What Is News?

Two Sides to Every Massacre

THE PERUVIAN GOVERNMENT under Alan Garcia re­cently sent heavily armed police in order to clear several thou­sand Aguaruna and Wampi Indians from an Amazon highway blockade. The Government has recently signed a number of free trade agreements with the United States and Canada, seeking to change domestic laws and encourage foreign in­vestment in the Amazon. The Aguaruna and Wampi men and women were standing up to government plans to encroach on the Amazon in order to acquire resources like oil, etc. Their confrontation was publicized by government media very dif­ferent than most private sources relay. The media has claimed that these people were very aggressive and violent towards the police and have presented it as a massacre of policemen, recording the Aguaruna and Wampi death tolls as low as three or four people. Private sources insist however that the natives traditionalist's death toll is up to about one-hundred, and ad­ditionally these men and women were lawfully protesting the destruction of their ancestral or indigenous homeland.

Natives holding a road blockage at the entrance of the Amazonian town of Yurimaguas, northern Peru June 9, let the lorries pass through for a couple of hours. AFP / Getty Images / Ernesto Benavides

This discrepancy in the portrayal of this "massacre" is not uncommon. The majority of mass media sources are owned by either government or colonial agencies. The real battle that is present on every continent and within every country or statelines is the battle between modern or colonial ways and indigenous or traditional customs. For example, many just take the colonial borders and names like "Peru" and the "United States of America" as just the way it is, and don't re­alize that these are one side's (colonial) attacks on traditional identity. Traditional people had a name for the United States before "U.S.A.".

In this light, the term indigenous also has an interesting con­notation. Though to many, it is a preferred term, it is really a back-handed attack that spreads the perception of colonial dominance. By using this term indigenous people in today's current world climate are really giving "humanity" as we have always defined it, a foreign title. Indigenous is really just hu­man. It is the portion of the human family which has a his­tory and understands its legitimacy in its ancestral ways and cultures. No matter who you are if you look into your history you will find that your family was "indigenous" at one point in time before somewhere along the line someone listened, conceded or submitted to others who claimed we no longer needed to learn from our history, that we no longer needed to respect our elders, that we no longer needed to value the wisdom that has come from generations and generations of experience and advice as handed down to us through ancestral intiations. It is this portion of humanity that ignores the ac­cumulation of human understanding of the natural order of the universe. It is this portion of humanity who wishes to throw out all of the wisdom of our ancestors because we don't want to humble ourselves to anyone but ourselves. It is this portion of humanity that doesn't understand the sacredness of life past how it has the potential to fulfill our insatiable desires.

If we will now call those who live how it means to be hu­man "indigenous" and the "modern" human needs no label, what then our they planning for our species, what then our we planning for this Earth. It is important that any conscious human beings around the globe stand for their ancestors and for living a life that respects this planet. If we are not giving our efforts to this feat, our personal desires, colonial education and conditioning will have us unknowingly identifying with the monster who is destroying this planet. We will listen to their accounts of these crimes towards humanity and we will justify them, labeling the true human beings of the planet as "indigenous".

 Green Colonization

ONE DOES NOT blame the stove for a leaking pot, because no matter what stove you move that pot to you will always face the problem. This is a Kemetic proverb that speaks di­rectly to the New-Age Green Movement that is taking our communities by storm. The proverb speaks about the need to fix our faults. If we are not honest enough to admit to our observe our own faults those faults will sabotage every goal we set for ourselves.

At first glance it looks like a good intentioned effort to bal­ance the scales on the environmental destruction and neglect that we have watched since the beginning of the age of colo­nization. If anything, some would say if there was anything wrong with these "green" ideas it is that they are late in com­ing. However, we must look a bit closer. There is another well-known saying that exists within Kemetic society and the colonial world, "The path to hell is paved with good inten­tions."

According to Cultural Survival, a newsletter circulated to promote human (indigenous) organizations and issues, "Some of the biggest threats to indigenous peoples (today) are the efforts to stop global warming." The reason being that these efforts are being led dishonestly by the same multi-national corporations, governments and organizations that have cre­ated the problem. In order to fix such a situation we must first really understand what the major contributors are. This is not very difficult. It is easy to see that pollution, destruc­tion and a total disregard for this planet are the culprits. The solution then seems simple, just stop destroying our planet, and just stop polluting the air, soil and water... very simple. The real question is what could have motivated humans to begin this path of destroying the planet in the first place? The an­swer is wrapped up in the lifestyle that every human being in the colonial territories has now grown accustomed to. It is for one person's comforts and conveniences that they will sacrifice the well-being of the next individual human being or living entity. Our awareness of our affect on ourselves and our surroundings has been atrophied by our colonial paradigms and education. We will have to submit to the challenges of reeducating ourselves in order to realign with our ancestral paradigm. Our ancestors built their customs and culture based on the limitations that this awareness defines. This is maybe why we have for so long seen their lifestyles as primitive or simple. Anything more luxurious or convenient would sacri­fice the true well-being of the individual, a well-being that cannot be disconnected with the well-being of the whole.

Today, the United Nations, the World Banks and many non-governmental organizations and corporations join in cahoots to milk as much profit from this "green" movement as they can. Any individual who is not vigilant in raising their aware­ness will find themselves working to destroy the planet under the same beliefs and meaningless good intentions that humans have used to destroy for the last two thousand years. New programs like the Carbon Market, which allows companies to buy their way out of having to reduce their carbon emis­sions, salt the Earth's wounds. UN programs are even giv­ing more power to colonizing governments who will use the guise of "saving our planet" to snatch land from traditional (indigenous) cultures. Our leaders are asking us to clean those wounds with more excrement. There is now research proj­ects to further geo-engineering weather control such as ocean fertilization, genetically modified organisms like gmo tree plantations to replace forests, and the continued use of fossil fuels under the guise of renewable resources. Will we join these profiteers in their "green" marketing and colonization or will we return our attentions and allegiance to what has been proven to work?