From: harelb@math.cornell.edu (misc.activism.progressive co-moderator)
Subject: QUINCENTENIAL: "We Are Still Here"
Organization: misc.activism.progressive on UseNet ; ACTIV-L@UMCVMB
Date: Sat, 7 Nov 1992 05:17:06 GMT

    "Columbus was a slave trader, a thief, a pirate, and most certainly
    not a hero.
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    "The Taino, Arawak, and other indigenous peoples of the Caribbean,
    the first "hosts of Columbus," were systematically destroyed [..]
    Every man over 14 years of age was obliged to bring a quota of
    gold to the conquistadors every three months. Those who could not
    pay the tribute had their hands cut off "as a lesson." Most bled
    to death.
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    since 1900 one-third of all indigenous nations in the Amazon have
    been decimated, while during the same time one- quarter of the
    forest has disappeared. There is a direct relationship between how
    industrial society consumes land and resources and how it consumes
    peoples. [..]  In the past 150 years, we have seen the extinction
    of more species than since the ice age.

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[Via misc.activism.progressive from PeaceNet's igc.netnews]
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Topic 143       -- We Are Still Here 
jillaine        IGC NetNews      6:10 pm  Oct  2, 1992 
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	      We are Still Here -- 500 Years Celebration
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		   b y   W i n o n a   L a D u k e
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To "discover" implies that something is lost. Something was lost, and it  
was Columbus. Unfortunately, he did not discover himself in the process  
of his lostness. He went on to destroy peoples, land, and ecosystems in  
his search for material wealth and riches.  

Columbus was a perpetrator of genocide, responsible for setting in  
motion the most horrendous holocaust to have occurred in the history of  
the world. Columbus was a slave trader, a thief, a pirate, and most  
certainly not a hero. To celebrate Columbus is to congratulate the  
process and history of the invasion. 

The Taino, Arawak, and other indigenous peoples of the Caribbean, the  
first "hosts of Columbus," were systematically destroyed. Thirteen at a  
time they were hanged, in honor of the 12 apostles and the Redeemer.  
Every man over 14 years of age was obliged to bring a quota of gold to  
the conquistadors every three months. Those who could not pay the  
tribute had their hands cut off "as a lesson." Most bled to death.  

Sixty years later, in 1552, the Catholic priest Bartoleme de las Casas  
declared that within the entire Western Hemisphere, a total of 50  
million Indians had already perished in just over a half century of  
Spanish invasion. Las Casas had been an eyewitness to some of the  
slaughter and depopulation caused by diseases accidentally introduced by  
the Spanish. In his protest of his own people's "abominable cruelties  
and detestable tyrannies," Las Casas cried out that five million had  
died on the Caribbean islands and that 45 million had died on the  
mainland. (In 1492, in the Western Hemisphere, there were 112,554,000  
American Indians. By 1980, there were 28,264,000 American Indians.) 

Although Columbus himself later returned to Europe in disgrace, his  
methods were subsequently used in Mexico, Peru, the Black Hills of South  
Dakota, and at Wounded Knee and Sand Creek. They are still being used in  
Guatemala and El Salvador, and in Indian territory from Amazonia to Pine  
Ridge in South Dakota. The invasion set into motion a process, thus far  
unabated. This has been a struggle over values, religions, resources,  
and, most important, land. 

The "Age of Discovery" marked the age of colonialism, a time when our  
land suddenly came to be viewed as "your land." While military  
repression is not in North American vogue (at least with the exception  
of the Oka Mohawk uprising of the summer of 1990 , today legal doctrines  
uphold that our land is your land, based ostensibly on the so called  
"doctrine of discovery." This justifies in the white legal system the  
same dispossession of people from their land that is caused by outright  
military conquest. But in a "kinder, gentler world," it all appears more  
legal. 

We understand that "to get to the rainforest, you must first kill the  
people," and that is why since 1900 one-third of all indigenous nations  
in the Amazon have been decimated, while during the same time one- 
quarter of the forest has disappeared. There is a direct relationship  
between how industrial society consumes land and resources and how it  
consumes peoples.  

In the past 150 years, we have seen the extinction of more species than  
since the ice age. And since 1492, we have witnessed the extinction of  
more than 2,000 indigenous peoples from the Western Hemisphere. Where  
are the Wappo, the Takelma, the Natchez, and the Massachuset? 

Most disgraceful of all is the self-congratulatory hoopla under way in  
most colonial and neocolonial states. In 1992, the governments of Spain,  
Italy, the United States, and 31 other countries are hosting the largest  
public celebration of this century to mark the 500th anniversary of the  
arrival of "Western civilization" in the hemisphere.  

It is in the face of this celebration of genocide that thousands of  
indigenous peoples are organizing to commemorate their resistance, and  
to bring to a close the 500-year-long chapter of the invasion.  
Indigenous organizations such as CONAIE (Confederation of Indigenous  
Nationalities of Ecuador), SAIIC  (South and Central American Indian  
Information Center), the Indigenous Women's Network, Seventh Generation  
Fund, the International Indian Treaty Council, UNI (from the Brazilian  
Amazon), and other groups have worked to bring forth the indigenous  
perspective on the past 500 years. 

A number of Native writers, including Gerald Vizenor, M. Scott Momaday,  
Louise Erdrich, and Joy Harjo, are completing books and anthologies on  
the 500 years. And a great number of indigenous peoples are calling on  
other groups--nationally and internationally--to mobilize around 1992 as  
a year to protect the Earth and the people of the Earth.  Indeed, the  
ecological agenda is what many indigenous people believe can, and must,  
unite all peoples in 1992. That agenda calls for everyone to take  
aggressive action to stop the destruction of the Earth, essentially to  
end the biological, technological, and ecological invasion/conquest that  
began with Columbus' ill-fated voyage 500 years ago. 

Through it all, indigenous people will continue to struggle. It is this  
legacy of resistance that, perhaps more than any other single activity,  
denotes the essence of 1992. After all the hoopla and celebration by the  
colonial governments are over, the Native voice will prevail. It is like  
a constant rumble of distant thunder, and it says through the wind, "We  
are alive. We are still here." 

Winona LaDuke is president of the Indigenous Women's Network and a  
member of the Anishinabe Nation.  Orignally published in Sojourners,  
October 1991. Reprint permission granted by Sojourners, P.O. Box 29272,  
Washington D.C. 20017.  This printed article has been edited for this  
newsletter.  For the complete text see "We are Still Here" in the  
conference 'native.1492'. 
Newsgroups: talk.environment