March 24, 2009 by Mirjam Hirch.

What pain patients desperately need and hardly get, youths can easily buy even though they should never be able to. It seems ludicrous how easy it is to get access to illicit drugs, even for teenagers. Despite governments declaring `being tough on drugs’.
Legitimate access to pain relief medicines though is not ensured.
In February 2009, the World Health Organization estimated tens of millions of people worldwide suffering from severe pain having no access to adequate treatment. This causes immense stress and pain also to family and friends not able to help.
Likewise mothers, fathers, sons and daughters are left with trauma and severe suffering when helplessly witnessing their most beloved ones slowly being consumed by drug addiction.

Instead of developing their creative and intellectual potential drug users often turn into dangerous consumers if not criminals who are easily controlled and manipulated providing a dead sure market for those dealing with illicit drugs. An international trade worth 320 billion according to guesstimates. Which would put drugs alongside arms and oil amongst the world’s biggest traded good. Demand is constantly increasing. As is organized crime which has become more powerful than ever in spite of governments’ declarations promising the opposite.

Almost unnoticed by the public the UN General Assembly Special Session on Drugs convened for two weeks this month in Vienna. The destructive potential of production, transport and consumption of drugs on the personality as well as society were clearly recognized. With more than 6000 people dying in Mexico alone last year due to fights amongst rivaling drug cartels. Knowing these stark facts tanglible results at the conference, however, were absolutely minimal.

Meanwhile families and communities close to their breaking points are being paralysed no longer able to cope with their perpetuating problems. Caught in a cycle of chronic stress fuelled by the perceived instability and injustice of the current world system. As Dr. Leslie Korn notes in her recently published book Preventing & Treating Diabetes Naturally: The Native Way: “In response to chronic stress people feel depressed, helpless, anxious, irritable, and then they blame themselves for feeling that way. These feelings often lead to self medication with sugar and carbohydrates, drugs, alcohol, sex and other activities… these substances exacerbate the trauma and stress and the cycle continues….”
It is high time to stop it.

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October 24, 2008 by Rudolph Ryser.

The manufacture of liquid crystal television screens, microcircuits and photo voltaic cells for solar panels produces the deadly gas nitrogen trifluoride–a gas released into the atmosphere 17,000 times more deadly than carbon dioxide. Scripps Institution of Oceanography scientists led by Ray Weiss point to results of a study that concludes how high technology industry gas emissions have been measured at four times greater levels in the atmosphere than earlier thought. High levels of toxic gases emitted from the manufacture of technology like solar panels seriously undermines the argument that technology is the solution to global warming. One need not be a high tech Luddite to conclude that technology must be heavily regulated and controlled for unintended environmental consequences. Indeed, a growing number of “alternative energy solutions” have unintended consequences as “biofuels” demonstrate by their adverse effects on food prices, deforestation and green house gas emissions. The so called high technology solution to green house gas emissions is apparently as threatening to life as the 19th and 20th century technologies of coal powered rail and internal combustion motors for automobiles have proved to be.

Well, what can be done given the obvious crisis now faced world wide as a consequence of global warming and climate change?

Clearly the system of economy built on petroleum must come to a sudden stop. Instead of serving the demand for capital accumulation economy must be organized to promote and support life–human, plant, animal…life.  This is a tall order since a powerful slice of the human family demands a capital formation based economy.  Neither Karl Marx nor Adam Smith was correct.  Their theories have clearly been shown to be merely two sides of the same coin.  Both have lead to disaster for life. Huge examples of environmental destruction became obvious in the USSR after that empire’s collapse in 1991. Both the United Kingdom and the United States of America–capitalist bastions both–have demonstrated similar negative consequences for the environment.

If there are to be technological proposals for producing electricity or other types of energy then they must be heavily regulated for their adverse environmental emissions. Systems of gas and toxic product capture must be a part of the process of manufacture. This includes extraction of raw materials and the recycle of post-use materials.  Technology development must respect life in every way.

Food production must be localized and increasingly reliant on “natural gardening.”  By this term I mean that food (animal, fish, plant, insect, etc) must be produced as a product of human cooperation with nature where the goal is production of food and maintaining the health and fruitfulness of nature. Native peoples all around the world have a knowledge base for producing substantial quantities of food if they are allowed to maintain access to their historic territories. (Industrial forestry, farming and urban development have forced thousands of native populations from their original lands world-wide.)

The world must cease promoting growth as an aim in and of itself. Indeed, organizations that grow beyond human scale–beyond the possibility of human control–they must automatically be divided or broken down to smaller scale operations.  Size does matter. Even forests naturally break down into smaller units after growing too large. Native peoples have long understood the importance of maintaining smaller organizations and reducing large ones. We must learn again from native peoples.

Many indigenous nations have begun to forget the lessons of survival by adopting 19th and 20th century solutions to their social, economic, political and security problems.  These nations must reverse themselves and reclaim their ancient knowledge and make that knowledge a part of their 21st century solutions. Indigenous nations must also incorporate beneficial parts of western science, but reject those parts that clearly fail to support life.

High technology produces conveniences for entertainment, transportation, food processing, housing materials, and a large number of other products on which at least half the world’s population has come to depend. The other half of the world’s population does not have access to high technology. What do we conclude from this observation? There must be a global compromise between the two halves to transition immediately to life supporting tools and methods for producing the basics for life.  The transition must be negotiated from the ground up and not from the top down. Subregional meetings involving indigenous peoples, rural peoples and urban peoples must be urgently organized.  These meetings must seek a consensus on the transition.  Regional meetings must follow and agreements at the regional level must guide global behavior. All must look to supporting life.

technology, greenhouse gas, Scripps, Ray Weiss, global warming, climate change, indigenous knowledge

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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

Technorati Tags: climate change, Evo Morales, subsistence, capital

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February 2, 2008 by Rudolph Ryser.

Kenya is aflame with internecine tribal warfare. Sudan is split between the Arab controlled government, the Dinka, Fur, Nuba, and Nubian peoples. Rwanda, Uganda, Ethiopia, the Congo, and Chad have been equally faced with violence and warfare. Namibia battles separatist tribes in the northeast, and Zimbabwe’s government promotes division and violence against Zimbabwe’s various peoples. Nigeria violently attacks and imprisons advocates of the Republic of Biafra lead by Igbo, Ijaw, and Ogoni nations.

Violence between indigenous nations in Africa’s states boils with vengeance. At the core of all of these conflicts are three major irritants: corrupt control over the state apparatus, uneven distribution of natural resource wealth and denial of access to land.

Most African states were officially decolonized in the 1960s and afterward. European colonial domination was replaced by neocolonialism and black African recolonization where corrupt tribal leaders, corporations and other financial interests maintained a grasp on natural resources (land, diamonds, oil, minerals, precious wood), made newly empowered African state leaders into corrupt puppets and impoverished millions of indigenous African nations. State boundaries were imposed on populations by those who thought the state system was good for Europe and would be good for Africa–they weren’t and aren’t. Whole peoples have been prevented from accessing their traditional territories and lands necessary for the the production of food and natural wealth.

Europe’s state system in Africa has fundamentally failed to benefit Africa’s hundreds of different nations. Corruption, the use of state force against differing nations inside the boundaries of a state, denial of access to life supporting land and denial of shared wealth are all symptomatic of failed African states. The states have been bankrupted while individual families and dominating tribes have been enriched.  The state system has failed!

Corporations have battered African natural resources by plundering raw materials and undermine social and cultural stability of tribal peoples through de facto slave trading. Single sources of wealth have contributed to impoverishment of whole peoples and enrichment of a few. The few control access to the natural resources and businesses deal only with them to gain access.  This imbalance reflects the blind profit motive that fails to recognize the social, cultural and economic imbalances caused by outside economic demands for energy, minerals, wood and even animal parts like ivory tusks from elephants and  the hands and feet of gorillas.

European-based land tenure systems have disenfranchised whole peoples and removed them from access to life-giving lands. The wealthy and the powerful control the best lands while nations starve. Lands that produce food are used to produce exports to other countries resulting in the enrichment of those who control the land.

Kenya is inflamed by the reality of corrupt states’ governments, the failure of fair natural wealth distribution and denial of land access. Kenya is only the most visible of festering violence being done in Africa.

How to remedy the current violence?  There is no way to stop the violence now. States will be broken up, violence will be done to businesses that steal raw materials (like Shell Oil experiences in the Delta Region of Nigeria), and land will be reclaimed through violence. The original nations of Africa cannot and will not be denied as the violence, the famine, the disease and hatreds gripping unstable and bankrupt states foretells. The state system will be replaced with something more appropriate to the history and realities of the African continent.

Africa’s indigenous nations have been too long denied their place in their own countries.  They have been denied the benefits of enormous natural wealth and life giving land and water.  Africa is not a poor place. It is a corrupted place that needs cleaning out.  The corrupt and bankrupt neocolonialism and black tribal recolonization must be replaced and apparently Africa’s original nations are now, however, chaotically, moving to reclaim their destiny.

(c) 2008 Center for World Indigenous Studies

Technorati Tags: kenya, Africa, corruption, recolonization, violence in Africa, wars

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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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November 4, 2007 by Rudolph Ryser.

The United Nations General Assembly launched the First UN Development Decade in December 1961.  In those heady days sixteen years after the end of World War II popular opinion in the world was being encouraged to believe that economic development, economic growth and progress would combine to give the world paradise. Placed on a global scale, this was the equivalent of President Dwight Eisenhower’s, “chicken in every pot,” and a car in every garage.

In 1970, the UN General Assembly was given the bad news: the First UN Development Decade had failed.  The minimal growth rate set as an objective for all countries was 5% in aggregate national income by the end of the declared decade. The world had been divided into developed, underdeveloped and less-developed countries and all but the developed countries failed to achieve the objective. Measured in dollars the so-called gap between developed countries and everyone else widened substantially. Secretary-General U Thant remarked in 1969 that the lack of progress or slow progress  came about because of low food production, problems with diseases and education levels had not be achieved. Because of population increases and the absence of a well-thought out international development strategy the UN Development program reported that the effective improvement in growth was only 2%.

The Second UN Development Decade also failed to meet the objectives set by the General Assembly, and so did the Third UN Development Decade. In 1990 the UN General Assembly marched up to the UN chambers again and declared a Fourth UN Development Decade that would set a new International Development Strategy that contained six points:

1. To speed up the pace of economic growth in the developing countries;
2. To devise a development process that meets social needs, reduces
   extreme poverty significantly, develops and uses people’s capacity and
   skills, and is environmentally sound and sustainable;
3. To improve the international systems of money, finance, and trade;
4. To strengthen and stabilize the world economy and establish sound
   macroeconomic management practices, nationally and internationally;
5. To strengthen international cooperation for development;
6. To make a special effort to deal with the particular problems of the least developed countries.

    United Nations Economic and Social Development

By the time the new century came around, the UN Fourth Development Decade had been characterized as a failure as well. Economic growth had to increase its pace in developing countries. There hadn’t been improved international development cooperation and the least-developed countries had experienced “negligible” economic and social progress. This failure occurred despite the establishment of the World Trade Organization, the World Intellectual Property Organization, and approval of the Law of the Seas (aimed at distributing wealth) and the Convention on Biodiversity (aimed at making tropical and other “natural resources” available for trade).

Now that we are all engaged in the Fifth United Nations Development Decade what can we say has been accomplished in the more than 40 years since “development” was declared the goal for all of humanity. Well let’s take a look:

The gap between the well-off and the rest of the world has grown even greater than it was in 1960 when dollar income differences were 10 to 1.  Now the difference is measure in excess of 450 to 1.  Apparently “development” worked better for a few than for the rest of the world.

More than 121 million children in the world do not attend school.

Half the world’s population–about three billion people–live on less than the equivalent of two dollars a day ($60 per month).

The gross domestic product of 48 of the world’s poorest states is less than the wealth of the world’s three richest individuals. That bears repeating: three individual people have control over greater wealth than the total economic output of 48 of the world’s poorest countries.

According to Ignacio Ramonet’s report in Le Monde diplomatique :

In 1960 the income of the 20 % of the
world’s population living in the richest countries was 30 times
greater than that of the 20 % in the poorest countries. Now we
learn that in 1995 it was 82 times greater (2). In over 70
countries, per capita income is lower today than it was 20 years
ago.

What kind of farce is being perpetrated here? “Development” as was originally conceived in the early 1960s was supposed to be measured in terms of social change with improved education, quality of life, improved economic conditions, improved food, shelter and institutions for the world’s less advantaged.  “Development” is not happening for humanity; it is primarily benefiting the wealthy and those few who now control most of the world’s resources. “Development” is a sham for generations of people who were told they would have a better life, and that they should play by the rules and work hard.  Well, billions of people have played by the rules and worked hard; and all that has happened is that they bear more children who grow up to play by the rules and work hard so that a few individuals, a small elite in virtually every country, can become wealthy and experience a better way of life.  The human lives that are considered expendable should instead be celebrated for their life on the planet.  What kind of “development” is it when 200 of the wealthiest individuals in the world controlled $1 trillion in 1999 while at the same time the combined wealth of 582 million people living in 43 of the so-called least developed countries had just $146 billion.

“Development” is a cruel fiction that sounds good, but in reality prospers a very tiny elite, impoverishes the vast majority of the peoples in the world, destroys the world’s life giving soils, air, water, plants and animals and creates a world of terror and violence. “Development” and its sister “sustainable development” are a hoax that undermines life-giving small and diverse economies, devalues the life giving role of men and women, and rapes the natural world.

What is the alternative? Small economies, diverse in their relationship to the environment in which they operate, produce life, do not impoverish people and do not ravage the natural plants, animals, water, air and soil.  Small economies produce what is needed by a community and if excess is produced it is either distributed through giveaways in the community or traded to a nearby community for other things. Small scale economies exist throughout the world relying on the creativity, skill, knowledge and intelligence of people who are both producers and consumers.  When consumers are also producers they tend to respect the limits of the natural world and recognize the value in what they possess. “Development” promotes only more consumers.

More and more people in the world are being removed from their land in the name of “development” when they ought to be encouraged to continue to use that land and produce their own foods.  When people are pushed off their land they become impoverished and wholly dependent on the “development economy.”  That places the power in the hands of an elite group who become the main beneficiaries of the land.

In the United States and Canada Indian people were pushed off their lands and poverty ensued. The richest nations in the world became, in short order, beggars and dependents.

In only the last fifteen years, Indian governments in the United States have begun to take control over their own economic lives within the boundaries of their postage-stamp sized reservations.  For many of these nations, the only economic model they know about is the economic model of “development.”  A new kind of dependency is occurring in Indian communities where new elites are being created based on a money economy that recognizes value only in “economic development.”

Poverty is extensive in Indian communities except for those who control the money.  The small economy that made everyone wealthy on which people depended for hundreds and thousands of years now constitutes about 5% of the tribal economic activity.  Tribal economic activity is devalued because it doesn’t “make money” but it does produce and sustain life. Child care, housekeeping, care for the elderly and infirm, gathering of natural medicines and foods, traditional health care and medicines, making clothing, making of masks and other ceremonial regalia, making canoes are among those things that do not get counted as valuable, yet without these things life could not be sustained.

Tribal communities must abandon what is obviously already a failure: “Development.” “Economic Development” is guaranteed to produce more poverty, an elite wealthy, and activities destructive of life.

(c) 2007 Center for World Indigenous Studies

Technorati Tags: development, small economies, United Nations, Development Decade

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October 8, 2007 by Rudolph Ryser.

The Micmac of what is now Newfoundland, Canada were probably the first of the many peoples of the western hemisphere to see the boats from Skania (at the southern tip of what is now Sweden) arrive near their shores about one thousand years before the present. The Skanians continued to show up on the Micmac shores for decades and then they were gone.  The northern Atlantic currents allowed for occasional visits by the peoples who would be viking and fishing in what eventually would be known as Iceland, and then Greenland and in the “new found land” of the far west. These were the descendants of the early travelers from northern Europe who only sporadically visited and settled for short times.

For the nations of the western hemisphere, the first visits from the “norse lands” proved to be disastrous.  While there was little actual intercourse between the visiting fishers and the people on the land, the “germs of Europe” had landed. Unbeknown to either the Micmac or the Skanians, deadly diseases that would eventually consume a hemisphere had been  left in the communities to spread along trade routes to the south and to the interior.

The cod fishing fleets of what would become Norway, France, Portugal and England traveled the month-long sail across the sea to take millions of fish from the rich shores of Newfoundland and the “banks” to the south as far as the Wampanoag and Narragansett of what would become Massachusetts. Such fishing was intense for its time for more than five hundred years until the early 1600s when colonization of North America’s Atlantic coast began in earnest. Driven by a produce “more valuable than gold” for the wealth earned in Europe, the cod fishery drove the expansion of northern Europe and eventually stimulated boat building by the Basque of Iberic Peninsula (eventually to be known as Spain).

The Basque were superb boat builders and seafarers (and remain so today). They were whalers and fishermen of long experience–possessing great knowledge about the ocean to the west. New ships worthy of long hauls across the Atlantic Ocean were built and became in the 1400s the foundation for what would become the means for the Genoan, Don Cristóval Colon (Christopher Columbus in the United States) to travel from Spain to the land of the Taino Nation in the western hemisphere. Basque knowledge combined with Skanian, English, Breton, and Irish knowledge of the Atlantic Ocean developed over five hundred years proved to be essential to Don Colon and his proposal to the new Queen and King of Spain in 1491 for a journey to brasil and the spice islands.

Before Don Colon set foot in Taino territory in 1492, the diseases that would eventually kill millions of people throughout the western hemisphere had already been planted and replanted in what would become known as New England. When Don Colon stood on the shores of the Taino nation it is fairly clear he had no idea that bacteria and viruses carried by his predecessors and now his own shipmates would deal a death blow to so many peoples in the vibrant and hugely populated western hemisphere (some estimates suggest a collective hemispheric population of 90,000,000 to 110,000,000). The western hemisphere was populated by hundreds of large cities (some with populations of 500,000 and more) dwarfed Europe’s cities and, indeed, the European populations.  Nations from the tip of what is now called South America to the far north of what is called North America now engaged in trade and migrations north and south.

The Huadenosaunee and Wampanoag confederations had been seriously damaged by introduced diseases in the years before initial settlements from England. The Taino were also damaged by introduced diseases from Don Colon’s visits.  The most striking fact is that these diseases traveled like wild fire from one nation to the other by way of the trade routes long established and functioning in the western hemisphere.

Disease was the first product of globalization beginning a little more than one thousand years before the present. After disease came rape, slavery and finally wars to the nations of the western hemisphere. Lief Erikson is one name attached to the first European visits and Cabot and Don Colon. The search for fish wealth, spices and gold wealth introduced deadly diseases like influenza, chicken pox, measles, and malaria in to the lands of the Micmac, Taino, the Maya, the Inkas, and eventually the Apache, Shoshone, Dakota and then the Cowlitz, Skagit, and the Squamish of the northeastern Pacific Ocean.

Whole communities would die in a matter of days after the deadly infections were introduced by carriers who traded between nations carrying their goods on their backs, in canoes, on dog pulling travoi, and on Llamas. Before the Europeans even arrived in most places in the hemisphere, death by disease had already arrived.

After sustaining enormous losses (sometimes half of a population and other times as much as 90% of a population would die) whole nations were sometimes left to wander–leaving their cities and dropping their cultivation of maize, potatoes, tomatoes, manioc, squash, beans, chilis and thousands of other plant and animal products that provided sustenance to millions. When the Europeans began to come in greater numbers and settle in the western hemisphere, they were in many instances faced with nations only beginning to recover from former losses. And then with new settlers came new diseases.  The effects of disease globalization continued for generation after generation.

The first round of globalization beginning so long ago was followed by another phase in the 1500s. That produced more disease. And now a new phase of globalization has struck that covets the lands and resources of the Fourth World in a way never before experienced. What diseases will come of this new pariah?

(c) 2007 Center for World Indigenous Studies

Technorati Tags: skania, columbus, globalization, disease

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October 1, 2007 by Rudolph Ryser.

“Don’t touch those tennis shoes!” is the command said directly or otherwise implied. By this command, Fourth World peoples are directed to stay as their ancestors were and not live as modern human beings. This has been the way of the settler descendants to keep indigenous peoples from claiming their powers and rights.

Descendants of settler populations control the economic and political power in the modern state; and the peoples on top of whom the state was formed–the indigenous people–are supposed to be content with being social artifacts–powerless and satisfied with settler castoffs. The original peoples of lands the world over are stratified into the lowest level of social identity in the modern state.

In South Africa, the original peoples of that land remain, despite the African National Congress rise to power in the last ten years, socially, politically and economically at the bottom of the social pile. They suffer the greatest health and economic problems and lack the power to change the circumstances.

In Chile, the Mapuche have been assigned the lowest rank in Chilean and Argentine society and they suffer constant threats and attacks for lack of social and political power.

The Sammi of Norway, Sweden and Finland also suffer from this social stratification that will deny the more than 60,000 indigenous peoples of Scandinavia political power.

In much of the western hemisphere the language of powerlessness is used by state authorities, academics, politicians, business people and the every day settler descendant to eliminate or otherwise obscure the distinctive identity of specific indigenous peoples. With the expectation of perfecting a “homogeneous state” the descendants of settler populations who largely rule and control the state power structures in Spanish occupied states have used the word mestizo to suggest that an individual has a social standing above a “mere Indian”–that category being of lower social status. Mestizo is accepted by many individuals who are Indígena in an effort to avoid being assigned a lower social status in the state. As Guillermo Bonfil Batalla observes in his México profundo (edited by Philip A. Dennis) the process of “de-indianization” of rural Mexican populations has been underway since before the formation of the Mexican state. Its goal? The elimination of the original peoples of the land.

Clearly the effort to eliminate the Indian population over time has failed, for as noted in Bonfil’s work: Their lives and ways of understanding the world continue to be rooted in Mesoamerican civilization–pre-Spanish societies. Perhaps 70% of Mexico’s population are in fact people rooted in the ancient civilizations. Despite this reality, social and institutional pressures heavily emphasize mestizo as an identity rather than indígena or the original identity people know themselves by.

States throughout the hemisphere and indeed throughout the world repeat this pattern. And it is the case that indigenous peoples the world over remain rooted in their ancient cultures. The indigenous population is often much larger than state records document. The concern seems to be that when indigenous peoples are recognized to be of greater numbers they will band together and compete for power with setter descendants.

That seems to be the worry among settler descendants in Bolivia where the state population of Indígena is the majority population (60% of 9.3 million). Despite this fact, the settler descendants who oppose the rise of power among the original peoples want to promote the view that this majority population is Bolivian, “mestizo” or of otherwise mixed-race heritage. By virtue of this view, it is argued, the indigenous population is considered smaller.

Indigenous peoples want to take the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples seriously. In particular Article 26 of the Declaration commands considerable attention. It is here that the UN Declaration states: Indigenous peoples have the right to the lands, territories and resources which they have traditionally owned, occupied or otherwise used or acquired. This principle seems to directly threaten the settler descendant population since they basically stole most of the land on which they live. They are clearly concerned in Bolivia that those who are Indígena will no longer want to be called Mestizo and wish to claim their right to lands and self-government.

Because of the UN Declaration Indígena now means power and the choice to reclaim lands and resources for the benefit of original peoples.

For millions of peoples in the world, reclaiming land on which to grow food, build society and families has got a shot in the arm. There is great opposition to this idea by those who claim the lands and resources originally used and owned by Indígena. The struggle for one’s identity may be less difficult than the struggle to take back the lands, the resources and the power taken by those who came to occupy and replace lands and the people. In Bolivia the struggle has been raging and now will take on a new level of importance.

The war in Nicaragua between the Miskito, Sumo and Rama and the government of Nicaragua between 1981 and 1990 demonstrated that indigenous peoples will defend their lands and their way of life with success. The Zapatistas demonstrated a resurgent power in Mexico as have the Mixe in Oaxaca simply by taking the initiative and acting. The Salish peoples demonstrated their resurgent claims to the right of self-government in Canada and the United States and have begun to force a shift in political power. Fourth World nations throughout the hemisphere, and indeed throughout the world, may now reclaim their lands, resources and power to decide their own social, economic, political, economic and cultural future. In the western hemisphere, the may come that it is no longer mestizo, but Indígena that identifies the majority populations in many states.

(C) 2007 Center for World Indigenous Studies

Technorati Tags: UN Declaration, Indígena, mestizo, land rights, political power

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September 27, 2007 by Rudolph Ryser.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(c) Center for World Indigenous Studies

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

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August 21, 2007 by Rudolph Ryser.

Many Fourth World nations have experienced an explosive growth of chronic diseases in their populations. Diabetes, heart disease, obesity, depression, and suicide along with alcoholism and conventional and illicit drug addiction now top the list of killers in Mexico’s indigenous villages, on US reservations and Canadian reserves. Where Mexican communities had no diabetes or heart disease twenty-years ago, these chronic conditions now afflict growing numbers of young and old. In Canadian communities these chronic conditions, these slow killers, began to rear their ugly heads twenty-five years ago and as recently as ten years ago. Fourth World nations in the US have experienced a growing incidence of chronic diabetes, heart disease, arthritis and cancers since the end of World War II. In all of these nations, chronic diseases were virtually non-existent until fairly recently. What changed?

The benefits of modern free enterprise and the loss of natural foods and medicines.

Medical practitioners in all three countries have busily over-prescribed antibiotics that have suppressed immune systems and irrationally prescribed Oxycodone–that wonder drug sythesized from thebaine that has contributed to millions of addictions. The US Indian Health Service is the source of growing drug addiction cases on Indian reservations simply because “pain relief” is taken from an Oxycodone bottle. In Mexico a cold will get a person a dose of antibiotics even though such a prescription will do nothing for the cold. Canada has irrationally promoted the importation of harmful sweets and carbohydrates into Indian communities contributing to dietary overloads from these refined sources.

Inexpensive foods, dangerous drugs, environmentally dangerous herbicides and pesticides are regularly dumped into native communities. Natural environments are destroyed so they are nolonger accessible or available for natural food and medicine harvests. Mercury and ddt is increasingly found in the fats of fish poisoning native peoples and further undermining their immune systems.

Free enterprise principles argue that these native peoples want these poisons and so the economies of states produce them. Nonsense! Native peoples want healthy and unadulterated foods and medicines like all the rest of humanity. The so called free enterprise system dumps garbage into native communities and rapes their natural territories leaving growing numbers of Fourth World peoples with chronic diseases that slowly, but most assuredly maim and kill as if a bomb had been dropped.

Fourth World peoples still have knowledge of important foods and medicines that prevent chronic diseases, but they don’t always have the social or physical access to these necessities of life.

Wild plants, clean fish, clean wild animals, medicines from the earth–all are quite attractive even to the metropolitan city dweller. Indeed, their measured use will reverse most chronic diseases like diabetes, heart disease and depression. Unfortunately, the demands of the city dweller extract the very best from Fourth World territories and return foods and medicines that create dependence, addiction and chronic disease. Fourth World culture, foods and medicines are the source of life that all of humanity must work to preserve and encourage by avoiding the pharmaceutical fix: the pill that poisons.

Leaders of Fourth World nations must take the initiative to protect their peoples from the poisons of “modern civilization.” This was the mission of many leaders in the 19th and 20th century. New leaders in the 21st century must find new ways to protect their peoples and ensure their health for generations to come, or there will be no generations to come. This cause is so urgent that delay of a few years will see only growing destruction in Fourth World communities.

(c) 2007 Center for World Indigenous Studies

Technorati Tags: health, chronic disease, diabetes, depression, free enterprise

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