An indigenous call to action
By Rick Kearns, Today correspondent
Story Published: Jul 14, 2010
Indigenous
environmental philosophers from the four corners of the earth came
together May 1 to sign the
Redstone Statement, a declaration of the rights of the peoples
and the earth that includes a list of “mechanisms for restoring
balance,” including a call for indigenous self-determination and a
definition of that indigenous philosophical perspective.
“Indigenous environmental philosophy respects a mutually supportive
network of interconnected physical and spiritual entities that is
sustainably maintained, and which connects the ancestral past with
the distant future. The vision of our indigenous peoples is to reach
spiritual and material well-being through conscious action. Mother
Earth is a living, dynamic being with inherent value, and her
principles must be actively embodied in order to remain in harmony
and balance,” reads the second paragraph of the statement, put
together by summit participants from all continents.
The group of 22 philosophers met in the Kiowa community of Redstone,
Okla. to hold the first International Summit on Indigenous
Environmental Philosophy April 26 – May 1. They came from Siberia,
Kenya, Chile (Mapuche), Guatemala (Maya), New Zealand, Mexico
(Toltec), Russia, Taiwan, India, Australia, Canada, Swaziland,
Thailand and American Indian communities in the United States to
share information and strategies to deal with current and future
environmental threats. The summit also benefited from the guidance
of a circle of elders and some American
Indian students.
The principal summit organizer was Professor Jonathan Hook, who
teaches in the Department of Philosophy and Religion Studies at the
University of North Texas, and is an internationally known
environmentalist and activist. Hook was the director of
International Indigenous and American Indian Initiatives at UNT and
the director of the Office of Environmental Justice and Tribal
Affairs for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Region 6.
Hook said indigenous activists from across the world had already
been meeting for several years, but that the idea for this summit
grew out of gatherings he attended in Siberia and Malaysia in the
last four years.
“The most frequent request I received was to sit down and visit with
American Indians and talk about common experiences and issues. Those
experiences led to taking American Indian students to Siberia, and
to participate in a series of digital video conferences.”
Hook said the main themes of the conferences were environment and
culture, especially the issue of how communities are dealing with
global climate change. He also noted that the first group of
students to travel to Siberia was a group from the Anadarko Kiowa
community in Oklahoma, which would become the host site of the
summit.
American Indian student activists and videographers helped in
various ways at the summit, and they drafted a declaration of
support for the project. David Sullivan, Kiowa, an educator and the
Anadarko Summit project coordinator, said he and his students had
been working with Hook on the video conferences and that “the
development of the summit was a natural progression from those
events.”
The role and importance of young people, of the next generation, was
an important theme in the summit and the Redstone Statement.
“Today, we are at a tipping point at which humanity is in danger of
being removed from the cycles of Mother Earth. We bring this urgent
message in response to indigenous women, youth and children from
around the world who have consistently asked us to leave them a more
balanced planet,” the statement reads. “We come as individuals from
cultures whose authority originates from our unique relationships
with nature and the environment. Our ways of living, and very
existence, are threatened by the resistance of nation states to
include our institutions as part of the solutions that can save our
planet. Consequently, we issue this call to the world.”
That call included eight “mechanisms” that the participants drafted
for the purpose of restoring balance.
“1) Recognition of the interdependence of all things; 2) Indigenous
self-determination; 3) Indigenous land, air, water, territory and
natural resource management; 4) Protection and preservation of
indigenous traditional knowledge, lifeways and languages, cultures,
sacred sites, and folklores/oral traditions; 5) Indigenous authority
over all actions impacting indigenous communities; 6) Respect for,
and protection of, traditional agricultures and genetic resources;
7) Seed sovereignty and food security; 8) Rights of movement, rights
of access, rights of participation and communication in the exchange
of environmental knowledge and culture.”
The end of the statement mentioned how the philosophers were
committed to implementing the mechanisms. Hook said all the
participants were going to disseminate the statement in their home
communities and countries, and that several were taking it directly
to officials in the United Nations. He said he was going to Mexico
for follow up meetings for Latin American plans, and that
participant Brad Barnes, Samish, of Alaska had also attended the
Peoples Climate Summit in Bolivia earlier and was already “energized
by that experience.”
Translations of the statement in Spanish and Russian are on the
Web site.
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