Statement
of Winona LaDuke, Co-Chair Indigenous Womens Network, Program Director of the
Environmental Program at the Seventh Generation Fund, at the United Nations
Fourth World Conference on Women, Beijing, China, August 31 1995:
I am from the Mississippi Band of Anishinabeg of the White Earth
reservation in northern Minnesota, one of approximately 250,00 Anishinabeg
people who inhabit the great lakes region of the North American continent.
Aniin indinawaymugnitok. Me gweich Chi-iwewag, Megwetch Ogitchi taikwewag.
Nindizhinikaz, Beenaysayikwe, Makwa nin dodaem. Megwetch indinawaymugunitok.
I am greeting you in my language and thanking you, my sisters for the
honor of speaking with you today about the challenges facing women as we
approach the 21st century.
A primary and central challenge impacting women as we approach the 21st
century will be the distance we collectively as women and societies have
artificially placed ourselves from our Mother the Earth, and the inherent
environmental, social, health and psychological consequences of colonialism,
and subsequently rapid industrialization on our bodies, and our nations. As a
centerpiece of this problem is the increasing lack of control we have over
ourselves, and our long term security. This situation must be rectified through
the laws of international institutions, such as the United Nations, but as
well, the policies, laws and practices of our nations, our communities, our
states, and ourselves.
The situation of Indigenous women, as a part of Indigenous peoples, we
believe is a magnified version of the critical juncture we find ourselves in as
peoples, an the problems facing all women and our future generations as we
struggle for a better world. Security, militarism, the globalization of the
economy, the further marginalization of women, increasing intolerance and the
forced commodification and homogenization of culture through the media.
The Earth is our Mother. From her we get our life, and our life, and our
ability to live. It is our responsibility to care for our mother, and in caring
for our Mother, we care for ourselves. Women, all females, are the
manifestation of Mother Earth in human form. We are her daughters and in my
cultural instructions: Minobimaatisiiwin. We are to care for her. I am taught
to live in respect for Mother Earth. In Indigenous societies, we are told that
Natural Law is the highest law, higher than the law made by nations, states,
municipalities and the World Bank. That one would do well to live in accordance
with Natural Law. With those of our Mother. And in respect for our Mother Earth
of our relations -- indinawaymuguni took.
One hundred years ago, one of our Great Leaders -- Chief Seattle stated,
"What befalls the Earth, befalls the People of the Earth." And that
is the reality of today, and the situation of the status of women, and the status
of Indigenous women and Indigenous peoples.
While I am from one nation of Indigenous peoples, there are millions of
Indigenous people worldwide. An estimated 500 million people are in the world
today. We are in the Cordillera, the Maori of New Zealand, we are in East
Timor, we are the Wara Wara of Australia, the Lakota, the Tibetans, the peoples
of Hawai'i, New Caledonia and many other nations of Indigenous peoples.
Indigenous peoples. We are not populations, not minority groups, we are
peoples. We are nations of peoples. Under international law we meet the
criteria of nation states, having a common economic system, language,
territory, history, culture and governing institutions. Despite this fact,
Indigenous Nations are not allowed to participate at the United Nations.
Nations of Indigenous people are not, by and large, represented at the
United Nations. Most decisions today are made by the 180 or so member states to
the United Nations. Those states, by and large, have been in existence for only
200 years or less, while most Nations of Indigenous peoples, with few
exceptions, have been in existence for thousands of years. Ironically, there
would likely be little argument in this room, that most decisions made in the
world today are actually made by some of the 47 transnational corporations and
their international financiers whose annual income is larger than the gross
national product for many countries of the world.
This is a centerpiece of the problem. Decision-making is not made by
those who are affected by those decisions, people who live on the land, but
corporations, with an interest which is entirely different than that of the
land, and the people, or the women of the land. This brings forth a fundamental
question: What gives these corporations like CONOCO, SHELL, EXXON, DIASHAWA,
ITT, RIO TINTO ZINC,and the WORLD BANK, a right which supersedes or is superior
to my human right to live on my land, or that of my family, my community, my
nation, our nations, and to us as women? What law gives that right to them? Not
any law of the Creator, or of Mother Earth. Is that right contained within
their wealth? Is that right contained within their wealth, that which is
historically acquired immorally, unethically, through colonialism, imperialism,
and paid for with the lives of millions of people, or species of plants and
entire ecosystems? They should have no such right, that right of
self-determination, and to determine our destiny, and that of our future
generations.
The origins of this problem lie with the predator-prey relationship
industrial society has developed with the Earth, and subsequently, the people
of the Earth. This same relationship exists vis a vis women. We,
collectively find that we are often in the role of the prey, to a predator
society, whether for sexual discrimination, exploitation, sterilization,
absence of control over our bodies, or being the subjects of repressive laws
and legislation in which we have no voice. This occurs not only on an
individual level, but, equally, and more significantly on a societal level. It
is also critical to point out at this time that most matrilineal societies,
societies in which governance and decision-making are largely controlled by
women, have been obliterated from the face of the Earth by colonialism, and
subsequently industrialism. The only matrilineal societies which exist in the
world today are those of Indigenous nations. We are the remaining matriliineal
societies. Yet we also face obliteration.
On a worldwide scale and in North America, Indigenous societies
historically, and today, remain in a predator-prey relationship with industrial
society, and prior to that colonialism and imperialism. We are the peoples with
the land -- land and natural resources required for someone else's development
program and the amassing of wealth. The wealth of the United States, that
nation which today determines much of world policy, easily expropriated from
our lands. Similarly the wealth of Indigenous peoples of South Africa, Central,
South American countries, and Asia was taken for the industrial development of
Europe, and later for settler states which came to occupy those lands. That
relationship between development and underdevelopment adversely affected the
status of our Indigenous societies, and the status of Indigenous women.
Eduardo Galeano, the Latin American writer and scholar has said:
In the colonial to neocolonial alchemy, gold changes to scrap metal and food to poison, we have become painfully aware of the mortality of wealth which nature bestows and imperialism appropriates.
Today, on a worldwide scale, we remain in the same situation as one
hundred years ago, only with less land, and fewer people. Today, on a worldwide
scale, 50 million indigenous peoples live in the world's rainforests, a million
indigenous peoples are slated for relocated for dam projects in the next decade
(thanks to the World Bank, from the Narmada Project in India, to the Three
Gorges Dam Project, here in China, to the Jasmes Bay Hydro Electric Project in
northern Canada).
Almost all atomic weapons which have been detonated in the world are
also detonated on the lands or waters of Indigenous people. This situation is
mimicked in the North American context. Today, over 50% of our remaining lands
are forested, and both Canada and the United States continue aggressive
clearcutting policies on our land. Over two thirds of the uranium resources in
the United States, and similar figures for Canada are on Indigenous lands, as
is one third of all low-sulphur coal resources. We have huge oil reserves on
our reservations, and we have the dubious honor of being the most highly bombed
nation in the world, in this case, the Western Shoshone Nation, on which over
650 atomic weapons have been detonated. We also have two separate accelerated
proposals to dump nuclear waste in our reservation lands, and similarly over
100 separate proposals to dump toxic waste on our reservation lands.
We understand clearly the relationship between development for someone
else, and our own underdevelopment. We also understand clearly the relationship
between the environmental impacts of types of development on our lands, and the
environmental and subsequent health impacts of in our bodies as women. That is
the cause of the problems.
We also understand clearly, that the analysis of North versus South is
an erroneous analysis. There is, from our perspective not a problem of the
North dictating the economic policies of the South, and subsequently consuming
the South. Instead, there is a problem of the Middle Consuming Both the North
and the South. That is our situation. Let me explain.
The rate of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon, is one acre every
nine seconds. Incidentally, the rate of extinction of Indigenous peoples in the
Amazon is one nation of Indigenous peoples per year. The rate of deforestation
of the boreal forest of Canada is One Acre Every Twelve Seconds.
Siberia, thanks to American corporations like Weyerhauser, is not far behind,
In all cases, indigenous peoples are endangered. There is frankly no difference
between the impact in the North and the South. Uranium mining has devastated a
number of Indigenous communities in North America.
Uranium mining in northern Canada has left over 120 million tons of
radioactive waste. This amount represents enough material to cover the
Trans-Canada Highway two meters deep across the Country. Present production of
uranium waste from Saskatchewan alone occurs at the rate of over one million
tons annually. Since 1975, hospitalization for cancer, birth defects and
circulatory illnesses in that area have increased dramatically -- between 123
and 600 percent in that region. In other areas impacted by uranium mining,
cancers and birth defects have increased to, in some cases, eight times the
national average. The subsequent increases in radiation exposure to both the
local and to the larger north American population are also evidenced in broader
incidences of cancer, such as breast cancer in North American women, which is
significantly in the rise. There is no a distinction in this problem caused by
radiation, whether is is in the Dine of northern Canada, the Laguna Pueblo
people of New Mexico, or the people of Namibia.
The rapid increase in dioxin, organichlorides, and PCBs (polychlorinated
byphenots) chemicals in the world, as a result of industrialization, has a
devastating impact on Indigenous peoples, Indigenous women, and other women.
Each year, the world's paper industry discharges from 600 to 3200 grams of
dioxin equivalents into water, sludge and paper products according to United
States Environmental Protection agency statistics. This quantity is equal to
the amount which would cause 58,000 to 294,000 cases of cancer every year,
based on the Environmental Protection Agency's estimate of dioxin's
carcinogenicity. According to a number of recent studies, this has
significantly increased the risk of breast cancer in women. Similarly, heavy metals
and PCBs contamination of Inuit women of the Hudson Bay region of the Arctic
indicates that they have the highest levels of breast milk contamination in the
world. In a 1988 study, Inuit women were found to have contamination levels up
to 28 times higher than the average of women in Quebec, and ten times higher
than that considered "safe" by the government.
It is also of great concern to our women, and our peoples, that polar
bears in that region of the Arctic have such a high level of contamination from
PCBs That they may be facing total sterility, and forced into extinction by
early in the next century. As peoples who consider the Bears to be our
relatives, we are concerned also, significantly about ability to reproduce, as
a consequence of this level of bio-accumulation of toxins. We find that or
communities, like those of our relatives, the Bears, are in fact, in danger of
extinction.
Consequently, it is clear to us that the problems also found in the
south, like the export of chemicals and bio-accumulation of toxins, are also
very much our problems, and the problems clearly manifested in our women. These
are problems which emanates from industrial societies mis-treatment and
disrespect for our Mother Earth, and subsequently are reflected in the devastation
of the collective health and well-being of women.
In summary, I have presented these arguments for a purpose. To
illustrate that that these are very common issues for women, not only for
Indigenous women, but for all women. What befalls our mother Earth, befalls her
daughter -- the women who are the mothers of our nations. Simply stated, if we
can no longer nurse our children, if we can no longer bear children, and if our
bodies, themselves are wracked with poisons, we will have accomplished little in
the way of determining our destiny, or improving our conditions. And, these
problems, reflected in our health and well being, are also inherently resulting
in a decline of the status of women, and are the result of a long set of
historical processes. Processes, which we as women, will need to challenge if
we will ultimately be in charge of our own destinies, our own
self-determination, and the future of our Earth our Mother.
The reality is that all of these conditions -- those emanating from the
military and industrial devastation of our Mother the Earth, and subsequently,
our own bodies, and the land on which we live -- are mimicked in social and
development policies which affect women. It is our belief, at Indigenous Womens
Network, the following:
1.Women
should not have to trade their ecosystem for running water, basic housing,
health care, and basic human rights.
2.Development
projects, whether in the north or in the south, whether financed by the World
Bank, or by the coffers of Rio Tinto Zinc and Exxon, often replicate patriarchy
and sexism, and by and large cause the destruction of matrilineal governance
structure, land tenure, and cause a decline in the status of women. By denying
us the basic land on which we live, and the clean food and streams from which
to eat, and instead offering us a wage economy, in which privilege is often
dictated by class, sex and race, indigenous women are frequently moved from a
central role in their societies to the margins and to refugee status in
industrial society.
3.The
intellectual knowledge systems today often negate or deny the existence and
inherent property rights of Indigenous people to our cultural and intellectual
knowledge by supplanting our knowledge systems. Industrial knowledge system
call us "primitive" while our medical knowledge, plants, and even
genetic material are stolen (as in the Human Genome Project) by transnational
corporations and international agencies. This situation affects Indigenous
women, as a part of our communities. But on a larger scale it has affected most
women.
4.Subsequently,
our women find that the basic rights to control our bodies are impacted by all
of the above through development policies aimed at non-consensual or forced
sterilization, medical testing, invasive genetic sampling, and absence of basic
facilities and services which would guarantee us the right and ability to
control the size of our families safely and willingly. These same development
policies often are based on tourism which commodifies our bodies and cultures
(the Pacific and Native America are prime examples), and causes the same with
women internationally.
Collectively, we must challenge this paradigm. In this international
arena, I call on you to support the struggle of Indigenous peoples of the world
for recognition, and to recognize that until all peoples have
self-determination, no one will truly be free. Free of the predator and free to
control our destiny. I ask you to look into the United Nations' International
Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, PART 1, Article 1,
which provides that "All peoples have right to self-determination. By
virtue of that right they may freely determine their political status and
freely pursue their economic, social, and cultural development."
All peoples, should be constructed to mean, Indigenous peoples have that
right to self-determination. And, by virtue of that right, they may freely
determine their political status and freely pursue, their economic, social and
political development. Accord us the same rights as all other nations of
peoples. And through that process, allow us to protect our ecosystems, their
inherent biodiversity, human cultural diversity, and those matriarchal governments
which remain in the world.
And with the Unrepresented
Nations and Peoples Organization (UNPO), we reaffirm that definition
of self-determination provided in Article 1 of the International
Covenant on Social Economic and Cultural Rights, further recognizing
that the right to self-determination belongs equally to women and to men. We
believe that the right of all peoples to self-determination cannot be realized
while women continue to be marginalized and prevented from becoming full
participants in their respective societies. The human rights of women, like the
human rights of Indigenous peoples, and our inherent rights to self-determination,
are not issues exclusively within the domestic jurisdiction of states. For
further discussion of these, please see the international agreements and
accords struck by hundreds of Indigenous nations, such as the Karioka document
and the Matatua document.
Finally, while we may, here in the commonness of this forum, speak of
the common rights of all women, and those fundamental human rights of
self-determination, it is incumbent upon me to point out the fundamental
inequalities of this situation. So long as the predator continues, so long as
the middle -- the temperate countries of the world -- continues to drive an
increasing level of consumption, and, frankly continue to export both the
technologies and drive for this level of consumption to other countries of the
world, there will be no safety for the human rights of women, rights of
Indigenous peoples, and to basic protection for the Earth, from which we get
our life. Consumption causes the commodification of the sacred, the natural
world, cultures, and the commodification of children, and women.
From the United States position, consider the following. The US is the
largest energy market in the world. The average American consumes seven times
as many wood products per capita as anywhere else in the industrialized world.
And overall that country consumes one third of the world's natural resources.
By comparison Canada's per capita energy consumption is the highest in the
world. Levels of consumption in the industrial world drive destruction of the
world's rainforests and the world's boreal forests, drive production of nuclear
wastes, production of pcbs, dioxin and other lethal chemicals, which devastate
the body of our Mother earth, and our own bodies. Unless we speak and take
meaningful action to address the levels of consumption, and subsequently, the
exports of these technologies, and levels of consumption to other countries
(like the international market for nuclear reactors), we will never have any
security for our individual human rights as Indigenous women, and for our
security as women.
If we are to seek and struggle for common ground of all women, it is
essential to struggle on this issue. It is not that the women of the dominant
society in so-called first world countries should have equal pay and equal
status, if that pay and status continues to be based on a consumption model
which is not only unsustainable, but causes constant violation of the human
rights of women and nations elsewhere in the world. It essential to
collectively struggle to recover our status as Daughters of the Earth. In that
is our strength and the security; not in the predator, but in the security of
our Mother, for our future generations. In that we can ensure our security as
the Mothers of our Nations.
No comments:
Post a Comment