Celebrate the international day of the world’s indigenous peoples

A note from Cultural Survival:

August 9 is the International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples, and Cultural Survival joins the world in recognizing and honoring of the strength, resilience, dignity, and pride of Indigenous Peoples around the world. Despite our long histories of struggle, we continue to weave our stories, our songs, our rituals and ceremonies into rich, colorful, textured, and beautiful tapestries that portray landscapes of our Indigenous experience and indigeneity.

We continue to pray and give thanks in sacred places for the knowledge and materials offered to us from this earth, and for all the relations that keep us connected to the heavens, earth, each other, and all beings.

We seek to speak our language to our children so that they speak to their children of this ancestral knowledge. We seek to be recognized as Indigenous Peoples with inherent rights, and we fight for those rights. As Indigenous Peoples we stand up and survive and weave our futures.

That spirit is honored each year on the International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples, and this year Cultural Survival is marking the day by launching a new campaign to support the Telengit people of Russia.

Telengit person — Telengit man from Russia. Courtesy of Cultural Survival

The Telengit are resisting the building of a natural gas pipeline from Siberia to China that will cross their lands, undermine their way of life and spiritual traditions, and threaten the delicate ecosystem that has supported their lifeways. The pipeline would bisect the sacred Ukok Plateau and the Golden Mountains of Altai UNESCO World Heritage Site in Russia, and the Kanas National Park in China, all of which are home to endangered wildlife that includes the snow leopard, argali mountain sheep, the black stork. The construction will destroy the sacred lands where the Telengit People have journeyed for thousands of years to give offerings to the spirits of the heavens, the mountains, and the waters, and where they conduct ceremonies to bury their dead.

Your letters and financial support can help the Telengit people defend their lands, their traditions, and their rights. To learn more and support the Telengit click here.

On the politics of exile

Guest post by Majid Razvi

If “monk-politician” strikes you as somewhat of a contradiction… well, you might be right. Meet Samdhong Rinpoche, Prime Minister of the Tibetan Government-in-Exile. His title contains within it a sad reminder of the current plight of the Tibetans.

On July 14, the Culture in Global Affairs Research and Policy Program of the Elliott School of International Affairs at the George Washington University hosted Samdhong Rinpoche as a speaker in the CIGA Seminar Series.

Rinpoche began with an apology for his English skills, which proved to be better than many native speakers. He then declared that he was “not comfortable” with politics. (I am reminded of Plato’s hypothetical philosopher-kings, who would likely be not at all interested in the political position. Perhaps reluctance should be a prerequisite for public office!)

His lecture delved into the history of Tibet and its people. What struck me most, however, was Rinpoche’s constant reiteration of His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s longstanding position: what is important is not political autonomy, but cultural and religious freedom.

“We are not concerned with who is ruling Tibet,” said Rinpoche, “but how they are ruling Tibet.”

During the Q&A session, a reporter asked how Samdhong Rinpoche felt about President Obama’s failure to meet with the Dalai Lama. With that blend of rigorous logic and holistic wisdom that so-perfectly characterizes Buddhism, Rinpoche pointed out that ascribing such a “failure” to the President before His Holiness had left the country was premature.

Two days later, at the White House:

His Holiness the Dalai Lama and President Barack Obama — His Holiness the Dalai Lama with President Barack Obama, July 16 2011. Flickr, Creative Commons

Majid Razvi received his B.A. in 2011 from Virginia Commonwealth University where he majored in Philosophy and Religious Studies. He has a strong interest in Tibetan epistemology, logic, and argumentation. He intends to pursue graduate study in philosophy.

Will travel for health

Miwok sweat lodge. Flickr/Jason Holmberg.

A special edition of the journal Body & Society is devoted to contemporary “medical migrations,” or travel in search of a medical cure for a health problem. Elizabeth Roberts and Nancy Scheper-Hughes, both medical anthropologists, are the guest editors.

In their introductory essay, they state that increasing numbers of people are now crossing national borders and travelling great distances for solutions to health problems. They construct a vast frame for “medical migrants,” which includes not just elites shopping globally for the best health care and newest drugs, but also victims of torture and human rights violations who seek to protect their health and prolong their life by gaining asylum outside their home country.

Also included are medical tourists who take risks to access illegal health services, such as organ transplants and the spiritually motivated travelers who make pilgrimages to American Indian sweat lodges in the desert. Medical trials that roam the globe in search of subjects are also in the frame.

The collection of essays promises to break new ground in thinking about “medicine on the move.”

Chagos: get it right about the reefs

Diego Garcia (Chagos Archipelago) British Indian Ocean Territory. Credit: Flickr/Drew Avery.

Guest post by Sean Carey

A recent BBC Radio 4 broadcast, a programme on coral reefs, included misleading information about the Chagos Archipelago, also known as the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT). The gist is that the amazing health of the reefs in the Chagos region can be attributed to the absence of human habitation.

The subliminal message is that repatriating the Chagossian Islanders, who were evicted from their homeland by the British authorities to make way for the U.S. military base on Diego Garcia, will endanger the reefs.

Is this genuine marine science or sheer politics masquerading as marine biology?

Because the right of return of the islanders is now before the European Court of Human Rights, many supporters felt that this naive environmentalism could not left unchallenged.

A letter was drafted and several amendments were made to it before a copy was finalised and sent to BBC complaints.

Anthropologists Thomas Hylland Eriksen and Sean Carey signed the letter, along with many others including several luminaries including broadcaster, Ben Fogle; bestselling historical novelist, Philippa Gregory; environmental campaigner and botanist, David Bellamy; and former leader of the UK Liberal Party, Lord Steel.

Sean Carey then sent the letter on to the Mauritius Times so that it would gain the attention of a wider public.

“Although I wrote the introductory paragraphs, my name shouldn’t have been put at the top as I am just one part of a ‘galaxy,’ but too late now.”

Note from the blogger: Sean, you are too modest by far.

Sean Carey obtained his Ph.D. in social/cultural anthropology from the University of Newcastle upon Tyne. He is currently research fellow at the Centre for Research on Nationalism, Ethnicity and Multiculturalism (Cronem) at Roehampton University. He writes for the Guardian, Mauritius Times, New African and New Statesman.

(Child) sex in the city

There are people who buy and sell other people all over the world today. Among the most severe forms of human trafficking is child sex trafficking. And Washington, DC is one of the “hot spots” for this crime.

The extent, causes, approaches to prevention, and recovery of victims were among the many compelling topics addressed by four anti-sex trafficking activists who participated in a panel discussion at George Washington University on October 18. The event was sponsored by the Global Women’s Forum, part of the Global Gender Initiative of the Elliott School of International Affairs.

: Fighting Sex Trafficking, Four Approached by Local Organizations. Speakers (left to right) Mastrean, Neff, Mathon-Mathieu, Powell, Bertone. Photo taken by Mathilde Bras, exchange student from Sciences Po, Paris.

Panelists included Andrea Powell (co-founder and executive director, FAIR Fund), Faiza Mathon-Mathieu (counsel, Rebecca Project for Human Rights), Erin Neff (assistant project manager, Courtney’s House), and Taryn Mastrean (programs administrator, Shared Hope International). The panel was moderated by Andrea Bertone, visiting assistant professor of international affairs at GW.

Powell launched the discussion by pointing out that when she was first studying “people buying people” in Bonn, Germany, the term “human trafficking” didn’t even exist. When she returned to the US, she thought that the problem wouldn’t be serious. She learned otherwise, and that young people with difficult home situations are at high risk of becoming victims of sex trafficking. With FAIR Fund, she has helped build capacity in communities to identify victims and to make sure that family services are aware of the complex needs of trafficked children. She works with young people directly and has established a preventive education campaign called “Tell Your Friends.” Powell emphasized the gap between the number of children who need help and the lack of places to shelter them. Services in Belgrade are better than they are in Washington, DC.

Continue reading “(Child) sex in the city” →

Unleashing Human Potential

Global Citizens in Pursuit of the Common Good

A Human Development Conference at the University of Notre Dame

CALL FOR PAPERS

The Ford Family Program in Human Development Studies & Solidarity announces a student research conference on topics vital to human development to be held at the University of Notre Dame on February 11-12, 2011. This student-organized event is co-sponsored by the Center for Social Concerns at Notre Dame and SIT Study Abroad, a program of World Learning.

Continue reading “Unleashing Human Potential” →

Roma: Not all alike

*Roma beggar in Paris. Credit: Seb Ruiz, Creative Commons licensed on Flickr*

Guest post by Sam Beck

The European Union must be held accountable if European states continue to expel Roma from member countries. The expulsions are taking place because Roma have created settlements not only in designated campgrounds but also within urban boundaries. This is not new. However, the scale and density of such settlements disturbs the sensibilities of Europeans. This is not only a West European phenomenon. Events of intolerable discrimination are also taking place in East Central Europe and the Balkans from which many of these Roma originate. The history of anti-Roma sentiments in both East and West Europe is torturous and long-standing.

A rather unusual situation emerged in Romania where Roma have lived for hundreds of years, where to this day they appear in abundant variation, from people who have resumed migratory lives to people who have been settled at the margins of villages, towns, and cities for as long as anyone can remember. In Romania, Roma were enslaved and indentured for centuries. They played important roles as musicians, miners, and in producing objects necessary for an agrarian society, crafting metals and wood objects. Today, those that we call Roma, were involved in all sorts of labor, agricultural workers and house servants.

Some may no longer speak their Sanskrit based language, or if they do they speak it with lexical-items borrowed from Turkish, Romanian, Bulgarian, Hungarian, Czech, Slovak, Russian, and so on. In Romania, many no longer speak Romani. In Romania, Roma may identify themselves with this “national” identity, or they may identify as “tsigani,” how others have named them. This is a term of derision. Some Roma have integrated themselves into the mainstream of Romanian society and melted into the Romanian ethnic identity. Some Roma sustain their identity and have experienced upward mobility in many different fields.

Roma were persecuted in the Nazi era, large numbers of whom lost their lives; their population decimated in great proportions to their total numbers, referred to as Prajmos. Oddly enough, when mentioned at all as a persecuted population in Germany’s ethnic cleansing effort they are lumped in with Jews, rather than being mentioned outright as a population. No museums exist for them and if there are memorials for them, I do not know of them. They have no homeland with which they can identify. There is no Israel that was created for them as it was for Jews. Their identities are claimed as citizens of their countries of origin.

Continue reading “Roma: Not all alike” →

Nuclear news, nuclear fears and the role of science

Guest post by Barbara Rose Johnston

I received last week copies of two very different publications reporting on outcomes from the scientific assessment of life in a nuclear warzone. These studies consider, first, the health experience of resident populations living in areas contaminated by nuclear weapons fallout, and, second, the health of people as affected by the low-level radiation that accompanies modern warfare.

The first is a set of eight papers published in the August 2010 issue of the journal Health Physics and reflects conclusions from US-government sponsored science about radiation and cancer risks.

The second, a study conducted by an international and independent team of scientists published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, is about the health effects of war on the local population of Fallujah, Iraq.

Appropriate reading, since much news in the past few days has focused on the ceremonies surrounding the 65th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the human suffering associated with nuclear war.

Nuclear worries and concerns have been a major feature in world news for years, but especially so in this first decade of a new century.

A review of today’s global headlines finds reports of fear and accusations over the development of a nuclear weapon in Iran, as well as fears of nuclear war on the Korean peninsula and in Kashmir, the Himalayan territory that lies between Pakistan and India. Fidel Castro’s first address in four years to the Cuban Parliament warns of an imminent nuclear war if the US follows through on its threat of retaliation against Iran for not abiding nuclear-arms sanctions.

There are also hopeful reports on political promises and the potential progress in the struggle to further abolish nuclear weapons. Unfortunately, there are also reports on the lack of progress – for example, the news that the US Senate has again delayed its hearing on a new START Treaty.

The nuclear news also includes “peaceful uses” of atomic energy. The US is reportedly finalizing a nuclear cooperation agreement with Vietnam that would allow enrichment. There are reports of numerous proposals or approved plans for new nuclear power plants in Germany, Egypt, the US, Canada, the Philippines, India, Serbia, Bulgaria, and the UK.

Continue reading “Nuclear news, nuclear fears and the role of science” →

Dishonorable killings

So-called honor killings take the wind out of a form of cultural relativism that I refer to as absolute cultural relativism. According to absolute cultural relativism, anything that goes on in a particular culture, and is justified within that culture, cannot be questioned or changed by insiders or outsiders. For insiders, such questioning is cultural heresy; for outsiders it is ethnocentrism.

An antidote to absolute cultural relativism is critical cultural relativism, which promotes the posing of questions about practices and beliefs by insiders and outsiders in terms of who accepts them and why, and who they might be harming or helping. In other words: Who benefits, who loses? [Note: I present these terms in my cultural anthropology texts as a way to get students to think more analytically about the very important concept of cultural relativism.]

Image: Flickr creative commons licensed content. If only India, and indeed the whole world, was a domestic violence free zone.

When death, torture and structural violence are involved, it’s time to relegate absolute cultural relativism to the sidelines and bring to the fore critical analysis and discussion among insiders and outsiders. As far as I know, murder is not legal in any country in the world, including murder of one’s own kin for purposes of protecting family honor.

An article in The New York Times describes an alleged honor killing of a young unmarried Hindu woman in her family home in Jharkhand state, eastern India.

The article links the possible murder to Hindu caste values, which forbid marriage of woman to a man of a lower caste category — in this instance, the woman was of a Brahmin family and was engaged to a man of the Kayastha category, which is lower. Not only that, she had apparently engaged in premarital sex, another serious problem from the point of view of family honor.

What the article doesn’t say is that honor killings of daughters and wives by family members occur among people of other religions as well, including Christianity, that are not driven by caste purity. More deeply than particular religious values is the widespread existence of lethal patriarchy: male dominance in all domains of life — economic, political, social, sexual — that it justifies, even actively supports, murder of women and girls.

There can be no way, in this world, that anyone can get away with murder by saying that “it’s part of our culture” to kill a daughter or wife who breaks cultural rules. As if it’s their right and duty to kill.

Unfortunately, local police and the judicial system are often on the side of the killers.

Amnesty International now keeps track of so-called honor killings, but it’s likely that cases are severely under-counted. Nevertheless, any and all efforts to keep shining a very bright light on the problem of honor killings and related forms of patriarchy are essential.

See also this post on the blog Women Against Shariah.

To thee I sing: sweet land of oil spill

European colonists came to North America seeking religious freedom and economic opportunity. They destroyed the very same for those who had lived here for centuries.

One person’s liberty often means someone else’s shackles. One group’s success often means another group is in ruins.

The boom and crackle of Independence Day fireworks in the United States are echoed in the gunfire in the war zones of Iraq and Afghanistan as outside forces vie for control of these strategic lands. Let freedom ring.

Allow me one more bit of gut gashing irony. In the 18th century, the American patriots fought hard to gain independence from the British. They succeeded.

What would those freedom fighters say about British Petroleum’s oil spill in the Gulf?

Image: “An American Flag on top of a fake oil derrick in Sapulpa, Oklahoma.” The derrick may be fake, but the questions the image raises are surely very real. Creative commons licensed Flickr content.