I hear you, Ray, sort of. The study I did for the Royal Commission on
Aboriginal Peoples some years ago addressed the costs to Canada of aboriginal
under-education, poor health, inability to be part of the labor force, etc. It
wasn't supposed to say this, but its underlying message was c'mon you guys,
smarten up, get with it, become like us so we don't have to look after you
forever! It was all about their costs to us and said nothing about the costs
we've imposed on them by taking their land, by bringing in European
communicable diseases, or by cutting their communities and way of life to
pieces.
I've been to the Itaipu dam on the Brazil-Paraguay border. When I was there in
the 1990's it was the largest dam in the world and had created a huge reservoir
on lands that the Guarani Indians had occupied. The message to the Guarani was
c'mon you guys, forget your forests. You have to get jobs now. Some did. A
couple of Guarani women were selling beads and trinkets at the Brazilian end of
the bridge that connected Brazil and Paraguay across the Piranha River.
I've also been to central Costa Rica, the locale of one of the most beautiful
societies on earth. The people who live there, mostly of Hispanic origin,
looked after each other lovingly with co-op after co-op after co-op.
Everything seemed be done cooperatively and the people seemed very happy. But
the area had once had a large Indian population. Where was it? Gone mostly. The
bits that were left lived far away from the main communities in little isolated
villages. Were they happy? Not likely.
When I looked at the Survival website I felt a sadness and foreboding. The
forests and outbacks that the remaining Pygmies, Hottentots, Aboriginals, rain
forest Indians, etc. live in are bound to change and probably change greatly as
the global population moves from its present 7 billion to the UN's prediction
of over 9 billion in a few decades. Someone (Steve perhaps?) posted something
on the pressures the environment is already under as the current population
urbanizes and the existing land base becomes over-utilized.
It makes one want to tell the people of the forests and the outbacks to get out
now, get educated, become like us, survive! But something tells me they won't
and perhaps they can't. It would seem that culture is deeply embedded in
people, and may be something that's passed on epigenetically from generation to
generation. It's not something you can simply walk away from. As the forests
are chopped away and the outbacks are transformed to agriculture or whatever,
the cultures that depend on them will fade away. There will be survivors, of
course. They'll be like the odd person of Indian origin that I encountered in
the slums of Sao Paulo, who didn't have much of an idea of where he'd come from.
Ed
________________________________
From: Ray Harrell <mc...@nyc.rr.com>
To: 'Ed Weick' <ewe...@rogers.com>; 'Keith Hudson' <keithhudso...@gmail.com>;
"RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION"
<futurework@lists.uwaterloo.ca>
Sent: Wednesday, June 12, 2013 11:41:05 PM
Subject: RE: The plight of aboriginal people
Thanks Ed.
What can I say? Capitalism and a woman President who underwent rape and
torture by people she opposed. Stockholm Syndrome? Remnant forest nations
are easy targets. A single anthropologist will do.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/05/world/americas/president-rousseffs-decades-old-torture-detailed.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
Pinker is such a pretty boy with his curls. Things ARE getting better, for
him. As for Jared Diamond? I've gone on about him with Keith. I still
think the same way. Pinker and Diamond are Western cultural apologists and
stuck in their libraries. You can't be a book worshipper and be a good
scientist. Abuse and mass murder need not always lead to revenge and
retribution. Just look at the European Romany. No one is nastier than the
Europeans to the Romany. They don't seem to be willing to give them an
identity or respect for anything they do. Not their music, the dance, not
anything. Note the NYTimes article not long ago about the successful Romany
in Rumania. The typical response was they "stole" it just like the Swiss
stole gypsy children "for their own good." Still, have you ever seen a Gypsy
army? Even NBC's Grimm has the evil Gypsy allied with the witches who are
anti-Grimm.
Hollywood Gypsies are like Hollywood Indians. Now if that were a Drabani,
I might worry but in all liklihood it is a simple Gitche Serve' just fooling
around with the unclean Gadje.
People are more deserving of respect then most are willing to give. Getting
to know them and telling the truth is often a hopeless venture. Look at the
preacher who brought out the 50 to 70% death rate amongst the First Nation's
Boarding Schools and documented it. He lost everything. He was fired from
his church and then defrocked by the national church and then his wife left
him. You've got to be strong to tell the truth.
How do I feel about the Brazil Indians? If they were "dirty" (as in always
dirty) as the press claims, then they would not be able to hunt. War is a
different matter. War is dirty as are mind altering drugs. The Yanomami's
sense of smell is so good that they can tell you where a monkey pissed at
thirty yards. (Wade Davis) Do you believe that the monkey could'nt smell a
dirty hunter at 80 feet? Do you believe that anthropologists never infer
when they are scared?
Native foresters bathe at least once a day and have for thousands of years.
Indians without plentiful water use a very hot sweat lodge once a day where
others "go to the water" whether frozen or not. They don't want to starve.
The inference with "dirty" in English also becomes a metaphor for human toxic
waste. What some call huckapuck. We call it ukstaha. Indians were
pretty good at transformation there, especially in Mexico. No one handled
human waste better than the Aztecs who cleaned it and used it in the gardens
once it was no longer toxic. Up North the prairie people's used buffalo dung
for everything from fertilizer to baby diapers. After a couple of years on
the prairie what was left was soft, absorbent and sterile.
"Dirty" is a pejorative in the case of Indian people. Mark Twain used it
walking, after a hard rain, between the Tipis of Plains Indians. Think "Dirty
bear" or "dog" or "snake." A metaphor for "unhuman." That made it OK to
steal from us and even kill us. We are "dirty." Sounds like some mother
trying to potty train a child.
I believe all people have the possibility of nobility and honor but the Noble
Savage is a silly stereotype. People are complicated no matter where they
are. They also have the potential for significance and nobility. When
Napoleon Chagnon admitted sorrow to the Yanomami he said: “I was hushuo, in a
state of emotional disequilibrium, and had finally begun to act like a human
being as far as they were concerned.” What was he acting like, as an
anthropologist, that wasn't human being?
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/17/magazine/napoleon-chagnon-americas-most-controversial-anthropologist.html?pagewanted=all
Actually, that the remnant nations have survived at all, given the intrusions,
speaks reams. They are a beautiful people. Some of the most beautiful I've
ever seen. Are they brutal? Is a person working in a kosher slaughter
house brutal? Is a Weyerhauser forest farm brutal? Is a nylon fishing
net brutal? Is trying to kill one culture to replace it with another in the
same human being the act of a brute?
The Amazon Indigenous Nations are farmers and foresters. If you don't
believe me just read the NYTimes Science section. Even the Newspaper of
record with its generics has admitted to advanced farming techniques of the
Amazonian Indians spread out over 15 year cycles. Think Terra Preta. The
Amazonians would say the point is whether you respect the plants and animals
that you kill and eat. There are some good environmentalist anthropologists
working in the Amazon. They know the languages and learn the cultures. Some
good scientists as well but good science begins with respect and a genuine
humane search for knowledge.
I would recommend "Advances in Historical Ecology" ed. William Balee Oikos
pub. for the latest in the exploration of the ecological practices of the
Amazonian Remnant Nations. Balee and his colleagues are the ones who put the
lie to so many of the small groups being fundamentally primitive. What they
proved was that the small jungle groups were survivors of much more complex
societies and were wandering in a kind of PTSD social situation where they had,
as Sartre called it, a "No Exit" social pathology. A situation far removed
from the "just dirty bad people barely above animal status" or examples of
"primal human beginnings." "People just waiting to be discovered by the
Europeans so they could begin their history properly."
That type of stereotype is on a par with L. Frank Baum the Wizard of Oz who
advocated extermination of the Sioux since they were debouched from a former
glory or Duncan Campbell Scott's "Final Solution" that was later mouthed by
the German Fuehrer. With both a Campbell and a McDonald advocating in
Canada for cultural genocide via the native children, might we not say that
they were suffering from a Glencoe PTSD passed down through hundreds of years
by their warring families? Every attitude comes from somewhere and not just
the toxic ones.
Whether we care that they continue or are connected to us is a description of
our honor, dignity and significance as human beings. What does it mean that
their cultural practices will protect the environment in order to make a
universe which is balanced and where diversity survives but ours will not?
Balee's conversations with certain of the Indians now being displaced by the
dams, is an exercise in trying to keep up with a subtle forester's mind. Is
the President of Brazil as subtle? Does she think as holistically as the
Native forester, or is she just a part of the great religious idolatry founded
in Europe on the money ripped from the gold of the Pre-Columbian American
Nations? These dams in Brazil are like putting a freeway through the
Vatican or a canal through the White House. They've done it before. They
did it in the Seneca Nation in upstate New York and flooded the Cherokee Sacred
sites and
cities in Tennessee. Does "potential" mean the ability to rape the
environment with impunity? Just like they raped the President of Brazil?
Will they hang the Amazon upside down when they torture it? Has it already
begun?
REH
From:Ed Weick [mailto:ewe...@rogers.com]
Sent: Wednesday, June 12, 2013 3:57 PM
To: Ray Harrell; Keith Hudson
Subject: Fw: The plight of aboriginal people
I sent this to Ottawa dissenters earlier today. You will also be interested.
Ed
----- Forwarded Message -----
From:Ed Weick <ewe...@rogers.com>
To: dissenters <ottawadissent...@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Wednesday, June 12, 2013 10:46:23 AM
Subject: The plight of aboriginal people
An interesting website:
http://www.survivalinternational.org/
Ed
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