Democracy in Global Life

How has Adivasi understanding of surrounding life saved more exactly the life of living environment than the modern culture of scientifically exact knowledge of ‘Nature” ?

What in indigenous life (and its ‘super-natural’ understanding) is thus more friendly to surrounding life than modern bio-ecological understanding and conservation of Nature?

As scientific modern world recognizes and - by enormous resources - handles and observes Earth’s life as exact biological ‘Nature’, why has this treatment of environment exactly as ‘Nature’ (of science) created more severe dangers to Earth’s life than any other culture?

“We are the land and the land is us; we have a distinct spiritual and material relationship with our lands and territories and they are inextricably linked to our survival and to the preservation… of our knowledge systems and cultures”. (Kimberley Declaration, International Indigenous Peoples Summit on Sustainable Development, Khoi-San Territory 28 August 2002).

Land where people live is thus also constituted as access to soil, fields, waters, vegetation, forests and fauna as people’s those means of subsistence, which are fundamental for their identity and dignity - for their life as people who they are - and thus for their “own” means of subsistence.

Indigenous land is their own land primarily in this sense that they belong to the land, which forms their existence so that people can not live without it:

“Our lands… are at the core of our existence”; “We are the original peoples tied to the land by our umbilical cords and the dust of our ancestors” (Kimberley Declaration). The concept of ‘indigenous’ implies that where people have origin of being born in life on such land or territory, whose life’s continuance and significance have been sustainably linked to the life of these people in that area, those people have a particular entitlement to life of that land.

“In the chronological sense the term “indigenous” means earliest settlers or autochtons in a region”. In this respect, “tribe” can be considered “more appropriate description of the concerned peoples in Asia and Africa”, where “it is difficult to say, who are the earliest settlers in different regions”.

Indigenous in the cultural and environmental sense means “rootedness in their immediate surrounding” by their way of life, social organization and meaning system. Things happen as indigenous life so that they “carry the imprint of history on the surrounding”. In relation to the in-coming settlers, indigenous can be understood as one who is “under process of dispossession from their life-support resource base”. (Anthropologist B.K. Roy Burman; Aboriginal cultures and modern Society, 2004.)

Also in etymological sense of the word “Adivasi”, “adi” means the earliest and original and “vasi” means living as being on somewhere to which one belongs. Such original belonging by living, can be thus understood as living on or by some being as the earliest belonging to such being (of what is lived on).

It is thus linked to sense of ‘Indigenous’ or ‘Adivasi’, that originally all belongs to their elementary abode, basis, location or ground upon which they exist and which is in this sense their own :

“In the entire cosmos, there is not a thing that does not have a place, all its own” as considered by Gunia, a tribal from Chhattisgarh. “Limits and legitimacy are defined in terms of cosmic placement”, where “all legitimate existence is subject to limits defined by correct placement”. (Suresh Sharma; “Tribal Identity and the Modern World” Tokyo, 1994, pages 97, 129-130.)

Beings belong to that placement or land upon which they exist, as the primary belonging and ‘ownership’; which owns them as appropriated to it.

Primary Nature of world’s material basis “does not belong to us, but we belong to it” as was noted by a Gond Adivasi Indu Netam (WSF-debate on Survival of Adivasi Globally on 20.1.2004, Mumbai). This is because world’s material basis lives in various forms by providing them their matter, essence and consistence as their abode to exist.

Also the answer of an Adivasi to my question about how “own” land for Adivasi differs from land as one’s own property, was that :

“People belong to the land and forest, on which they live” (Adivasi Juen Shastri in Ekta Parishad tour/ Chhattishgarh 28.1.2004).

People belong thus to the place of their life where they are born to live and die on, or for it.

3.2. Existence as Community of Access to Take Place upon the Earth

Land is common access to own place in the world. People belong to the land upon which they - and the identity of their life and death - exist, and which is in this sense also their ‘own’.

(Land belongs to the life and death of Adivasi as their own. Some have got murdered for not leaving their land as was demonstrated for us in a Baiga tribal forest-village in Chhattisgarh in 26.1.2004 at a grave of Birju Baiga, a place where he was murdered by the officers of Forest Department a year earlier. Many tribal people continue to maintain that they will never abandon their land even if it means their death.)

“The land tenure system, known as Kipat, of the Limbu indigenous people of Nepal provides a means of belonging to a place and to a distinctive community - the one not separable from the other. Kipat defines them as a “tribe””. In this respect land as indigenous “property was… space that creates our consciousness”. It is “fundamental to their identity… and humanity”. (UN-report “Indigenous peoples and their relationship to land”, E/CN.4/Sub.2/2001/21, paragraphs 13-14)

“At the level of ethos there is the extension of myself... with the Earth” (Interview of athropologist B.K. Roy Burman, 25.3.2004)

“The notion of self does not end with their flesh, but continues with the reach of their senses into the land”.. “Such a relationship manifests itself in the elements of indigenous peoples’ cultures, such as language”. (UN-report “Indigenous peoples and their relationship to land”, paragraphs 13-14)

Land as shared opening position of how life for all takes place upon the earth is thus the living heritage of perceivable signifiability of shared surroundings, echoed and inherited in the language of the land.

“Language is the voice of our ancestors from the beginning of time”; we are “tied to the land by… dust of our ancestors” so that “language is part of the soul of… our being” in which “we are the land and the land is us”. Such language is “the pathway to the future”. (Kimberley Declaration, International Indigenous Peoples Summit on Sustainable Development, Khoi-San Territory 28 August 2002).

Land consists of inheritance of significance, which signifies land; as access to ground, soil, territories, waters, fields, forests, vegetation, fauna and thus as indigenous people’s “own means of subsistence”, a human right which ‘in no case shall’ be deprived from them.

Land is clearing of the earth as shared access to live on common space of world’s significance.

Land signifies itself rights and dignity as such access to fields, waters, vegetation, fauna, (etc.), which provides life by various inherited means of significance, perception and senses, nuances of intention in them and their semantic and syntax structures of thought and other collective means of living and survival.

Land is clearing upon the earth into shared inherited horizon of access to live and consists of the scenery as remembrance of how life takes place upon the earth, in immemorial significance of earth’s universal inheritance.

An indigenous American Indian Chief Sealth (Seattle) said in his speech to white man 150 years ago that when “white Chief sends us word that he wishes to buy our land”, land is difficult of being sold as land consists of what have happened upon the earth in ancestral time.

“Every part of this soil is sacred… Every hillside, every valley, every plain and grove, has been hallowed by some… event in days long vanished.

Even the rocks, which seem to be dumb and dead as the swelter in the sun along the silent shore, thrill with memories of stirring events connected with the lives of my people, and the very dust upon which you now stand responds more lovingly to their footsteps... Our departed …greet shadowy returning spirits.” (Chief Sealth, 1854)

“We are … tied to the land by our umbilical cords and the dust of our ancestors” (Kimberley Declaration 2002).

How do Adivasis save the surrounding life without even perceiving it often as ‘Nature’ (as defined by science of ‘Nature’, biology or ecology), and without having often even a word synonymous with ‘Nature’?

(And why does modern world, which uses and concentrates globally more energy than any other culture to lead our life according to bio-ecological knowing of world’s life as physio-organic Nature, produce more degenerated environment than any other culture?)

How does Adivasi understanding and perception of (and relation to) earth, water, fire, air and akasha differ from understanding and perception of ‘Nature’ (by science) ?

How do Adivasis see and treat Earth as endowed with ‘spirits’ of surrounding life (which are not biological Nature) and have in this way preserved Earth’s life for millenniums much more adequately than modern view of life as purely organic biological ‘Nature’ ?

“The modern culture based on precarious science and technology has nothing to do with understanding Nature and it’s gift for the fellow living beings. The modern world uses science to use the Nature. The tribal society had a scientific understanding of Nature only to conserve and preserve for sustaining both lives (human as well as nature).

Though the religion or other dogma evolved and maintained by the tribal people is termed as superstitious or unscientific, they were really spiritual or mystic. Nature was a God or Goddess, a Divine- friend, a supernatural helping force for the tribal people and hence they invented forms of worship and customs much to the conservation of Nature than exploiting it. The meaningful practices the tribal communities entertained virtually demonstrated their faith in the power and principles of Nature. The symbolism and mythology prevalent in the Tribal culture or religion promoted harmonisation or synchronization of human life and Nature.

The modern science is developed as a separate system parallel to the Natural system and is vying to conquer the Nature. It is believed that the ancient people feared Nature and hence worshipped it. This is not the explanation recorded by the ancient people themselves but evolved by the so-called modern civilised human race. But, even for the purpose of argument if we admit that they feared Nature and so worshipped it, they did not foolishly attempt to outdo Nature.

It was not fear but reverence the ancient tribes had towards Nature. The tranquillity contributed by the Nature helped them to observe and understand it thoroughly and find ways for harmonious mutual co-existence. Even today Nature tends to remain as same as time immemorial. But ill-motivated humankind has reduced Nature to a mere group of material substance readily available for the unlimited exploitation and consumption.

The Nature was cognised as a mystic treasure by the Adivasis and other ancient indigenous groups. If given a deeper understanding of the way Adivasis perceived Nature and its presence one may come to conclusion that many Adivasis should have lived a life which the Rishis or Seers glorified in the mythology and puranas (epics) had lived - a life totally immersed in pondering the beauty of the Nature, using Nature without endangering it”. (I.P. Jeevankumar, ATWT-director, Tamil Nadu.)

3.3. Traditional Communities & Green Movement

by Kai Vaara, Finnish activist and boardmember of Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam and Siemenpuusäätiö

The practical knowledge of tribals and dalits

In January and February, after WSF in Mumbai, I was visiting many NGOs in Tamil Nadu, Orissa and Jharkhand, working in connection to drought, environmental issues, organic agriculture, community theatre, women, dalits and adivasis etc. As a result of this process of meetings and consultation 72 NGOs, networks and grassroot groups in Tami Nadu decided to start a state wide joint action for sustainable livelihood in the context of globalisation. Interesting and valuable in this process was not only the stress on common lands and rights of people inhabiting these areas, but also the stress on sustainable livelihood. In this writing I’ll describe some thoughts that was discussed about this.

After several decades of bad experiences of the “green revolution” traditional skills and knowledge is highlighted because of their functionality and ecological value - like traditional ways of irrigation and storing water, cultivation of indigenous dry land plants with own seed production, medical plants and medicals etc. But these traditions include also different ways to organize the work and share responsibilities and results in village communities.

So traditional ways of sustainable livelihood include also non-commercial cultural habits and self-reliant life patterns, not just “ecological” solutions as techniques. It was understood that this type of “hidden”, practical and non-literal knowledge—carried by women, dalits and other marginal groups, especially tribals—is a many sided heritage that gives people a base to sustain their life with scarce resources and without modern pressure on consumerism. Although the picture is changing and not that simple in many cases, the question remains about the value of traditional skills and knowledge in marginal communities, adapted to ecological circumstances - and often also to oppression from outside.

In search and work for political alternatives for another world this type of experience, knowledge and understanding was seen crucial. Indigenous and community based life style was understood as inevitable human capital for an ecologically sound future, culture and policy. Marginal and traditional groups survive with inherited skills, and this practical and spiritual capital is inevitably important for the majority of world population that never can reach western way of consumerism. And it is this type of groups and the creativity in their culture that is basic for a sustainable future.

This means that the forces working for another world should have straight, informal and living connections to life style circles - not just to administrative level, to growing middle classes and new subcultures, or to oppressed classes and their ways of life - but especially to this marginalized and self sufficient village life, with self rule and sustainable traditions. Through understanding basic ways to sustain the life gives a perspective also to understand “real” needs, necessities and essentials - also in relation to “development” or globalisation.

Nature protection, mining, forest loss, leasing and selling of common lands and now also water resources is increasingly threatening traditional communities. Confronting outside forces and nowadays the “open” economy of powerful companies traditional communities have mostly forced to withdraw. More and more conflicts like this ought to be coming in the future. So, in supporting these land-based communities it is not just a question of protection of their rights and dignity. It is also important to point out their unique place related knowledge and cultural value of their life style.

These societies, cultures and communities do not produce commodities to global markets, and they are deemed to be unproductive and ineffective through according to modern mind. Traditional communities produce and maintain wealth in many different ways, which the thought of productivity like also the framework of poverty and poverty alleviation - focusing on money flows - easily ignores. Local sharing of skills and commodities based on peoples mutual relations is one feature of social wealth. Poverty alleviation leads easily to inequality, dependency of outside forces, decreasing local control of resources, and local access to participation. Thus the local community weakens, becomes more vulnerable and peoples wealth decreases.

Marginal communities living mostly with subsistence economy needs rights to rule their own life. But on the other hand we others do also have a need to widen our understanding of tribal way of life if we search for sustainable life styles and culture. This creates a field of “real development cooperation”, in which for example natural building materials and solutions of housing, agro-forestry practices, herbal and other types of medicines, socio-psychological caring, belief systems and celebrations connecting people to mutual responsibility with earth and it’s beings and rhythm of seasons, different ways of knowledge etc. This cooperation can be a source of learning, experience sharing and a culturally creative field. This type of learning is in interest of people searching for alternative life styles, sustainable communities and eco-villages all over the world. For the youth of traditional communities encountering the modern impact, it is important to share their search with people and youth from consumerism oriented societies having interest for alternatives. Thus the traditional life styles and modern search for sustainable life could create forms for mutual learning and exchange. - to reach and create intentional knowledge for another world.

The crucial point is not just protection of place based life style and traditions as such. The point is to ask what lessons their way of life can give us to share and learn from. It is not a question about either-or. Our “western” cultures have adapted to the exploitation of “natural resources” developing an expanded realm of “artificial” needs, greed and lusts, and we have individual rights for it. Do individuals of tribal communities not have the same rights? Like we earned these rights for all through centuries of fight and work? On the other hand - do not also we “westerners” have a right to learn from them - or from our past and roots - and have rights to realize similar or corresponding ways of life. Awareness and knowledge - local, space and time related, intuitive, action oriented, life-sustaining and reciprocal, body connected, community oriented and unique- is in common interest. This is a reason for many so called “new age” features in West, often having influences from Eastern or tribal traditions or approaches - on expressive skills, health treatments, groupwork and facilitation, psychology, and also science and philosophy. ..

In our discussions cultures of the marginalized majority was seen as the crucial corner stone for the building of “another world”. Women, dalit and adivasi people etc. do mostly carry traditional caring and sharing ways to sustain oppression - or to build a connection to earth. And the role of adivasi and tribal people might in this regard become most important - like the knowledge of local nature, medical plants and healing places etc. is most unique and diverse among these people.

I do not say that the campaign in Tamil Nadu for sustainable livelihood in connection to globalisation will carry these elements - they were shared with individual groups and NGOs. Still these discussions seemed have a clear impact to the joint campaign.

3.4. Shifting Cultivation as Clearing of Land

In the name of Nature, forest project, environment and wildlife, indigenous people has been evicted from living in their forestlands, where they have always lived in most sustainable manner.

Forestry Department of the government is destroying Adivasi villages in forest lands by force. Western biologically oriented understanding of ‘nature’ has adopted such totally opposite “deconstruction even of the concept of forest”, that “where there is wilderness, people do not have a place” (as cultures or as spiritual actors). (Speaker in WSF-seminar on Indigenous Peoples Identity and Their Rights on 20.1.2004, Mumbai).

The Indian government tries to reserve forests from being used by the population even though “‘there are about a 100 million forest dwellers’ and ‘another 275 million’ who depend on the forest produce for their livelihood’.

Even where law confirms Adivasi land-ownership, it is often “stated that ownership does not provide the right to take any decisions related to stewardship, management or sustainable harvesting of “ forest-land. Even though the Forestry Department who states this, contrarily prohibits in other cases Adivasi from using land just on the basis of declaring formal public or private ownership of land to someone else. (Harsh Mander; “Tribal Policy”, 2004, page 24)

Indian Government’s Ministry of Tribal Affairs tries in its new “Draft National Policy on Tribals” 2004 (pages 6-7) to claim, that shifting cultivation by Adivasi’s villages “is hazardous to environment”, and a backward phase in the evolution.

But often “most of their villages are 100% plastic-free, they practise zero-waste, their agriculture is completely organic and their afforestation… show great appreciation of bio-diversity”. (WSF-report “Lessons Learnt. Lessons Shared” by IRDWSI).

Ministry says that “in shifting cultivation lands, no attention is paid to the replenishment of soil fertility. Tribals merely believe in harvesting crops without putting in efforts or investments”.

By Adivasis land has been “neglected as land belonged to no one but was subject to exploitation by every one” according to the “Draft National Policy on Tribals” (by Ministry of Tribal Affairs of India, 2004, pages 6-7)..

But it is extremely evident, that this “exploitation” has been such use for everyone, which has preserved the forests and people alive and recovered for millenniums, providing “basic sustenance… assured for all”.. (Suresh Sharma; “Tribal Identity and the Modern World” Tokyo, 1994, pages 196-197)

“An adivasi will cut wood from the tree only so much that is required for a daily living. In doing that the adivasi will take only that wood which when cut will help the tree to grow! Even when the adivasis cut down wood from the tree for repairing or building homes, they cut the tree in such a fashion that the concerned tree may be reborn many more times than it was when the wood was taken out. The tree is not cut from its roots. The roots are kept in a manner that within a few days the tree is revived.

This is the speciality of indigenous civil society. When the forests were in their hands they saw to it nature was conserved and its resources were used in a sustainable manner. However when the forests were grabbed by the Government under laws enacted by the British Imperialists destruction of forests began. Despite hundreds of officials and their sub-ordinates working to protect the forests under laws prepared by the British and thereafter by the ‘free Indian Union and State Governments’ the forest cover continued to decline”. (Judav; Indigenocracy, People’s Alternative to Globalization, 2004)

According to “aerial survey… traditional community managed forests were much more densely forested than state managed forests” (Anthropolgist B.K. Roy Burman, 19.2.2004)

“Forests have survived best in regions of shifting cultivation” (practiced by Adivasis); “a threat to the forest it has never been”. “Viability of shifting cultivation is inseparable from the survival of vigorous natural forest vegetation” and thus through thousands of years its means “are modulated as much to nurture cultivation as to preserve the variety and vigor of forest vegetation”.

Shifting cultivation forms into a forest a limited temporary “clearing that stimulates the forest and Nature”. “In the penda clearing, Nature in all its wild resilience and variety retains its sway” and so that “after the crops have been harvested, penda slopes merge back into Nature” with essential renewal of its wilderness usually in 3 years time.

And the diversity in shifting cultivation as investment to sustaining diversity was able to “ensure that harvests never fail completely. Famines simply never happen.”(Suresh Sharma; “Tribal Identity and the Modern World” Tokyo, 1994, pages 92-93, 144, 147, 157 and 159).

“None can say that the Madia is poor in food - in a non-agricultural, non-industrial society-unless he were to come out of his forest and engage in trading forest produce with the ‘outside’ world. In his native land and with practically no possession worth a consideration he lives a life that is plenty in itself. The ‘products’ found in his forests are valuable in as much as they are given a cultural meaning and significance but they are not accounted an exchange value. The forests are a cultural asset and knowledge investment that has a defining role in his self-identity and affirmation”. (Narendra Bastar 27.3.2004; he researched the life of Madia for 3 years in 80’s by living with them.)

Modern world is used to complain about aboriginal practices of burning the forest or the vegetation to clear the land for shifting cultivation or other use. Such aboriginal practices are considered to result from the lack of “mechanized tools or… even ploughing” and to produce “poor yields” per acre (Ministry).

But the practice of burning the wood of the cleared forest area on the ground before cultivation, leaving the ash in the soil and growing there same crops only for short time, sustains soil’s nurturing capacities and makes land open for life of more diverse biota following the cultivation. As the nutrition, which the soil gives, is used not for mono-culture but for various crops, ripening and harvested on differing phases and not preventing wild species or trees from growing, soil’s nutritional capacities and species, which can grow and live on it, are diversified and complement each other. This openness for diversity without stopping its own growth, makes the forest in the longer run into a totality of a kind of wild gardens for various nutritional and other uses.

Shifting cultivation produces thus sustainable diversity of rotating forms of biota, which enrich each other in relation to their nutritional capacities. Efficiency of the yield per acre has certainly to be counted in relation to the totality of land and work-hours used for producing adequate nutrition and nurturing distribution for maintaining life.

In estimating the efficiency of production per acre, we must certainly count all land use and work needed for feeding a population of a village in a sustainable manner. We must consider, what would be the total amount of acres and work needed to sustain a clan of shifting cultivation for longer period; for 500 years for example. And we must then compare this amount of acres and work to all acres and work sustaining same amount of modern population by modern agricultural technology.

What is the amount of acres and work as needed for producing fertilizers and pesticides, raw materials for tractors, cars and other machines, fuels, roads and other resources of transportation, market and other infrastructures of industrialized areas, sciences, education, health care and environmental measures needed for the maintenance of agriculture, etc ? For example “During mining operation massive subsoil water seepage goes on continuously… As a result, quantum of soil moisture in the agricultural and forest land on the surface goes down with corresponding reduction in productivity and increase in the proportion of persons below poverty line”..

(Anthropologist B.K. Roy Burman, Observations, February 2004)

We may wonder, would the modern or Adivasi land use consume more acres and work for sustaining same amount of people. Ministry does not give reasonable ground for its reference that “advanced agriculture… technologies… raise… production” if compared to the shifting cultivation, which Ministry wants to displace.

When the government requires from Adivasis an “emotional attachment to the land as an asset or property needing care and attention” and such “land ownership… that they will invest their energy and resources” to soil, its actual aim is now that:

“Tribals will be encouraged to raise cash crops” and “training and extension programmes will be organized to sensitise tribals… so that they can come out of shifting cultivation”. (“Draft National Policy on Tribals” by Ministry of Tribal Affairs of India, 2004, pages 6-7).

But by “cash-crop plantations, small-scale and subsistence producers are often displaced from their…land” and export oriented “agreements on agriculture and forest products has… led to environmental degradation and thereby to the destruction of indigenous modes of production”. (UN-report on human rights of Indigenous People, E/CN.4/Sub.2/AC.4/2003/2, paragraph 33)

This all continues the colonial forms of take-over of lands and peoples into settled cultivations and “reserved forests”, controlled by western forms of natural science and property. It is structurally colonial takeover of the resources of local life into foreign purposes and profits so that any other “mode of livelihood ceased to have legitimate existence”.

Already the colonial “Forest Regulations (1867) sought to completely prohibit the practice of shifting cultivation in the Central Provinces”, where it was the major livelihood of Adivasi; “the imperative need was to uphold the interests of the entire ‘public’ realm, of which ‘local interests’ could have hardly any understanding”. (Suresh Sharma; “Tribal Identity and the Modern World” Tokyo, 1994, pages 143 and 198).

Globalized state continues to exercise similar colonial laws and practices by which “tribal lands are taken in the name of public purpose and changed into private property”.. The use of legislation inherited from the colonial rule and the “colonization of tribal areas continue in the form of ‘nation-building’” of India by further development of former colonial industries.

Inhabitants of the ‘reserved forests’ are forced away to be settled into cheap farm hands or they are classified as habitual offenders to live with the stigma of the criminals. (Pradeep Prabhu, WSF-seminar on Indigenous Peoples Identity and Their Rights Adivasi identities on 20.1.2004, Mumbai).

Lands forests and other natural resources are taken from the sustainable use of Adivasis by force thus into foreign forms of property for “larger interests”, also in the name of the preservation of biological ‘Nature’, as controlled maintenance of ‘untouched’ or distinct ‘wild-life’ forest reserve.

“The Wild Life Act will also have to be revised based on the recognition of the fact that the experiences of generations the peoples have developed own conservation strategies specific to each ecological niche” (Anthropologist B.K. Roy Burman; Tribal Peoples of India - Emerging Heritage, 2000)

India is funded for example by the World Bank to provide Nature simultaneously as product for ‘eco-tourism’ as Wildlife sanctuary Tiger Reserve and for controlled teak plantation reserves; both at the same time in the same areas like in Chhattishgarh.

But Adivasi life maintains the forest certainly in a more familiar natural condition for the survival of tigers than the ‘eco-tourism’ or teak or eucalyptus plantations by the World Bank. Adivasis consider that “We are ready to live with the tigers as we have always lived rather than the Forest Department”. (Adivasi in a Baiga-tribal village in Tiger Reserve of Chhattisgarh 26.1.2004).

Controlled forest reserves and “the conversion of complex forests into genetically simplified industrial
plantations add to State revenues and benefit industries, but a wide range of species critical to the survival and well-being of tribal forest dwellers are depleted severely and sometimes even lost forever”. (Harsh Mander; “Tribal Policy”, 2004, page 12).

Tribals “have always lived in harmony with other living things… without having to destroy them”, “protecting and respecting the other forms of life that make up this environment”. Still “in many countries, land set aside for parks and protected areas may encroach upon and often swallow all the land reserved for indigenous populations, without any compensation being provided”. (UN-report on Indigenous peoples and Globalization, E/CN.4/Sub.2/AC.4/2003/14, paragraphs 8 and 27).

3.5. Nature as Political Institution of Western Control over the Earth

While application of science of Nature, hand in gloves with biology and ecology, have led to the degradation of living environment and biota, indigenous peoples without science of Nature or biology, have preserved the living environment without even perceiving it as ‘Nature’ (in any scientifically coherent sense).

In cultural history, indigenous “stateless societies were less prone to do environmental damage” than those structures of governance and control of nations and capitals, which have been through the natural science “particularly prone to degrade environments in ways that vastly reduce biodiversity and are unsustainable”. While the “aboriginal economic practices sustained an extremely diverse biota” in gathering, shifting cultivation or burning (etc.) practices of their livelihoods and subsistence “without undermining the environmental prerequisites”, the modern commercial control takes globally that indigenous heritage of all those environmental resources into its reserves by the laws of Nature. (a Lecture on Indigenous People and Environment by a lecturer, whose name we are still trying to find out).

Western habits to call indigenous peoples ‘peoples of nature’ are treating their life under such usage of the concept of ‘Nature’, its scientific authority and its implications, which are excluding their indigenous perception of environment and depriving the indigenous sense and significance of surrounding life.

Modern scientific ‘Nature’ excludes indigenous experiences of surrounding community as livable space and extension of self to the environment.

“Tribal peoples claim prerogative in respect of certain physical space as an extension of their social space. The link is rooted in ontology and ethics of the concerned communities rather than organization of political power for exclusive control of the resources.” (B.K. Roy Burman; Aboriginal cultures and modern society, 2004)

“At the level of ethos… the tribal social entities represent values of conviviality, reciprocity, sharing and extension of self to the surroundings-animate or inanimate”. This “imparts to the tribal peoples a sense custodial responsibility towards the endowments of nature in the geographical space, which through diverse procedures are also considered as social space for the different tribes”. Such “social space with custodial responsibilities, irrespective of their status in state law… are also respected by their neighbours”. (B.K. Roy Burman; Tribal Peoples of India - Emerging Heritage, 2000)

Indigenous and other “stateless societies… less prone to do environmental damage”, have saved the living environment with “beliefs which endow” the “environment with supernatural powers and human qualities” by “ritual practices…. designed to preserve an environmental status quo in which humans… continue to depend on the… environment for sustenance”. (a Lecture on Indigenous People and Environment; such practices may have also inspired or inspirited the development of maize, potato or tomato for example).

In preserving the environment as surrounding life, the indigenous intentions thus do not necessarily perceive Nature or act with Nature in the sense how it is understood by science. Living beings and species in the environment exist by spirits or reflect spirits, ancestral or various other modes of being, which are appealed to forgive the people, who consume the life in environment.

As rights of environment can exist in various senses, those cultures of identification and treatment of environment, which are based less on scientific Nature, must thus certainly have rights to protect rights of environment in other senses than as ‘Nature’. (Nature as the very scientific controllability which has created the most serious environmental problems in the world.)

Land belongs for “full liberation of all living beings” (Indigenous speaker in WSF-debate on survival of the indigenous people, 20.1.2004, Mumbai). For Adivasis, “their meaning of existence” is such that “everything... available in their surroundings... are always pregnant with a message”. “The spirits are... messengers... to ensure that the... creation does not deviate from the established path. They are... guardian on everything on earth”. Adivasis live in “social system” of humans, animals and spirits and “the community is accepted always in its totality”. (“Redeeming the World Order - The Adivasi perspective”, publication in WSF Mumbai by Indian Confederation of Indigenous and Tribal Peoples).

For tribal people thus also “non-human lineage of human life” “is seen as still an active”, “not biological linkage”. One may for example be “reborn as a deer or a snake or a dog or whatever… it is spiritual link which have a cosmic … validity”, but not “in biological time or DNA-time.” (Suresh Sharma, interview 20.3.2004)

“Indigenous peoples have the right to the conservation, restoration and protection of the total environment and the productive capacity of their lands, territories and resources” including “vital medicinal plants, animals and minerals” in accordance to their customs and traditional law of land tenure. (Draft UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, articles 24 and 28.)

‘Nature’, constituted by its laws and matters as observable by scientific discoveries of modern consideration, treatment and projections on environment, is connected to structures of modern nation state and science as the treatment of globalizably exchangeable sense of matters as proper for modern man.

‘Nature’ in this respect signifies that world as the surrounding environment have to be proper to scientifically authorized observations according to their scientifically validated degree of western education and literacy.

“Conquest of Nature becomes unethical” as “it leads to the conquest of human beings” (B.K. Roy Burman, interview 26.3.2004) through the control of scientific authority by unequal options of literacy, education, income etc..

How does ‘Nature’ function as a perceivable world, whose very perceptibility is authorized by social control of scientific objectivity to guide the world to take place as what is proper as observable in literal sense ?

This is the connection of the social and institutional structures of the authority of scientific ‘objective’ perceptibility:

“Consolidation of nation-state”, the universalizing mode of control as common understandability of common matters, is directed by the “complete subjucation of Nature” into its “impenetrable” autonomy of “manageable hierarchy of useful segments” (for “boundaties of... control”) from any other values of what is right or proper. (Suresh Sharma; “Tribal Identity and the Modern World” Tokyo, 1994, pages 35 and 66-67)

But is it most adequate to title this as “subjucation of Nature” into its own impenetrable autonomy - where even “one could speak of subversion of Nature as natural” ? (Suresh Sharma; “Tribal Identity and the Modern World”, page 66)

Is not this rather such a subjucation and subversion of surrounding environment into ‘Nature’, constitutive for the very concept of Nature as scientific structures of perception and categorical controllability for conceiving all as objects proper (for scientific perception) ?

Is not this thus rather a subjucation of living Earth to become exploited by authorized perceptibility, - by the ‘Nature’ and its laws - into scientific new ‘discoveries’ of the significance of all environment as matters proper to the modern scientifically authorized observers ?

This inequality in Nature of facts, how there exists objective ‘reality’, is what is ‘proper’ for scientific senses of modern white man by his Nature; by the essence as the universal objectivity of his ideas.

Or are non-western languages demonstrated to have equivalently similar significance, what the western word-root and concept “Nature” means ? If one has examined comparatively the hundreds of indigenous languages of so-called ‘natural peoples’ or ‘peoples of Nature’, has one found each of them having an exact equivalent for this western concept, the ‘Nature’ ?

And would these hundreds of words of hundreds of languages thus happen to be all exact equivalents for each other, unified to mean ‘Nature’ of western science ?

The reality as Nature - the Nature of the “real thing” in its essence - is a special western entertainment, institutionalized (to ‘add life’, perhaps) as enjoyability of clarified flows of fluent sensing into sheer consumability of significance from the surrounding world by senses. Considerable as universally proper for modern humans without further difficulties:

“The only thing that is of use and benefit to the modern world is the virtually untouched wealth of Nature” (Suresh Sharma; “Tribal Identity and the Modern World”, page 151).

Nature, as wealth of ‘untouched’ means controllability without limitations of becoming handled by intentions of other lives, lands or cultures. Such Nature subjucates Earth as living environment into common understandability of ‘manageable hierarchy’:

Nature means controllable access to objective hold on all as reiteratively perceivable via senses, which are strictly halted from providing any flow of other additive significance from themselves to the perceivable significance of the surrounding world.

All significance what is perceivably got, is ordered to be got from the perceived (enjoyed by senses of the perceivers) without the perceivable, what surrounds, getting anything (in significance) from the perceivers’ senses, which live the perception. Like parasite, scientific observer lives again in observing repeatedly the perceived as merely received enjoyable for his objective senses, giving from this reliving thus nothing in significance for maintenance of what the surrounding perceivable is in its significance.

‘Nature’, as scientific objectivity, consumes that indigenously inherited re-livable sense and perceptibility of land as living earth, how life takes place upon the earth, which is the origin of the rights of life (and also of dignified death).

The modern world consumes indigenous heritage of what land is into properties on matters proper for modern demands to be owned by global exchange for commercial consumption.

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