NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #26/NN_1992_26.iso/spool/talk/environm/4530

Text File | 1992-11-08 | 7.9 KB | 142 lines

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Path: sparky!uunet!cis.ohio-state.edu!math.cornell.edu!harelb
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Subject: QUINCENTENIAL: "We Are Still Here"
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Date: Sat, 7 Nov 1992 05:17:06 GMT
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    "Columbus was a slave trader, a thief, a pirate, and most certainly
    not a hero.
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    "The Taino, Arawak, and other indigenous peoples of the Caribbean,
    the first "hosts of Columbus," were systematically destroyed [..]
    Every man over 14 years of age was obliged to bring a quota of
    gold to the conquistadors every three months. Those who could not
    pay the tribute had their hands cut off "as a lesson." Most bled
    to death.
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    since 1900 one-third of all indigenous nations in the Amazon have
    been decimated, while during the same time one- quarter of the
    forest has disappeared. There is a direct relationship between how
    industrial society consumes land and resources and how it consumes
    peoples. [..]  In the past 150 years, we have seen the extinction
    of more species than since the ice age.

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[Via misc.activism.progressive from PeaceNet's igc.netnews]
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Topic 143       -- We Are Still Here
jillaine        IGC NetNews      6:10 pm  Oct  2, 1992
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              ===========================================
          We are Still Here -- 500 Years Celebration
                ***  ***  ***
           b y   W i n o n a   L a D u k e
              ===========================================

To "discover" implies that something is lost. Something was lost, and it
was Columbus. Unfortunately, he did not discover himself in the process
of his lostness. He went on to destroy peoples, land, and ecosystems in
his search for material wealth and riches.

Columbus was a perpetrator of genocide, responsible for setting in
motion the most horrendous holocaust to have occurred in the history of
the world. Columbus was a slave trader, a thief, a pirate, and most
certainly not a hero. To celebrate Columbus is to congratulate the
process and history of the invasion.

The Taino, Arawak, and other indigenous peoples of the Caribbean, the
first "hosts of Columbus," were systematically destroyed. Thirteen at a
time they were hanged, in honor of the 12 apostles and the Redeemer.
Every man over 14 years of age was obliged to bring a quota of gold to
the conquistadors every three months. Those who could not pay the
tribute had their hands cut off "as a lesson." Most bled to death.

Sixty years later, in 1552, the Catholic priest Bartoleme de las Casas
declared that within the entire Western Hemisphere, a total of 50
million Indians had already perished in just over a half century of
Spanish invasion. Las Casas had been an eyewitness to some of the
slaughter and depopulation caused by diseases accidentally introduced by
the Spanish. In his protest of his own people's "abominable cruelties
and detestable tyrannies," Las Casas cried out that five million had
died on the Caribbean islands and that 45 million had died on the
mainland. (In 1492, in the Western Hemisphere, there were 112,554,000
American Indians. By 1980, there were 28,264,000 American Indians.)

Although Columbus himself later returned to Europe in disgrace, his
methods were subsequently used in Mexico, Peru, the Black Hills of South
Dakota, and at Wounded Knee and Sand Creek. They are still being used in
Guatemala and El Salvador, and in Indian territory from Amazonia to Pine
Ridge in South Dakota. The invasion set into motion a process, thus far
unabated. This has been a struggle over values, religions, resources,
and, most important, land.

The "Age of Discovery" marked the age of colonialism, a time when our
land suddenly came to be viewed as "your land." While military
repression is not in North American vogue (at least with the exception
of the Oka Mohawk uprising of the summer of 1990 , today legal doctrines
uphold that our land is your land, based ostensibly on the so called
"doctrine of discovery." This justifies in the white legal system the
same dispossession of people from their land that is caused by outright
military conquest. But in a "kinder, gentler world," it all appears more
legal.

We understand that "to get to the rainforest, you must first kill the
people," and that is why since 1900 one-third of all indigenous nations
in the Amazon have been decimated, while during the same time one-
quarter of the forest has disappeared. There is a direct relationship
between how industrial society consumes land and resources and how it
consumes peoples.

In the past 150 years, we have seen the extinction of more species than
since the ice age. And since 1492, we have witnessed the extinction of
more than 2,000 indigenous peoples from the Western Hemisphere. Where
are the Wappo, the Takelma, the Natchez, and the Massachuset?

Most disgraceful of all is the self-congratulatory hoopla under way in
most colonial and neocolonial states. In 1992, the governments of Spain,
Italy, the United States, and 31 other countries are hosting the largest
public celebration of this century to mark the 500th anniversary of the
arrival of "Western civilization" in the hemisphere.

It is in the face of this celebration of genocide that thousands of
indigenous peoples are organizing to commemorate their resistance, and
to bring to a close the 500-year-long chapter of the invasion.
Indigenous organizations such as CONAIE (Confederation of Indigenous
Nationalities of Ecuador), SAIIC  (South and Central American Indian
Information Center), the Indigenous Women's Network, Seventh Generation
Fund, the International Indian Treaty Council, UNI (from the Brazilian
Amazon), and other groups have worked to bring forth the indigenous
perspective on the past 500 years.

A number of Native writers, including Gerald Vizenor, M. Scott Momaday,
Louise Erdrich, and Joy Harjo, are completing books and anthologies on
the 500 years. And a great number of indigenous peoples are calling on
other groups--nationally and internationally--to mobilize around 1992 as
a year to protect the Earth and the people of the Earth.  Indeed, the
ecological agenda is what many indigenous people believe can, and must,
unite all peoples in 1992. That agenda calls for everyone to take
aggressive action to stop the destruction of the Earth, essentially to
end the biological, technological, and ecological invasion/conquest that
began with Columbus' ill-fated voyage 500 years ago.

Through it all, indigenous people will continue to struggle. It is this
legacy of resistance that, perhaps more than any other single activity,
denotes the essence of 1992. After all the hoopla and celebration by the
colonial governments are over, the Native voice will prevail. It is like
a constant rumble of distant thunder, and it says through the wind, "We
are alive. We are still here."

Winona LaDuke is president of the Indigenous Women's Network and a
member of the Anishinabe Nation.  Orignally published in Sojourners,
October 1991. Reprint permission granted by Sojourners, P.O. Box 29272,
Washington D.C. 20017.  This printed article has been edited for this
newsletter.  For the complete text see "We are Still Here" in the
conference 'native.1492'.