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civ-i-lize (siv'l-iz), v.t.[civilized, civilizing],[Fr. civiliser < L. civilis; see civil:lit. etym. sense,"to citify"], 1. to bring out of a condition of savagery or barbarism; instruct in the ways of an advanced society. 2. to better the habits or manners of; refine.
civ-i-li-za-tion (siv'l-i-za'shen), .n. 1. the process of civilizing or becoming civilized. 2. the condition of being civilized; social organization of a high order, marked by advances in the arts, sciences, etc. 3. the total culture of a people, nation, period, etc. 4. the countries and peoples considered to have reached a high stage of social and cultural development. "Progress" continues to revise our geopolitical map of the world with undeveloped countries changing to become developing countries and developing countries aspiring to become developed countries. When the core of the state system divided into 1st and 2nd World countries, nation-states not aligned with either political block were regarded as 3rd World. The emerging block of the 4th World consists of ancient nations of indigenous peoples from which these nation-states have grown. In Chief George Manuels publication "The 4th World: An Indian Reality", this block was defined as "...indigenous peoples descended from a country's aboriginal population and who today are completely or partly deprived of the right to their own territory and their riches." The people of the Fourth World possess no internally recognized sovereignty, yet their geopolitical force, through a unified movement toward self-determination is challenging the entire state system. Although self-determination for these nations may be considered the most problematical challenge of our decade because it questions the legitimacy of settler regimes, it is one that can no longer be avoided or postponed. The global consequences of resource exploitation in the Amazon are threatening not just the lives of indigenous peoples, but rather the lives of us ALL. The Center for World Indigenous Studies states, "Access to knowledge and people's ideas reduces the possibility of conflict and increases the possibility of cooperation between peoples on the basis of mutual consent. By democratizing relations between peoples, between nations and states, the diversity of nations and their cultures will continue to enrich the world." See complete text at http://www.halcyon.com/FWDP/fwdp.html A major characteristic that distinguishes 4th World nations is their adherence to and relationship with natural law. They hold these universal laws as sacred, and believe them to be that which what binds us together as a race of mankind. But the lifestyles of the modern world , along with the frantic pace at which we are proceeding, is in direct conflict with the philosophies of the 4th World. Our energy needs are blinding us to the ethical and moral ramifications of our plunder. A devastating example of the conflict between industry and the rights of indigenous people was illustrated in an article in the May, 1994 issue of the New Yorker Magazine, titled "Moi Goes To Washington", by Joe Kane. "In the Ecuadorian Amazon, Huaorani Indians waged an exhausting battle against the American petroleum interests that have begun drilling for two hundred million barrels of raw crude under their lands." Described as a "small but fearsome nation of semi-nomadic hunter-gatherers who have lived in isolation for so long that they speak a language unrelated to any on earth", and who also refer to themselves as the "People", the Huaorani, like the Apaches, were living in the path of westernization. Moi, a Huaorani leader, had gone to Washington to personally deliver a letter he had written to the President requesting an explanation for why "America was trying to destroy them". The letter was an invitation..."The whole world must come and see how the Huaorani live well... We live with the spirit of the jaguar. We do not want to be civilized by your missionaries or killed by your oil companies. Must the jaguar die so that you can have more contamination and television?" Obviously, Moi had knowledge of the western world, but was not tempted by its amenities. He was accompanied by the author on his trip to the White House, and was full of questions. He remarked to his friend, "There are so many cars. How long have they been here? A million years?", "Much less," came the reply. Moi pressed on. "A thousand?" Again, the answer was a short, "No. Eighty, perhaps." After a period of silence, the warrior continued his questioning. "What will you do in ten more years? In ten years, your world will be pure metal. Did your god do this?" I silently answered Moi's question in my mind as I thought to myself, "Yes, the money god did this to us." With the help of the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund, a petition had been filed with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (a branch of the Organization of American States, or O.A.S). It was with lawyers from the Sierra Club that Moi had come to Washington. Over the last twenty years, at least one tribe in the unregulated Ecuadorian Amazon, the Cofan, has succumbed to the devastation brought to this region from the colonization, deforestation and the millions of gallons of untreated toxic pollutants that are dumped daily into the watershed that extends over 50,000 square miles of their rainforest, according to Kane's article. "Commercial oil production in the Huaorani territory is expected to begin sometime this year[1994]. The Huaorani petition charges that this will be ethnocide..." The details of Moi's meeting with the commission could not be revealed, however the author was able to share some of Moi's arguments. "Moi told the commission that the Huaorani protected the forest for the whole world, and that they had never been conquered and they never would be." Anthropologists have referred to the Huaorani as "the fiercest people in the world", inasmuch as they have successfully defended their territory from "the Incas; the Spanish conquistadores; the rubber barons; the armies of Equator and Peru; modern-day colonists and prospectors; and....their neighbors, the Quichua and the Shuar, who together outnumber the Huaorani by almost a hundred to one." The oil companies, however, have revealed themselves to be enemies "far more powerful than any the Huaorani have ever known: an enemy that, as Moi sees it, kills by destroying the source of all life, the forest itself." Their last stop on the journey was to the Ecuadorian Embassy where they had scheduled a meeting with the Ambassador. There Moi outlined his proposition to invite the O.A.S. to investigate and place a moratorium on oil development until whatever problems that were found could be resolved. The Ambassadors position, as explained by the author, was that "...the Huaorani were not a sovereign nation; they were Ecuadorian citizens. Ecuador depended on oil for half its revenue, so to impede production was akin to treason." The story went on to tell that Moi patiently listened to the Ambassador's arguments, "For the Huaorani, political discourse, such as it is, is a matter of long discussion aimed at achieving consensus; aggression means spears, and putting one's life on the line." When the Ambassador quit talking, Moi asked "what harm could there be in opening an investigation?" The Ambassador indicated that he would speak to the commission and get back to him. On the second to the last page of the article, my heart began to pound as I read the author's description of the role the Huaorani territory plays in the ecology of the Amazon basin. Half the rivers that flow into the Amazon originate in that region, and anything that happens there "resonates throughout the Amazon". In the last twenty years, over three hundred miles of pipeline were run through the Ecuadorian rainforest and out to the Pacific coast. This pipeline has ruptured at least twenty-seven times. The oil that was spilled into that portion of the Ecuadorian Amazon has been "more than one and a half times as much oil as the Exxon Valdez spilled off the coast of Alaska." Judith Kimerling, formerly an environmental litigator in the New York State Attorney General's office, reported that the oil industry is already dumping some 4.3 million gallons of untreated toxic waste into the watershed (in the Ecuadorian Amazon) each day and is spilling an additional 10,000 gallons of oil per week from secondary flow lines. In a recent study conducted by Harvard trained scientists testing water from the Oriente (Ecuadorian Amazon) results indicated "extremely high levels of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, an element of crude oil so toxic that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency considers any amount at all to be an unacceptable risk." Later this year (1994), Maxus Energy Corp. out of Dallas expects to open the first of about 120 commercial wells inside Huaorani territory. Maxus holds the concession rights to Huaorani lands and will be laying 75 miles of pipeline right through the headwaters of the Amazon River and an additional 94 miles of access road will be cut. "This infrastructure will help open up to development, by any number of other oil companies (American concerns operating in the Oriente include Arco, Occidental Petroleum, and Oryx Energy)... the rest of Huaorani territory..." Reports indicate that the Oriente is expected to be completely deforested by the early part of the next century. Maxus will extract enough raw crude oil from these wells over the next 20 years to meet U.S. energy needs "for about thirteen days". Two weeks after Moi's departure from the U.S., the Ecuadorian government sent a letter to the O.A.S. saying that "there had been a misunderstanding ; that it would not extend a formal invitation; and that, essentially, it saw no reason for an investigation." Moi called Kane some months later, unaware of the news. He told him that the government was after him for going to Washington and that he feared for his life. Two months later, another friend who was working with the Huaorani telephoned from Ecuador and said, "The word is that Moi is a dead man." As industry ruthlessly moves forward for short term capital gain, the sensitively aware become filled with an almost abject despair. They ask themselves questions like, "If the entire Amazon River becomes a trans-continental oil slick, thus destroying the entire ecosystem of Brazil including a rainforest as large as the continental United States, how will this affect our lives, the lives of our children, and the future of our planet? Will we have enough oxygen to breathe? Will the entire food chain be disrupted when the oil spreads across the land and dumps into the oceans from both sides ? There is a war going on and it's one you won't see on CNN. This is an internal war and it's taking place inside of us. Our hearts may go out to the animals, the people and the forests, but our minds ask, "What can we do about it?" If we were to focus our efforts on the most fundamental problems, from which many others stem, ones that if left unsolved will surely affect the entire world, many other resulting problems would diminish. I am referring to the seemingly insatiable need for energy and the destructive consequences of our methods of obtaining or generating it. The exploitation of resources in the rain forest such as fossil fuel have indescribably serious consequences. The continued use of nuclear reactors are bound to result in more accidents. David Brower, archdruid of the conservation movement, reports in his most recent book Let the Mountains Talk, Let the Rivers Run, that architect William McDonough told an environmental group: "In the last few decades, the U.S. has spent half a trillion dollars subsidizing something nobody wants - radioactivity." Most people seem to feel that these industries have so much power that they cannot be stopped. But what is all this power based upon? The cooperation of many thousands of people who are working together to continue to perpetuate this insanity. Is it conceivable that, by working together to form a consensus, we could expose the primary offenders, and in effect, black ball them through public opinion? If every television station in the country ran a feature story like "Moi goes to Washington", could we apply pressure through public opinion, to place a moratorium on all fossil fuel exploration in environmentally sensitive areas? According to David Brower, "Politicians are like weathervanes. Our job is to make the wind blow." Can we put together a media campaign to educate the world of these impending disasters? Could we do what the Norwegian government is trying to do with their displaced reindeer people, by offering subsidization and educational training programs for those in the nuclear energy and petroleum industries who might want to change occupations, offering job placements in the alternative energy field, and collectively undermine the political force behind the petroleum and nuclear energy industries? Could we replace the need to exterminate entire cultures for the sake of 13 days of fossil fuel? Could we eliminate the threats of cesium 137 in our water supplies for the purpose of generating electricity? If everyone took an afternoon to compose a letter to then be sent out to their local television station, their congressman, the President, or someone like Ross Perot, we could at least reveal the numbers of concerned citizens that might object to not having enough air to breathe or uncontaminated food to eat. There is great power in numbers and getting past our sense of helplessness is the first step. We, as tax payers, have helped to create situations that "work against the world's ecological and socio-economic self-interest." And WE can undo what has been done if we unite in a common cause. To take steps, any steps, toward this end will help our consciences to heal and diminish the feeling that we are being haunted by the spectre of self-annihilation. We can't stop progress, but collectively, we can redirect it. In his insightful book, David Brower doesn't just list the uncomfortable realities of our present situation. He offers solutions, oftentimes in a drole and humorous way, to back up his statements that "The Earth can be healed. This is what restoration is all about. It is time for all policymakers to wake up." In reference to the corporate world, especially multinational corporations, he states that they are "given the rights of a person without a conscience. [and that] we've got to build conscience back into the corporate structure." By "we" he meant the "consumers, customers, executives, stockholders and employees." And goes on to add that "there will be no corporations, no stockholders, no profits and no sex on a dead planet..."and reminds us that the consumer vote should be "wielded with vigilance by environmentalists, who must understand who is doing what to the Earth, and buy accordingly." As an example of visionary green corporate thinking, he sites the 3M Corporation's environmental department as having developed a program called Pollution Prevention Pays. By retooling, recycling, and redesigning processes and equipment, they managed to save $537 million dollars over a 15 year period. Their goal is to reduce 90% of all emissions by the end of the decade. Subsidization programs and incentives can be developed to encourage all industries to follow suit. Brower devotes a chapter to Amory Lovins' explanation of hypercars- vehicles capable of "driving from New York to Los Angeles on one tank of any fuel....and burns 100 or even 1000 times cleaner than present cars..."adding, "they may even cost less." In reference to chemical pollution, Brower states that "the industrialized world is awash in a sea of estrogens", a biproduct of certain plastics that are polluting the water, and remarks that the "assault" on the human male, evidenced in a doubling of the incidence of male prostate cancer, the decimation of sperm, "or worse"...those with "two heads and no tail" may cause the male half of humanity, "which is still running most of the chemical industry (and government)...to become effectively concerned about what certain chemicals do to the sperm and its distribution system..." He further suggests "Conservation, Preservation and Restoration- CPR for the Earth and reminds us of the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) developed during the Great Depression, when 3 million Americans were given jobs, creating 44 wildlife refuges and planted 2 billion trees across America. A "World Ecology Bank" (WEB) could be "as devoted to conserving, preserving and restoring the Earth's ecological capital as ....the World Bank is to expending it." Through the creation of WEB, "interested WEB nations could nominate a substantial part of Tibet, for instance, as an international Peace Park. This is what the Dalai Lama has suggested. Until the Free Tibet effort succeeds, China could be paid to stop draining Tibet's natural capital." Perhaps Ecuador could be paid to prevent the U.S. from punching oil wells in the Amazon's headwaters as well. What Brower is suggesting is a "global form of reverse colonialism." That's what I call Restoration of the planet to the highest degree. At a recent conference in Aspen, Colorado, I had the opportunity to listen to and later speak with some of the leading spokespersons for ecology and environmentalism, including David Brower, Matthew Fox, R.Carlos Nakai, Kenny Loggins and John Denver to name a few. This "celebratory" symposium, organized by the Windstar Foundation, provided a gathering place for like minded individuals to exchange ideas and gather information. There was, of course, a certain amount of chapter and verse on all of the problems we have created, but the momentum that was produced by the strength of the presentations combined with the enthusiasm that was generated through the music precipitated a feeling of cohesiveness, courage and renewed determination. The words of author Matthew Fox still resonate deep within me. "Our hearts are daily broken with facts about what humankind is doing to the earth. Despair and grief hit us, but the first thing to do is pay attention to that grief and to let it be, to journey with the grief...into darkness." He then added, "that it is not necessarily a bad thing. It can be the beginning of a radical conversion, the beginning of a new life....[that through our] emptiness, disillusion and despair" can come transformation. "Artwork is heart work, and after the darkness, the mourning, and the grieving, there always comes creativity." This certainly seems to apply to me, inasmuch as my overwhelming sadness regarding man's inhumanity to man, inspired me to create the sculptures in the preceding photographs, in the hope that it would at least help me to work through my own grief. He encourages us to "explore our inner houses", by listening to the voice of our "deep self". Moreover, we need to explore the inner houses of our "communities...our nations...our gender...our species." We all need to look inside and examine what is really important to us, and if breathing is one of those things, then we need to re-evaluate our thinking and our way of living. If it is true that we were meant to be co-creators, then we need to examine what we are creating. To be sure, we are creating more deserts, more trash piles and more dump sites, but when the devastation reaches "critical mass", as I believe it has, groups, like the indigenous people, form coalitions to reverse current trends. Given the idea that we live in an interdependent universe, it would seem important that we ALL work toward attaining cohesive wholeness. We're all in this together. Compassion and justice "should be the foundation for all political action". Matthew Fox has suggested that our higher Self "anoints all as prophets to 'interfere' with the causes of injustice and its multiple expressions in racism, sexism, militarism, adultism, impersonal capitalism and impersonal socialism....Justice, after all, is not an anthropocentric invention any more than is interdependence or compassion. Rather, in a living cosmology [as opposed to an anthropocentric mentality], justice as well as interdependence are laws of the universe and therefore laws by which humanity ought to be living. A living cosmology regrounds humankind's politics in the laws of the universe." He encourages personal as well as social transformation and a shift from "Eurocentrism to a celebration of the wisdom of ancient and primordial peoples' spiritualities of microcosm and macrocosm..." and the reconstruction of religion from "worship as words -read, preached and sung- to worship as a nonelitist celebration of our shared existence." The call for an Environmental Revolution is echoing over the planet. Go out into nature, take a walk in the woods or climb a mountain to see what a wonderful place we live in and need to preserve for ALL of our children. We can and we must RECYCLE, RENEW AND RESTORE OUR PLANET! 1. Sting/ Jean-Pierre Dutilleux. Jungle Stories: The Fight for the Amazon. London: Barrie & Jenkins, 1989 2. Art Davidson. Endangered Peoples. San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1993 3. David Maybury-Lewis. Millennium: Tribal Wisdom in the Modern World. New York: Viking, 1992 4. Hank Whittemore. "A Man Who Would Save The World"-Parade Magazine. Austin: American Statesman, April, 1992. 5. Nadine Amadio. Pacifica. Sydney, Australia: Angus & Robertson, 1993. 6. David Brower. Let The Mountains Talk, Let The Rivers Run: A Call To Those Who Would Save The Earth. New York: HarpersColliins, 1995. 7. Matthew Fox. Wrestling With The Prophets. New York: HarperCollins, 1991. 8. Gordon C. Baldwin. The Warrior Apaches. Tucson: Dale Stuart King, 1965 9. Douglas B. Lee. "Okavanga Delta: Old Africa's Last Refuge". Washington, D.C: National Geographic Magazine, Dec., 1990. 10. Charles E. Cobb, Jr. "Twilight of Apartheid". Washington D.C.: National Geographic Magazine, Feb.,1993. 11. Oren Lyons. Voice of Indigenous Peoples: Native People Address the United Nations. Santa Fe: Clear Light Publishers, 1994. 12. David Nicholson. "Hitting- And Obliterating- The Trail" London: World Press Review, Jan., 1994, Vol. 41. 13. Melville J. and Frances Herskovits. Rebel Destiny. Freeport, New York: Books for Library Press, 1971. 14. Galen Rowell. "Annapurna: Sanctuary for the Himalayas". Washington, D.C.: National Geographic Magazine, Sept., 1989. 15. Roger Thurow. "For the Bushmen, It's Not The Gods That Must Be Crazy". New York: Wall Street Journal, 1986. 16. Chief George Manuel. "The 4th World: An Indian Reality". Fourth World Documentation Program: http://www.halcyon.com/FWDP/fwdp.html, 1995. 17. Glen H. Welker. "The Sami of Scandinavia". http://www.gwelker@mail.Imi.org, 1995. 18. Frances X. Clines. "Nuclear Shadow Dims Future of Laplanders". New York: New York Times, 1989. 19. Professor Frances Boyle. "E Hawai'i Au" Spiritual Solidarity March informational circular interpreting The Presidential Apology Bill to Hawaii. Honolulu, Hawaii: Office of the Ohana Council, 1993. 20. Dr. Mark Plotkin. Tales of a Shaman's Apprentice. New York: Viking, 1993. 21. Joe Kane. "Moi Goes to Washington". New York: New Yorker Magazine, 1994. 22. Sally Anderson. "Norway's Reindeer Lapps". Washington, D.C.:National Geographic, Sept., 1977. 23. Bill Hess. "The White Mountain Apache:Seeking the Best of Two Worlds". Washington, D.C.: Feb., 1980. 24. Mike Edwards. "Pollution in the Former USSR: Lethal Legacy / Living With the Monster: Chernobyl" Washington, D.C.:National Geographic, August, 1994. 25. Elizabeth Marshall Thomas. "Bushmen of the Kalahari". Washington, D.C.: National Geographic, June, 1963. 26. Joel Zisken. "Trek to Nepal's Sacred Crystal Mountain". Washington, D.C.: National Geographic, April, 1977. |