Blake rightly states that emphasis should be directed to the causes of the dispossession, marginalization, and premature deaths of so many of the world's indigenous peoples, but he fails to appreciate the importance of culture in ultimately addressing these problems. In giving voice to this view, Blake links himself with a growing clique of academics and environmentalists who claim to speak with the interests of indigenous peoples at heart, as if they intimately understand their struggles and know what is best for them. In his latest book, The Culture Club, for instance, University of Sydney anthropologist Roger Sandall argues that federal policies of self-management for Aborigines in Canada and Australia and the Maori of New Zealand have not advanced their cause. Such an outlook, Sandall argues, when foisted on indigenous peoples, has led many to the mistaken belief that their cultures are worth preserving. We do not seek to answer the question of why some cultures appear to persist and others falter along the way.
All cultures are constantly in flux.
The U'wa are fighting not only for their territorial integrity but also for the social integrity and collective rights of their group. Culture is what gives meaning to people's lives. Individuals orient themselves toward each other, toward the world, and toward the cosmos in terms of the understandings they share with others who live by their culture. If a given population wishes its culture to survive, then its own responsibility is to do what is necessary to maintain and cultivate it, reordering priorities in accordance with the will of the group. This they will do unless they are forced to abandon it.