A Language Is Not Just A Body

The Problem Is That Those Of Us Sympathetic With The Plight Of Indigenous People View Them As Quaint And Colorful, But Somehow Reduced To Margins Of History As The Real World [(our World)] Moves On We Will Be Known As An Era In Which We Stood By And Either Actively Endorsed Or Passively Accepted The Massive Destruction Of Both Biological And Cultural Diversity On The Planet.

You Know, Once Something Freezes, It's Solid. That's The Key To The Arctic - They Didn't Fear The Cold, They Made Use Of It.

In The West We Cling To The Past Like Limpets. In Haiti The Present Is The Axis Of All Life. As In Africa, Past And Future Are But Distant Measures Of The Present, And Memories Are As Meaningless As Promises.

We Accept It As Normal That People Who Have Never Been On The Land, Who Have No History Or Connection To The Country, May Legally Secure The Right To Come In And, By The Very Nature Of Their Enterprises, Leave In Their Wake A Cultural And Physical Landscape Utterly Transformed And Desecrated. What's More, In Granting Such Mining Concessions, Often Initially For Trivial Sums To Speculators From Distant Cities, Companies Cobbled Together With Less History Than My Dog, The Government Places No Cultural Or Market Value On The Land Itself.

What Could Be More Lonely Than To Be Enveloped In Silence, To Be The Last Of Your People To Speak Your Native Tongue, To Have No Way To Pass On The Wisdom Of The Elders, To Anticipate The Promise Of The Children. This Tragic Fate Is Indeed The Plight Of Someone Somewhere Roughly Every Two Weeks.