April 23, 2008 by Rudolph Ryser.

Speaking at the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues at the United Nations (23 April 2008) Bolivian President Evo Morales called on indigenous peoples’ delegates to recognize the importance of ancient traditions and knowledge held by Fourth World nations as the essential ingredient for reversing the adverse effects of Climate Change.

Morales, according to Climatewire, said “Climate change offers proof that the world must undergo a fundamental realignment of its economic system.” The alternative to persistent consumption, according to President Morales is the balance between human need and natural reproduction provided by Fourth World cultures–the knowledge and practices rooted in intergenerational experience.

Economies centered on capital accumulation are the cause, not the cure for global warming, food shortages, massive refugee movements, fuel shortages and the perpetual impoverishment of most of the world’s people. The goal of capital economies, market economies, is accumulation and concentration of wealth and power into the hands of a very few; impoverishing the many and raping the natural world. Capital economies install the vast human population as consumers while limiting the number of producers in massive corporate conglomerations. The basic assumption and necessity of capital economies is that nature’s wealth is a commodity essentially free for the taking and that human labor is a commodity that must be kept at a minimum. The constant emphasis on capital growth assumes endless natural wealth and human labor. This is a fundamental error in thinking. Nature has limits and human labor cannot long sustain abuse.

Modern subsistence economics, based on the concept of life renewal and natural balance is now essential as a corrective for more than four hundred years of intensified capital growth and consumption. Economies centered on subsistence where human need is balanced against the capacity of the natural world to reproduce can reverse global warming and stabilize global climate. Subsistence affirms life as the central concern of human economic activity while ensuring that more of human societies become producers and consumers of their own produce. The goal of modern subsistence economics is the replenishment of life and respectful use of the natural world. Subsistence economics is deeply embedded in the cultures of Fourth World peoples throughout the world. (For a thorough and insightful discussion of the subsistence perspective read Maria Mies and Veronika Bennholdt-Thomsen in their excellent book “The Subsistence Perspective,” Zed Books: London. Professor Mies emphasizes that her book along with Claudia von Werlhof and Veronika Bennholdt-Thomsen discusses the “subsistence perspective” and not an economic model. Mies argues that the subsistence perspectives emphasizes the economy and society, culture, history and all other aspects of life. While I agree with this analysis, I suggest that economics is indeed about all aspects of life just as it is true that culture is about all aspects of life.)

Many Fourth World nations, like the states governments of India, China, Singapore, Saudi Arabia and others have turned their backs on their own culture, their own knowledge, to become acquisitive societies. These nations have joined in the headlong rush to consume the natural world in excessive ways. They have become contributors to global warming, food shortages, and all the rest. These indigenous peoples believe they have long been denied the “fruits of progress,” and have waited too long to become consumers like metropolitan populations. These nations are making the same mistake as the consumer, commodified populations. These Fourth World economies are showing the same signs of widening gaps between rich and poor, sharply reduced natural wealth, and wild swings between enrichment and impoverishment.

US President Bill Clinton proclaimed in the early 1990s “It’s the economy stupid” to call attention to a political point of emphasis in that electoral campaign. The phrase is now the point to understand why climate change, fuel shortages, food riots, desertification and deforestation are a product of the capital economy Mr. Clinton then lauded. Capital economics assumes perpetual growth and consequently perpetual consumption. It is argued that the capital based economy and environmental balance can go hand in hand by generating “green jobs” and “green technology.” The problem with this thinking is that it essentially no different from the constant growth and consumption emphasis of straight capital economics. Technology is supposed to save the environment and prosper the population. There is no evidence that such an approach has any legs.

On the other hand, there is powerful evidence supporting the notion that subsistence economics is the appropriate alternative that can reverse the sins of the last 400 years. Now it is up to Fourth World nations that still have confidence in their own cultures to persuade modern states like the United States, Germany, China and India that they must adopt the tried and true practices of modern subsistence economics. By so doing, President Morales’ urgent call for an alternative to the greed of capital economics that solves the problem of climate change, food shortage, fuel shortages and more will indeed be realized and Fourth World nations will resume their place in the global dialog for human life.

A fundamental shift must take place in the way human beings transact the distribution of goods and services. We must reclaim localism, and restore human productivity as well as human access to land. These are essential elements of the subsistence perspective and of these the most immediate change that must take place in the relationship between people and the land. Restore land to those who have become landless owing to state and corporate confiscations of land. People must have access to the land to produce food and life. Changing the economy in this fundamental way can restore the balance needed to reverse the calamities now confronting the world’s peoples.

(c) 2008 Center for World Indigenous Studies

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April 4, 2008 by Rudolph Ryser.

The United Nations has convened and scheduled numerous meetings to address remedies to reduce the effects of Global Warming and needed human adaptations in response to impending climate change. The latest of these meetings has just ended in Bangkok, Thailand under the name: Adhoc Working Group - Climate Change.

States’ governments are beginning to consider new laws, regulations and policies aimed at ensuring their prosperity even as they tentatively take steps to reduce the adverse effects of Global Warming.

While states’ governments act through their multi-lateral organizations and in their own legislatures Fourth World nations prepare to complain about the adverse affects of Global Warming at the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues beginning April 21 in New York City. The United Nations Permanent Forum meets as a side bar while others make decisions that directly affect the health, wealth and security of Fourth World peoples. Meanwhile, Fourth World peoples remain on the sidelines complaining about the serious threats and adverse affects of global warming caused by the very industrialization that ravaged Fourth World territories throughout the 19th and 20th centuries.

Despite the fact that 80% of the world’s biodiversity remains located in Fourth World territories, states governments and multi-lateral organizations act as if there are no Fourth World peoples who must be active participants in the global dialog. Fourth World peoples are the key to green territories remaining in the world. Again, despite this fact, Fourth World peoples have remained sidelined either by choice, temperament or simple exclusion.

When the Biodiversity Convention of 1994 was negotiated the same thing happened. Instead of seating themselves in the negotiating hall Fourth World peoples met in a facility more than a kilometer from the assembly hall holding the state “deciders”. The result of that Convention has been the decision of states’ government to share in the benefits of Fourth World nations’ resources without the consent of those nations.

The Kyoto Protocols didn’t include discussions about or by Fourth World peoples and their territories, yet the conclusion was for states’ governments to benefit from the green Fourth World territories without the consent of Fourth World nations.

The Climate Change negotiations just ended in Bangkok, Thailand have set an ambitious agenda intended to lead up to a new international agreement on global warming. The agenda themes for new negotiations will focus on adaptation, mitigation, research & technology, finance and “a shared vision for long-term cooperative action.” Three more meetings are scheduled for 2008 and probably four more in 2009.

The Bangkok meeting importantly decided to include “forest-related activities as a major emphasis for carbon emissions reductions.”

Now the stage is set for the states’ governments….but, notice that Fourth World nations are no where to be seen even though their forests, their jungles, their oceans, and soils are the most important part of carbon emissions sequestration debate.

Fourth World nations have very hard choices to make not only in the face of climate change, but in the face of disenfranchisement at the hands of states’ governments. Fourth World nations must stop complaining and take action to demand seats at the negotiating table. Proactive initiatives are necessary. Asking for sympathy from the very states that reap benefits from Fourth World territories without the consent of nations has not worked and won’t work.

The very existence of more than 500 million Fourth World peoples depends on the nations taking the initiative to shape the dialog and the direction of global climate change negotiations. Failure to do so means that Fourth World nations will accept the confiscation of their lands, their resources and their way of life or an untimely end at the hands of industrial pollution produced by a greedy and ignorant commercial system. The hard choice now is to act proactively and vigorously. Complaining at the lower steps of the United Nations achieves nothing.

Copyright 2008 Center for World Indigenous Studies

Technorati Tags: climate change, Fourth World, global warming, negotiations

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January 29, 2008 by Rudolph Ryser.

Guest Contributor: Laura Killian, CWIS Associate Scholar

Obtaining clean energy and working towards independence from fossil fuels has, up until recently, been a far off, expensive notion for small communities. That notion is changing, due in part as renewable energy technology advances while new markets open, allowing for costs to be lowered each year. Fourth World nations are in position to clear a pathway to promote energy independence in North America.

Efforts to reduce dependence while supporting the local economy and incorporating community participatory planning and collaboration can be seen in many Fourth World communities including the Yakama Nation in Washington State, members of the All Indian Pueblo Council in New Mexico, Kumia in southern California, and the Black Feet in Montana. First Nations in Canada and Indian Nations in the United States are providing innovative leadership models by collaborating with fellow Nations, academic institutions, government agencies and the private sector to work on solar, wind, small hydro and biomass projects.

Organizations such as the Center for Indigenous Environmental Resources (CIER), based in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, the First Nation Energy Alliance, based on the Wikwemikong Unceded Indian Reserve and the Intertribal Council On Utility Policy (COUP), based in Rosebud, South Dakota, are all working on feasibility reports, integrated approaches for community participation in environmental planning and education, and project support for the transfer of energy on reserves and reservations from oil and coal to the renewable energy sector, especially with wind technology.

Wind power provides the most cost effective option for the energy needs of a community, assuming the geography provides the necessary ingredient, wind. According to NRG Systems, a world leader in the manufacture of wind energy assessment equipment, wind energy in the United States could provide as much as 40% of our electricity. Today’s wind farms can generate electricity for less than 5 cents per kilowatt-hour in many parts of the U.S., a price that is competitive with new coal or gas-fired power plants. The cost is expected to decline as the technology improves and the market for this source develops.

Playing a large role in developing the wind market within the Fourth World in the United States is the Intertribal Council On Utility Policy (COUP). This Council is made up of thirteen Tribes from North Dakota, South Dakota and Kansas who provide policy analysis, workshops and wind energy development for its communities. They provide a great example of innovative problem solving through inter-tribal collaboration and investment. In addition, extra energy produced by their windmills can be sold back to the electric companies, thus, creating a strong arm in the local economy.

By keeping efforts strong and proactively engaging with their communities, state agencies and local companies for the assessment and investment of renewable energy technology and education, Fourth World Nations can reduce their dependence on outside sources for power while strengthening their local economy. With money earned from casinos, entrepreneurships and businesses, Nations in Canada and the United States are in a position to invest in an important technology that solves many problems at once. Utilizing collaborative efforts for assessment, planning and implementation of renewable energy technology in the Fourth World should be recognized as utter importance for the survival of each community and surrounding ecology.

(c) 2008 Center for World Indigenous Studies

Technorati Tags: wind power, energy, energy indepence, north america

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January 21, 2008 by Rudolph Ryser.

Biofuel production is supposed to be the panacea for skyrocketing petroleum costs. Environmentalists argue that biofuels reduce carbon emissions and reduce dependency on petroleum-based fuels. Industry leaders argue biofuels are good for the economy. Both are wrong. Biofuels increase carbon emissions problems by increasing the destruction of jungles and forests. Biofuels like soybean and palm oil increase food oil prices.

Palm oil and soybean oil are two important sources of calories for peoples living in Asia, Melanesia and parts of the Middle East. Competing demands for these oils have suddenly exploded as Palm oil produced mainly in Indonesia is refined for use to power automobiles. Growers are clearing more jungles to plant palm trees to meet increased energy demands thus contributing to carbon emissions and increased prices for foods and cooking oil too.

Industry is essentially shifting valuable foodstuffs to the energy market taking nutrition from those who need it most.

If there was ever evidence that saving the environment and developing the economy at the same time is simply nonsense the competing demands between human food verses energy for machines certainly dashes the hopeful notions behind sustainable development. Biofuels, if they are to be produced, must not detract from human biological need. Reducing carbon emissions, improving human health and energy consumption command us to become more realistic. We must, in post-industrial states, accept the necessity to “use less” and not more. States like China, Brazil, Indonesia and India should stop repeating the failed experience of post industrial states like the United States, United Kingdom, France, Germany and others. Nineteenth century industrialization must be stopped and replaced by a combination of modernized traditional food production, housing, social organization (smaller towns) and modern advanced technology.

Intercropping, for example, (that food planting method that involves companion planting and plant selection) produces 40% more food than row cropping commonly used now by agricultural sectors around the world. Intercropping uses little added energy in the form of fertilizer, machine technology, etc. Row cropping is extremely expensive and inefficient in terms of food production and distribution.

Land tenure systems will have to be substantially changed in countries around the world to distribute land to landless peoples and communities so they can produce much of their own food.  Self-sufficient communities should be the goal instead of forcing global standardized markets and interdependence.

Fourth World peoples throughout the world demonstrate the staying power of self-sustaining communities that produce much of their own food and use little energy. Choices between fuel and food are substantially reduced making human life more important than energy profits. Post-industrial and industrial peoples must now stop and think! Does it really make sense to grow and increase energy use and grow carbon emissions to eventually choke life on the planet?  Does it make sense to barrel ahead taking food from the poor and the poorest of the poor to fuel machines, electrify homes and manufacture consumer goods?

The choice between fuel and food is a false choice. We humans cannot survive constant growth.  We need new strategies to meet human needs. We need new strategies to meet the demands of the living earth.  There are strategies long tested by Fourth World societies that do not pollute, leave a small human imprint and promote a high quality of life.  We must pay attention to those strategies as lessons of human survival.

(c) 2008 Center for World Indigenous Studies

Technorati Tags: carbon emissions, biofuels, food prices, alternate strategies

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December 31, 2007 by Rudolph Ryser.

Virtually every Fourth World nation has experienced a form of climate change since the beginning of global colonization in the 11th century. It was then that Skanians (sometimes called Vikings) followed the westward currents in the north Atlantic to what became known as “new found land.” Changes brought on by colonizing populations in eastern Africa (Arabs), western India (Han Chinese), and the western and eastern coasts of the Western Hemisphere (English, Spanish, French, Dutch) slowly, but vigorously reduced the numbers of Fourth World peoples (disease) and changed the environment (introduced plants and agricultural practices). While Fourth World nations world wide “managed” lands, waters, jungles and forests through selective decisions, their “management” was and is in some parts of the world still aimed at balance between the needs and wants of the human beings and the capacity of nature to reproduce. An example of Fourth World knowledge needed to support human life is “inter-cropping,” a cultural process of selective interaction between humans and plant life and animal life that produces 40% more nutritious food than “row-cropping” introduced by European agriculturalists. “Inter-cropping” has the virtue of not requiring fertilizer, insecticides or herbicides while producing foods more nutritious that industrial agriculture.

The colonists, settlers and their descendants (or what I have come to describe as “eternal tourists” have continued to ravage the environment such that where ever the “eternal tourists” reside they denude the earth. They take what was green and produce what is brown or no longer life producing. Since the end of World War II the idea of “development” has accelerated the process of denuding the earth and fouling the air, waters and the land. The greedy presumption of “development” is that all living things (plants, animals, soils, water, air, etc) are “free for the taking.” This attitude naturally flows from the experience of the “eternal tourist.” A tourist “uses” and does not produce anything. The earth’s bounty, as it is described, clearly costs a great deal as evidence for global warming is beginning to demonstrate. Cutting forests to the ground, dumping waste into rivers, and spewing carbon dioxide along with other greenhouse gases into the air are directly responsible for the very serious challenge that is now coming to a head: major changes in the climate, water levels and food productivity.

Fourth World nations that remain faithful to dynamically and evolving cultures reside in regions of the world that are “green.” To the extent that these nations have prevented occupation by the “eternal tourist” they have managed to continue life in their lands.

The United Nations Development Program asserts that 80% of the world’s last remaining biodiversity is located in Fourth World territories. The connection between human cultures and living green regions in the world is stunning, but essential for all human beings to understand. Fourth World peoples are essential to the continuation of living environments in the world.

With the debate over Climate Change now opening following the Bali, Indonesia session in early December and continuing for the next five years (culminating in Copenhagen, Denmark) it is important that Fourth World nations sit with the world’s state government decision-makers, non-governmental organizations, corporations and others to produce a credible Copenhagen Protocol on Climate Change. Fourth World nations must now step up to the table and demand a place there next to other decision-makers.

The Kyoto Protocol failed to recognize the significant part Fourth World nations play in the health of the world’s environments. No nation was invited to contribute to the dialog. The consequence was that from 1998 to 2012 states’ governments could confiscate with impunity Fourth World territories as if these living regions were truly part of the debate. Only Fourth World nations can make decisions in relation to their territories. Sovereignty over these territories must be in each Fourth World nation. States’ governments are makers of the problem we call Climate Change. Fourth World nations have solutions to what is an old problem if they will be heard.

Fourth World nations must now become a part of the global dialog. Without their participation as active decision-makers, the Copenhagen Protocol on Climate Change will fail. All of humanity will suffer.

(c) 2007 Center for World Indigenous Studies

Technorati Tags: Climate Change, global warming, environment, kyoto, copenhagen

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December 21, 2007 by Mirjam Hirch.

The world is full of wonders. All we have to do is explore, see and feel with all our heart and senses wide open. Continously we will discover something “new.” This is a very exciting experience. It enriches our personal worlds with beautiful forms tastes and colours and makes us re-experience the amazing novelty of life a child is mesmerized by.
Children often invent sort of a game of discovery and turn into a competition what might involve questions like: Who is the first one to find out about mysteries such as how does that bird look like which brings the babies?
Children are very curious and very desirous to know. They are happy as well as proud when their parents praise them for finding out things that are new because unknown before to the child’s world. Sure the child is made to believe to have been the first one to find out….

Scientists like children are very much driven by their sense of curiosity and the need to explore. The scientists’ zest for action being sometimes simply to have their names immortalized. My biology teacher at school proudly used to tell his pupils about this bug in Venezuela who bears his name, proofing the truth of the story by a very small line printed in a sizeable book. This made us children smile.

This week newspapers reported on two “new” species which got “discovered” in Indonesia. One being a giant rat which is about five times the size of a typical city rat. The other a pygmy possum which could be one of the smallest marsupials in the world.
In June 2006 scientists discovered a chameleon snake able to change its colours in the rainforest on the island of Borneo. Probably the animal, one of nature’s best kept secrets, had been long known to local indigenous groups and was only hidden to western science.

Evidently there is a lot out there not everybody has found out about yet. However this precious knowledge and biodiversity is critically endangered the world over by illegal logging and pollution.
Dumbfounded by the immensity of creation it is up to us to get active and fight to protect the Garden of Eden which is our planet- not only a story in a book. Paradise can be all around us.

Technorati Tags: Biodiversity, indigenous knowledge

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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

Technorati Tags: capitalism, sustainable life

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November 9, 2007 by Rudolph Ryser.

The Russians dump nuclear waste in the Arctic seas, the Republic of Congo sees companies with the consent of some government officials dump 20 metric tons of toxic waste into an old uranium mine and they succeed in contaminating the Mura river; and PCBs and mercury from coal fire electrical production contaminate the oceans.  China pushes industrial development in Shanghai while the Yellow River becomes the source for death from contamination. Socialist and capitalist economic systems equally pursue money and power at the expense of life-giving nature–the rivers, the land, the air and all the plants and animals.  President Bill Clinton argues that “you can have strong wages and business while protecting the environment.” He urges as do many US and European political leaders that “we can have our cake and eat it too.”

When the discussion turns to reducing carbon dioxide and other climate warming emissions the decision is to balance what is now going into the air with increased capacity to absorb–otherwise called carbon sequestration.  The result is no reduction of carbon emissions; only an eventual precarious balance of present emissions.

Business, industry and government policy on reducing or eliminating damage to the environment translates into continued destruction.  The economic systems on which business, industry and governments rely are at root the major problem.  Neither capitalism nor socialism contribute to life giving support of the world on whom we all must depend for life.  When an economic system is concerned with money and the consumption of material goods, there is an assumption that what nature has is free for the taking.  Growth of business and unlimited consumption are simply impossible, yet the assumption of those traveling the path of “development” is that “a few will get there’s while everyone else can eat smoke.”  In the end, this is not only foolish but utterly destructive of life on this planet.

While it isn’t easy shifting from a consumer economy to an economy that supports life, we are compelled by the limites of life-giving nature to make the shift.  Either we will decide to make the shift or we will be forced by the necessities.

(c) 2007 Center for World Indigenous Studies

Technorati Tags: growth, socialism, capitalism, consumerism, life, carbon emissions

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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.)

Technorati Tags: water, environment, dead zone, fish

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October 15, 2007 by Rudolph Ryser.

The killing of a people in whole or in part through mass murder, starvation or displacement constitutes the main features of the internationally recognized crime of genocide. The 1985 United Nations Report on Genocide notes: “The right of a person or people not to be killed or avoidably left to die depends upon the reciprocal duty of other people to render protection and help to avert this. The concept of this moral responsibility and interdependence in human society has in recent times received increasing international recognition and affirmation.” (UN ECOSoC E/CN.4/Sub.2/1985/6 2 July 1985) This solemn pronouncement was written in a UN report by Mr. B. Whitaker 37 years after the United Nations General Assembly unanimously adopted the the Convention on the Prevention and Protection of the Crime of Genocide (9 December 1948). One would conclude after reading the Whitaker Report to the UN and noticing that ninety-six member UN states approved its contents that all states’ governments would firmly guard against acts of genocide anywhere in the world. Twenty-two years since the UN affirmation of Whitaker, states’ governments fail to recognize genocide from the past or the present–and so mass murders continue. The grave reality is that Fourth World nations are increasingly the target of genocide now being committed in the name of “anti-terrorism” or worse yet in the name of development.

Genocide was introduced into the laws of the world by Professor Raphael Lemkin of Poland. He combined the Greek word “genos” meaning nation or tribe and the Latin “cide” meaning killing. Lemkin’s word was quite obviously speaking to the killing of Fourth World nations. As a consequence, Fourth World nations have a particular interest in the meaning and application of this term and the extent to which the crime of genocide as the 1948 UN Convention affirms governs the conduct of nations and states. Indeed, Fourth World nations have a particular duty to prevent the crime of genocide and to punish those who will commit the crime. While states’ governments wrote a law, Fourth World nations must enforce it along with states’ governments.

Natural disasters do great damage to life and property all over the world. Each time nature expresses her wrath human beings, animals, plants and all other forms of life are at risk. Fourth World nations that persist in the practice of their culture regularly survive natural disasters–especially when the culture contains memories and stories and knowledge about earlier experience with the threats to life and limb. This ancient knowledge can help the rest of the world’s metropolitan populations that have lost the knowledge. In a seeming paradox Fourth World peoples hold in their cultural systems the very knowledge that all human beings need to survive and yet these same peoples are reviled, denounced and marginalized. Not only are Fourth World nations pushed aside as if the metropolitan populations have the “more advanced” and more beneficial knowledge, many nations are targets of genocide and “delayed-action genocide” with the actual or potential lost of whole peoples and the knowledge of their culture.

It appears that the metropolitan populations now contribute to the impending disaster of “global warming” after years of profligate burning of earth’s carbon-based resources and spewing carbon dioxide and other gases into earth’s atmosphere. The same metropolitan populations threaten the diversity of the world’s food stuffs by standardizing food production–eliminating ancient foods and wild foods far more nutritionally beneficial than the commercially created and the genetically modified foods. Ancient knowledge of time and space is deeply rooted in many cultures throughout the world and yet metropolitan populations by sheer force demand press Fourth World nations to adopt trans-state religions. Metropolitan societies have a constant demand for the operation of trans-state corporations that force Fourth World peoples off their lands (often with the aid and assistance of states’ governments) to engage in oil extraction, mining, forest wood and natural medicines extraction, and mass-production fisheries.

All of these activities threaten human survival–most particularly the survival of many Fourth World nations in whole or in part. These activities are the product not of nature, but of human decision, and the failure of human beings in metropolitan societies particularly to recognize how they are befouling the earth. Political and economic systems developed for the operation of metropolitan societies militate against the formulation of new decisions to stop the human created disasters. Genocide comes in many forms, but the basic reality remains the same: destruction of a people in whole or in part.

Denial of genocide is the most common method for avoiding the identification of genocidal incidents. Denial is used to avoid punishing the crime of genocide. By pretending an incident does not occur when it obviously does, the perpetrators or their protectors must be held responsible for the crime.

The government of Turkey denies what is known as the Armenian Genocide in 1915 reported by the then German Ambassador Wangenheim when he wrote on 7 July 1915: “the government is indeed pursuing its goal
of exterminating the Armenian race in the Ottoman Empire” (Wilhelmstrasse archives). Though the successor Turkish Government helped to institute trials of a few of those responsible for the massacres at which they were found guilty, the present official Turkish contention is that genocide did not take place although there were many casualties and dispersals in the fighting, and that all the evidence to the contrary is forged.” A bill is being considered by the United States Congress recognizing the existence of genocide having been committed against the Armenians. The United States President wants to deny such official recognition to protect relations between the government of Turkey and the United States. This is a form of denial.

In the 1980s when the government of Guatemala was slaughtering Mayans exercising a genocidal killing of perhaps 200,000 people I called for the formation of an international tribunal on the genocide in Guatemala. Allegations had been made that the United States government aided the Guatemala government through a “third party” agreement with Israel. Charges were swirling about that the Guatemalan government was systematically killing a displacing Mayan peoples with the strategic advice and assistance of the Israeli government. “Strategic Hamlets” in the fashion of those created in South Vietnam in the 1960s and 1970s received Mayan people forced at the point of gun–it had been alleged. More than 1 million Mayan villagers had been forced into the Mountains and into Belize while more than 100,000 more fled across the border with Mexico to take refuge in the villages of Chiapas. I began our efforts at the Center for World Indigenous Studies by organizing an international body of respected jurists and a venue (the Dutch Parliament). I wanted very much to have the most noted advocate of genocidal prosecution Mr. Simon Wiesenthal join and, indeed, lead the juridical panel. I traveled to Vienna to meet with Mr. Wiesenthal in 1986. Barney Nietschmann of the University of California-Berkely Geography Department and a Founding Board Member of the Center for World Indigenous Studies joined Mr. Wiesenthal and me for lunch.

Not wasting any time, I immediately launched into my purpose for wanting to meet Mr. Wiesenthal: would he serve on the panel of judges in an International Mayan Genocide trial? Initially I was pleased to learn that Mr. Wiesenthal would be eager to help. Then I asked the most pertinent question: Mr. Wiesenthal. Do you believe you could maintain your objectivity as a judge if members of the Israeli government are found to be culpable in the genocide of Mayan Indians?

Mr. Wisenthal pushed back from the table and said: “That cannot happen. You have been misled. Israel would not be a party to such a thing. No, I cannot participate in such a forum.”

The alleged genocide committed against Mayan Indian people remains unresolved though Nobel Laureate Rigoberto Menchu is working to now establish a tribunal.

The intentional destruction in whole or in part of a nation, of a people is a crime of genocide. Not only have the Jews experienced this horrible crime, but so have the Roma, the Chechens, the Kurds, the Assyrians who now wish to have a recognition of their experience as having occurred along with the Armenians and the Pontus Greeks. The Lakota, Apache, and many other peoples in the Americas along with the peoples of Cambodia and the Hutu and the Tutsi of Rawanda, and the Fur, Zagawa and Masalit of Darfur in the Sudan. Indeed, for many Fourth World peoples delayed-action genocide is being committed virtually every day with denial of lands and resources to native peoples sufficient for their survival. This must be known as the crime of genocide springing from the intentional development of lands and resources that destroy the way of life of Fourth World peoples.

It is inconvenient to note that many individual leaders of government, business and religion have actively participated in the destruction in whole or in part of Fourth World peoples. Fourth World nations have a duty to bring these people to just and so do states’ governments.

(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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