Democracy in Global Life

As our modern world does not have sustainable form of access to life, there is invaluable significance in the indigenous and tribal presence, sense and understanding as sustainable access to life upon the Earth.

“Indigenous peoples who are rooted in the indigenous environment and who interpret their situation… in the terms of the immediate environment” have important “commitment to life”. Survival of their “life-view… is the question of survival of life on the planet” as “it can not survive long if there is not radical change in the world-view”. (Anthropologist B.K. Roy Burman, Delhi, 1.3.2003)

Our indigenously inherited means of subsistence have sustained the Earth as livable equally for all of us. It, thus, constitutes also the core and origin of universal human rights as a part of wider universal rights of life.

We need thus to understand the threats to and requirements for the survival of this indigenous heritage as a most equal and sustainable source of human access to life on Earth.

Fundamental rights to means of subsistence carry world’s indigenously inherited universality, but are now endangered by the way the globalized modern world of nation states treats tribal life and communities.

The modern structures of knowledge, science, ecology or democracy have not been able to adequately reach or describe the indigenous experience of life and world. It fails to appreciate the indigenous inheritance of that way of existence of human life on earth, which has been most sustainable and equal.

Modern democracy may in fact lead to the growth of inequality by replacing indigenous inheritance of life, which is more equal in spirit than modern democracy.

Geo-bio-ecological science of Nature may also lead to environmental degradation by replacing all what in global majority’s indigenous inheritance of life, which is more friendly for the life of Earth than ‘Nature’ or its bio-ecological conservation.

As our aim is to seek a more sustainable alternative to what modern ‘civilization’ and science of ‘Nature’ have produced, we may learn something from that, how has the presence of indigenous people and their life-views been able to preserve the life on earth for millenniums.

We try thus to search, what significance could the presence of the indigenous peoples have in contemporary world situation.

“Tribal survival in the modern world would be possible and meaningful only if it is recognized as a presence with its own intrinsic worth” for which “the rhythm of life in the remotest hamlet was vibrant ” in tribal lands “prior to the modern onslaught”. (Suresh Sharma; “Tribal Identity and the Modern World” Tokyo, 1994, page 202).

It would be important to understand what kind of contribution could the indigenous inheritance give for the survival of life on the planet.

I do not however know much about the significance of what or how indigenous people feel, think or live. What can I thus do with indigenous significance, which I do not even know ?

I may still have already ‘known’ enough by ‘knowing’ only this one thing-the limitation of my own knowledge:

As it is unsure if that - what or how indigenous people (‘Adivasis’) feel or think - can or even should fit into becoming ‘known’ in the prevailing western sense of the term, may be I do not have even any right to know.

But because of this, and especially just in spite of this, I may be responsible to consider what Adivasis feel and think and how it is related to what is knowable in modern world - not as something to be made more ‘known’ for modern ‘knowledge’, but quite the opposite:

There may be many things seriously wrong in the ways the modern world and power of its ‘knowledge’ treat Adivasis and the lands, which they live as ‘known’ for western perceptions and intentions.

These wrongs, which result from world’s modern globalized scientific power, knowledge and understandability, should be removed in relation to life of Adivasi lands, which are exploited through being made ‘known’ for modern observance and intentions and treating and using them accordingly.

Life-views of indigenous and other people of the marginalized majority may be more valuable and significant for the survival of the life on our planet, than the ‘clarity’ of modern or scientific understanding.

The modern scientific understanding does not have any clarity how it could change itself and its concepts to stop itself from endangering the life of earth. We could thus learn something from others, who have not similarly consumed and wasted earth’s life and rights of life.

But to grasp in the modern concepts, how indigenous life has managed to sustain earth’s life, is not the same as to understand how to change the modern understanding to stop it from consuming the life of earth.

Those ways of living, which preserve earth’s life should perhaps thus not be forced to be made understandable under the modern concepts, because that what makes things understandable for the modern concepts is now endangering earth’s life.

The life of indigenous people should not thus be subordinated into something fluently and clearly ‘known’ for such globalized modern concepts, like ‘nature’, ‘democracy’, ‘education’ or ‘literacy’, by which the scientific modernity founds its unequal and endangering control of the world.

The task is not to change indigenous people to become more ‘known’ for concepts of modern understanding. On the contrary, the task could be rather to understand how we could change the modern concepts, to stop the modern understanding from endangering the life and rights of other ways of life and understanding of indigenous people and marginalized majority.

By endeavoring to understand, what in their life is marginalized by modernity into something, which modernity treats as less significant and less understandable for modern concepts, a dialogue could be established, how to stop transforming world into something understandable for modern concepts.

The modern world may need to learn how to stop seeing indigenous meanings as something which should become known through modern concepts. We may instead need to look into our modern life through the significance of the indigenous senses and intentions to find possibilities to change our modern concepts and ways of understanding so that they would not threaten the life of the earth or indigenous people.

We may need thus to understand what to do by not knowing indigenous people, by trying to find answers to the following questions:

- What in the life of these communities could be more equal than modern western democracy and more friendly for life of Earth than bio-ecological conservation of ‘Nature’ ?

- How to change the structures of our modern understanding and treating of indigenous life and lands wrongly as something ‘known’ for western intentions ?

- How to remove the reservations of modern scientific power, which consume away the re-livable indigenous significance of land ?

- How to stop the way the indigenous life, land and world and the ‘prehistoric’ indigenous inheritance of our whole world - millenniums of its history and future - are violated and exploited by the modern world?

As some common understanding (among indigenous people and various other people exists about the wrongs, which are done to indigenous people by neglecting their human rights, their human rights can be used as a context of consideration.)

This shall not mean that human rights would be only rights of life upon the earth, but rather indigenous rights imply such rights of earth’s life, which are wider rights of life than rights of people, Nature or any scientifically perceptible environment.

To look for answers, a dialogue is needed with indigenous and other people, who experience how indigenous life, land and world are violated and exploited by the modern world.

To achieve this purpose, we ask you to provide comments, critiques and other contributions to this text to produce a more comprehensive understanding, documentation and proposals for strengthening solutions for environmental and human rights problems faced by indigenous people. Recent UN resolutions and other UN documents on indigenous issues and globalization have invited indigenous peoples, governments, NGOs and others to provide information for the appropriate solutions.

We seek to use your comments and contributions to produce such further public discussion, documentation, to provide information, to make proposals and publications for accomplishing this purpose at the end of the International Decade of the World’s Indigenous People (1995-2004) of the UN. We are thus inviting indigenous people, researchers, NGOs and all others to share information on the problems, which indigenous peoples face, especially in relation to the prevailing conditions of globalization and commercial
take-over of indigenous lands, resources and identities.The case of India is in this respect is especially relevant as India is the home of largest indigenous population in the world.

Looking forward to your co-operation,

Ville-Veikko Hirvelä, a Finnish volunteer

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