It was no surprise last year when the only four countries in the UN to oppose human rights for indigenous peoples were Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the United States. Now that Canada is trying to evict the Shuswap people from their territories in order to build Olympic tourism developments, Independent Media Center takes a look at what’s wrong with 2010.
Re-founding Nation-states
There are other indigenous movements that do not demand autonomies but the re-founding of nation-states based on indigenous cultures. This is the tendency most apparent in the various movements in the Andean region of the continent, especially among the Aymara in Bolivia.
With the decision to build autonomies, indigenous peoples seek to disperse power in order to achieve its direct exercise by the indigenous communities that demand it. It is a sort of decentralization that has nothing to do with that pushed by the government with the support of international institutions, which actually endeavors to enhance government control over society. The decentralization we are talking about, the one that indigenous peoples and communities advancing toward autonomy are showing us, includes the creation of paralegal forms to exercise power that are different from government entities, where communities can strengthen themselves and make their own decisions.
When indigenous peoples decide to build autonomies, they have made a decision that goes against state policies and forces those who choose that path to begin political processes to build networks of power capable of withstanding state attack, counter-powers that will allow them to establish themselves as a force with which governance must be negotiated, and alternative powers that will oblige the state to take them into account. In other words, indigenous communities must become political subjects with capacity and desire to fight for their collective rights, must understand the social, economic, political, and cultural reality in which they are immersed, as well as the various factors that contribute to their subordination and those that can be used to transcend that situation in such a way that they can take a position on their actions.
Indigenous peoples, by appealing to their culture and identifying practices in order to mobilize in defense of their rights, are questioning vertical political forms even as they offer horizontal forms that work for them, because they have tested them over centuries of resistance to colonialism. These are practices that come into play precisely at a moment when traditional organizations of political parties, syndicates, or others that are class-based and representative, are entering into a crisis, and society no longer sees itself reflected in them.
Therefore, we must celebrate that many indigenous peoples and communities have decided not to wait passively for changes to come from the outside and have enlisted in the construction of autonomous governments, unleashing processes where they test new forms of understanding rights, imagine other ways to exercise power, and create other types of citizenships.
Afghan Mafia
The US and her allies tried to legitimize their military occupation of Afghanistan under the banner of “bringing freedom and democracy for Afghan people”. But as we have experienced in the past three decades, in regard to the fate of our people, the US government first of all considers her own political and economic interests and has empowered and equipped the most traitorous, anti-democratic, misogynist and corrupt fundamentalist gangs in Afghanistan.—RAWA
Colonia
Pepe Escobar of Real News reports on The Rise of Neo-fascism in Bolivia, and the implications for anti-indigenous violence in 2008.
Lasting Scars
Hardly a family in East Timor was untouched by the Indonesian invasion in 1975. In the occupation, a third of the nation may have died from bombing, starvation and systematic killing. This is besides the forced displacement of most of the population and widespread evidence of rape, torture and other human rights violations. It is the worst massacre, per head of population, in recent history, comparable to Cambodia under Pol Pot and to Rwanda.—Le Monde
Curbing Criminal Behavior
In his now classic paper on fundamental forms of social organization, Tribes Institutions Markets Networks, RAND’s David Ronfeldt lays the foundation for further discussion on the dynamics of conflict over such values extended in his and John Arquilla’s paper Networks and Netwars, which is also the title of an anthology edited by them that considers the implications of questions like how civil society networks can effectively curb or overcome the criminal, anti-democratic behavior of other social actors.
Perhaps of further interest to the discussion are questions of how the moral and ethical lessons learned within the structures of family, clan, tribe, and (ethnic) nation can be applied in negotiating such remedies as autonomy, sovereignty, and power-sharing within the modern state and multi-state institutions. Dr. Rudolph Ryser’s paper Toward the Coexistence of Nations and States is probably the most enlightening in that regard.
Closing Ranks
The Guatemalan delegation threatened to remove the consultative status of the International Indian Treaty Council. It was a very aggressive reaction. They probably thought that if they could kill twenty indigenous people in El Quiche, they could shoot a few at the United Nations with the same arrogance. Their principal international ally was the US, which had been annoyed by the presence at the UN of Navajos, Hopis, Lakotas and Yaquis. It was sad to see these governments closing ranks to defend their repressive colleagues.—Rigoberta Menchu, Mayan recipient of the 1992 Nobel Peace Prize
Sui Generis
With legal assistance from the University of Toronto and University of Arizona schools of law, the Maya of Belize have prevailed in a precedent-setting case citing the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
Defending What is Ours
Narco News covers a Chiapas encuentro celebrating the 14th anniversary of the Zapatista uprising.
Marketing Generosity
In a new article from the International Journal of Communication, Inger L. Stole of the University of Illinois critiques Philanthropy as Public Relations. By examining the industry, Stole looks at how “cause marketing” detracts attention from the corporate role in undermining the public safety net.
