetypal symbols which reflect our ideas about the nature of life and the universe we simply take for granted.
 
The reason why symbols appear ominpresent and exert great power and influence on the human being might lie in the fact that those symbolic forms in myths, music and art are logical representations of emotions and accordingly the human mind.
Moreover in a world of diffuse powers and possibilities symbols convey secret, subconsciously active messages that oftentimes cannot otherwise be articulated. Thus they are used to communicate with or to manipulate other people.
Throughout history symbols have been appropriated and used for propagandistic manipulation, like e.g. the swastika. The swastika (from Sanskrit svasti, meaning well-being) was perverted by the Nazi regime, originally representing peace, good luck and success.

As powerful as symbols might be they shoud not make us close our eyes to the stalk realites behind the beautiful structures forms and colors. Certainly we can consider ourselves very fortunate when living in urban centers of the developped world and able to afford organically produced products. At the same time we should face the fact though that the majority of the world, mostly the poorest of the poor, indigenous peoples do not have access to safe foods. In coutries of the south, such as Argentina where the highest per capita amount of foods (3500kg/inhabitant) is produced thousands of people die of hunger while life-sustaining, high quality food products are shipped away to where people are able and willing to give a lot of money for them.
Is this real health and sustainability when only a select few of the world have access to and can benefit from safe environments? Or rather the illusion of a better world?

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November 15, 2007 by Jay Taber.

I was only nineteen when I first saw the tumbling falls of the upper Skagit from behind some huckleberry bushes that grew along a river path that I’d stumbled on while picnicking. Having just moved from the dusty pines of the Yakima where Peregrine falcons nest in the volcanic cliffs, I was still absorbing the lush mossy green of the west slope.

I’d recently heard of the “Magic Skagit” and was curious to know how it differed from the middle Columbia where I grew up.

Walking on in silence, I overheard a soft, solemn, baritone song mixing in the wind with the sounds of water and muted footsteps. Turning my head toward it, I glimpsed a lone man gently dancing and singing aside the rock promontory above the falls, completely enthralled in the moment of being.

Startled by this unexpected encounter to which the Indian I watched was unaware, I found myself unable to move for fear I might disturb the sacred poetry he was offering in his native tongue, and was only jarred into making a stealthy retreat after witnessing the splendid leap of a steelhead trout as long as my arm into the dip net swung swiftly under its belly by the dancer who’d swept the long pole handle from the ground in a seemingly effortless fancydance spin.

Today, in my fifties, I remember that mirror into my childhood when I watched the Yakama dip salmon from platforms on the Columbia, and wonder if my memories include the great Celilo on the gorge where the buffalo and the salmon peoples met to trade stories and goods. I know I was there.

[ Mirror Dance is from Life as Festival, a collection of short stories by Jay Taber. ]

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November 10, 2007 by Jay Taber.

Recent discoveries and interpretations of my ancestors’ graves in Southern France, associated with cave paintings from fifty thousand years ago, gave me pause to think about modern notions of what it means to be human. The enduring beauty of the depictions of animals that inhabited the region then — including bison and reindeer — is all the more remarkable in that these works of art went undisturbed through so many generations, enabling us to “communicate”, so to speak, with those who expressed themselves so eloquently given the mediums available.

What was previously viewed by many as simply art, or perhaps magic ritual to ensure successful hunting, was enlightened by the discovery of a meticulously arranged burial site suggesting the noble leader interred facing the painting had been charged in death with a task of communicating with the spirit world — an ambassadorial task, if you will — the gratitude of his people for all the animals that provided for their material and psychic needs.

Oddly, it is possibly the message conveyed to their descendants that is of greatest importance today. Maybe their primitive ways weren’t so ignorant after all.

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