Thinking & Acting Differently
In Latin-America lived many different tribal groups before the Spanish conquest. They had a cosmic vision that was completely different from that of the invaders, whose predatory plundering was not limited just to mineral resources like gold and silver, but aimed also to “brainwash” the supposed “uncivilised” peoples. Although there were some voices already early on which condemned the genocide of the indigenous people and defended their “otherness” (for example, Fray Bartolomé de las Casas in the famous dispute of Valladolid), they changed little in preventing the de facto subjugation of the indigenous people. The slave labourers dragged in from Africa likewise brought in their very own languages, religious and cultures with them to Latin America. However, the languages of the conquerors, Spanish and Portuguese, do not cover many of the areas of experience of the indigenous people. For example, for the Pirahã of the Brazilian Amazon, the only thing that counts is the here and now. That comes through in their language, too: their grammar has neither the subjunctive nor the passive mood.
All of this overlaps in present-day Latin America. The anthropologist Wade Davis created the concept “ethnosphere” for this in order to describe these multi-facetted living spaces analogous to the “biosphere”. The concept is an appeal to call into question the dominant Western world-view, to confront it unprejudicially with other world-views about human social life. It is therefore a question of the intellectual superstructure of human civilisation.
Although it has been proven that indigenous and local communities manage the most stable and healthy ecosystems on earth, we still find it difficult to understand their knowledge. It is either idealised or dismissed as mumbo-jumbo.
In a joint article, indigenous and non-indigenous researchers are now calling on the international scientific community to work together in a transdisciplinary and intercultural way to improve conservation research, policy and action.
We want to shine a light on it, interrogate its assumptions, reveal its lines of conflict and report examples where some people are already interposing new concepts.
For the indigenous peoples, territory is not simply forest, water and a reservoir of mineral resources. It is also not a designed space for ‘wilderness’. Rather, it is a part of their cosmic vision and stamps their thinking, their language, their life-style. They are deeply rooted in a particular region. If they lose the forest and their ancestral habitat, their very livelihood is destroyed.
The struggle for land is thus the core conflict between the Western and the indigenous civilisation. These worlds collide particularly hard at present.The Amazon is one of the last regions not yet completely connected with the capitalist economic system. But the pressure grows unceasingly. One driver of virgin forest destruction in gold.
But the pressure is growing relentlessly. The main reasons for the destruction of the rainforest are gold, cattle breeding and, above all, the cultivation of soya for export. Lobbyists are currently trying to soften the protection of indigenous reserves and open them up for economic use by means of legislative initiatives.
Indigenous people demonstrate in Brasilia in the summer and in Argentina in November 2021, all of whom would be affected by the filibustering of territorial laws.
The Brazilian protests were directed against three plans that directly threaten their territories and autonomy.
The PL490 bill was passed in the Congress in March 2022, is one of them. It does not abolish the reserves, but allows mining in indigenous territories.
For decades, they have been trying to gain political recognition and have organised themselves worldwide.
The are trying to organise communities in accordance with the strict rules of Kosmovisión, structuring them in such a way that they are recognised externally.
Indigenous people such as Jorgelina Daurte, the International Guarani Association delegate, are being invited abroad more and more.
Some also try to break into the world of politics, which is dominated by white people. However, this is not as easy as the case of Cacique Marcos of the Xukurú shows.
