peoples my name is harold chan or i have a television program in new york city and for this reason they have asked me to moderate or introduce the people who can discuss the conference and if i would i would like to introduce the people at the round table here so that we can talk about some of the events and if i may on my far left or across the table from me is a professor caro you know the current he is a professor of political science at the university of me portugal and professor welcome very very much in honduras ation next to the professor is a hans kutcher and he is a professor of philosophy at the university of austria and is the he's with the international again when that got started i was involved other people have been honored by it and then we can throw this open for discussion with some of the issues that are have been raised here at this symposium the international people's committee for the death the prize for human rights the gun and officially about three years ago of course the intent here was to award the prize to individuals and to groups who are struggling to advance humanity in the struggling against forms of prize is being awarded to the indigenous people of the western hemisphere commonly called american indians for their continuing struggle against five hundred years of aggression occupation and genocide  type of people who are aware and conscious of their responsibility to advance humanity using all forms of struggle in deed you can hardly be more appropriate at this award warning to people who have struggled and suffered so for over five hundred years  would want to wear that yes first of all i would i'm very happy to have this opportunity to greet the people of the great john maria and as is our custom we would like to extend a very warm greeting in our own language so that we can show that we have a language a culture that goes back thousands of dollars a year so i will simply say  was obviously and the language of the audition ave a word in our language that describes us as the people commonly referred to as the chippewa by the immigrant comment calling this two occupied our sacred lands and by the french who similarly occupied our territories in what is now called canada so we are very honored of course to be the recipients of this award for human rights and of course that the committee international popular committee for the prize on human rights has made a determination to award that prize to the indian and of course to what is now called the united states to central america to south america all the way to the tip of argentina and so in the past few days representatives of many indigenous nations commonly call the have again returned to the job as we have done over the past twelve years and i should point out that in one nine hundred eighty eight in the month of january and the first days of february the people of the hosted the first international conference for the liberation of the indigenous peoples of the americas it's interesting that no longer cut off the prize is a great contribution to humanity and so naturally quite we're quite excited quite happy that our struggle which has been a five hundred year struggle literally is the recipients of this award and it's heartening that should come from the geometry that such a recognition should come because the struggle continues in north america the struggle continues in the americas under un recognized by the mass of the citizenry there the holocaust has been put on your of course in every sense of the word  we oftentimes on american television almost every day here accounts and see accounts of the holocaust in europe during the second world war and usually just before another intrusion or invasion into human rights and about the role of law in international relations do not accept this policy of double standards as it has been officially instituted by the government of the united states of america and now through the pressure of the u s government but the organization of the united nations in this time when the east west conflict is ending speaking terminated everybody is speaking of the new world order of peace and trust is human rights them ocracy and so on and that's the power de only remaining superpower the united states of america is committing new crimes in the name of justice democracy and human rights the u s propagates these values certain regions of the world in order to find a pretext to intervene and to impose etc money it's neglects these very riots since sound itself years on its own territory where it first should enforce them in order to indigenous people of america did come at the time because the questions of international law new world order trying to find a new world order with some element of elemental justice involved with it is a different proposition to finding a new world order of a hedge of monica ntro by the united states or even imperialist forces and the world is a different proposition and international law can service in that direction international law can be one big can serve not only the  powerful and the wealthy but it must begin to have a sense of serving the less advantaged peoples of the world and that's why we have two from senator a basic reform and the management of the united nations charter which are now yeah and what we have seen now in the gulf during the gulf war this is a very dangerous president because for the first time we can say since the foundation of the united nations one superpower the u succeeded in using the united nations organization as an instrument for an aggressive policy and as keynes case against the arab world what do you have to consider now is to add that to  immense the charter of the united nations so that there would be also representation on the popular level not only as we have it now on the governmental and state level and that would also make it possible that of indigenous people indigenous nations we would have a chance to express their views in the international forum which now doesn't exist because they are all the hostages of their respective governments whether in the minds of many your revoke oblique changed the nature of the united nations itself it was meant to be an instrument to save mankind from the scourge of war many have seen it was your strawman of war making in the name of american the political substance of the united nations with the now deeply profoundly affected see by even in the violation of the number of articles and i think we have the our choices and in fact once we first the first prize was a tribute to nelson mandela and we were happy to see that not so long after that he was yet released th same bush administration will completely ignore concerning the indian peoples in india usa and in the americans in general seem now but there is another side to it that is that in attributing this prize we are also and in members as members of this committee as i say independent committee we are also in a way standing also for the height of the libyan people to live in peace and without foreign interference and we don't forty nine action as they have known in the past namely from the united states each of us has its own different views about the libyan political and social experiment but we agree on this and this brings me mack to to the international situation i think we are living in a dangerous international situation it is united nations the whole of the united nations has to be greatly improved but in my view we have to be extremely cautious in this present juncture that is the coalition of forces for the moment internationally is such germany over the land this isn't the problem for man for instance we have overwhelming power that the peoples in the american people indian peoples have have known from the beginning of their encounter with the european they have been so overwhelmingly are outmanned as it were by the by the forces that were there it's a very very difficult problem to know whether if i may i don't mean to interrupt your ears but it's a very difficult very difficult thing for the american indian peoples to know whether they want to under certain sense become assimilated with the american political economic social experiment as it is the stablished system as it works or whether they want to cling and try and maintain their traditional values  difficult thing because there's this tremendous pressures that are must be exerted upon you to give up what they would call primitive ways and so forth and to join it work almost in a must be seen in a certain sense in a collaborative way with these forces that have been so oppressive against you much of the world must feel that way do we join with these overwhelmingly powerful hedge monic forces to perhaps gain some advantage by doing that or do we try to stick to some revolutionary or traditional values  for a long time that basically america's foreign policy is a they exactly flexion of their domestic policy back to hundreds of years first toward the indigenous peoples and of course their foreign policy now throughout the world of the war against iraq to take with force whatever they want when they first arrived on our shores of course everyone knows that they were a pitiful people who got off the boats  destitute wrapped in rags they had nothing a pitiful people who were victims of repressive economic political systems suffered social spiritual cultural persecution came to the so called new world which wasn't new at all and it bend there for thousands of years and happened it inhabited by many great civilizations and people when they arrived on our shores they were negotiating from a from a point of weakness and so consequently they came with the bible in one hand and the musket and the saber in the other and we know very well the role of the christian church played as the sort of the advantage in order to penetrate our culture to penetrate our societies little did we know all that when they wanted to make treaties with us and wanted a little land in which to live on of course our people were people of such love and compassion as columbus said the became labeled as and the other one was that he was lost in thought he had landed off the coast of india i don't think that's the more accurate the point i'm trying to make is that realizing they were negotiating from a point of weakness they use their words any use the bible and they use christianity to enslave the minds of our of our leaders little did we know that we were did with a people that each and every time they would walk on their own words war claimed as many as forty five thousand victims many of the indian people the war that continues in el salvador now under the guise of fighting drugs before they pretext was to fight communism but now with the  changes of the global changes and in the soviet bloc in the soviet alliance they can't use the excuse of fighting communism so now it's the war on drugs to do the same thing to the indians of colombia up a rule bolivia and so it goes on and i mean and it is a thing that goes on as you say and think that your people in north america particularly and your people that had it might be well worth stressing that they were they were they were greeting a european culture based on laws of private property and certain ontologies and views of the world were is your people had a very very different empathetic feeling toward their world around them my words i don't know the word ecology is beginning now to be used but it was one that if the resources weren't utilized in a materialistic sense or the european consciousness it was a waste and they had no sense of empathy for the environment whereas the american indian peoples did and it's that lessons of empathetic understanding of the environment the broader environment and other peoples which is perhaps a crying need of all of the world at this moment as we as we reach a point of such his book is lame deer seeker visions and in it he says that the earth is our mother and we cannot harm her in any way without harming ourselves i think that exemplifies the fact that we never thought we could all in the  not to mention the continued desecration of the rain forest the end then people are being eradicated literally and the amazonian basin in order for the multinational corporations to exploit the gold and the labor resources in those regions and so the destruction of our environment continues and of course we are very concerned about that now there are those that will say well the indian people are the first environmentalists let them clean it up well to that we say  will certainly assist but basically these people have to turn around in there and same desire to exploit mother earth and the environment at any cost i think is that what i was trying to say no kwame is picked this up to in a sense is that we have to modern term ecological concerns for the for the broader environment you did that in a heavy price you could have gone to the major institutions and joined the united states but you kept your traditional revolutionary or your traditional values and i now from the lessons of your forefathers which were derided and called primitive and called backward which were really in sense had the wisdom that we now all must begin to learn from this great powerful country the united states  begin to learn from the values of your forefathers which we call primitive gender here and i think that what we have to first of all look at the whole concept of civilization and what does that mean robbers all enemies book club launched pay the that carry that forward today wherever they don't agree with their account subjugating or are terrorists and so that same kind of mindset then it's almost like a major contradiction so you know that that's the point  world our great spiritual leaders down through the years have always try to relate and make washington d c understand and if i could i would like to share a prophecy of a great leader by the name of chief c principal chief of the us to polish nation as well as the dormice confederacy up in what is now called seattle washington is named after him and chief seattle said this and i i think i would like to share this with the people of the john maria and elsewhere in a link where they would hear this and here is what he said when the generals were forcing him and his people to submit to the forced violence of state sponsored terrorism incidentally which we know well down through the years about state sponsored parents any do you victims of that here's what he said to the general whatever befalls the earth the falls the people of the earth we hear means they are not we have the web of life we are merely a strand in it what we do to the web we do to ourselves followers tried nation follows nation like the waves of the sea it is the order of nature and regret is useless your time of the k may be distant but it will surely come for even the white man who is god walked and talked among them as friend to friend could not be exempt from the common destiny we may be family after all we will see that's   civilization is much different than technology and i think they make that confusion well the technology is there this is technology and the technology can be used in a civilized truly civilized way is one of the challenges when you come up against information with your listeners again back in the mid seventy's when we were intensely engaged in the various struggles so we went back to wounded knee where a massacre occurred last one hundred years ago during christmas week where four hundred men women and children were cut down by gatling gun and savor the high tech weaponry of that era and it's interesting to point out the last in one hundred years later we see that gatling gun the high tech weapons of destruction of this arrow less than one hundred years later have they learned in a hundred years nothing what have we learned and the point i want to make is that there was a man that came out of the effect is this man quien the phrase black power it came out of the struggle of the africans in america and he came to our people and he offered his friendship his knowledge respect and he solidarity and this man one time i remember a speech he was given and here's what he said the indians have a history the end an have a glorious history it's not to be found in america's history books but it will be when the indians have their proper nationalism and there is no power on earth that can stop it that man was brother  look and then well spoken today at the same time we have these gatling guns that were used in eight hundred ninety against your people and somewhere and now we come through we've been how long it is that the human species has been on this planet some people are saying now two hundred thousand years we reach a point of absolutely almost existential challenge as we reach a point where we have weapons of destruction that perhaps are capable of destroying our species and it is at the same time imperative that we have some new sensibility in the world other than dog eat dog law of the jungle who has got the strong might makes right and it's somewhere we're going to have to be able to repair to notions of international law perhaps transformed international institutions that are in accord with changing technological or changing realities in the world but that the world is oppressed that the world does not have a vision toward some new empathetic way for the peoples of the world to live together is a next gen challenge that confronts us all and this is something international law must have a rule to play in this right i mean  destruction of all mankind and let's we are able to compliment this civilization which is based on mere materialism and drive for power and control unless we are able to complement that by and i don't value system which could be described as a system respecting nature helping us to understand that we are all part of one reality and in the field of international law that would mean to enforce younger standing of the human being as a citizen of the world first i am of the sea to some of the world to cause more politan  the true sense and only then do i belong to this or diet other good will paint formation or whatever and therefore in my view the indigenous cultures that still have been able in spite of that very strong pressure from the overwhelming technological society that still has been able to preserve their identity have to play a very vital role for the survival of mankind and it is only from those cultures that the western civilization can learn to reflect itself critically and what we have celebrated as achievement in the eloquently carried by you and your brothers and sisters could be our alarm clock or something that could awaken us to the need of this counterbalancing empathetic understanding of dialectic of universal consciousness they're allowed like to carry this point a little further if i made from what is now canada you know there are progeny two million indigenous people of many different nations and linguistic groups that have survived this five hundred years periods and united states according to the last census they say were over two million of course would be broken homes and foster care placement orphan children we say more probably more than three million but from mexico on down we have a situation where in many countries like wa tamala ecuador bolivia and particular mexico we make up the majority of the population estimates as high as eighty million indigenous people of many different indigenous nations but carrying that further we go through the south pacific zealand the maori people make up i think fifteen percent of the population in australia a very smaller percentage west papua new guinea new caledonia the kind acts are being murdered by the french settlers and we can go on the point i'm trying to make as america so arrogantly call themselves the first world let's look at the fact that there is an emerging reality and that is the fourth world of natural in the digit is people who still occupy lands that are relatively unpolluted much of the world's resources will find people are under intense pressure today and particularly in places where the united states is being isolated from southeast asia as they were in vietnam are being isolated from different parts of africa they then have to come home to exploit the remaining lands of people in america the indigenous peoples in what we call the sacred turtle islands before it became america so we would hope that people that understand that this contribution of the prize we human rights  in relationship to this event are celebrating our hosting the five hundred year anniversary of the resistance of the indian peoples of the americas and their right to reap or their right to development and these two events that are taking place this past few days and will conclude monday night with the awarding of the khadafi prize again i will say is a major contribution to humanity getting back today at a point in many countries we are the majority population should be you know the majority rule if i actually thought about the united states we don't see them liberating guatemala from a very progressive murderous regime we don't see them liberating the people who are being murdered now salvador  yet under the guise of of establishing democracy throughout the world we find them oftentimes destroying democracies like they did in one thousand nine hundred eighty four and watch them all like they've done in chile against a democratically elected governor and government of salvador allende and so again this contradiction they say one thing right invalidate it means another so i just wanted to make that point yeah well it isn't the words are important to try to understand words the words are used falsely and the word democracy is a very big word but there's precious little democracy in the united states in real terms in economic terms there's very little democracy democracy is an important word here they have a different sense of democracy in this country what do we mean by it do we mean people can line up to vote for meaningless the question of democracy and justice and do we live in or do we have a lot do we have a way of seeing us achieving an elementally just world order is it something that's beyond the grasp of the human human capability or is it something that we can see a trend that can move that can answer these th can provide not only for a new world order but for an elemental the just new world order and if there is such a way where do we find inspiration for that  to determine their their way towards development the libyan experiment from that viewpoint is valid may have it may have its shortcomings it certainly has its own successes for the last the to the struggles of the peoples you know that the united nations human rights charted of one hundred forty eight does not mention the high to self determination and i didn't realize i had it comes afterwards and it comes up or because before that the people because it is an american gun the american people be interested in this present and balance in this president has germany of us i don't think they can because it brings in security you see you can always overhead if you look at the international scene you can see for the next twenty years or so unless that is that a deep democratic changes you can see the dangers of power process political power process that can be empathetically in touch with other peoples of the world and the fact that they lack that vision makes them very very dangerous and from where does that vision come they can begin to introduce the world capitalist system and this is why the mass of the people around the world recognize a necessity to smash the system because the logic of the capital system is that all of the capital will accrue in fewer and fewer hands and i imagine the logic is that we'll get to the hands of one one individual it's getting close to that now and it certainly is if you look at the united states where the takeovers of so many multinational corporations and all of the state power will do is to protect this individual does america this individual obviously this logic will go nowhere and we will come exactly to the point raised by our guests here at the table that there's no question that the system will break down it will explode  whether spawn tenuously and then a final plan man a plan from the beginning but there's no question it cannot continue the example of the children in palestine throwing stones at a zionist with all their weapons shows that some sort of breakdown of the system that doesn't a certain sense keep things going that could well be the launching pad for the for the for the desperation that would launch the weapons that would exterminate our species we need almost to find some way that we can incorporate as you said earlier the best of the technological we can have a breakdown of the system we have to have some sort of the way where we can transform them or cooperate the best of what they are and include others it would seem to matter no i'm not sure if you understand what i'm going to say with a very dangerous time for there to be such power in the hands of people who say they need vision they need with the american people and the leadership that might become answerable to the american people and say in this case need vision that can allow them to become and politically involved in the interest not only of the people that that would serve the less advantaged but in their own interest in me but i think that you know we may get carried away by american propaganda here and technology in the first instance is universal now it doesn't just belong and even if you look at america today sometimes even on the television when they're explaining technological developments th americans who are speaking the immigrants from outside of america who are making sometimes indians from india pakistan even africans for example during this last gulf carnage if you look at the israelis they were  gas masks those gas masks were invented by an african inside of america so the technology doesn't just belong to it's just that they have because of their wealth and power collected that technology and because some people from outside of america are responsible to humanity and seek only dollars they will sell their brains and anything else for the money they will collect themselves there but they anything america can develop of human nation can develop  just to any one nation or even to any one race it's universal concepts belong to all men and all women it's just a question of power concentration that makes it appear as if america is technological power even the competition to get from japan  straits that today there's no doubt about that the jack kennedy's theory of the fact that it's moving over to japan the technological leadership but the political power is and you know that's the problem so that's why the question is to break that political power is not to do with the technology as we say technology but also the entire world well could be you were speaking for months about the fact that there is this need for an empathetic other side to the technological advance materialistic advance of the capitalistic world  the needs to be i don't know if you use the term empathetic but some sort of an understanding of a way of moderating that kind of the world of course and in some new way and if the adverse side of this nightmare of destruction that is one part of us and we could read that we've gotten to after all these years of experience on the human species it might be on the earth it might be that the other side would be something like a notion a liberation that could be characteristic of the time in which we find ourselves that we have a chance to begin to see a transformation that history is not allowed as in the past were maybe we  could win or something of that so beyond the dialectic of having some brought down i don't know if that makes any buckminster fuller used to talk about but that's why we need a real dialogue going on among culture sensations so far the west has never what is needed now is that the west has to listen to the other cultures and only then will we create or channel rights this critical so if understanding which then may  international progressive organization and professor of philosophy at the university of austria and my far far left is professor serious so care of the mini me you know university in portugal  the universal declaration of human rights adopted by the united nations forty years ago may not be a legally binding document it is rather a promise made by all the members of the united nations to the people of the world  international believe that the governments who have adopted the declaration have a moral responsibility to keep that promise right and that the international post office box three seven one three seven washington d c two double zero one three it's easy to think one person can't make a difference but two hundred million people can if every one of us volunteered just five hours a week to the causes we care about if we all donated just five percent of what we ear