Josh’s blogg

The real deal in global perspectives!

Some quotes

“We have to make sure of our place in society as indigenous Indians that we have won. In Mexico, there are movements, there are revolutions and change, but for the indigenous nothing changes.”

 

Subcomandante Marcos

 

 

 

Emiliano Zapata

 

“I would rather die standing than live on my knees!”

   

 

 

 

 

 

 

“We were very poor and my father couldn’t afford to pay the school fees in Caracas. So I finished high school and entered the academy, planning to stay for just a year then leave to play baseball. I learned what had happened to the indigenous people by studying history, by reading. After reading Frei Bartolome de las Casas and other history books, I saw what had really happened. They slaughtered us. This knowledge often brought me into conflict with the life I was leading. When we were cadets they used to make us march past a statue of Columbus in front of the hospital. I used to ask my “why on earth should we pay tribute to the man who launched the invasion?” It was really too much. It had taken 30 years to bring us and our people, to power to begin this new phase and put things in their proper place. The statue? We didn’t pull Christopher Columbus down, he’s still standing there, but we don’t pay tribute to him any more. Now we honour Guaicaipuru, leader of the indigenous resistance. Just before the Spanish killed him, after killing his wife and children, Guaicaipuru shouted a challenge to the Spanish saying “Come Spaniards! and see how an Indian, a free man of this land can die!”. . . I am Indian, mixed with African, with a touch of white thrown in.”

 

Hugo Chavez

 

 

 

Their reason for killing and destroying such an infinite number of souls is that the Christians have an ultimate aim, which is to acquire gold, and to swell themselves with riches in a very brief time and thus rise to a high estate disproportionate to their merits. . . We can estimate very surely and truthfully that in the forty years that have passed, with the infernal actions of the Christians, there have been unjustly slain more than twelve million men, women, and children. In truth, I believe without trying to deceive myself that the number of the slain is more like fifteen million.

Bartolomé de Las Casas

“When Scholars deny genocide, in the face of decisive evidence that it has occurred, they contribute to a false consciousness that can have the most dire reverberations. Their message is: (genocide) requires no confrontation, no reflection, but should be ignored, glossed over. In this way scholars lend their considerable authority to the acceptance of this ultimate human crime. More than that, they encourage-indeed invite-a repetition of that crime from virtually any source in the immediate or distant future. By closing their minds to the truth, that is, scholars contribute to the deadly psychohitorical dynamtic in which unopposed genocide begets new genocide”

-         Roger W. Smith, Eric Markusen and Robert Lifton

“Professional Ethics and Denial of the Armenian Genocide”

 

 

 

 

 

 

Article 26 of the UN declaration on the rights of indigenous people states: “Indigenous peoples have the right to the lands, territories and resources which they have traditionally owned, occupied or otherwise used or acquired.”

 

We should like to see this Assembly (UN) shake itself out of complacency and move forward. We should like to see the committees begin their work and not stop at the first confrontation. Imperialism wishes to convert this meeting into a pointless oratorical tournament, instead of solving the grave problems of the world. We must prevent their doing so. . . As long as imperialism exists, it will, by definition, exert its domination over other countries. Today that domination is called neocolonialism.

Commandante Ernesto “Che” Guevara

 

“When the missionaries came to Africa they had the Bible and we had the land. They said, ‘Let us pray.’ We closed our eyes. When we opened them we had the Bible and they had the land.”

Bishop Desmond Tutu

 

“Philosophers have only interpreted the world the idea is to change it”

Karl Marx- The Communist Manifesto

 

“Whoever stands by a just cause cannot possibly be called a terrorist” . . .This is my homeland no one can kick me out.”- Yasser Arafat

April 9, 2008 Posted by joshjig | Uncategorized | | No Comments

Declaration of Aboriginal Rights from: http://aboriginalrights.suite101.com

 

United Nations Declaration on the Rights of

Indigenous Peoples

 Tyson Yunkaporta

Oct 26, 2007

Australia and New Zealand, along with Canada and

the US, stood alone against the 143 nations voting

in favour of the declaration of the rights of

indigenous peoples.

 

While the colonial governments of Australia, Canada, US, and New Zealand withdrew to the safety of their invader regimes to bury their collective heads in the sand, Indigenous peoples around the world celebrated recently.

Finally, the UN General Assembly had passed the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples on September 13th 2007 by an overwhelming majority in an historic vote in New York.

It was the climax of 22 years of intensive debate and negotiation. It came as no surprise that Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the United States voted against the declaration, whilst 143 nations voted in favour and 11 abstained.

While in Australia we watch the government overrule the constitution with regard to racial discrimination, the rest of the indigenous world is dancing in the streets.

Kiplangat Cheruiyot of the Ogiek tribe, Kenya said, “Now the lives of indigenous peoples will be on an equal footing with the rest of world citizens.’

Jumanda Gakelebone, Bushman of First People of the Kalahari, Botswana stated, “Governments can no longer treat us as second-class citizens, and tribal peoples are now protected from being thrown off their lands.”

No such protection for usmob here.

 

 

 

April 9, 2008 Posted by joshjig | Uncategorized | | No Comments

Who am I?

As a new resident of Canada I often ask myself what nationality identify with, and moreover do I need to? I wonder if being born in an island in the North Atlantic Ocean makes me inherently different to a Blackfoot person or an Arab or a Cree person. I wonder if I am not simply a citizen of the globe who by accident of birth was born in a country called Britain.

 

I have travelled to over 23 countries in my life and noted little tangible evidence to qualify myself as superior or different to a Tahitian or a Cook Islander.  Everybody ate, slept, drank, sought pleasure, laughed, cried. So why do some people exert their dominance over another, I wondered? Why do some walk barefoot so others can drive in a luxury car? Why should some people live for 35 years so others can live for 75 years? Why do some people live in miserable poverty so others can live in disgusting opulence? In Britain I was often asked in by patriotic zealots (of which there are many) the cliché “are you proud to be British?” Is there a need to be I would think? If being proud of a rock or a tree in Britain is what you mean then of course not. I am no less proud of the achievements of the Afghani people who are bravely resisting the invasion of their lands, or the beleaguered natives of the Americas who resisted the pogrom and genocide committed by white aggressors against them, nor the brave Canadian solders who shed their blood in order to visit the mother of defeats on Hitler fascism in WWII. Likewise French, Spanish, Iraqi, Palestinian, Japanese, Chinese, Korean and Argentinean (etc) people have achieved great things equal to that of British people. My confused reply to myself is simple: “be proud of people and defend their right to their own distinct polities” it was once said that “patriotism was the last refuge of the scoundrel” I would agree with this statement. The British flag for me is the equivalent to a butcher’s apron, smeared with the blood of unfathomable numbers of indigenous peoples from the four corners of the globe. When my history teacher told me as a young man that “the British Empire was so vast that upon it the sun never set” I fired back “that’s because nobody would trust the British in the dark”. Proud of people also from my islands?  some of course yes and others undoubtedly no.  Proud to be British?……no need. I am Josh living on Blackfoot land a place my friends tend to call Lethbridge.  

 

 

 

 

 

April 9, 2008 Posted by joshjig | Uncategorized | | No Comments