Share

Mark Cherrington

Letter from the Editor: The Tough Get Going

If you’ve been reading Cultural Survival Quarterly magazine for any length of time, you will have been exposed to what must seem like an endless stream of outrages committed against Indigenous Peoples. And it’s easy, reading about these situations, to feel sorry for the Indigenous communities affected, particularly if you are not Indigenous yourself. But pity is actually an inappropriate response. Indigenous communities are far from helpless victims—you don’t survive 500 years of colonialism without being tough, resilient, self-reliant, and innovative.

Bully Baiting

In a schoolyard fight, you can tell when you’ve landed an effective blow against a bully: that’s when he gets angry in earnest. With that in mind, we might take some solace from two new laws passed in Papua New Guinea and Panama. (It would be the only cheerful aspect of these laws.)

The legislation in Papua New Guinea is particularly outrageous. Passed by the legislature on May 28, it amends parts of the country’s Environment and Conservation Act and is designed specifically to let corporations operate in the country without the possibility of being sued for environmental damage.

A Woman to Reckon With

With this issue of Cultural Survival Quarterly we pay tribute to the organization’s executive director, Ellen Lutz, who stepped down for health reasons on August 1. When she arrived at Cultural Survival in 2004, she brought with her an unbeatable combination of talents, including a master’s degree in anthropology and an impressive background as a human rights lawyer. The latter experience included running the Center for Human Rights and Conflict Resolution and a long stint as California director of Human Rights Watch. She also taught human rights law at Tufts University.

Mapping Cosmology

Seeing José Benítez Sánchez’s artworks in person is a dramatic experience. His art is intensely colorful and packed with forms and motion. Every square inch is filled, and figures and shapes crowd each other, all formed of yarn pressed onto a beeswax-covered panel. Your eye hardly knows where to land as it tracks the motion and flow of the various elements, and yet for all the artwork’s exuberance there is no chaos here. Every element is calculated and balanced with a sure hand and a master’s eye.

A Return to Culture

Rudyard Kipling’s The Man Who Would be King is a parable about the price of cultural hubris. His two heroes decide that if they bring their innately superior culture to remote and backward people they can become the kings of the title. Looking for the most backward and un-Western culture they can find, they choose Kafiristan, in the mountains between present-day Pakistan and Afghanistan, and before the story ends, they pay a high price, indeed, for their bloated ambition.

Indigenous Peoples and Climate Change

Just five years ago, governments, pundits, and the general public were talking about climate change—to the extent they were talking about it at all—as a vague issue that was open to question. Today it is not just accepted as a fact; it is seen as a crisis. But indigenous peoples have known for decades that climate change is happening, and they know better than most exactly what it means.

Oh, Canada!

"Residential schools.” On the surface, the term sounds benign, even bucolic, the sort of place where upper-class Britons would send their children in preparation for Oxford. But for Native Peoples in Canada, residential schools are the stuff of nightmares.

The Last Word

This issue of Cultural Survival Quarterly focuses on one of the most critical yet little-known problems in the United States today: the rapid and catastrophic disappearance of Native American languages.

The Secret Life of Beads

For outsiders, the elaborate beadwork worn by Maasai herders may seem nothing more than a colorful decoration that enlivens ceremonies and dancing. But for the Maasai themselves, the beads capture their whole world.

Human Rights Delegation Finds Colombia Guilty of Crimes Against Humanity

In September a delegation of human rights experts from Europe, Latin America, the United States, and Canada, including representatives from the United Nations and the European Union, investigated the state of indigenous peoples in Colombia and issued a statement charging the government with crimes against humanity and other, lesser charges. The group, called the International Verification Mission on the Humanitarian and Human Rights Situation of Indigenous Peoples in Colombia, was organized by the National Indigenous Organization of Colombia.

Syndicate content