The Enawene Nawe

[Rick]

This is a video full of mixed emotions. On the one hand it relates a horrible tale that is just too da**ed common. But if you can step back from that for a moment you will meet some incredibly versatile people adept at survival. You will also get to see their fishing traps and baskets along with a short glimpse of food preparation and housing. I wish I could spend some time with them. I'm sure I would receive a tremendous education.

http://www.tribalchannel.tv/player/program/2

Note: This depicts indigenous peoples so some natural nudity is displayed.

[Runs With Beer]

Outrageous, It realy is a sad thing to watch, What goes around comes around!

[Runs With Beer]

I think the newest members should see this. Link at the top of the page

[Pict]

Having lived in Brazil for 12 years of my life I see this issue as very complicated. It really is no different than the clash of cultures that happened here (with devastating results to native Americans) in our own history.

If you drive from western Pennsylvania to Colorado you drive through essentially a vast agricultural zone that is the breadbasket of the world. The south of Brazil is the same thing. Unlike the Amazon, this area can be developed into sustainable agricultural land.

FUNAI, Brazil's organ to deal with native Brazilian relations, tries to mitigate the effects of the culture clash. Before FUNAI ranchers simply shot native peoples and native peoples simply speared or arrowed ranchers, killed livestock etc. Now with FUNAI the situation is much more complicated. Mac

[Runs With Beer]

I understand, But Uts heartbrecking to see it in this time in OUR lifetime.

[trax]

I don't see it as complicated, someone moves in and steals and destroys someone else's land. What's complicated about that, as long as people can keep getting away with it, they will. That the consequences are devastating there is no doubt.

[chiye tanka]

I don't see it as complicated, someone moves in and steals and destroys someone else's land. What's complicated about that, as long as people can keep getting away with it, they will. That the consequences are devastating there is no doubt.

It happened here. It's still happening here, our friends in D.C. still won't give the Black Hills back to my people.

[HOP]

There is no excuse for treating people in such a manner ,feeding the world is on the surface a noble cause IMHO it is undermined with greed and worship of money and money talks.
I don't see governments giving back anything even with a strong fight . I wish I had an answer for peoples around the world that have been pushed to extinction .

[Pict]

The situation presented in this video is fairly cut and dried. The entire issue is not so black and white as this one particular video.

As this whole drama is playing out across Brazil there are a great many people involved. The old adage "follow the money" is a very twisted tale in the modern world. The usual players are all there: greedy landowners, natives trying to preserve their cultures and ways, corrupt politicians and law enforcement, wealthy cattle barons, hired guns, drug trafficers, illegal miners and loggers, multi-national corporations exploring for oil and ore, biopiracy and pharmaceutical research both Brazilian and international, non-profit ecological preservation groups, non-profit missionaries both Catholic and Evangelical, labor unions, political organizations, cult groups that have carved out their own fiefdoms in the jungle, armed guerilla groups that range from extreme right to left, just to name a few.

Some questions for which there are no good answers...

Does a nation have the right to protect its national territory from foreign invasion by other governmental or international entities when that land is currently occupied by a native people that spans the international border?

Does a people group who do not recognize a national government as sovereign over its people have the same rights to education, health care, and protection of law bought and paid for by the tax-payers of that government?

The knee-jerk reaction is that the government should just walk away and leave them be. OK, so what do they do when that void of government control is filled in by: another government and their troops, a cartel, illegal miners or loggers, a multinational corporation, or someone who hired a private army? Do the natives have the right to petition the government that surrounds them for protection?

OK, so the government sets aside a huge tract of land that will remain in the native groups control to preserve it as pristine forest. A faction in the tribal council then decides to take a large section of it and lease it to illegal loggers or miners for a share in the profits resulting in just the same kind of destruction caused in the video.

Heartrending and unjust? Absolutely. Simple? No, not really. Mac

ETA- they don't call it the developing world for nothing. Have you ever stopped to consider exactly what it is that is being developed? it is a real stretch to think any government is not going to develop Natural resources such as agriculture,timber, oil, natural gas, and ore. In Brazil you have 175,000,000 people who want to have jobs and feed their families, and they vote. They look at us as supremely hypocritical when we developed "our" land (granted destroying the native cultures that were on it) to raise our own standard of living and then we take them to task for much of the same. They have learned from our success in that, not our sense of national shame over it.

[Rick]

Well written, Mac. My original intent in posting it was to see the artifacts presented therein. But, as I said, it's full of mixed emotion. And you are right, there are no easy answers. It will be interesting to watch the Nunavik Government and how it responds to the pressues of oil, diamonds and gold as those resources become scarcer and scarcer and investors and exploration creeps closer and closer.

[wareagle69]

i usually try to stay out of discussions about the first peoples, all i can say after talking to a few of the ones i respect (allan is a metis) is that i think our governments have handicapped them, now this does not apply to all it is a generalization but i think that giving them so much for free (out of guilt?) that they have not the desire to go out and do better, i know that if i got half of what i make evryy month for free i would probably learn to do with less and spend all my free time in the bush just come into town every month to cash my cheque

[trax]

It's not an accident WE, it's a policy. The best way to dominate someone's will is to take care of everything in that person's life until they become totally dependent on you.

There is an awful lot that most Canajuns think Indians get for free that they don't mind you and there are specific treaty obligations that are far from adhered to, but I'm not even going to have that conversation.

[Runs With Beer]

Pict, You are well spoken on this, Im sure you have more insite on this than most of us.I guess its like what happend here, but I still think its so sad, You would think.. we as a people, The world over, We would know better.

[Pict]

There is alot of money to be made in developing the developing world. We were once in that same place as a nation and know what happened here. We rarely stop to think that everything we eat from beer, bagles and bacon is grown on land that was once wild and populated by native Americans. The same clash of cultures is still playing itself out in South America but with all the complexity of modern society thrown in.

Consider this, in Brazil there are tribes that have maintained their cultural identity across 500 years of contact with European civilizations and yet there are tribes who remain uncontacted to this day.

I'll tell you something else that most Americans don't know. Brazil has an ingrained fear (bordering on paranoia) that they cannot possibly control their entire national territory, specifically the Amazon basin. It would be as if we held Alaska in name only but did not have the military or economic resources to hold onto it. Every time anyone points at the Amazon and starts to tell them what to do this thought is in the back of their minds.

The Portuguese words for "explore" and "exploit" are the same word, there is no separation of these two concepts in Brazilian reasoning. It is unfortunate that native peoples are camped there on land that has enormous economic potential just like they were here. The lesson learned is that "we too can be a superpower." Mac