Declaration of the Continental Summit of Native Peoples
Declaration
In defense of Water, Land, Air and Life
At the beginning of the 21st century, the promise of Modernity has been left unfulfilled. The world is far from being a harmonious place. People have tried to dominate Nature, but the current state of Nature demonstrates to us that the wisdom of our oldest communities cannot be ignored by economic interests or by distainful arrogance. Global warming and the scarcity of water, which have been denounced by native peoples for centuries, are now acknowledged as a fact by the United National International Panel on Climate Change.
It follows in our perspective, that as native peoples of the American Continent, from Alaska to Tierra de Fuego, we would like to make the pronouncement that governments, businesses, the media, scientists, technology experts and the society as a whole need to stop the road we are taking in order to intentionally restructure a vision of Mother Earth and her natural and human resources.
We believe that it is urgent to give voice and participation to native peoples and communities, as well as to the youth of our communities who are those who will have the responsibility to carry the torch into the future. We, ourselves, have equal responsibility to teach the world community about the necessity of recuperating the past and our traditions as a way to take charge of the present. It is in the ancestral wisdom of native civilizations that we can find the balance between Nature and human development.
In support of these ideas, the Continental Summit of Native Peoples has allowed us to come together as equals, capable of unifying our voices and actions in order to present the following to the world community:
Declaration Concerning Global Warming and the Scarcity of Water
Wherever possible, we will find:
I. A Common Vision
1. To take our traditional wisdom and understanding as profound knowledge. No one respects that which they do not understand. We need to show who we are, the strength of our culture. Only in this way will we understand our rights, understand and admire what we have. In our own identity and tradition, in our ancient rituals lie the possibility of a life of dignity accompanied by sustainable development.
This is why we search to rediscover our own knowledge, the interchange and complementary relationships with other peoples and urban areas, the continuity of our traditions for the coming generations, the possibility of accessing new knowledge and technology, as well as widening the expression of native thought and political participation.
2. We come together as one each day that we activate our thoughts in a united way, giving life in this way to our actions, putting forward our prayers in order to raise our total level of energy with the willing help of the entire planet.
3. We must stay in contact, to create working networks and to bring motivated people together. We must work to unite communities, to create the mindset of living cooperatively together with respect, a sense of humor and happiness to accompany us, erasing the “egos” that separate us from others and from the Universe.
II: The Current Devastation
1. The land where native communities live has suffered a profound deterioration accompanied by the loss of traditions and independent native government. The dissolution of communitarian life and corruption has brought with it a profound deterioration of our lands, rivers, mountains, forrests, and springs that form part of our everyday life.
2. As native peoples we condemn the rights that the rich exercise in order to pollute, even when the pollution takes place as part of paid agreements, as this money is used to stain the land, the air, and the water, to chain the land to death and peoples to loss of their roots and the environment.
3. The effects of climate change and the scarcity of water are Mother Earth’s response to the lack of respect shown to her. We must, in order to avoid this disrespect, form a multi-lingual leadership deep-seated in the knowledge of our roots, our languages, with the capacity to understand others in a world more and more interdependent.
4. As native peoples we remember the biodiverse world that has been protected and respected in the traditions of our peoples, guiding life in our communities. In contrast, where predatory forms of science and trade have been allowed to take control, biodiversity has disappeared, condemning vast zones of land to impoverishment and loss of quality of life. This is why the reinforcement of entire native communities is obligatory to human survival.
5. Equally necessary is that non-native communities must reflect this committment: for example, universities can collaborate in order to have better knowledge of native procedures, which will create closer collaboration and understanding.
6. Economic interests, guided by the search for profit, and when not participating with native communities, convert into enemies of the peoples, of Mother Earth, and of humanity. This is why petroleum has been exploited in a way that does not recognize sacred lands, contaminates water and land, stains the air, destroys the forrests, creates over-salinated water, and erodes the forrests, impoverishing our communities, marketing life, creating low-paid labor, sowing uprootedness, introducing drugs, alcohol, prostitution, and finally forcing the population to leave.
7. This “modernization” is a false concept that mucho too often conceals the conversion of life into an economic resource and destroys the fundamental teachings of life and condemns humanity to a desastrous present and future.
8. Native peoples make theirs the cry of the land and tell the world that the lack of respect for water has become one of the main threats to life on the planet. The merchandising of water, for consumption, for irrigation or for electrical production, is bringing this sacred liquid to a short and terrible end the same as petroleum and gold have faced.
III. Proposals
9. For the struggle against climate change and the scarcity of water we propose:
a. To form a Continental Congress of Native Peoples that will assume the coordinating work, support and evaluate the care of Mother Earth. Their conclusions must be taken to the United Nations International Panel on Climate Change.
b. To promote the development of a continental legislative body in defense of Mother Earth based in ancestral wisdom and to promote the concrete defense of natural resources in the long run. A law in the defense of the entire Mother Earth must accompany all that involves and affects the environment.
c. To obligate governments to end the criminalization of all the brothers and sisters who are persecuted and condemned for defending Mother Earth.
d. To mobilize citizens for the purpose of raising the consciousness of these issues in the public as a whole, sensitizing the media, making politicians take responsibility for assuming the defense of Mother Earth according to the universal principles of native peoples. To this end, we will promote putting into action public policies that will stop the deterioration of Nature, and work so that urgent political action is taken to stop environmental predators.
e. To create yearly meetings such as the one promoted in August of this year in Mexico City.
f. To teach indigenous world views in universities
g. To award grants to indigenous intellectuals and doctors.
h. To present in conferences in schools and public places.
i. To train learned people as intercultural facilitators so they will be able to serve as intercultural translators.
j. To incorporate indigenous ceremonies into the national anthem and the raising of the flag.
k. To assure that governments take joint responsibility in the realization, promotion and growth of Mother Earth Day.
I. To demand that those with public power, especially legislative assemblies, support the manifesto of indigenous peoples by making their own corresponding plans of action, where in joint manner we will define a scaled plan of action to satisfy the demands of native peoples.
10. To widen knowledge of the forms of cultivation that respect that Mother Earth cannot be reduced to an economic instrument, but is the womb that takes care of all of us. The seeds that we use, the chosen methods of cultivation, the respect for water, the use of natural nutrients, the communitarian distribution of harvests, the appreciation made to the Earth for her contribution to our health, and the protection from commercialization of the right to sustain one’s self with food, these are all requirements of a relationship with the Earth that will recover respect for her. The protection of land must create geographic areas where native communities can develop lives of dignity and sustainability.
11. To revoke all of the concessions and permition given for projects that harm our security, health and the environment.
12. As indigenous peoples we want our holistic concept of health to be valued, not only in order to give voice to this knowledge in decision-making, but also to diagnose health problems. Concepts of holistic health such as those that the Mapache culture demonstrate to us indicate physical, mental, social balance, and are inspired by the forces that rule our universe. The Nien, the spirits of places, must be respected. This is why we understand that poverty is the enemy of our being because when there is poverty, the balance is broken and people lose quality of life and their lives reach a point of breakdown.
13. To resist, to oppose, to be; to fully be and in this way to sow our works and way of life and our perceptions into our surroundings.
14. To ensure that it is immediately proclaimed that the large aquafiers of the planet be made zones in which speculative, commercial, and industrial extraction is prohibited, unless it is scientifically demonstrated in an open, public and democratic fashion that these reserves have not been over-exploited nor contaminated by the development of such projects.
15. To ensure the joint participation of governments and our multi-lingual leadership in order to define, implement, and evaluate government programs which are developed fundamentally to increase the value of indigenous peoples and at the same time to open their eyes to the urgency of re-thinking the ways we have treated Mother Earth.
16. The use of vegetation-based fuels has its advantages, among them the fact that they are not toxic, they are biodegradable and non-flammable, and they also emit less contamination into the atmosphere. These benefits also occur from the use of recyclable recepticles such as corn, tusa, maxan or banana leaves.
Nevertheless, there are at least three problems that need to be considered: firstly, what is relevant in facing the climate change is to reduce all consumption of fuels; secondly, the increase in the demand for grains must not bring transgenetics into use; and thirdly, the use of corn and soy as agro-fuels (which is a more adequate term than “bio-fuels” because fuels do not give life) must consider that they increase the prices of staple food items needed by the population for sustenance.
17. As native peoples, we defend the use of medicines, which are based on traditional healing plants, as well as our nutritional and cultural soverienty, and our communitarian self-management. All of these elements cannot be separated. Because of this, we as indigenous peoples proclaim with urgency the necessity of biological and cultural diversity in our communities and in Mother Earth as a whole.
18. We, as indigenous peoples remember the essential importance that childhood has on our future lives. To this end, we proclaim for children the participation in all social, spiritual and cultural activities. Indigenous culture has made children the bearers of the entire culture, the caretakers of the air, the water the Mother Earth, and they must be given special, sacred attention. We must teach our children our native languages, impart to them the advantages of bilingualism and the preservation of our languages in danger of extinction.
19. We, as native peoples, denounce as well, the hypocrisy of recognizing in speech the rights of our peoples, but constantly denying these same rights in practice.
20. It is a profound desire of indigenous peoples that the road towards unity of our hearts is in the name of a shared spirituality. From Alaska to Tierra de Fuego, native peoples manifest the same respect for Mother Earth, for Father Sun, for the Sacred Fire, all of which makes what we share much more relevant than our differences.
21. As native peoples, we want to take things from Nature in accordance with our necessities, and not abuse the use of resources so that we have in this way the balance of Nature and people. The balance that Nature requires can be achieved through teaching the values and principles of native peoples.
22. We call to the National Congresses of all nations to promote the creation of social-environmental protection laws that recognize the rights of citizens and peoples to have adequate and timely information.
23. We understand that balance is necessary to guarantee survival. A balance will achieve the equity and help needed to maintain an equilibrium between Nature and humanity. If not, the lack of balance will translate into the outbreak of war, protests, lawsuits, plague and disease.
24. We demand a law be made to prohibit the patents of medications and medicinal plants that are illegally usurped from native peoples and given to other countries.
25. Women, the bearers of live, are at one with Mother Earth. They deserve as such our respect and care. They are the seeds of life and must be considered as such.
26. We, as native peoples, declare to be the owners of our traditional knowledgeable practices in technology and science to resolve the problems that concern humanity in matters of health, ecological productivity, and the awareness of sustaining Nature, since we have them and practice them and we offer them to humanity.
27. We, as native peoples understand the moral alternatives of different policies. With our own fundamental principles and values we propose that we should be a parallel and consulting body to official actions on the problems of pollution, loss of biodiversity, and the deterioration of water. Our ancestral technology has the knowledge to provide intelligence and harmony to Mother Earth and how to pay tribute to and harmonize with Mother Earth.
To this end, we propose to live in accordance with our ancestral calendar events in order to reestablish our view of the cosmos and modernize our language. We propose in like manner the use of correct names and forms in respect to recuperating Nahuatl names, which have been usurped by the invading peoples. The same must occur for the names of our streets and places that now have names that do not mean anything to us.
28. We are in solidarity with the people of Colombia who are immersed in an armed conflict, in a civil war that directly affects the integrity of life and of indigenous territories. We demand a cease-fire and an end to the armed conflict in Colombia. We denounce before the world the crimes against humanity and the ecological devastation caused by the unlawful fumigation of crops on indigenous lands and zones of high diversity such as “la sierra nevada” and “el putumayo” where the poisons have fallen mercilessly on forrests, fields and people.
29. We demand the recognition of indigenous doctors, that their knowledge be respected and that they are not required to have university degrees nor academic studies in order to carry out their work, in this way helping to avoid the continual stealing of their knowledge.
30. In addition, the youth of native peoples declare the will to organize themselves in all of the Continent, using this united platform in order to be valued as the inheritors and keepers of tradition. The youth demand to not be criminalized for being poor, that public agencies revitalize rural life to help keep the new generation from emmigrating to the cities where a life waits for them that is other than that of the traditions of native peoples.
31. We, as representatives of native peoples, manifest our profound thanks to Lic. Marcelo Ebrard Casaubon, the Mayor of Mexico City, for his help, sensitivity, and openness to make possible the holding of the “Continental Meeting of Native Peoples.” We recognize the spirit in the defense of freedom of the government of Mexico City and their pledge to ancestral and traditional cultures. You receive from us our best hopes for the realization of these government works. We, the representatives of native peoples that have attended the “Continental Meeting of Native Peoples” meet in Mexico City on the 29th of August of 2007, freely sign this Declaration.
for audios here (spanish only)
We want to thank joan MacLean and Bonnie Larson for the translation of this document.
Declaration
In defense of Water, Land, Air and Life
At the beginning of the 21st century, the promise of Modernity has been left unfulfilled. The world is far from being a harmonious place. People have tried to dominate Nature, but the current state of Nature demonstrates to us that the wisdom of our oldest communities cannot be ignored by economic interests or by distainful arrogance. Global warming and the scarcity of water, which have been denounced by native peoples for centuries, are now acknowledged as a fact by the United National International Panel on Climate Change.
It follows in our perspective, that as native peoples of the American Continent, from Alaska to Tierra de Fuego, we would like to make the pronouncement that governments, businesses, the media, scientists, technology experts and the society as a whole need to stop the road we are taking in order to intentionally restructure a vision of Mother Earth and her natural and human resources.
We believe that it is urgent to give voice and participation to native peoples and communities, as well as to the youth of our communities who are those who will have the responsibility to carry the torch into the future. We, ourselves, have equal responsibility to teach the world community about the necessity of recuperating the past and our traditions as a way to take charge of the present. It is in the ancestral wisdom of native civilizations that we can find the balance between Nature and human development.
In support of these ideas, the Continental Summit of Native Peoples has allowed us to come together as equals, capable of unifying our voices and actions in order to present the following to the world community:
Declaration Concerning Global Warming and the Scarcity of Water
Wherever possible, we will find:
I. A Common Vision
1. To take our traditional wisdom and understanding as profound knowledge. No one respects that which they do not understand. We need to show who we are, the strength of our culture. Only in this way will we understand our rights, understand and admire what we have. In our own identity and tradition, in our ancient rituals lie the possibility of a life of dignity accompanied by sustainable development.
This is why we search to rediscover our own knowledge, the interchange and complementary relationships with other peoples and urban areas, the continuity of our traditions for the coming generations, the possibility of accessing new knowledge and technology, as well as widening the expression of native thought and political participation.
2. We come together as one each day that we activate our thoughts in a united way, giving life in this way to our actions, putting forward our prayers in order to raise our total level of energy with the willing help of the entire planet.
3. We must stay in contact, to create working networks and to bring motivated people together. We must work to unite communities, to create the mindset of living cooperatively together with respect, a sense of humor and happiness to accompany us, erasing the “egos” that separate us from others and from the Universe.
II: The Current Devastation
1. The land where native communities live has suffered a profound deterioration accompanied by the loss of traditions and independent native government. The dissolution of communitarian life and corruption has brought with it a profound deterioration of our lands, rivers, mountains, forrests, and springs that form part of our everyday life.
2. As native peoples we condemn the rights that the rich exercise in order to pollute, even when the pollution takes place as part of paid agreements, as this money is used to stain the land, the air, and the water, to chain the land to death and peoples to loss of their roots and the environment.
3. The effects of climate change and the scarcity of water are Mother Earth’s response to the lack of respect shown to her. We must, in order to avoid this disrespect, form a multi-lingual leadership deep-seated in the knowledge of our roots, our languages, with the capacity to understand others in a world more and more interdependent.
4. As native peoples we remember the biodiverse world that has been protected and respected in the traditions of our peoples, guiding life in our communities. In contrast, where predatory forms of science and trade have been allowed to take control, biodiversity has disappeared, condemning vast zones of land to impoverishment and loss of quality of life. This is why the reinforcement of entire native communities is obligatory to human survival.
5. Equally necessary is that non-native communities must reflect this committment: for example, universities can collaborate in order to have better knowledge of native procedures, which will create closer collaboration and understanding.
6. Economic interests, guided by the search for profit, and when not participating with native communities, convert into enemies of the peoples, of Mother Earth, and of humanity. This is why petroleum has been exploited in a way that does not recognize sacred lands, contaminates water and land, stains the air, destroys the forrests, creates over-salinated water, and erodes the forrests, impoverishing our communities, marketing life, creating low-paid labor, sowing uprootedness, introducing drugs, alcohol, prostitution, and finally forcing the population to leave.
7. This “modernization” is a false concept that mucho too often conceals the conversion of life into an economic resource and destroys the fundamental teachings of life and condemns humanity to a desastrous present and future.
8. Native peoples make theirs the cry of the land and tell the world that the lack of respect for water has become one of the main threats to life on the planet. The merchandising of water, for consumption, for irrigation or for electrical production, is bringing this sacred liquid to a short and terrible end the same as petroleum and gold have faced.
III. Proposals
9. For the struggle against climate change and the scarcity of water we propose:
a. To form a Continental Congress of Native Peoples that will assume the coordinating work, support and evaluate the care of Mother Earth. Their conclusions must be taken to the United Nations International Panel on Climate Change.
b. To promote the development of a continental legislative body in defense of Mother Earth based in ancestral wisdom and to promote the concrete defense of natural resources in the long run. A law in the defense of the entire Mother Earth must accompany all that involves and affects the environment.
c. To obligate governments to end the criminalization of all the brothers and sisters who are persecuted and condemned for defending Mother Earth.
d. To mobilize citizens for the purpose of raising the consciousness of these issues in the public as a whole, sensitizing the media, making politicians take responsibility for assuming the defense of Mother Earth according to the universal principles of native peoples. To this end, we will promote putting into action public policies that will stop the deterioration of Nature, and work so that urgent political action is taken to stop environmental predators.
e. To create yearly meetings such as the one promoted in August of this year in Mexico City.
f. To teach indigenous world views in universities
g. To award grants to indigenous intellectuals and doctors.
h. To present in conferences in schools and public places.
i. To train learned people as intercultural facilitators so they will be able to serve as intercultural translators.
j. To incorporate indigenous ceremonies into the national anthem and the raising of the flag.
k. To assure that governments take joint responsibility in the realization, promotion and growth of Mother Earth Day.
I. To demand that those with public power, especially legislative assemblies, support the manifesto of indigenous peoples by making their own corresponding plans of action, where in joint manner we will define a scaled plan of action to satisfy the demands of native peoples.
10. To widen knowledge of the forms of cultivation that respect that Mother Earth cannot be reduced to an economic instrument, but is the womb that takes care of all of us. The seeds that we use, the chosen methods of cultivation, the respect for water, the use of natural nutrients, the communitarian distribution of harvests, the appreciation made to the Earth for her contribution to our health, and the protection from commercialization of the right to sustain one’s self with food, these are all requirements of a relationship with the Earth that will recover respect for her. The protection of land must create geographic areas where native communities can develop lives of dignity and sustainability.
11. To revoke all of the concessions and permition given for projects that harm our security, health and the environment.
12. As indigenous peoples we want our holistic concept of health to be valued, not only in order to give voice to this knowledge in decision-making, but also to diagnose health problems. Concepts of holistic health such as those that the Mapache culture demonstrate to us indicate physical, mental, social balance, and are inspired by the forces that rule our universe. The Nien, the spirits of places, must be respected. This is why we understand that poverty is the enemy of our being because when there is poverty, the balance is broken and people lose quality of life and their lives reach a point of breakdown.
13. To resist, to oppose, to be; to fully be and in this way to sow our works and way of life and our perceptions into our surroundings.
14. To ensure that it is immediately proclaimed that the large aquafiers of the planet be made zones in which speculative, commercial, and industrial extraction is prohibited, unless it is scientifically demonstrated in an open, public and democratic fashion that these reserves have not been over-exploited nor contaminated by the development of such projects.
15. To ensure the joint participation of governments and our multi-lingual leadership in order to define, implement, and evaluate government programs which are developed fundamentally to increase the value of indigenous peoples and at the same time to open their eyes to the urgency of re-thinking the ways we have treated Mother Earth.
16. The use of vegetation-based fuels has its advantages, among them the fact that they are not toxic, they are biodegradable and non-flammable, and they also emit less contamination into the atmosphere. These benefits also occur from the use of recyclable recepticles such as corn, tusa, maxan or banana leaves.
Nevertheless, there are at least three problems that need to be considered: firstly, what is relevant in facing the climate change is to reduce all consumption of fuels; secondly, the increase in the demand for grains must not bring transgenetics into use; and thirdly, the use of corn and soy as agro-fuels (which is a more adequate term than “bio-fuels” because fuels do not give life) must consider that they increase the prices of staple food items needed by the population for sustenance.
17. As native peoples, we defend the use of medicines, which are based on traditional healing plants, as well as our nutritional and cultural soverienty, and our communitarian self-management. All of these elements cannot be separated. Because of this, we as indigenous peoples proclaim with urgency the necessity of biological and cultural diversity in our communities and in Mother Earth as a whole.
18. We, as indigenous peoples remember the essential importance that childhood has on our future lives. To this end, we proclaim for children the participation in all social, spiritual and cultural activities. Indigenous culture has made children the bearers of the entire culture, the caretakers of the air, the water the Mother Earth, and they must be given special, sacred attention. We must teach our children our native languages, impart to them the advantages of bilingualism and the preservation of our languages in danger of extinction.
19. We, as native peoples, denounce as well, the hypocrisy of recognizing in speech the rights of our peoples, but constantly denying these same rights in practice.
20. It is a profound desire of indigenous peoples that the road towards unity of our hearts is in the name of a shared spirituality. From Alaska to Tierra de Fuego, native peoples manifest the same respect for Mother Earth, for Father Sun, for the Sacred Fire, all of which makes what we share much more relevant than our differences.
21. As native peoples, we want to take things from Nature in accordance with our necessities, and not abuse the use of resources so that we have in this way the balance of Nature and people. The balance that Nature requires can be achieved through teaching the values and principles of native peoples.
22. We call to the National Congresses of all nations to promote the creation of social-environmental protection laws that recognize the rights of citizens and peoples to have adequate and timely information.
23. We understand that balance is necessary to guarantee survival. A balance will achieve the equity and help needed to maintain an equilibrium between Nature and humanity. If not, the lack of balance will translate into the outbreak of war, protests, lawsuits, plague and disease.
24. We demand a law be made to prohibit the patents of medications and medicinal plants that are illegally usurped from native peoples and given to other countries.
25. Women, the bearers of live, are at one with Mother Earth. They deserve as such our respect and care. They are the seeds of life and must be considered as such.
26. We, as native peoples, declare to be the owners of our traditional knowledgeable practices in technology and science to resolve the problems that concern humanity in matters of health, ecological productivity, and the awareness of sustaining Nature, since we have them and practice them and we offer them to humanity.
27. We, as native peoples understand the moral alternatives of different policies. With our own fundamental principles and values we propose that we should be a parallel and consulting body to official actions on the problems of pollution, loss of biodiversity, and the deterioration of water. Our ancestral technology has the knowledge to provide intelligence and harmony to Mother Earth and how to pay tribute to and harmonize with Mother Earth.
To this end, we propose to live in accordance with our ancestral calendar events in order to reestablish our view of the cosmos and modernize our language. We propose in like manner the use of correct names and forms in respect to recuperating Nahuatl names, which have been usurped by the invading peoples. The same must occur for the names of our streets and places that now have names that do not mean anything to us.
28. We are in solidarity with the people of Colombia who are immersed in an armed conflict, in a civil war that directly affects the integrity of life and of indigenous territories. We demand a cease-fire and an end to the armed conflict in Colombia. We denounce before the world the crimes against humanity and the ecological devastation caused by the unlawful fumigation of crops on indigenous lands and zones of high diversity such as “la sierra nevada” and “el putumayo” where the poisons have fallen mercilessly on forrests, fields and people.
29. We demand the recognition of indigenous doctors, that their knowledge be respected and that they are not required to have university degrees nor academic studies in order to carry out their work, in this way helping to avoid the continual stealing of their knowledge.
30. In addition, the youth of native peoples declare the will to organize themselves in all of the Continent, using this united platform in order to be valued as the inheritors and keepers of tradition. The youth demand to not be criminalized for being poor, that public agencies revitalize rural life to help keep the new generation from emmigrating to the cities where a life waits for them that is other than that of the traditions of native peoples.
31. We, as representatives of native peoples, manifest our profound thanks to Lic. Marcelo Ebrard Casaubon, the Mayor of Mexico City, for his help, sensitivity, and openness to make possible the holding of the “Continental Meeting of Native Peoples.” We recognize the spirit in the defense of freedom of the government of Mexico City and their pledge to ancestral and traditional cultures. You receive from us our best hopes for the realization of these government works. We, the representatives of native peoples that have attended the “Continental Meeting of Native Peoples” meet in Mexico City on the 29th of August of 2007, freely sign this Declaration.
for audios here (spanish only)
We want to thank joan MacLean and Bonnie Larson for the translation of this document.
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