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Living in Two Worlds Also: Community Conservation Naga Identity Remaking Philanthropy VOlumE 35 IssuE 3 us $7.50/CAN $9

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A group of Naga women attend a celebration in traditional clothing. See the related story on page 42. Photo by Tuisem Ngakang.

Cultural Survival Before the day is over, an Indigenous person will be killed or displaced. Before the month is over, an Indigenous homeland will be clear-cut, strip-mined, or flooded. Before the year is over, dozens of Indigenous languages will vanish forever. Governments and powerful economic interests perpetuate this human and cultural devastation. Cultural Survival works to reverse it. We partner with Indigenous Peoples to protect their lands, languages, and cultures and fight against their marginalization, discrimination, exploitation, and abuse.

Indigenous Empowerment

Education and Outreach

Among Cultural Survival’s programs, we are working with a coalition of Native American organizations to save critically endangered Native American languages, and are reinforcing a network of community radio stations in Guatemala to help Mayans rebuild their cultures after 36 years of civil war. Our Global Response program helps Indigenous communities defend their threatened environments by mounting international letterwriting campaigns. We are also pursuing legal actions and more ambitious advocacy with Indigenous communities in Panama, Kenya, and Brazil.

Cultural Survival’s publications raise public understanding of and support for Indigenous Peoples and their concerns. In addition to this magazine and our digital newsletter, we maintain a website that includes the largest source of information on Indigenous Peoples anywhere and is visited by millions of people each year. We are also launching a website for Native American nations to share information on rescuing their endangered languages. Our fair-trade bazaars introduce more than 30,000 people a year to Indigenous artisans and provide money that directly supports Indigenous communities around the world.

Become a Part of Cultural Survival Cultural Survival’s work is only possible because of our members. Join us in making Indigenous Peoples’ rights matter. See the inside back cover for a membership form or join online at www.cs.org.

UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Cultural Survival’s work is predicated on the principles set out in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

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FALL 2011 VOLUME 35 ISSUE 3

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A MESSAGE FROMTHE EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

DEPARTMENTS 4

Women the World Must Hear:

PASSIONATE PROTEST IN PAPUA

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Indigenous Arts:

AHTNA ATHABASCAN POEMS FROM ALASKA

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Spirituality:

MASSAU'U’S MESSAGE

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Food for Life:

CHICHA David Bradley (Chippewa), Half Breed, Acrylic on panel 40"w x 40"h, Blue Rain Gallery (www.blueraingallery.com)

FeaTuReS 12 Grandma’s Stocks

By RichaRd MeyeRS an indigenous perspective on the economic crisis.

16 Bringing Back the Tobacco

By ViRGinia dRywaTeR-whiTekilleR a personal essay on cultural resilience, family history, and cherokee identity.

24 conservation Begins at home

a phoTo eSSay By indiGenouS duSun phoToGRapheRS inTRoducTion By heaTheR leach

34 a new way of Giving

an interview with evelyn arce, director of international Funders for indigenous peoples, about how foundations and indigenous peoples are forging new models for partnership and success.

39 a Messenger Between worlds By paula palMeR Sonja Swift is a prime example of the new face of philanthropy, shifting the focus to indigenous communities, emphasizing partnership, and rethinking both the means and methods of foundation giving.

42 My people

By TuiSeM nGakanG Tradition and resilience among the naga of india

ediToR’S noTe: cultural Survival recognizes that indigenous peoples have long been exploited by photographers and publications. This publication does not pay photographers for images and makes no money from publishing them. we also make a tremendous effort to identify every indigenous individual in the images that appear here. From time to time, however, such identification is not possible. we apologize to the subjects of those photos and to any reader offended by the omission.

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What We’re Doing With Your Money

GLOBAL RESPONSE CAMPAIGN 9

STOP THE PIPELINE ON THE SACRED UKOK PLATEAU

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BoaRd oF diRecToRS pReSidenT and chaiRMan Sarah Fuller Vice chaiRMan Richard Grounds (euchee) TReaSuReR Jeff wallace cleRk Jean Jackson karmen Ramírez Boscán (wayuu) Marcus Briggs-cloud (Miccosukke) westy egmont laura Graham James howe cecilia lenk pia Maybury-lewis les Malezer (Gabi Gabi) p. Ranganath nayak Vincent nmehielle (ikwerre) Ramona peters (wampanoag) Stella Tamang (Tamang) Martha claire Tompkins Roy young FoundeRS david and pia Maybury-lewis

STaFF Suzanne Benally (Navajo/Santa Clara Tewa), Executive Director Mark Camp, Deputy Executive Director and Guatemala Radio Project Manager Mark Cherrington, Director of Communications and Editor Danielle DeLuca, Guatemala Radio Program Officer Kristen Dorsey (Chickasaw), Donor Relations Officer David Michael Favreau, Marketing Director Sofia Flynn, Financial Officer Cesar Gomez (Pocomam), Guatemala Radio Project Content and Training Coordinator Polly Laurelchild-Hertig, Director of Program Resources Jamie Malcolm-Brown, Graphic Design Jacob Manatowa-Bailey (Sauk) Language Apprentice, Team Leader, Endangered Languages Jason Moore, Membership Officer Paula Palmer, Director of Global Response Program Agnes Portalewska, Program Officer Rosendo Pablo Ramirez (Mam), Guatemala Radio Project Assistant Coordinator Alberto Recinos, Guatemala Radio Project Legislative Coordinator Jennifer Weston (Hunkpapa Lakota/Standing Rock Sioux), Program Officer, Endangered Languages Ancelmo Xunic (Kaqchikel), Guatemala Radio Project Bookkeeper Phoebe Farris (Powhatan-Renape), Contributing Editor, Arts

SenioR ediToRial adViSoRS Kris Allen Duane Champagne (Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa) Louis Fox Lotte Hughes Kelly Matheson Bird Runningwater (Cheyenne/Mescalero Apache)

cultural Survival 215 prospect Street cambridge, Ma 02139 t 617.441.5400 f 617.441.5417 www.cs.org p.o. Box 7490 Boulder, co 80306 t 303.444.0306 f 303.449.9794 7 avenida norte #51 antigua Guatemala, Sacatepequez, Guatemala

pRoGRaM adViSoRS jessie little doe (Wampanoag) Theodore Macdonald, Jr. Ava Berinstein

inTeRnS and VolunTeeRS Ana Bisaillon, Aileen Charleston, Emily Clayton, Aisha Farley, David Gagne, Deirdre Gillen, Lucile Hoarau, Talia Katz-Watson, Curtis Kline, Ali Mitchell, Derek Smallwood, Amanda Stephenson, Paula Svaton, Tina Thesia, Adam Trope GeneRal inFoRMaTion Copyright 2011 by Cultural Survival, Inc. Cultural Survival Quarterly (ISSN 0740-3291) is published quarterly by Cultural Survival, Inc. at 215 Prospect St., Cambridge, MA 02139. Periodical postage paid at Boston, MA 02205 and additional mailing offices. Postmaster: Send address changes to Cultural Survival, 215 Prospect St., Cambridge, MA 02139.

Printed on recycled paper in the U.S.A. Please note that the views in this magazine are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of Cultural Survival.

wRiTeRS’ GuidelineS View writers’ guidelines at our website (www.cs.org) or send a self-addressed, stamped envelope to Cultural Survival, Writer’s Guidelines, 215 Prospect St., Cambridge, MA 02139. on the cover: Mateo Romero (cochiti), Two Worlds, Mixed media on panel, 48 x 36 in., Blue Rain Gallery (www.blueraingallery.com).

Cultural Survival Quarterly is printed on paper that is a combination of post-consumer recycled fiber and fiber from sustainably managed nonpublic forests certified by the Forest Stewardship Council, the Sustainable Forestry Initiative, and the Program for the Endorsement of Forest Certification. The printer exclusively uses inks, chemicals, and solvents that are biodegradable and recyclable.

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Remembering to Remember

s the end of August nears and summer begins to transition to fall, we are reminded of the seasonal change with the early hints of yellow leaves, the crisper evening air, the harvesting of crops, and the feeling of needing to prepare for the winter months ahead. I am, of course, speaking about a specific place: the United States. Further, I am speaking about my own specific experience recently at the Santa Clara Feast Day as part of a pueblo community remembering to give prayers of thanks at this time of year for the crops, the food, and our well-being, and honoring the attunement of our life cycles with the natural seasonal cycles. This is all expressed through ceremonial song, dance, ritual, and open hearts of sharing and giving. This is our language, our meaning system, and our profound interpretation of what it means to be human and connected to each other, to all living beings, and to the natural world. This language, this literacy of “we are related” or mitakuye uyasin of the Lakota People, is referenced in this issue of Cultural Survival Quarterly, in the article “Grandma’s Stocks,” and it is a foundational understanding in the articles written by Indigenous authors in this edition. From the Cherokee story of bringing back the tobacco, to the haolaa “songs” of the Naga People in India, to the salmon ceremony of the Takelma People in Oregon, to

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the chakra spiritual gardening of the Achuar People in Peru and Ecuador, we are reminded of our spiritual responsibility by elders who have gone before and by those now who continue to offer prayers, who speak with spirit world and with the natural world. These elders tell us, as the Tewa People say, “to remember to remember”: to give thanks, to be in reciprocity, and to stay connected through prayer, song, dance, and ceremony, in community, as was done on the Santa Clara Feast Day. As Indigenous people, Native people, tribal people, we struggle for the right to be given full recognition as collective “Peoples” entitled to maintain our worldviews and our relationships with the natural world, our homelands, and the sites we hold sacred that bind us to our spiritual world; to protect our natural resources and cultural and intellectual property. We live within our Indigenous and Native societies, and also live in dominant state-societies that challenge our sensibilities as Indigenous Peoples, that require us to be educated and to participate in knowledge systems and practices that are antithetical to our own. As this magazine’s articles demonstrate, we are contemporary people negotiating multiple worlds as grandmothers, grandfathers, community workers, lawyers, artists, philanthropists, and educators. We seek to build strong Indigenous communities and tribal nations in the midst of difficult and often-contradictory complexities. In doing so, we reflect on the wisdom of the late Hopi spiritual leader Thomas Banyanca in his address to the United Nations Habitat Forum in 1976: “Land was here long before any human being set foot upon this earth. Somewhere the human race began, and we came to this land after asking permission from the Great Spirit, Massau'u. . . . He marked out the boundaries for each group on the continent, after which each group was given an individualized life plan with certain spiritual and religious beliefs, the way to worship, to live, the food to eat, the languages to speak, etc. He then gave his final instructions: live and never lose faith or turn away from your life pattern.”

Suzanne Benally Executive Director Navajo and Santa Clara Tewa cultural Survival Quarterly

Fall 2011

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WOMEN THE WORLD MUST HEAR

Standing up to Violence

By Tina Thesia

“This land is my body, Nemangkawi Mountain is my heart, Wonongan Lake is my marrow, and this river is my breath. Yet you have been eating me; you don’t have heart and feelings. Freeport and Indonesia government, you have been eating me, don’t you realize?”

—yosepha alomang

Yosepha Alomang looks through the fence and razor wire at mine waste being dumped into one of the local rivers on her people’s land. Newport’s Grasberg mine dumps at least 230,000 tons of waste into the area’s rivers every day.

Photo by Popon Anarita.

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est Papua is the western half of New Guinea, the second-largest island in the world. The island is divided into two parts, West Papua, which has incorporated as a province, and Papua New Guinea. In May 1963, West Papua was occupied by Indonesia. Since that time. Indonesia has denied Indigenous Papuans a genuine opportunity for self-determination. Papuans are now facing a real threat to their survival in their own land, due to continued subjugation and suppression by the Indonesian authorities, ongoing crimes against humanity committed by the

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Indonesian military, and the neglect of their socio-economic and cultural rights.

For 30,000 years, West Papua's Indigenous Peoples lived a sustainable existence, but three decades of mining practices permitted by the Indonesian government have destroyed rainforests, polluted rivers, and displaced communities. The Grasberg gold mine, operated by the Freeport-MacMoran corporation, is among the worst examples, dumping at least 230,000 tons of tailings into local rivers every day, spreading deadly pollutants over vast areas.

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Yosepha Alomang is perhaps the best-known person fighting these injustices. The founder of YAHAMAK, a women's organization dedicated to human rights, environmentalism, traditional culture, and collective action, Alomang received the 2001 Goldman Environmental Prize for her efforts on organizing her community to resist the Freeport mining company. She also was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize and has received numerous other national and international awards.

Despite not being able to read or write, she has sued the Freeport mining company in U.S. courts. She has also been jailed numerous times, in horrifying conditions, for her opposition to the mine.

Yosepha is a member of the Amungme people. She was born in Papua’s Mimika District in 1949, and stopped her schooling when she reached the fourth grade, following the death of her parents. She is physically small, but she has stood up to powerful interest groups in defense of her people’s right to their land.

“I live in a traditionally strong and strict culture,” she says. “I learned to live on the basis of what God has provided for us. We must be responsible for that. A good relationship with nature is essential. Men do not live just for money. My culture does not teach us to steal and rob the rights of others. I know what is right and wrong in defending my rights. On my land, I speak up about humanity, the truth that my rights are being taken away. They took our land. They didn’t even ask our permission.

“Since the Indonesian colonization of Papua, my land became military property. My land is maintained by weapons; my mountain is guarded with guns; my river is kept guarded; my forest is protected by soldiers; and we land owners are murdered and driven out brutally and politically by military pressure. Indonesian soldiers oppress our human rights, rape and murder anyone they please. I have been deprived of my rights, such as the right to peacefully raise children, to garden, and to hunt, just to name a few. I am an angry woman, wife, and mother. I have suffered from this for so long.”

Yosepha’s outspokenness has not faded, despite the government’s attempts to silence her. “I have been in and out of prison 18 times,” she says, “always fighting for justice, reclaiming what is rightfully ours. Even when I was jailed, I kept talking about my rights. I am not afraid of them.”

That kind of courage is all the more impressive considering the state of affairs in Papua, where it is illegal to even show the Papuan flag and no one has an accurate figure for the number of people killed by the military.

Even more impressive is Yosepha’s commitment to nonviolence in that context. “Our purpose is to speak to the local and central government,” she says, “sitting together to discuss and attempt to find solutions to unresolved and unfinished problems. I have spoken to Suharto, Mega, and many others with dignity.”

Yosepha says that it’s natural that in her culture a

leader should be a woman. “This land,” she says, “is like a mother who is sleeping: the mountain is the mother’s head and the river is the mother’s breast milk. Now the mother’s breast milk is being contaminated and dried, the mountain and lands are being destroyed brutally by Freeport and the government. We all know that mother’s role in the family is very important. A mother knows that she has a responsibility to raise children. If the mother dies, the children will suffer, because a father will not take care of them well. However, if the father dies, the mother is able to raise and take care of them well and with love.

These struggles do not only belong to the men. We women and children also suffer from this oppression.

Women are sent in to prison, raped, and killed. We cannot get used to seeing women tortured, raped, and murdered cruelly. I don’t know how many souls have been sacrificed in defending our right to live in our land.”

Much of Yosepha’s fire comes from living as an orphaned child. She was little girl when she saw outsiders take over their tribal lands without getting permission.

“Before,” she says, “long ago, we all lived peacefully, but the moment outsiders came in, our lives were ruined and our future was destroyed. Why can’t we determine our own future? Why can’t we live peacefully on our own land? Why do Indonesian soldiers not treat us like human beings? I am fighting back for my rights nonviolently. Despite this, though, they are dealing with me by using military force. This is my land, my ancestor’s land, and nobody can take this away from me. These beliefs give me the strength to keep fighting.”

Yosepha Alomang received the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize in 2001 in recoginition of her work against mines in Papua.

Photo courtesy of the Goldman Environmental Prize (www.goldmanprize.org).

Agustina F Thesia is a Papuan master’s candidate at SIT Graduate Institute in Brattleboro, Vermont, and was an intern at Cultural Survival during summer 2011. cultural Survival Quarterly

Fall 2011

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I NDIGENOUS A RTS

in My Grandmother’s Tongue: poems from the ahtna athabaskan language of alaska The following poems are from the Ahtna Athabaskan language of interior Alaska. They are from John Smelcer’s forthcoming volume, The Complete Ahtna Poems (foreword by Noam Chomsky). The son of an Alaska Native father, John learned how to speak Ahtna from the few elders who still speak the language. He was the tribally appointed executive director of the Ahtna Heritage Foundation, where he worked with elders to produce The Ahtna Noun Dictionary. Today, only about 20 elders still speak Ahtna. John is the only living tribal member who can read and write in the language, one of the most endangered languages in the world.

These poems are among only a handful in existence, the only literature of an entire culture.

DANDELION C'ET'AAN' 'UNETNIIGI Ts'isaenniidze, dik'aagi ninic'ezet, “Łunitesdzet ts'ii.”

Xukahts'en', ditsiic c'et'aan' unetniigi tah dzaen na'aaye'.

THE DANDELION BLOSSOM During midsummer, a fluffy seed thought, “I'm tired of being adrift on the wind.”

SII UZADALTS'ET SON' Nelt'e'ne kilaen son' tah yazaan k'e dzes tah ne niic 'eł dzes tah ne ts'aat.

Presently, a dandelion blossomed in the sun.

'Udii lae kole cu.

DLOK'

WHAT I LEARNED FROM THE STARS

K'e xay zaadi na'aay na'idyaa 'eł ziił nen tsaadle'.

There are as many stars in a clear night sky as there are trials in our lives and tests of our love.

Nen' dlok' tah c'et'aan' 'unetniigi.

LAUGHTER

Nothing else is eternal.

After the harsh winter the sun returns and warms the belly of the land.

The earth laughs in flowers.

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Nen’ Cuut Yaak kaskae ts’en denae tah Washington:

NADAEGGI DENAE INAA KAYAXKUDGHIŁ’’IITDEN

K’e lae denae nen’ kaet?

Yen lae ‘yaen kaet di łuyinitaan.

Tah 1492, nadaeggi denae ‘aen kayaxkudghił’iitden yii hwzaak’e kenaege’ yaak:

Denaey nuu dlok’ gha iin.

Gaa xona: America!

The Land Grabbers

“Yaak yidi?” kaet denae ts’iłk’ey.

“Su’u,” yaak denae nadaeggi, ghaats dii tsi.

“Sii łigu kayaxkudghił’iitden kole gha denae.”

Said the chief to the man from Washington: How can a man buy the land?

He can only buy the things he can carry.

Indians standing close by chuckled at the notion.

TWO INDIANS INTERPRET A SIGN In 1492, two Indians stumble upon a billboard in the middle of a clearing with the words: Coming soon: America!

GHAETL' SAGHANI GGAAY Saghani Ggaay den ghaetl' xa' yen ya'yaał ts'es tah de da ka ggesdlaani saen

“What does it say?” asks the first Indian.

“I don’t know,” says the second, scratching his head.

“But I’m sure it doesn’t have anything to do with us.”

MUM RAVEN Raven wanted to learn silence so he carried a stone in his beak for a hundred years

Photo of Milky Way by Bulliver. Raven painting by Susan Brand Studio. To see John Smelcer’s Ahtna dictionary, go to www.johnsmelcer.com/dictionaries

cultural Survival Quarterly

Fall 2011

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S PIRITUALITY

MaSSau’u’S MeSSaGe The following is an excerpt from a speech delivered by Hopi spiritual leader, Thomas Banyacya, in front of the United Nations Habitat Forum in Vancouver, British Columbia in 1976. The speech was delivered as part of a three-day Earth Healing ceremony, during which the Hopi shared their spiritual prophesy with the forum. Prior to this event, the Hopi people had been denied audiences with both the United Nations General Assembly in New York and the World Congress of Religions.

By Thomas Banyacya y name is Banyacya of the Wolf, Fox, and Coyote clan, and a member of the Hopi Independent Nation. I have been appointed as an interpreter for and by the hereditary Kikmongwis [clan leaders] and the religious headmen of the Hopi people. I am here to fulfill my clan duty by presenting to the United Nations and the world the message of the hereditary Kikmongwis, Hopi religious headmen and other Native traditional elders.

The time has come to join in meaningful action.

Destruction of all land and life is taking place and accelerating at a rapid pace. Our native land is continuing to be torn apart and raped of its sacredness by the corporate powers of this nation. We do have an alternative to this. Mankind has a chance to change the direction of this movement, do a roundabout turn, and move in the direction of peace, harmony, and respect for land and life. The time is right now. Later will be too late. In order to do this, the Native peoples must return to the spiritual path as one to cure and heal our Mother Earth. It is only through the heart, prayer, and ceremony that we can bring this turbulence of evil to a halt.

Hopi and other Native spiritual leaders are greatly concerned with the conditions of our Mother Earth.

They have watched the white brothers systematically destroy the Native peoples as they did natural resources. According to our beliefs and prophecies, if this destruction continues, man’s existence on this world will soon be ended. We are not asking the United Nations for help in a material way. We are, according to Hopi prophecy, simply trying to inform the world of what is going to happen if the destruction of the earth and its original peoples continues as is known by our

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religious Hopi elders.

The Hopi and all Native brothers have continually struggled in their existence to maintain harmony with the earth and with the universe. To the Hopi, land is sacred, and if the land is abused, the sacredness of Hopi life will disappear and all other life as well. Land is the foundation of Hopi and all life, and the foundation of the Hopi stand.

Land was here long before any human being set foot upon this earth. Somewhere the human race began, and we came to this land after asking permission from the Great Spirit, Massau’u. After obtaining His permission we came and settled with Him on this land. He showed us the continent. He gave us Sacred Stone Tablets, religious instructions, warnings, and prophecies, and all land and life was placed in the care of Kikmongwis and religious headmen. He marked out the boundaries for each group on the continent, after which each group was given an individualized life plan with certain spiritual and religious beliefs; the way to worship, to live, the food to eat, the languages to speak, etc. He then gave his final instructions: live and never lose faith or turn away from your life pattern. The peoples of the world are turning away from their life plan.

We Hopi have been faithful to the instructions of the Great Spirit, Massau’u, up to this time. We have followed our life plan. We are still carrying on our sacred rights and ceremonies. We have not lost our faith in Massau’u. He has given to us many prophecies. He told us the white brother would come and be a very intelligent man, bringing to us many things he would invent.

One invention that our forefathers spoke of was a machine, or object, that would move on the land with an-

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Telengit people make offerings at a sacred site known as Jeele during the Jashyl Buyr (“green leaves”) holiday.

Photos courtesy of Ere-Chui Association of Obshchinas of the Telengit

TELENGIT PEoPLE of RussIA

stop the Pipeline on the sacred ukok Plateau

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or at least 8,000 years, people have journeyed to the high Ukok Plateau to bury their dead with sacred ceremonies and give offerings to the spirits of the heavens, the mountains, and the waters.

Today, the Telengit people carry out their ancient rituals on the Ukok amid the burial mounds, stone stellae, and petroglyphs of their ancestors in this mountainous borderland between Russia and China.

Through centuries of experience, the Telengit people learned the survival skills—herding, hunting, fishing—that sustain their clans and communities in this remote, arid, permafrost landscape. But now they are facing a new challenge: Russia and China are planning to build a pipeline to carry natural gas from Siberia to China. The pipeline would bisect the sacred Ukok Plateau and the Golden Mountains of Altai UNESCO World Heritage Site in Russia, and the Kanas National Park in China, one of China’s last undeveloped wilderness areas. This remote mountain region is critical habitat for snow leopards, argali mountain sheep, and other endangered species.

The Telengit people and Russian environmental organizations are calling out to the international community for help to stop construction of this gas pipeline across the Ukok Plateau. Please write letters to Russian and Chinese officials today. w w w. c u l t u r a l s u r v i v a l . o r g

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You Can Help Write a Letter for this Campaign Please send polite letters to Russian and Chinese government officials. Model letters in English, Russian, and Chinese are available at www.cs.org.

Express deep concern that the proposed Altai Gas Pipeline from Russia to China would bisect the Ukok Plateau, the Chuya Valley, the Golden Mountains of Altai UNESCO World Heritage Site, and a Nature Park in Russia, and the Kanas National Park in China. Pipeline construction threatens critical habitat of many endangered species, pristine rivers, permafrost wetlands, mountain wilderness, and archaeological treasures.

Urge Russia’s president to respect the rights of the Telengit people, who are recognized as a “small-numbered minority people” with legal rights, and for whom the Ukok Plateau is a sacred place for burials and religious ceremonies. Construction of the pipeline would violate their rights and threaten their livelihoods based on free-range livestock herding, hunting, and fishing.

Inside their yurt, Telengit women prepare food for their guests during the San Salary ritual.

A Message from the Telengit People: Dear Friends!

As representatives of the Telengit Indigenous People of Altai Republic (Russia), we ask for your support in conducting a campaign against plans to build a natural gas pipeline from Russia to China across the Chuya Valley and the Ukok Plateau.

Ukok is a sacred territory for us. Over many centuries, our ancestors have conducted rituals and buried our dead there. The San Salary takes place on Ukok, a ritual to honor the spirits of the heavens and our ancestors. Each visitor to Ukok leaves a rock in offering at each obo (cairns located at mountain passes), ties a dyalama ribbon, and leaves “white food,” while those who travel on horseback leave a hair from the horse's mane. A pipeline across the Ukok Plateau will destroy numerous monuments of scientific and historical importance, and, more importantly, vital to our people's sacred traditions.

The planned pipeline will inflict serious environmental damage in a UNESCO World Heritage Site and the Ukok Nature Park where we have many animals and birds that are listed in the Red Book [Russia's list of endangered species]: snow leopard, argali mountain sheep, manul (Pallas) cat, black stork, bar-headed goose, steppe eagle, and others. Damage to permafrost on Ukok is particularly dangerous, as it will hasten the melting of glaciers in the Tabyn-Bogdo-Ola and Southern Altai ranges.This region is also prone to earthquakes that could cause devastating pipeline leaks and spills.

Construction of the pipeline also threatens our local economy. In our Territory of Traditional Natural Resource Use we practice free-range animal husbandry, fishing, and hunting, and we are developing cultural and ecological tourism. Construction of a pipeline, contamination, and the melting of permafrost will affect all our economic activities and we will lose our sources of food and livelihood.

We have appealed to Russian and Chinese government agencies and Gazprom, but our rights and demands are being ignored. Our only hope is for broad-based international support, and we turn to you with a request to send letters of protest in our names to the companies and governments of Russia and China. Thank you in advance,

Commend China for nominating Kanas National Park as an extension of the Altai UNESCO World Heritage Site, and remind them that UNESCO opposes pipeline construction through the World Heritage Site.

Urge China not to put the pristine Kanas wilderness at risk of contamination and degradation.

Send letters to: President Dmitry Medvedev 23, Ilyinka Street, Moscow, 103132 RUSSIA Fax: +7 (495) 910-2134 Send email via: www.president.kremlin.ru Li Baodong, Ambassador to the United Nations People’s Republic of China 350 East 35th Street New York, NY 10016 Fax: +212-634-0042 E-mail: ChinaMissionUN@Gmail.com Premier Wen Jiabao General Office of the State Council People's Republic of China No.2 Fu You Street, Xicheng District Beijing 100017 Peoples Republic of China E-mail: cnzongli@126.com For more information, see: http://saveukok.ru/ www.altaiproject.org http://fondaltai21.ru/ Tips: Postage to Russia and China from the US is 98 cents.

Model letters in English, Russian, and Chinese are available at www.cs.org Personal, mailed letters have highest impact!

Thank you for joining in this campaign! The Telengit people say, “Слерге jаан быйaн болзын!”

Roman Mikhailovich Tadyrov, Chairman Ere-Chui (“Sacred Chui”) Association of Obshchinas of the Telengit Small-Numbered Minority People

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TO Arzhan Tudenev, a young Telengit throat-singer, prepares to participate in the San Salary ritual. He plays a twostringed instrument called a topshuura. Photos courtesy of Ere-Chui Association of Obshchinas of the Telengit.

TELENGIT PEoPLE of RussIA

stop the Pipeline on the sacred ukok Plateau

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ultural Survival encourages children and teens to learn about Indigenous Peoples, especially how Indigenous communities work to defend their rights and protect their lands.

Sometimes, when governments and companies are not respecting their rights, Indigenous Peoples ask us to help them by writing letters.

Right now, the Telengit people in Russia are asking us to help them stop construction of a gas pipeline that would cut right across their most sacred place, the Ukok Plateau.This high plateau in the Altai Mountains on the border between Russia and China has been a sacred burial ground for at least 8,000 years.The Telengit people journey to the Ukok Plateau to make offerings to the spirits of the heavens, the mountains, and the waters amid the graves, stone monuments, and petroglyphs (rock carvings) of their ancestors. Snow leopards, argali mountain sheep, and other endangered species roam the permafrost landscape of the Ukok Plateau.We can help the Telengit people save the Ukok. Learn more, and then please write a letter to the president of Russia! w w w. c u l t u r a l s u r v i v a l . o r g

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YOUTH ACTION Stop the Pipeline on the Ukok Plateau

The Telengit People

The Telengit are horse people. Some say their forefathers served as the personal guards of the famed Mongol warrior, Genghis Khan, who conquered Eurasia. They call their horses “human wings” and treat them with great honor. The Telengit also raise yaks, camels, sheep, and goats.They use the yaks and camels for carrying heavy loads. All the animals provide meat, hides, wool, and milk. The Telengit make round houses called yurts out of felt and bark. When singer-storytellers come to visit, everyone gathers to hear them sing the long Telengit legends. They sing a special SaCrEd PlaCES way called throat singing, DO YOU HAVE A SACRED PLACE? with each singer making two WHAT IS IT LIKE? WHY IS IT SACRED TO YOU? notes at the same time, one HOW DO YOU BEHAVE IN A SACRED PLACE? high and one low. At the Telengit Culture Center, young WHAT DOES “FREEDOM OF RELIGION” MEAN? people learn throat singing, and they compete for prizes at regional festivals.

what difference would a Pipeline Make?

Russia wants to sell natural gas to China by building a 1700-mile pipeline across the Ukok Plateau. Pipelines can break or explode and leak gas into the lands, lakes, and rivers they cross. Earthquakes are common in the Ukok region, so that would be a big danger to the pipeline.To build the pipeline, they will have to build a road alongside it. Once a road is built, it is very hard to keep people from using it, so in no time traffic will be criscrossing the sacred lands. How will the Telengit people be able to protect their sacred sites and burial grounds? How will animals like the snow leopard, that need large undeveloped territories, survive?

The Ukok Plateau is in UnESCo’s golden Mountains of altai world Heritage Site.

UnESCo warned russia that building the pipeline would put the world Heritage Site in danger. now our letters can help convince russia’s president to stop the pipeline and save the Ukok Plateau.

The Telengit people are asking you to help them protect the sacred Ukok Plateau. Please write a polite letter to the president of Russia. Tell him what you think about the idea of building a gas pipeline across the Ukok Plateau.

Ask him to respect the rights of the Telengit Indigenous people.

SEnd yoUr lETTEr To: President Dmitry Medvedev 23, Ilyinka Street, Moscow, 103132 RUSSIA

lETTEr wriTing TiPS: Start your letter with this salutation: Dear Mr. President: Make sure your letter is polite and respectful.

At the end of your letter, ask the president for a reply.

Include your name, your age, and your address on your letter.You might get a letter back from the president!

Postage from the US is 98 cents.

The Telengit people say “Слерге jаан быйaн болзын!” – Thank you!

Photo Above: During the Jazhl Byur (“green leaves”) holiday, Telengit people travel to the Ukok Plateau to place rocks at sacred places and participate in other ancient ceremonies.

Photo Left: Snow leopards are well adapted to cold, rocky, mountainous terrain far from human populations. Scientists think only about 5,000 snow leopards exist in the wild because humans keep invading their habitat. Photo by Rob Brooks.

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imals pulling it: the wagon. Our forefathers also talked of a machine that would afterwards move with nothing pulling it. When we saw the automobile we understood. Then they said that the land would be cut up and that there would be many roads. Today we see pavement all over the land. Later, there would even be roads in the sky where people will travel. Now we see airplanes. It was said by Massau’u that if and when a gourd of ashes is dropped upon the earth, that many men will die, and that the end of the materialistic way of life is near at hand. We interpret this as the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We do not want to see this happen again, here or any place on our Earth Mother; instead, we should now turn all this energy for peaceful uses, not for war.

Today the sacred lands where the Hopi live are being desecrated by men who seek coal and water from our soil that they may create more power for the white brother’s cities. It will destroy our Hopi and other people with smog, poison air, lack of water, and pollution of water and land. One example is sacred Hopi land in ruin all over the "four corners area", where Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, and Utah meet in the United States; this area Hopis call Tukunavi and is part of the heart of our Mother Earth and has been a shrine and sacred place for the Hopi and other pueblos for many thousands of years. This desecration of our spiritual center must not be allowed to continue, for if it does, Mother Nature will react in such a way that almost all men will suffer the end of life as they now know it. All we ask is that this place be respected and protected by all nations who have sacred duty and responsibility. Every measure must be taken to preserve this spiritual center.

Massau’u said not to take from the earth for destructive purposes and not to destroy living things indiscriminately or without prayer. He further stated that man was to live in harmony and maintain a good clean land for all children to come, and take care of land and life for the Great Spirit. The United States system has gone against these religious instructions and now almost destroyed all our land and our way of life. All Hopi People and other First Peoples are standing on this religious principle. Not only have the Hopi struggled to care for and maintain the earth and their exis-

tence, but all the First Peoples of the Americas have struggled to maintain themselves in the world today.

The present oppressive governments in the Americas continue to make the existence of the First Peoples a continuous struggle for life.

The United States and United Nations should understand that it cannot bring about peace and harmony or the good life in the world if it does not correct the wrong doings going on within the American continent.

The United Nations will never be able to reach its goals, to bring about peace and harmony among all people, or make it in the future if it does not at least support the Hopi and the other First Peoples of this land in their struggle for world wide recognition and respect.

Man must learn to serve man and share freely from now on. We must bring back the level of life where land is free, water is free, there are no boundaries and there is freedom of spiritual understanding.

The Navajo Generating Station was put into operation around the time Thomas Banyaca delivered his address at the UN. The coal-fired plant, which is on the Navajo Reservation, near the Hopi Reservation, emits nearly 20 million tons of carbon dioxide each year. It also employs hundreds of Navaho and Hopi workers, and the royalties from the operation are a major part of the tribes’ budgets. Photo by Stefan Georgi.

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F OOD FOR L IFE

nijiamanch

By Stephanie Hartka he territory of the Achuar, the people of the swamp palm, is a vast and remote territory straddling the long-disputed border of Peru and Ecuador, spanning nearly three million acres of forest.

There are approximately 65 Achuar communities, made up of 50 to 500 people and scattered over a wide area of forest. Among the Achuar, hunting is primarily a male activity, while women are responsible for the communities’ gardens. The typical Achuar garden contains many kinds of plants, but the centerpiece of the garden and the staple of their diet is the manioc plant. The dynamic and complex relationship between this plant and its female cultivator is profound.

The garden, or chakra, is the domain of the woman only, and gardening is a fundamentally spiritual activity.

The spirit being who created cultivated plants and controls the garden is Nunkui. An Achuar gardener has to develop a relationship with Nunkui as well as with the plants in the garden if she hopes to be successful. To do that, she will sing anents, or magical prayers to the plants, referring to them as her children. These birdlike melodies are intensely personal and deeply spiritual, often sung in private, under the breath, or even silently in her head, as they are not to be heard by anyone but Nunkui. If a women is lucky, Nunkui will appear to her in a dream, revealing to her where to find a special stone, which, when buried in her garden, will enrich the soil, causing her garden to flourish.

The spiritual importance of the garden is not limited to plants: Achuar women typically give birth in their gardens.

But the garden is not a refuge. On the contrary, it’s seen as a hostile place. According to Achuar belief, when Nunkui first gave cultivated plants to an Achuar family, she was angered by the way the family mistreated her “children,” and she cursed the people so that plants would only grow if the people went to extraordinary lengths to care for them. The manioc plant on which they depend is especially hostile.

The Achuar believe that the manioc plant is vampiristic, that the leaves of the plant will suck the blood out of anyone who brushes against them. They consider the blood in a body to be finite and irreplaceable, so any loss is a major concern. The anents a woman sings in her garden are intended to placate the manioc plants and keep the woman and her daughters safe in the garden. For the Achuar, anemia in a child is a sure signal to a mother that her manioc plants are not receiving enough attention and prayer.

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A typical Achuar woman’s garden is made up of plantain, banana, sweet potato, chonta palm, guava, cocoa, papaya, peanuts, melons, caimito (star apple), sweetsop, and avocado. But, of all the abundance in an Achuar garden, the manioc plant is the most prized and depended upon. Therefore, every Achuar woman and girl strives for robust and shiny plants. Every nine months, the Achuar harvest the plant by disinterring long tuberoid roots, which are always replaced by a cutting from the mother plant to grow again.

In this way, the supply of manioc root is never depleted.

Chicha is a fermented alcoholic beverage found throughout Latin America and variously made from plants like corn, sugarcane, or pineapple, but the Achuar’s chicha, or nijiamanch, is made from manioc root. This yeasty brew is central to the Achuar diet, often substituting for food and water. From the women’s very complex relationship in cultivating the manioc plant to the long hours spent harvesting clay and decorating the ceramic pots from which the brew is drunk, the role of chicha is entirely fundamental to Achuar identity.

When chicha is not fermenting in large clay pots on hard dirt floors, it is being cultivated, sung or whispered to, harvested, or doled out in both homes and communal gatherings. Some men drink as many as six bowlfuls in one sitting, or as much as three gallons a day, often skipping meals. In the not-so-distant times of tribal warfare, men would bring only chicha with them for refreshment, foraging and hunting along the way. Though men depend on chicha, the gender issues of cultivation mean that they will neither enter a manioc garden nor come in direct physical contact with the plant itself. In fact, should an insect fall into a man’s bowl of chicha, he will wait for his female server to extract the animal, leaving his lips as the only part of his body that meets the drink.

The process of chicha-making is a crucial skill, passed down from a mother to her daughter when the daughter is around 10 years old. A woman first peels, hacks, and boils the manioc in a large pot, then chews it arduously, with her saliva providing the fermenting agent. With cheeks stuffed, she chews until the root has been turned

into a fine liquid, which she then skillfully strains through her teeth and spits back into her personal chicha pot. She then uses a paddle to mash the liquid into a smooth paste and leaves the result to ferment under a cover of plantain leaves. Just as each woman has her own chicha pot, so does each woman give her chicha a distinct and personal touch. Taste and texture contrasts vastly from woman to woman. Some women will become admired and sought after for their chicha, while others’ brews may seem far too fibrous or sour.

When serving, the women knead the pulp, lifting out the fibers before mixing the paste with water and pouring the creamy liquid into clay bowls, called pinin. Alcohol levels vary depending on the time of the day it is served; sweet chicha is typically consumed in the morning while the more vinegary and intoxicating chicha is reserved for guests, parties, or special gatherings.

When a guest arrives in a Achuar home, the woman of the house immediately offers a large bowl of chicha, and if a man has multiple wives, each wife will offer her own brew in her own bowl. A guest who declines a bowl of chicha gives a serious insult to the woman serving, implying that he distrusts the host. But no Achuar guest would ever make that mistake, knowing the spiritual connections of this most important drink.

Left, a Achuar woman stirs the manioc mash to make her chicha. Above, several women peel manioc root.

Only women deal with the manioc and the making of chicha, and each has her own particular way of making it. Photos by Stephanie Hartka.

Stephanie Hartka is a writer and photographer living and traveling between Latin America and Hudson, New York. Stephanie recently spent six months living with the Achuar people as a co-founder of Wachirpas Volunteer Program. cultural Survival Quarterly

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GRANDMA’S STOCKS An Indigenous perspective on the economic crisis

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By Richard Meyers initially submitted a portion of this essay for a contest that wanted insight from Native people.

The title of the contest and the ensuing description read, “Native Insight: Thoughts on Recession, Recovery and Opportunity is a writing competition crafted to tap the wisdom and ingenuity of our Native communities, and encourage Native thinkers to go public with their perspectives on the current economic and political landscape.”

The contest made me reflect upon how words conjure up images, ideas, and assumptions about reality and the world around us. My attention was especially drawn to the words “recession, recovery and opportunity.” This made me think of how language is crucial in depicting a story or conveying an idea. I was reminded of the distinct limitations of only operating in one language, and/or thinking that there is an evolutionary distinction or link between modern economic behavior and the tribal cultures of this hemisphere that did not necessarily dive head-first into embracing the assimilating global economy that is now in severe crisis. Funny how the folks I considered at the root of exploiting Natives now wanted to seize some “Indigenous knowledge” on how to fix their global catastrophe.

At times we all take the words we read for granted, not realizing how complicated meaning and interpretation can be across different cultures and languages. One of my colleagues just wrote an article on “literacy” versus “multiple literacies.” What I gleaned from the article was that to be “literate” is more than just knowing how to read in one language. It involves knowing how to be aware and knowledgeable of how to negotiate the environment in which one lives. It is to be conscious that the language, words, and ways of speaking and referring to reality are all intertwined.

If I take a well-read, literate, English-speaking

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highly educated economist and drop him off in the rural parts of the Pine Ridge Reservation, would he still be considered literate? Would he possess the literacy of the community or would he have to revert back to a study? What type of insight would he want to garner from people who are not the folks who constructed the “crisis” in the first place, but have been living in a crisis since their economic mode of production was supplanted by the externally imposed system in the first place.

Let me relay a pertinent story involving my late grandmother Ramona Moves Camp Meat Randall, who passed away in September 2002. My grandma had a way of saying things that always stuck in my head. You see, my grandmother’s second language was English, as was my mother’s. Their first tongue is Lakota. It is neither a romance language nor a language with roots to Greek or Latin—which constitute the linguistic foundation of the discussions that surround the current economic crisis. I say this not to “exoticize” Lakota; rather, I am emphasizing that when people discuss what they consider to be common knowledge, it is actually embedded within a linguistic paradigm of reality that is not always congruent to the lives of people living outside of the popular conversations concerning the “crisis.”

To grow up with a worldview and cosmology rooted in tribal stories and a notion of reality embedded in a traditional language was a common theme that linked both my grandma and mom’s beginnings as Lakota people. The financial realities of Lakota people on the Pine Ridge Reservation are often described by journalists who travel there to attest to the tremendous discrepancies of wealth within the United States. I know that the road leading into town didn’t get paved until 1968. Horseback was still a major means for travel, and the idea of what I take for granted as a product of being an cultural Survival Quarterly

Opposite: Marla Allison (Laguna), Eyes of Wisdom, acrylic on canvas, 40 x 30 in.

Blue Rain Gallery (www.blueraingallery.com)

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“iyeska” (half-breed) exposed to many languages and forms of media and the term “globalized industrial capitalism” are as far removed from their upbringing as mine is to walking on the moon naked.

I remember one time my grandma was passing by the room where my cousins and I were watching TV. We were watching a movie that I was considering using for my class at the Crazy Horse School in Wanblee, South Dakota. The school is made up of predominantly Lakota students, the vast majority of us all being related through our Lakota kinship by being of the same tiyospaye (extended family). The film was a documentary about the Netsilik Inuit, describing their life as a “hunting and gathering” cultural group. My grandma walked by the TV and said, “They say those people lived like us.” She never really sat and paid much attention to the TV because it functioned like the radio to her: she would leave it on for background noise while doing other tasks.

This particular moment comes to mind because the entire idea of how people learn or come to know about others and their economic reality was embodied in her statement. How news is disseminated usually occurs by way of trusted sources of information. One of my aunties lives on a remote area in the Pribilof Islands and has been married to an Aleut for quite some time. I knew she had shared stories with my grandma about the fishing culture of her husband’s people. While my grandma could read English on a basic level, her abilities did not encompass many of the words in the vast lexicon of globalization, including terms that are not easily translated between Lakota and English. Terms like “culture,” “nomadic hunting and gathering,” “paradigms,” “recession,” “recovery,” and “opportunity,” are not terms I am familiar with in the Lakota language. This point underscores that the words “recession,” “recovery,” and “opportunity” are not words I can imagine her articulating. Receiving “commodities” from U.S.D.A. or getting some money for working horses and cattle for a nearby rancher, or maybe working as a clerk or a teacher’s aide were more realistic terms to discuss with her.

Both my grandma and mother grew up in a time when TV was not available. Grandma’s childhood predated the technology, and after she had my mom she did not have the financial means for such a luxury. The TV she had was an item she got for her grandkids later on in life. It was a constant source of noise but never really a source of trusted truth.

While the road that I have traveled in American history allows me to sit here at a coffee shop on my laptop with wi-fi, a good portion of this hemisphere’s Indigenous people exist in spaces that are not as blind to socio-economic class disparities as we seem

to be here in the United States. To come from a collective identity within a community is very different from becoming a career-oriented person trying to carve out a piece of the American dream and seeking to fulfill the rugged-individualist rewards embodied by the illusory concept of “opportunity.”

What my grandma uttered while passing by, “they say those people lived like us,” resonates in my mind. The film depicted people who relied upon one another to survive. From clothing production to food and shelter, the entanglement of being a social animal living inside of the natural environment and trying to balance resources is at the core of being part of a nomadic hunting and gathering cultural group. The ideas of sharing and kinship obligations and responsibilities are part and parcel of nomadic hunting and gathering groups. The words that often get associated with Lakota are mitakuye oyasin. A good rough translation is “we are all related.” At a larger level it signifies that all things in the universe are interrelated such that the animate and inanimate world co-exist and require a balanced and reciprocal relationship.

I understand my grandma’s words to reflect that being tribal or a true Lakota is to come from a cultural reality where homelessness and poverty don’t exist; where siblings don’t compare their stocks and investments in a secretive manner; where there is no real preoccupation in being a Republican versus a Democrat; where people don’t worry about binaries like heaven and hell. This is not to say that to be a tribally oriented person is to be living in a utopia. I am suggesting that as social beings, the individual economic units of each tiyospaye—as well as the larger notions of being humans and Lakota—are about understanding that we are inherently socialists.

I use this term here intentionally to reappropriate the negative connotations that have evolved with the Cold War and McCarthyism. If being a socialist means caring more for the well-being of a larger unit of economic production than one’s nuclear family, well I think my grandma was all for it.

As I thought about her life and what she meant to me, I figured I would respond to this call for “Native Insight” on the economy. I wanted to dedicate this writing to her, wondering what she would have had to say. On my grandma’s behalf, her younger sister responded to my step-dad’s question this past summer about how the economy has affected the Lakota by proclaiming, “It’s no different than it’s ever been, jobs have always been hard to find around here.”

Dr. Richard Meyers is a member of the Oglala Sioux Tribe of the Pine Ridge Reservation. He teaches at American University. cultural Survival Quarterly

Opposite: Mateo Romero (Cochiti), Neo Tribal, mixed media and oil on wood panel, 48 x 36 in. Blue Rain Gallery (www.blueraingallery.com)

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BRINGING BACK THE TOBACCO: CHEROKEE STORIES

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CULTURAL RESILIENCE

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By Virginia Drywater-Whitekiller

ultural resilience has been used by Native Americans for centuries as a means to survive, using oral traditions, spirituality, family strengths, elders, tribal identity, ceremonial rituals and the need to give back to one’s tribe and family as tools to help them live and function in a majority society.

The following two Cherokee stories, an ancient traditional story and a modern autobiography, are examples of this idea. At the heart of the stories is tobacco, a powerful, sacred symbol of the Cherokee culture, and through these stories we can see how, through oral traditions, cultural resilience has evolved into the holistic survival of Native Americans.

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Judith Lowry (Maidu/Pit River), Roadkill Warrior: Last of His Tribe, acrylic on canvas, 48 x 60 in. Lowry’s work is in the permanent collections of many major museums, including the Heard Museum and the Smithsonian.

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Rick Bartow (Wiyot), Ancestral Memory, acrylic on panel, 12 x 9 in. Froelick Gallery (www.forelickgallery.com)

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ow They Brought Back the Tobacco: A Traditional Cherokee Story

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Tobacco: An Autobiographical Version of the Story

In the beginning of the world, when people and animals were all the same, there was only one tobacco plant, to which they all came for their tobacco, until the Dagulku geese stole it and carried it far away to the south. The people were suffering without the plant, and there was an old woman who grew so thin and weak that everybody said she would soon die unless she could get tobacco to keep her alive.

Different animals offered to go for the tobacco, one after another, the larger ones first and then the smaller ones, but the Dagulku saw and killed each one before he could get to the plant. After the others, the little Mole tried to reach it by going under the ground, but the Dagulku saw his track and killed him as he came out.

At last the Hummingbird offered, but the others said he was entirely too small and might as well stay home. He begged them to let him try, so they showed him a plant in a field and told him to let them see how he would go about it. The next moment he was gone and they saw him sitting on the plant, and then in a moment he was back again, but no one had seen him going or coming, because he was so swift. “This is the way I’ll do it,” said the Hummingbird, so they let him try.

He flew off to the east, and when he came in sight of the tobacco, the Dagulku were watching all about it, but they could not see him because he was so small and flew so swiftly. He darted down on the plant— tsa!—and snatched off the top with the leaves and seeds, and was off again before the Dagulku knew what had happened. Before he got home with the tobacco, the old woman fainted and they thought she was dead, but he blew the smoke into her nostrils, and with a cry of “Tsalu! [Tobacco]!” she opened her eyes and was alive again.

It is not surprising then that very early documentation revealed the importance of tobacco as a main staple used by many tribes, described by Christopher Columbus in 1492 as a sacred plant to the Indians with a “life affirming, positive spiritual role, a food of the spirits.” Even in a more contemporary Cherokee account, tobacco was noted to carry the smoke’s message to the spirits in the sky as a means to provide protection, to bring luck or to keep things calm, or, in a more sinister approach, to conjure another person. Tobacco was truly seen by the Cherokee as a powerful medicine of many virtues and held at its center the very essence of being Cherokee.

When I was growing up, there were certain cultural factors instilled in my siblings and me by our paternal grandparents about what being Cherokee meant. If I could choose only one poignant example in my memory, it would be that of being “doctored” by our grandpa. This usually involved our having a physical illness of some kind. We would tell our parents that we were sick, then we would load into our family vehicle, which was usually an old pickup truck, and travel three miles of dusty Oklahoma dirt roads to Grandpa and Granny’s house.

After the preliminary visiting would take place, with my grandparents speaking Cherokee to my dad and him responding in English, Daddy would report to Grandpa what was going on with us by describing our symptoms. For me, it usually involved headaches, especially during the summertime. After awhile, Grandpa would rise from his chair and go to the kitchen, where a variety of leaves, roots, herbs, teas, and salves, could be found in various pots and pans on the back of Granny’s old wood cook stove.

If the medicine was not readily available in the kitchen, Grandpa would retreat to the woods near his house to retrieve what was needed among the native plants. I must say that I never knew Grandpa to actually grow his own tobacco for ceremonial use, unless the cultivation was covert. I always assumed that the tobacco was purchased from the store in town where he and Granny “traded.”

When the gathering and preparation process was done, Grandpa would go out and beckon his ailing grandchild to join him alone in the bedroom that he shared with Granny. He would then motion for us to be seated in a straight-backed chair that he had brought in from the kitchen for this purpose. He would then stand in front of us, our faces squared with his. The atmosphere and the mood in the room would be very solemn and reverent. Although I can no longer recall the steps or methods in the order they came, a cup of water was always involved, along with prayers and chants in the Cherokee language. As he prayed, Grandpa would sometimes lay his hands on our head, stomach, or whatever part of our bodies was giving us trouble. The doctoring ceremony usually lasted for a few minutes, but it seemed to always climax with Grandpa taking a drink of water from the glass, placing tobacco in his mouth and spraying it over us with a fine mist that would cover our head and face. At the conclusion, he would pat us and say in broken English, “You be alright.” Always respectful to our elders, we would

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thank him and then run off to play, believing that we would be alright—and we were.

Tobacco was also used by my uncle, who would place it in his pipe each evening before bed and blow the smoke on his children, and on me whenever I would stay the night at his house. After this act was completed, he would take his pipe and walk around the outside perimeter of the house, blowing tobacco smoke out as he went along. When I asked him why he did this, he would only say that this was used for protection and to keep things from “bothering” us in the night.

When going to the public school the next day after being doctored by my Grandpa or smoked by my uncle, I was always aware that these were things that I could not share with my schoolmates or teachers. I must confess that not sharing these heal-

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ing ceremonies and rituals with my friends was partly based upon shame, because I feared that my classmates would think of my family as being primitive. The other part of my not telling was an innate understanding that they were different than we were, and they would not understand. You see, Cherokees were not exempt from derogatory stereotypes in the early 1970s, even when we lived in the capital of Oklahoma’s Cherokee Nation. This assumption was validated when, in the third grade, I stayed the night at a white friend’s house. The friend later told me that her mother had explained to her that I would not be using forks or spoons at dinner, because Indians only ate with their fingers. Maybe her mother’s assumption was partially reasonable, because I am certain that these white folks’ Grandpa did not spit on them when they were sick!

Looking back, I think about how separate these two worlds were: the essence of being Cherokee by the practice of Cherokee traditional medicine, and the majority society as was introduced to me by the public educational system. However, even as a child, these paths intermingled, because I walked in both, and I learned how to navigate both. But just when I would think that I had mastered the walk and found some semblance of balance with it all, a curve ball would be thrown at me, sending me tumbling.

Sometimes the mixed messages even came from my Cherokee family. For example, later on in my adulthood, my dad’s sister laughingly remarked that when her daughter was small she did not like to go and see Grandpa “because he spits on me.” Perhaps Grandpa was aware of this, as in his very old age he lamented to me that none of his six children expressed an interest in learning the traditional medicine practices—and when he died, he said, this knowledge would die with him. Feeling very important as his first born granddaughter, whom he christened with the Cherokee name of his beloved mother, I immediately proclaimed, “I’ll learn, Grandpa; teach me!” Just as quick, his reply was, “You too much a white woman.” Stung, ashamed, and embarrassed, I recoiled and left Grandpa that day, ailing in his nursing home bed, alone in a closed, dark, and bare room.

In retrospect, it is interesting that I did not take my Grandpa’s statement to be biased against my gender, as my Cherokee family never implied to me that I was anything less than a man because I was born a woman.

This was demonstrated by the fact that my grandmother was the matriarch of our family, and everyone understood this, especially Grandpa. I also grew up being familiar with Cherokee medicine women, one of whom was a relative of Grandpa’s and made frequent visits to

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my grandparents’ home. You see, his bias was against the white blood and culture that is also a part of who I am. Later, when working through my own personal offense, I tried to objectify his response by considering the fact that I knew very little of the Cherokee language, a major component of understanding the culture. Besides, was I not in fact acculturated to mainstream society if I was getting a college education?

Even though Granny was my strongest supporter in achieving a college degree, she made it clear to me that I was to use my formal education to help the Cherokees. And did I not honor her wishes?

In trying to overcome my personal pain at being denounced by my grandfather as too white, I tried to see the world through his eyes. The losses in his latter life were enormous: his physical mobility was now hindered by a stroke and a leg amputation; he was unable to die in the comfort of his own home surrounded by his blood kin; and he had no one to converse with him in his tribal language on a daily basis. The nursing home staff once tried to remedy this situation when they placed an elderly Native man in the room with him. Later Grandpa grunted with disdain, “He a Chickasaw!” As if this was not enough, then there was his children’s lack of interest in learning the practice of the Cherokee medicine that as a young man he had earnestly acquired from his uncle. He waited to die, receiving comfort only in the knowledge that the purpose of his life was now spent lying in his bed, “praying for my kids and grandkids all day long, that’s all I do.” Even in loss and disappointment, his hope for his future generations continued to be petitioned daily to his Creator, just as his former medicine ceremonies and prayers brought hope that we would be healed, and we believed that we would.

Shortly thereafter Grandpa did die. His life ended as a testimonial to the blending of Cherokee and Anglo cultures that in time became his life. He spoke fluent Cherokee and conversational English; he was literate in the Cherokee language, but was never interested in learning to read in English. In the confines of his home he practiced traditional Cherokee medicine, while he publicly confessed his Christian faith as a Baptist minister. And having married a half-blood Cherokee woman, all of his descendants were mixed with white.

His Christian memorial service was delivered by one of his Cherokee ministerial friends, who described him as a “good deacon.” The service was spoken first in Cherokee and then followed by an English translation for “non-Cherokees,” including all of his grandchildren, who did not understand the language. The funeral songs were all sung in

Cherokee, with one telling the story of our dying ancestors’ crying out to the Creator to save their orphaned children on the infamous Trail of Tears, to the final destination later known as the great state of Oklahoma. The songs were wailed out, sad and forlorn, by Cherokee elders, echoing the loss that we all felt in our hearts. I remember looking toward the casket that held my grandpa’s body and thinking that this is the last of the Cherokee full bloods in our family linage. There will never be another one, just as there will never be a person who was able to learn the Cherokee medicine from Grandpa.

But we know his story; it is also our story, and will become the story of our future generations only if it is repeated. cultural Survival Quarterly

Opposite: Arthur Short Bull (Oglala Lakota), Bear Medicine, watercolor, 7 x 9 in. (www.dawnhawk.org).

Above: The author’s grandfather and grandmother in their garden. Photo courtesy of Virginia DrywaterWhitekiller

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Bringing Back the Tobacco Above: The author, Virginia Drywater-Whitekiller.

Opposite: Jaune Quick-toSee Smith (Salish and Kootenai, Rabbit Boy Speaks to the Ancestors, monotype, 22 x 15 in. Berlin Gallery (www.berlingallery.org) Quick-to-See Smith calls herself “a cultural art worker.”

Her work is in the collections of leading museums, including the Smithsonian, the Metropolitan Museum, and the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

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Native American oral traditions involve repetition, with variations usually centering on the theme of life, death, and rebirth. The stories are multicultural and complex, as they are told both from within tribal relations and without tribal perspectives, interpreted through the view of others who do not personally know their subjects, as these take their view from the outside looking in. And finally, the stories are interpreted through Indigenous eyes, based on the shared experiences of the elders and those experiences that are personally owned by the individuals who have lived them. Sometimes there is astonishment at the method in which the stories bring back to life back what being Native means. In the ancient Cherokee traditional story, the tobacco lived and sustained life, as the Cherokee would die if the tobacco was no longer accessible to them. But then the tobacco was retrieved by a most unlikely source: a small, willing hummingbird that possessed the virtue of being brave and swift.

In the modern autobiographical rendition, the tobacco lived in a grandfather’s medicinal practices, through which he demonstrated to his grandchildren what being Cherokee meant. And the tobacco died with the grandfather. But the tobacco was resurrected by a most unlikely source: a willing mixed-

blood granddaughter who possessed the virtue of taking to heart what being Cherokee meant.

Although unable to speak the Cherokee language and perhaps not enough Indian blood by some accounts, she used her heritage and formal education to revive the importance of tobacco into yet another variation. The ancient story brought hope to the hearts of the people that the tobacco would be retrieved and the Cherokee people would survive. The modern version seeks to do the same.

Healing via tobacco can occur both spiritually and physically, and it is often in a protective covering that is a part of one’s cultural identity, and it is sometimes imparted in stories or in lived examples that later become stories. This is cultural resilience.

Through the passage of time, traditional stories can and do change, but their essence remains the same, as they always reflect the cultural resiliency of Native people. And we are Indigenous survivors whose “constitutional vigor” from our warrior ancestors guides us into an ever-evolving adaptation.

Virginia Drywater-Whitekiller is a professor of social work at Northeastern State University, in Tahlequah, Oklahoma. She is married to a fellow Cherokee, and together they have four children. Her writing interest involves cultural resilience theory and all things Cherokee.

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CONSERVATION BEGINS A photo essay by Indigenous Dusun photographers Introduction by Heather Leach

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radled by Borneo’s Crocker Range and tucked in a narrow strip of state land, a handful of villages known collectively as Ulu Papar are helping to redefine the concept of conservation. Ulu Papar is located in the upper reaches of the Papar River, in the state of Sabah, Malaysian Borneo, where about 1,000 Indigenous Dusun people live in several settlements scattered across the area.

Those villages include Terian, Buayan, Tiku, Timpayasa, Pongobonon, Kalanggaan and Longkogungan, and one small settlement, Kionop, that is located inside the Crocker Range Park, one of the most important protected areas in Sabah and an international tourism destination.

With no road access, the rugged and hilly terrain makes Ulu Papar remote and difficult for outsiders to reach. The Dusun people of Ulu Papar consider this area their ancestral land and depend almost entirely on their territory’s natural resources. They plant hill rice and wet rice, and they hunt, fish, and gather forest products for food, medicines, and construction materials. This, in turn, enables them to sustain an intricate knowledge of the kinds of plants, animals, and landscapes found in this area.

“The forest resources we collect include rattans, resin, wood, medicinal plants, and meat,” says Buayan community member Mositol Sondigon. “We cannot get these resources from the market because our village is so remote.

Also, we do not have money.”

For generations, the Indigenous Peoples of the state of Sabah have been relying on and managing their natural resources and landscapes. The long-term interaction of people with their environments has fostered unique forms of biocultural diversity, and their significant contribution to global conservation is gaining more widespread acknowledgement, particularly in the form of Indigenous and Community Conserved Areas (ICCAs).

As the name suggests, these areas are ecosystems that have a high degree of biodiversity and are protected by Indigenous communities. Both the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and the World Commission on Protected Areas have recognized the importance of ICCAs as conservation tools. At the Convention on Biological Diversity Conference of Parties held in Nagoya, Japan, in October 2010, a new biodiversity target was set to increase terrestrial protected areas from 13 percent to 17 percent by 2020. With an estimated 11 percent of the terrestrial surface under community ownership or management, the incorporation of as-yet-unrecognized ICCAs into formal protected areas networks represents the most effective way to reach this target. Not only does official recognition and incorporation of community conserved areas have benefits for global conservation, but it also promotes a shift towards a more equitable and just conservation framework, where the rights and responsibilities of Indigenous Peoples and local communities are acknowledged—a shift that is currently underway in Sabah.

The Crocker Range was first gazetted as a state forest

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reserve in 1969, then converted to a state park in 1984, and renamed the Crocker Range Park in 1984. Sabah law prohibits any resource extraction from inside parks, which means for the Dusun people of Ulu Papar that large tracts of their ancestral lands and the resources they need to live are now off-limits.

In the past decade, though, the parks authority in Sabah has initiated a consultation process that will lead to the establishment of a community-use zone inside the park. This will legalize community access to this area and open up ways for the local community to participate in the management of the resources and landscapes inside the park.

As part of that process, the community is conducting collaborative research into the potential for designating an ICCA on state land in Ulu Papar. They are also looking at the implications of combining that ICCA with a collaboratively managed community-use zone inside the Crocker Range Park. This is very progressive thinking in conservation management. “In my opinion,” says Buayan community member Jenny Sanem, “communities have a great deal of authority over ICCAs because they are the principle caretakers of their ICCAs. Communities manage their ICCAs by using Adat [customary laws and practices] and culture, which is inherited from the ancestors.

The role of the community is to ensure that all of the Adat and culture they have must be passed down to the new generations.”

As part of the investigative process, a team of Ulu Papar community researchers has been documenting their traditional ecological knowledge, mapping their territory, and monitoring their use of natural resources and landscapes.

Using methods such as participatory mapping, video, and photography, they are compiling a visual catalogue of community conservation in action, providing an opportunity to showcase the inextricable links between a people and their land and resources. Community photographers trained with renowned Sabahan photographer Cede Prudente and his team, in both technical and artistic photography techniques. In July 2010, some of their images were exhibited in Kota Kinabalu, Sabah’s capital city. What follows is a glimpse of the rich story that is being told through the eyes of Indigenous community researchers as they explore and define their roles as the local custodians and managers of nature, amidst a global movement to conserve our biocultural diversity. “My hope, says Buayan community member Lompokuk Tanggalung, “is that all the people and our descendants who live here will be able to continue their lives here forever. Even though the elderly will go, it is the younger generations who will continue this life and live here forever. That is our hope.”

Heather Leach is the outreach coordinator for the Global Diversity Foundation, a U.K.-based nonprofit organization that is supporting the Dusun people’s efforts to protect their environment (www.global-diversity.org). cultural Survival Quarterly

Rambat biasanya digunakan oleh komuniti Buayan kerana ia mudah digunakan pada bila-bila masa mahupun semasa banjir.

Rambat dibuat oleh komuniti sendiri biasanya kaum lelaki tetapi ada juga beberapa wanita yang pandai menghasilkannya.

Throw nets are commonly used by the people of Buayan because of their versatility; they can be used even during floods. It is usually the men in the community who make the nets, although there are several women who are also skilled in net making.

Photo by: Stanley Kurumbong, taken at the Papar River, Kg. Buayan, May 2010.

Note: most of the photo captions were written by the photographers themselves, rendered first in Malay and then translated into English.

The English-only captions were written by Heather Leach.

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Above: Pemandangan lembah Sungai Papar yang mengalir ke arah laut. Komuniti yang bercucuk tanam di sini sangat peka kepada keperluan alam sekitar dan tidak membazir menggunakan hutan untuk pertanian dan banyak kawasan hutan disimpan untuk masa akan datang.

A view of the Papar River valley as it flows to the sea. The community members who farm here are very sensitive to the needs of the environment and careful not to waste forests for cultivation. They keep a lot of forested areas intact for future needs.

Photo by: Stanley Kurumbong, taken at Kg. Longkogungan, January 2010.

Right: Peter Lasa adalah salah seorang penduduk Buayan yang sangat kreatif menghasilkan kraftangan dan pelbagai perangkap tradisi. Beliau sedang memasang perangkap kasip (nama Dusun) untuk menangkap binatang kecil.

Peter Lasa is one of the very creative community members from Buayan known for his handicrafts and for making traditional snares. He is setting-up a kasip (a Dusun word) to snare a small animal.

Photo by: Stanley Kurumbong, taken at Kg. Buayan, April 2010.

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Left: Rice is the staple food for the Ulu Papar Dusun. Swidden agriculture (hill rice cultivation) is widely practiced throughout Borneo and is frequently misrepresented by policy makers and enforcement agencies as a primitive form of agriculture that is detrimental to both biodiversity conservation and social development. But over recent decades there has been an increasing appreciation of the intricate and invaluable ecological knowledge of swidden farmers. In Ulu Papar, farmers can describe up to 32 distinct stages in the swidden cycle, starting from site selection, to clearing, burning, planting, weeding, harvesting and various stages of fallow management and rejuvenation.

Photo credit: Raymond Sipanis, taken at Kg. Kionop, August 2008 Above: Stanley Kurumbong works in his rice field, which he has interplanted with a variety of secondary crops, such as maize and legumes, to encourage the nutrient flow in soils. After the rice harvest, a swidden like this will continue to be managed for its secondary crops, which contribute to the food security of the household. Stanley and other Ulu Papar community researchers visit all the swiddens and gardens in their villages on a yearly basis to collect data that will help them plan and manage their resource-use patterns.

Photo credit: Raymond Sipanis, taken at Kg. Buayan, October 2007.

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Above: Kepelbagaian lanskap Ulu Papar adalah bukti komitmen komuniti untuk menjaga dan melindungi sumber semulajadi di sini.

The diversity of Ulu Papar landscapes is evidence of our community’s commitment to manage and protect the natural resources of this area.

“As we know,” says Pongobonon community member Julius Molumping, “the forest is the source of livelihoods for community members. If it is cleared for farming, even once, we cannot predict how many years [are] needed before [our community water catchment and our timber reserves] can regenerate back to an old forest, maybe 100 years or more. So this is why our water catchment has also been included inside the community forest reserve that we manage. When the areas around the upper tributaries are cleared, it is very likely that we will lose our own water source. For us water is used for drinking, cooking and also for irrigating our wet rice fields.”

Photo by: Raymond Sipanis, taken at Kg. Tiku, February 2010.

Right: En. Gorumpang Matanggim adalah penduduk asal Buayan yang telah mengalami musim Perang Dunia Kedua di Ulu Papar dan mempunyai banyak cerita mengenai sejarah Ulu Papar. Beliau merupakan seorang pewaris adat dan budaya nenek moyang yang sendiri menurunkan pengetahuan dan pengalamannya kepada generasi sekarang.

Mr. Gorumpang Matanggim is an Indigenous inhabitant of Buayan who lived through World War II in Ulu Papar and has many stories about the history of the area. A keeper of the customs and culture inherited from our ancestors, he is also passing down his knowledge and experiences to the present generations.

Photo by: Jenny Sanem, taken at the Church Market, Kg. Buayan, November 2010.

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Above: Penyelidik komuniti Ulu Papar dan Taman-Taman Sabah mengambil rekod GPS bagi tempat-tempat yang bernilai dari segi biologi dan budaya yang dimuat-turunkan ke dalam pangkalan GIS Ulu Papar. Tugu batu bersejarah ini merupakan bukti bahawa komuniti kami sudah lama menetap di sini sejak dari zaman nenek moyang lagi.

Ulu Papar community researchers and Sabah Parks collect GPS records of important biological and cultural sites that are uploaded into an Ulu Papar global information system database. This historical stone monolith is evidence that our communities have been living here since the time of our ancestors.

Photo by: Jenny Sanem, taken at Kg. Kalanggaan, January 2010.

Left: Naik rakit bambu untuk menyeberangi Sungai Papar.

Crossing the Papar River on a bamboo raft.

In 2009, plans were uncovered to build the Kaiduan Dam; a mega-dam that was intended to supply water to Kota Kinabalu City. A half-mile-high rock-filled wall would be built at this location to dam the Papar River, leading to the inundation of the Ulu Papar valley. The proposed Kaiduan Dam would forcibly relocate the people of Ulu Papar, flood their fields, gardens, burial grounds, historical sites, and dislocate the ageold relationship between the Ulu Papar Dusun and their forests. In fierce reaction, the Ulu Papar community has mounted a protest, and are seeking widespread support to defend their ancestral lands and livelihoods..

Photo by Ephraem Lompoduk, taken at Ponohuon (near the site of the proposed dam wall), Kg. Timpayasa, October 2009.

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A NEW WAY

Anank Nunink Nunkai (left), a Shuar representative, speaks with Cultural Survival staff person Cesar Gomez (Pocomam Maya). Nunkai was one of the invited speakers at the International Funders for Indigenous Peoples conference in May 2011. Photo

by Mark Cherrington

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OF

GIVING

In philanthropy, as in too many other areas, Indigenous Peoples tend to get scant attention. Despite being responsible for the majority of the world’s remaining biodiversity, and despite suffering the most egregious human rights violations and the highest rates of poverty, Indigenous programs receive less than one-fifth of one percent of U.S. foundation grants. And most of the grants they do get treat Indigenous Peoples as passive beneficiaries rather than as equal partners. But an organization called International Funders for Indigenous Peoples (IFIP) is working to change that model and is finding increasing success by having Indigenous representatives and foundation staff work together. To learn more about how this novel approach works, Cultural Survival’s Global Response director, Paula Palmer, interviewed IFIP’s executive director, Evelyn Arce, in June.

Below are excerpts from that conversation.

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Paula Palmer: How did you become involved in philanthropy?

Evelyn Arce: I started my journey in philanthropy by first working for First Nations Development Institute, a leader in giving to Native communities nationally. As a Colombian American of Chibcha descent, I was especially interested in a new project that the institute founded called International Funders for Indigenous Peoples (IFIP). I was asked to spearhead the project as a volunteer, which I did enthusiastically, and the project blossomed to the point that it demanded my full-time attention within only nine months. As I learned more about philanthropy and Indigenous Peoples, I became more and more consumed with the desire to make a difference, to bring Indigenous Philanthropy to the forefront of mainstream philanthropy. I was shocked at how little funding was going to Indigenous communities, especially international Indigenous communities, and I realized the power of education was critical in making a difference.

Everyone wants money, and there is lots of competition for it. How do you make the case for philanthropic giving to support Indigenous communities?

With the many global challenges that we are facing, Indigenous Peoples have models of resilience, sustainability, and adaptability that they can share with the world. Indigenous Peoples are known for being the best stewards of the most biologically diverse areas and have traditional knowledge that has been acquired over millennia.

Indigenous Peoples also contribute extensively to cultural diversity, enriching it with more than twothirds of its languages, and yet language specialists predict that 90 percent of the worlds languages are likely to become extinct by the end of the century.

More and more donors are realizing that investing in the most effective, time-proven practices means investing in Indigenous communities.

It is really simply a matter of getting to know each other. There are a lot of stereotypes out there, of both philanthropists and Indigenous Peoples.

Philanthropists think Indigenous cultures are too “exotic” to comply to Western standards of transparency and compliance. Indigenous peoples are wary of outsiders who claim to know better. But when they sit down, face to face, it becomes obvious that they actually have more in common than they

IFIP’s board has adopted the following values that came from a joint meeting between Native Americans in Philanthropy and International Funders for Indigenous Peoples.

Reciprocity Embrace the idea that giving and receiving connect people, beliefs, and actions. It is not all about money, and funders also need to be open to receiving. Giving and receiving from the Earth’s endowments is also part of a virtuous circle of healing.

Respect Honor traditions and respect the ideas of Indigenous Peoples. Respect diverse ways, and use processes and approaches that are transparent, open, adaptable, and flexible. Work directly with communities to gain understanding and knowledge about the community, issues, and solutions. Go beyond making grants and think about building long-term relationships and selfreliant communities.

Responsibility Recognize that Indigenous Peoples should speak for themselves and be responsible for their own voice in meetings, negotiations, and on issues. Be familiar with the principles articulated in the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People and seek to uphold these when working with Indigenous Peoples and to advance these as goals in this work.

Relationships Engage with Indigenous communities by understanding the nature of relationships among ancestral cultures, lands, and spirituality. Engaging in this way requires long-term commitments and mutual learning. Relationships based on mutual respect eliminate the tendency to exert power over another.

For more information or to download the new Grantmakers Guide or Indigenous Peoples Funding and Resource Guide, visit www.internationalfunders.org

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thought. IFIP simply serves as a bridge between the two worlds: philanthropic and Indigenous. We provide intimate spaces for people to get to know each other. We say that IFIP is about “relationship philanthropy”: it’s all about taking the time to get to know each other.

All Indigenous cultures are based on reciprocity, which is the recognition of the symbiotic give-andtake they have observed in nature for millennia. So that is their understanding of philanthropy. To them, all parties are equal; otherwise, there is an imbalance, which is not the normal state of nature. We in the Western world think that capital symbolizes an equal exchange, but that symbolism is lost on Indigenous Peoples. Philanthropists need to understand that to most people in the world, the symbolism of cash is not a substitute for human effort.

This idea that they might need to do things a little differently is sometimes daunting to philanthropists. However, once they start to work with Indigenous Peoples, they quickly learn that trans-

parency, trust, and compliance come naturally as part of the human interaction.

Are Indigenous Peoples receiving their fair share of funding given by foundations, family foundations, and individuals? How do you measure this?

Absolutely not! Indigenous communities are fighting a David and Goliath fight with little or no resources. The figures come from the Foundation Center, which compiles IRS reporting of over 70,000 U.S. foundations. It is very difficult, however, to know exactly how much of this money is going directly to Indigenous Peoples, since the reporting mechanisms do not capture all the grants, especially intermediary grants. We recently looked at international philanthropy for Indigenous Peoples and were shocked at how low the numbers were: less than a fifth of a percent.

Here are some stats: Indigenous Peoples across six continents form

Case Study Respect and Reciprocity “The board of the walter and duncan Gordon Foundation convened the northern policy Forum to explore how revenues from nonrenewable resource development can contribute to aboriginal communities in northern canada.

The forum was held in the remote fly-in Sahtu dene community of Radili koe (Fort Good hope). The board joined indigenous leaders to discuss future grantmaking and related programming. here is how board member James Stauch described the event: “we brought together current and former indigenous leaders, politicians, academics and youth, and we discussed issues with respect, in aboriginal style, roundtable style, such that no one is allowed to interrupt the speaker. The first roundtable took six hours and involved forty-five people. The process was wonderful and dealt with serious issues. politicians who had not spoken to each other in years, scarred from past battles, were reacquainting and building camaraderie. as neutral conveners, we felt we provided a space for the discussion process. however, the most powerful part of the process was one led by the indigenous peoples. it was a drum dance on the community stage that lasted until 2:30 a.m. everyone participated. it changed everything. it changed how we viewed each other as insiders and outsiders, and it changed the tenor of the discussion. it was critical that everyone participate and be vulnerable. we found that the dance was critical to the success of the ‘policy forum,’ and since our board was there, they understood what had been gained through the process.”

— James Stauch, walter and duncan Gordon Foundation” — excerpt from the Grantmaker’s Guide to International Indigenous Philanthropy

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the largest minority in the world, with more than 370 million people in more than ninety countries. In nearly every location, including in the United States, they are also among the most impoverished and underrepresented. This marginalization extends into the funding and research habits of the philanthropic community, where the amount of direct funding to Indigenous causes has not been tracked as closely as better-funded sectors of society. What is known is that of the approximately $27 billion in grantmaking

by U.S.-based foundations in ’08, less than $55 million (0.2 percent) was earmarked for Indigenous causes and concerns internationally.

What are some of the obstacles in the way of getting needed funds into the hands of Indigenous communities?

From my experience, the top three are language and cultural differences, geographic isolation, and lack of a bureaucratic structure. There are over 5,000 Indigenous languages, and yet most funders require proposals in English. There is also a lack of access due to geographic isolation.

Indigenous Peoples are learning to adapt, but it has been a slow process, since there is not enough funding for technical assistance, which needs to be given concurrently with funding that addresses the immediate issues Indigenous Peoples face. They are standing at the frontlines to protect the world’s natural resources against oil, mining, and other megaprojects. They need to both build their bureaucratic and core capacity and receive immediate funding to support their struggles.

What is IFIP doing to address these obstacles?

Our role is largely as a cultural liaison, to bring two worlds together on common ground. We do this important work by using a two-pronged approach: education and advocacy.

IFIP provides a space for authentic exchange between donors and Indigenous representatives. We develop publications and offer a variety of opportunities for learning through our webinars, website, listserve, and meetings.

Our latest accomplishment is the New Grantmakers Guide to International Indigenous Philanthropy, which is the very first comprehensive report from interviews with dozens of funders that offers examples of successful projects and collaborations that came out of a little bit of creativity and flexibility. For instance, when some funders allowed Indigenous communities to submit video reports,

videos that actually show where and how the funds were working, both sides won. The Indigenous Peoples enthusiastically learned a new communication tool, and the donors fulfilled their transparency requirements—and received ideal PR material with it! Now that’s true Indigenous reciprocity, otherwise known as a win-win situation, in our culture.

Justa Cabrera de Flores, of the Confederation of Indigenous Women of Bolivia, addresses participants at the May 2011 IFIP conference. Photo by Mark Cherrington.

You’ve said your mission is to create a movement to transform philanthropy. How do you want to transform it?

Our mission is to create the tipping point, in which philanthropists recognize that Indigenous Peoples are natural partners in their work. Rather than being exotic, Indigenous Peoples are the most obvious people to work with. cultural Survival Quarterly

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Christiana Louwa of Kenya (left) and Evelyn Arce, executive director of International Funders for Indigenous Peoples at the May 2011 IFIP conference.

Photo by Mark Cherrington.

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The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change recently described Indigenous strategies to adapt to climate change more than 2,000 years ago. They called this ancestral knowledge “the way forward.”

That Indigenous knowledge was recognized by the official international scientific authority on climate change is a sign of the times. As more people become conscious of the interconnection of all people and all beings on the planet, acceptance of the spiritual sensibilities and earth-wisdom traditions of Indigenous Peoples will grow as well. Let’s just hope that these cultures still exist by the time that happens.

IFIP sees this growing consciousness as an opportunity to influence the tenor of the dialogue and the substance of increased funding for Indigenous causes. IFIP’s trademark is “walking the talk,” a brand of true authenticity that sits at the heart of Indigenous philanthropy.

It is during the direct exchange of ideas, especially at IFIP’s annual conferences, where so much learning takes place and so many funding opportunities take root. IFIP’s annual conferences involve

more participants each year, including members and nonmembers. Printed publications reach 2,000 donors, Indigenous Peoples, and interested parties.

Online versions of publications are downloaded by countless more. Participation in meetings and conventions held around the world advance IFIP’s presence and multiply its impact on the field of Indigenous philanthropy.

What will philanthropy look like when it is transformed?

Philanthropy will be as multinational as capitalism itself. It will be not only multicultural, but also multi-issue and multidimensional. Instead of, say, the environmental grant officer giving to one Mayan village in Guatemala, socio-environmental projects will fund social justice, economic development, and environmental defense across Central America, uniting peoples struggling against the same root causes.

Our vision is to have philanthropy transformed in a holistic way to truly effect deep change in the world, and we believe the core foundation is the 4 R’s of giving: reciprocity, respect, responsibility and relationship.

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Messengers Between worlds By paula palmer

“With the climate in crisis, we are facing some dire circumstances going into the future. It’s a wild time to be alive. The problems we are facing are so complex and connected that a holistic way of addressing them is the only way forward. And that’s what I see in many Indigenous cultures. Given my role in this life, I am listening and trying my best to be a messenger.”

—Sonja Swift

t just 25 years of age, Sonja Swift has had unique opportunities to hear the voices of Indigenous people, and she feels an equally unique responsibility to carry their voices into the world of privilege into which she was born.

With her younger sister, Karen, Sonja forms the third generation of a philanthropic family. She has wrestled with the emotional baggage and challenges of inherited wealth and come out as a strong advocate for a new paradigm of philanthropy. As a board member of her family’s foundation and as a staff member of

A

Resource Generation, a network of young people with financial wealth who believe in social justice, Sonja is bringing a more holistic worldview—the worldview of Indigenous Peoples—into the world of philanthropy.

She started by listening.

“It was Martin von Hildebrand who gave me my first real opportunity to listen and learn in the Colombian Amazon,” Sonja remembers. For 35 years, von Hildebrand has collaborated with Indigenous Peoples of the Colombian Amazon as an independent researcher, as an appointed official of the Colombian govcultural Survival Quarterly

Sonja Swift, Martin von Hildebrand (left), and Roberto Marin enjoy a reunion at the May 2011 IFIP conference in New York.

Photo by Mark Cherrington.

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One of the keys to IFIP’s approach is having Indigeous representatives and foundation repesentatives interact on equal footing, to the benefit of both.

Photo by Mark Cherrington.

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ernment, and, most recently, as director of the nonprofit organization Gaia Amazonas. When von Hildebrand met Sonja, he sensed that she would be a good listener.

He invited her to visit the Indigenous communities on one of the rivers where Gaia Amazonas is working.

“Not everyone is right for that kind of experience,” he said, “but Sonja is made out of the right material. So I said, ‘Come and stay for a couple months and see what you learn.’”

Sonja joined a group of Gaia Amazonas advisors who spent two months traveling up the Pirá Paraná River, visiting Indigenous communities. “I learned so much there with them about another rhythm of time, ceremony, stories, and sacred sites, among other things,” she recalls. “They’ve accomplished a great deal since the missionaries left. Now they are managing their lands and resources again, overseeing their schools and health programs, all guided by their traditional knowledge.” She says that she was honored to meet Roberto Marin, a Barasano Indigenous leader who has been extraordinarily effective in gaining state recognition of Indigenous governance structures in the Pirá Paraná region. As the son of a shaman, Marin is

completely committed to the Indigenous worldview, and with the support of Gaia Amazonas he skillfully negotiated contracts with Colombian government agencies that enable the Indigenous Peoples of Pirá Paraná to run their own schools, health services, and forest management programs. Their self-governance model is spreading now into other Indigenous regions of the Northwest Amazon.

Unfortunately, these successes are tempered now with new challenges, as one of their most sacred sites, Yuisi, is threatened by a Canadian mining company.

“Yuisi is the origin of life,” explained Marin. “It is our Mecca, the heart of our people.” In pro-mining Colombia, they are working against the odds to protect it.

During her time in the Pirá Paraná, Sonja says she was impressed by the honesty and authenticity of the discussions between the Indigenous people and the Gaia Amazonas advisors. “I realized they were all messengers between their worlds,” she says, “and that I was a messenger, too. I could try to take their stories, their holistic way of thinking, back into the boardrooms of my world. I could open a place at the table so that they

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Response program. can speak for themselves here, so that my peers can listen. Even now, when I am frustrated dealing with this elite world, I think of Roberto Marin and others there, and they are a grounding force for me.”

When she returned from Colombia, Sonja helped the Swift Foundation put together a multiyear funding package for the communities she had visited and arranged for Marin and von Hildebrand to speak about their groundbreaking work at the 2011 International Funders of Indigenous Peoples conference last May. In her work as a part-time staff member of Resource Generation, she reaches out to other young people and encourages them to get involved in their families’ philanthropic activities, large or small. “I’m trying to promote systems thinking, ecological thinking in all our work,” she says, “and I realize that these new ideas are grounded in very old ideas.”

In that regard, Sonja and her sister are working hard to align the Swift Foundation’s investments with its mission by shifting their accounts from corporate banks to community banks and moving investments into microcredit, low-interest-rate loan funds for small farmers, clean energy, and the like. “It’s not just about the 5 percent of our funds that we donate each year,” she says; “it is about stewarding the entire endowment in line with our mission of biocultural diversity and resilience in the face of climate change. If that means we make less money, so be it. It has never made sense to me that foundations give away money to address the unraveling caused by the very corporations they are also invested in.”

Reunited at the 2011 International Funders for Indigenous Peoples conference (IFIP), Sonja, Roberto Marin, and Martin von Hildebrand modeled IFIP’s philanthropic principles of mutual respect, reciprocity, responsibility, and relationships. Von Hildebrand expressed it this way: “We are all here to do what we can for the world because it’s our responsibility to future generations. We should all sit around the table on equal terms. The people who have the money are not more important than the Indigenous Peoples who are in the forests taking care of them, doing the rituals and whatever is necessary. Money is not the scarcest thing. What is most scarce are people who understand the forest from living in it. Let the people who make money give money. Let the people who can make policy make policy. Let the people who do the work in the field do the work. And let the Indigenous Peoples continue to live in their ways, contributing knowledge that no one else has for the future of this planet.”

The rough and ready landscape doesn’t lend itself to roller blading yet, but this boy is determined to enjoy the urban life, even if it isn’t quite in place yet.

Elle Ellecho Essa, an Ethiopian healer and farmer, was one of the featured speakers at the May 2011 IFIP conference. Photo by Mark Cherrington.

Paula Palmer is the director of Cultural Survival’s Global cultural Survival Quarterly

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MY PEOPLE Tradition and resilience among the Naga

By Tuisem ngakang

y people, the Nagas, have a continuing high regard for the past, and throughout our life we are taught by example and observation that it is through the knowledge gained over time that our people have managed to survive.

We Naga are taught that all things stem from and continue to be tied to the past, and that it must continue to be respected and preserved. In our land, it is necessary to hand down from generation to generation the knowledge and the skills to ensure survival.

M

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The customs, beliefs, values, and opinions of Naga society were handed down from their ancestors to posterity by word of mouth or by practice since the earliest times, until the advent of British colonization in northeast India and its stress on literacy and the written word 150 years ago changed the trend. Before this so-called “civilizing” contact, we Nagas had lived our lives and had maintained our traditions in our own way. We made things and had acquired property; believed, loved, hated, fought, wandered, and wondered; and we learned many things by our own experimental existence. Our dreams, fears, and hopes had existed

since the most primitive days when our lives began.

From birth, children are taught through stories and legends about survival, endurance, and respect for nature and all mankind. Toys and playthings are fashioned for them, including tools and traditional dress, so that they may learn early about the roles they will assume. Girls are provided with packing parkas and carry their dolls on their back as they will carry their children in the future. They also are taught the traditional styles and methods for sewing and designing clothing.

Boys are dealt with from an early age as budding warriors, and are introduced to traditional games, group cultural Survival Quarterly

A Naga family shares a joke in front of their house. The term “Naga” is a collective covering 14 different tribes in the hills of Nagaland in northeast India. Photo by Rita Willaert.

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Naga men in tradtional dress for a ceremony. Traditions in Nagaland are still very much intact compared to most other parts of the country.

Photo by Tuisem Ngakang.

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play, and exercises to learn alertness, improvisation, and endurance.

Children in my culture quickly come to understand that time-honored skills and attitudes can never be relegated solely to the past, that they ensure a way of life and survival in the present and for the future.

Children spend a great amount of time listening to the elders as they recount tales of their past, and sing individual songs called haolaa. These songs usually speak of events that occurred in the past and detail their reaction to them. Their ties to the past have essentially been passed down verbally through legends, anecdotes, and songs.

I am part of something that time has not erased. As a Naga, I have learned first-hand that the knowledge handed down by my people on survival in our land is not to be disregarded, and failure to practice and uphold this wisdom can only result in tragedy or disharmony for an individual or a group.

We Naga have a strong sense of self: of who we are, and why we are as we are. Through our legends we speak of our close ties with the spiritual world, and of our reverence for and understanding of wildlife. Stories handed down through time depict our interrelationship

with the animal world, and tell of animals and humans exchanging roles, acquiring supernatural powers, and teaching and providing for one another. Our artwork also reflects these relationships, as do rituals that show respect for and acceptance of this oneness and harmony, which is displayed in our carvings and shawls.

All these, and more, are an eloquent testament to the way of life of a people. They represent the spirit, attitude, wisdom, and life-style which the Nagas have lived, have believed, and have passed on from generation to generation for many centuries. They are the product of our experience rooted at a particular time in the life of the society. This built-up wealth of Naga oral tradition has lived, is living, and will live in the folklore of the people. It is enshrined in the memories and hearts of the people. These tradition-bearers have kept alive the totality of our society, the unique system of our beliefs, the pristine virtues of our humanity, and the rich cultural heritage found in the folk tales, myths, legends, proverbs, superstitions, songs, and recitations of our ancestors, which have come down from the remote past of our history.

When the Westerners came to our land, they did not understand many of our Naga values and practices;

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their civilizations were different from our own. The tendency was to laugh at those things that looked surprising from the standpoint of those who made themselves judges. These were labeled “primitive” and “uncivilized,” because they did not conform to “civilized” standards.

Early missionaries, who considered our folklore primitive, without depth or sophistication, missed the point completely. Although there may be some common-sense beliefs and superstitions in the Indigenous communities, it must be noted that these have existed side by side with some humanity’s most profound philosophies, as well as some of its deepest truths.

Our elders tell us that we are the earliest inhabitants of this land. We are also aware of the tales and stories associated with the earliest contact with non-Nagas, in the form of wanderers, traders, missionaries, geographers, administrators. Our older people speak of their parents meeting the earliest visitors and sharing our food and shelter with them. There are many sites in our territory that tell of the heroic deeds of our forefathers and speak about our past, but these have limited historical interest to the Nagas, as they have simply accepted the sites’ existence as part of their lives. But our attitude should change, as outsiders are intruding. A new awareness of these sites should be seen as the key to preserving the past. As the population grows, our people should become increasingly concerned about the threat to the environment.

Archaeologists recently did some work on our land. It is good that we are digging out our past, but it is also necessary for the Nagas to share in that understanding and knowledge of the past. We will need to spend more time and attention to the strong concerns we have regarding removing artifacts to distant museums, where we question whether we shall ever get an opportunity to view them again and use them to educate our own children.

To know that we belong to us, we need to actively do our part to preserve our environment, wildlife, and historical sites while they are still relatively intact. We should learn how valuable they are and care for them for ourselves and our children. Spending our time in taking care of these invaluable resources is one way to look at our own way of life.

Standing here in my own land, with friendly birds and lovely animals, I am aware that their ancestors probably watched mine in the same manner in this same place hundreds of years ago. Here on this land, nothing has changed through time. I—Naga—and the land and the animals are still here. This is my past, and this has become a special place. Even though I am young, I, too, am the past as much as I am the future!

Left: A Naga man wearing traditional headgear. Photo

by Tuisem Ngakang.

Right: A Naga woman photographed by Rita Willaert.

The state of Nagaland is one of the least developed in India and is almost entirely Indigenous in its population.

Tuisem Ngakang is a researcher who is currently working on recording the music of Tangkhul Nagas while waiting to defend his PhD thesis. He is particularly interested in music, dance, and conflict resolution among the Naga. cultural Survival Quarterly

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What We’Re doing With youR money

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A crowd in the Guatemalan Congress Building waits for the arrival of Roberto Alejos, president of the Congress.

The representatives of community radio, including Cultulral Survival deputy assistant director Mark Camp (lower right) were there to persuade Alejos to put the Community Media Bill to a vote in Congress. Photo by Danielle DeLuca.

Community Radio PRogRam

cultural Survival partnered with seven other organizations to host a national conference of community radio stations on august 8, 2011. The conference was held at the Museum of the university of San carlos immediately across the street from the Guatemalan congress. Speakers included Mark camp, deputy executive director of cultural Survival; Frank laRue, united nations rapporteur on the freedom of expression; cesar Tzul, associate director of the national committee of Mayan organizations; and oscar perez, central american coordinator of aMaRc, the international alliance of community radio stations; and Guatemalan congressman walter Felix.The conference was attended by 159 people representing 43 community radio stations. on august 9, 2011, international indigenous peoples’ day, the conference participants choose 70 representatives to attend a meeting in the congress Building with Roberto alejos, the president of the Guatemalan congress and the chairmen of both the congressional committee on indigenous issues and the committee on peace. during the meeting, alejos signed a motion in favor of a congressional Resolution to place the community Media Bill and five other items of pending legislation on the agenda during the month of august.The resolution must receive a majority vote in the congress.The vote was scheduled for 3 p.m. on the same day. however, a strong hail storm with hurricane-force winds knocked out electricity to the congress Building and delayed the vote (and caused the collapse of the roof in the building where the conference had been held shortly before the storm).

global ResPonse

Samburu families who are suing kenya’s former president daniel arap Moi celebrated a small but significant victory in a kenyan courtroom May 12, when their lawyers persuaded a high court judge to allow them more time to prepare their case. The Samburu families were forcibly evicted from a property owned by the former president, and their homes were burned to the ground. The african wildlife Foundation reportedly was in the process of purchasing the property to develop a “community conservation” project.

The Samburu people’s lawyer, abraham korir Sing’oei, was joined in court by the well-known constitutional lawyer yash pal Ghai. “it is a great and refreshing day for the poor laikipia east Samburu community in the struggle for justice,”said Samburu representative Richard leiyagu. as this issue went to press, the next court hearing was scheduled for June 8 and 9 in nyeri. The uk’s channel 4 television is soon expected to air a documentary film that chronicles the eviction case as an example of how conservation programs can have negative impacts on indigenous peoples. cultural Survival raised funds for transportation and lodging so that the evicted families and witnesses can testify at the trial. Mr. leiyagu wrote, “The community thanks you so much for the timely assistance.The success just achieved [in the May 12 hearing] could not have been possible without such support.” we submitted our Samburu report on police violence to the May 12 Tom lantos human Rights commission hearing on indigenous peoples in africa. The u.S. congressional hearing is one of three on how american foreign policy is affecting indigenous peoples. we arranged for a wixárkia (huichol) delegation to meet with the un Special Rapporteur on indigenous Rights during the un permanent Forum on indigenous issues in new york in May. we also helped them prepare statements for the forum and some media events. Global Response director paula palmer worked with the delegation to help publicize their efforts to prevent a canadian mining company from destroying their sacred sites in the wirikuta natural and cultural Reserve (see the Global Response action alert in the previous issue of Cultural Survival Quarterly or on www.cs.org). we also arranged travel to the un forum for norvin Goff of honduras, the president of MaSTa, the largest Miskitu organization in honduras. paula palmer worked with him there to publicize and promote the campaign to stop construction of dams on the patuca River, on which the Miskitu,Tawahka, pech, and Garifuna peoples depend (see the action alert on page 17).

For our ongoing campaign to stop construction of a huge open-pit coal mine that would displace communities and destroy valuable productive farm land in Bangladesh, we translated our GR action alerts into the Bangla language, and arranged to have them printed in Bangladesh and circulated there. local Bangladeshi campaign organizers are especially

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excited about using the youth action alerts to encourage Bangladeshi students to write letters to their prime minister.

They will publish the alerts in their local organizations’ newsletters and websites, too. huge street protests against the pulbari coal mine continue in Bangladesh.

Global Response director paula palmer met in panama with ngöbe leaders Feliciano Santos, enoc Furmin Villagra, and Tomás Villagra and discussed strategies for negotiating the best possible outcomes for ngöbe communities that will be affected by construction of the chan 75 dam, which cultural Survival has fought for several years. our Global Response letters helped ngöbe people convince the president to revoke a reform to the mining law that would have permitted multinational mining companies to exploit indigenous territories.

endangeRed languages PRogRam

one of the important tasks of cultural Survival’s endangered languages program is to collaborate with our grassroots language program advisors—the euchee language project in Sapulpa, oklahoma; the northern arapaho language lodges in wyoming; the Sauk language department of the Sac and Fox nation in oklahoma; the wopanaak language Reclamation project in Massachusetts; and the alutiiq Museum language program in alaska— to raise the money they need to revive their languages.we commit to supporting a minimum of five funding proposals or fundraising events each year, based on the unique needs identified by each community-based program.

Since 2007-2008 these collaborations have yielded nearly $1million in local support—primarily for native language immersion instruction, master-apprentice teams, preschool and kindergarten classroom equipment, language grammars, teaching books, youth after-school programs, summer camps, and educational language teaching activities and materials. These commitments to grassroots language instructors and students are at the core of our endangered languages program, and we are currently working to expand our circle of language advisors to include another half-dozen tribal communities that are grappling with urgent language reclamation and revitalization efforts with few first-language or fluent speakers. in 2010, cultural Survival helped the national alliance to Save native languages in coalition with nearly a dozen other intertribal organizations to craft a proposed executive order on language revitalization for president obama. That order would mandate extensive federal interagency collaboration and support for tribal language programs. our goal throughout 2011 is to collaborate with dozens of tribal, educational, and cultural organizations to pressure president obama to sign this proposed executive order. To to build support for it, we have collaborated with the linguistic Society of america’s committee on endangered language preservation, and together we will launch letter-writing campaigns this summer through the fall, to urge both congress and the president to improve support for native languages. during June 2011, cultural Survival again held washington, d.c.-based summer native language events: a June 21 educational program at the library of congress, Celebrating Native American Language Revitalization in Practice, and a June 22 language Rights advocacy day on capitol hill. we engaged more than 60 members of the u.S. house and Senate appropriations committees in language revitalization success stories through direct constituent visits, letters, and phone calls from tribal language workers and advocates.

The education program at the library of congress (open to congress and the general public) featured film screenings to showcase heroic language revitalization efforts, raise public awareness, and to provide an experiential window into this urgent and important work.The documentary WE STILL LIVE HERE Âs Nutayuneân—which tells an extraordinary story of cultural survival and indigenous language recovery among the wampanoag nation of southeastern Massachusetts—was featured, along with short films on language revitalization efforts throughout indian country. Âs Nutayuneân, directed by filmmaker anne Makepeace and produced with the assistance of cultural Survival endangered languages program officer Jennifer weston, recently received the Full Frame documentary Film Festival’s “inspiration award,” sponsored by the hartley Film Foundation and presented annually to “the film that best exemplifies the value and relevance of world religions and spirituality.” Âs Nutayuneân also screened recently at film festivals around the world, from kathmandu to london to amsterdam, and will be broadcast in november on the pBS program Independent Lens. Âs Nutayuneân stars cultural Survival’s endangered language program advisors from the wôpanâak language Reclamation project, and a portion of the proceeds from the film will benefit cultural Survival’s endangered languages program. dVd copies are available for purchase online at www.makepeaceproductions.com and at this summer’s cultural Survival Bazaar series (www.cs.org/bazaar).

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Marcus Briggs-Cloud, Cultural Survival board member

The People Behind Cultural Survival

Marcus Briggs-cloud is a Miccosukke person of the Great Maskoke nation of Florida, and is a son of the wind clan people and grandson of the Bird clan people. he has worked as a Maskoke language instructor at the university of oklahoma and for the poarch Band of creek indians of alabama. he is an oxfam international youth action partner and a national Steering committee Member of the united Methodist Student Movement. last year Marcus received his master’s degree in theology from the harvard divinity School. his primary area of interest is Maskoke language and culture revitalization. “when i look at the sociodynamics of my people,” he says, “it seems the face of injustice keeps getting bigger and bigger every day, we’re losing our speakers one by one every day, and the infiltration of western ideology seems to be making the political decisions, the everyday social decisions, of our people. That’s our greatest challenge: how to decolonize ourselves and get back to the roots of what it means to embrace an indigenous cosmology.” why he supports cultural Survival: “cultural Survival’s work is an example of applying our traditional values in a contemporary context. advocating for the rights of indigenous peoples is everything my grandmother taught me.”

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On the high Ukok Plateau in the Altai Mountains of Russia, the Telengit people make offerings to Kok-Tengri (the blue sky) to celebrate the Lunar New Year. Russia plans to build a gas pipeline across their sacred plateau.

YOUR LeTTeR cAN heLP The TeLeNgiT sTOP iT. see page 9.

Photo courtesy of Ere-Chui Association of Obshchinas of the Telengit.