Basic Call to Consciousness

Continued from last week

This was the message of this U.N. conference. And if it was a message that couldn’t be delivered in its totality, it was because it is not a message of words only. It is about a real world, and about a real people and – and in Geneva, after 500 years of contact, it was a message about how these people, by no means perfect, but with a sane, healthy vision of existence, guided by concepts of unity and reciprocity, the positive values of non-accumulation of wealth and, most fundamentally, an all-encompassing comprehension of how the life-force manifests itself in all the beings of the Creation – how these peoples sometimes gradually but oftentimes suddenly found and find themselves barraged by missionaries, soldiers of fortune, educators, economic developers, armies and all manner of confusing gimmicks – and one by one they are extinguished, they disappear – they fight, they kill themselves; they get contaminated; they are assimilated; they survive; they unite.

And over and over this story had told itself, was documented, was specified. And it was the same in the Bolivian highlands as it was in Pine Ridge in South Dakota; in the Paraguayan Chaco as in Akwesasne. And the people could see that now, there was no doubt now.

The government states of North, Central and South America find much to fear in this new unity.

For the South and Central American governments, who make a studied habit of criticizing that “colossus of the North” – United States imperialism – and yet take its money and military aid for their own colonizing expansions – this was unacceptable.

Mexico, Nicaragua, Venezuela and Bolivia found ways to pressure the young Natalio, a Nahuatl delegate. They loomed over him, with serious, threatening faces.

The Mexican government will not have it said it mistreats “our” Indians, they said.

“Furthermore” one of the men said. “There are only 8 million Indians in our country – not 12 million as your report said.”

Natalio shrugged. “You know these figures are hard to ascertain.”

“Eight Million!” Natalio looked away.

“And another thing we want mentioned: the Indian fought for Mexico, in many wars.”

“I know,” Natalio said. “I know we did.”

The Nicaraguan ambassador to Geneva tried to call one of the Mesquitos out of a meeting. The Indians wouldn’t go.

“This is friendly,” the ambassador sent word.

They met for dinner one night. Our positions is very clear, the Mesquito said. We are 100,000 people, within our territories. We are not you and you are not us.

One day the Yecuana from Venezuela looked troubled, withdrawn. “They are pressuring me,” he said. “There are threats,”

And of course, Bolivia – where the struggle is intensifying and the Indian people have vowed to dust off their old, hidden rifles because no longer can they tolerate the humiliation and oppression – and this it: if the Rhodesians move in, apartheid becomes official.

In the United States, the word is out that Russell Means will again be imprisoned – his parole broken too blatantly, too politically. The court won’t tolerate it.

So it goes. And some other too, that one cannot mention.

And over there are the photographers again, during the Legal Commission testimony. They come in opposite sides and set up to photograph the Aymaras and Quichuas from Bolivia.

The Aymaras look down. But then: “Brothers,” one says. “If they want my picture, they can have it.”

He looks up, straight at the photographers. Under his breath he says, “It is going to take more cameras to shut me up.”

And another one looks up – a dark face, with red, tired eyes. “They’ll have to cut my heart out,” he says. “Truly they will.”

Dan Bomberry of the Haudenosaunee Delegation is walking around. He too carries a camera, this one with a long lens. The Aymaras call him over. They want him to shoot the photographers.

Bomberry walks away, crouches down, shoots. He shoots again and again, from the sides, from the front. And the photographers shoot back at them – at the Aymaras and Quichuas, at the other delegates.

Bomberry then shoots the Bolivian Military attaché and his staff. They glare at him scoffingly.

Stephen Gaskin, an independent observer from The Farm, a U.S. self-sufficient community is also recruited. He has a small, dinky camera, but he wields it with flair, joining the skirmish, shooting, shooting.

Pretty soon the two photographer’s retreat. The Aymaras are laughing, laughing. But the Bolivian military man is still looking out, silently, angrily.

Continued next week