Topic: News, politics and Activism
WARNING: The video below is a excerpt from a documentary styled movie depicting a tribe in the Amazon and contains full or partial nudity. Viewer discretion is advised.
For those of you not familiar with the story, I will provide brief quotes and links to the articles.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20090320/od_nm/us_indians
[RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) – A video made with the help of U.S. missionaries and depicting Amazon Indians burying children alive is "faked" and inciting racial hatred, a group campaigning for tribal rights said Thursday.
It depicts scenes of Indians in an isolated forest village digging graves and burying several live children in them. The "Hakani" campaign also has a website and a group on networking site Facebook with more than 13,000 members.
London-based Survival International said in a statement the film is "faked, that the earth covering the children's faces is actually chocolate cake, and that the film's claim that infanticide among Brazilian Indians is widespread is false."
"People are being taught to hate Indians, even wish them dead," said Survival's director, Stephen Corry.
The video was made by the son of the founder of an American missionary organization called Youth with a Mission, which has a branch in Brazil known as Jocum.
Youth with a Mission is an interdenominational Christian group based in Hawaii which focuses on involving young people in evangelism in 149 countries, its website says.
Infanticide is practiced by some tribes in the Amazon region, sometimes on disabled children, often based on the belief that children who take their last breath above land will come back to haunt a community. But Survival says it is rare and becoming rarer as healthcare access improves.
Brazil's Indian affairs department has tried to bar the film, which it says was financed by Jocum, saying it denigrates the image of the more than 220 ethnicities that live in Brazil.
Neither the video, the "Hakani" campaign website nor the Facebook group include any mention of the missionary group or any contact details. Corry said the group was trying to play down its role in the film.
The video is a "powerful docudrama" and urges people to donate money and write letters in support of a proposed Brazilian law, known as Muwaji's Law, which would abolish infanticide by indigenous groups.
Survival says the law, by requiring Brazilians to report to authorities anything seen as a "harmful traditional" practice, would foster "witch hunts" against indigenous people.
"I think the missionaries are stirring up hatred against the Indians, who they profess to be concerned about," said Fiona Watson, a Brazil campaigner for Survival.
"The infanticide is not being explained; it's being taken out of context."]
I would go further in saying that Muwaji's Law would be an open door for "lawful" removal of children from their culture and families for the sake of "legal adoption".
In a country already dealing with criminal logging and the removal and murder of indigenous people by unscrupulous ranchers in effort to clear more land for cattle, this is not a distraction the Amazon can afford.
http://www.survival-international.org/about/hakani
[If (the infanticide) happened as portrayed, it’s an extraordinary isolated case. After decades of working in Amazonia, we know of no Indian peoples where parents are told to kill their children. It just doesn’t happen.
It’s propaganda to bolster the evangelical campaign for a very dangerous principle, the so-called Muwaji law, which has been presented to the Brazilian Congress.
The Muwaji law focuses on what it calls ‘traditional practices’ and says what the state and citizens must do about them. It says that if anyone thinks there is a risk of ‘harmful traditional practices’, they must report it. If they don’t, they are liable to imprisonment. The authorities must intervene and remove the children and/or their parents. All this because someone, anyone, a missionary for example, claims there is some risk.]
I would advise anyone interested in the plight of the tribes of Amazonia to thoroughly tour Survival International's website. It gives an unbiased account of the country's political and enviromental situation, and gives information on how to get involved.
So this blog is completely rounded below is a link and information from the Hakani Organization. Funded by the evangelical group "Youth with a Mission".
http://www.hakani.org/en/synopsis.asp
[Buried alive because her tribe thought she had no soul. Plucked from the grave at the last moment by her brother. Then forced to live as a social outcast for three long years until sickness and neglect brought her once again to the doorway of death... (Remember, however, this story cannot be verified by Hakani's adoptive American parents, the Brazillian Government or by the tribe they claim she was rescued from)
This is the story of Hakani – whose name means "smile" – one of hundreds of children who are targeted for death each year amongst Brazil's 200 plus indigenous tribes. Physical or mental handicaps, being born a twin or triplet or being born out of wedlock – all are considered valid reasons for taking a child's life.]
All these cases of infants and children being buried alive, and yet only this evangelical christian organization has ever reported the issue when there are hundreds of charity based organizations who provide medical and educational support in Amazonia and have never brought this to the world's attention? Doubtful.
Stephan Corry of Survival International says, "The film and its message are harmful. They focus on what they claim happens routinely in Indian communities, but it doesn’t. It incites feelings of hatred against Indians. Look at the comments on the YouTube site, things like, ‘So get rid of these native tribes. They suck’, and, ‘Those amazon mother f—-ers burrying (sic) little kids, kill them all’. The filmmakers should be ashamed of all the harm this film is doing to the people they are trying to help."
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2008-09-22-infanticide_N.htm
[For the missionaries, "this is part of a strategy to justify their presence on indigenous lands," (Antenor) Vaz (Department of Indian Affairs) says.
He and activists such as (Fiona) Watson (Survival International) are offended by the Hakani movie, which they call racist. "Community actions are taken out of the cultural context and portray the Indians as savages, barbarians," he says.
Evangelical missionaries have emerged as perhaps the greatest threat to the Indians' survival. "I think they are doing a huge amount of harm," Watson says. "They are destroying people's beliefs."
Watson says erasing Indians' traditional faiths destroys their cultures, which have remained self-sufficient for hundreds, if not thousands, of years. "I have seen that," she says, "where a once proud people end up subdued, dependent upon people, because they have lost their beliefs."
Vaz recently completed an investigation into Youth With A Mission. His report accuses the group of "hiding their intent to evangelize" and bribing tribe members with tools and medicine to get them to listen to the Gospel.
The report, without elaboration, accuses the missionaries of slavery, illegally taking blood samples from Indians and illegally removing Indian children.
The missionaries deny that they are using infanticide as a smokescreen for efforts to convert Indians. YWAM members, including Marcia and Edson Suzuki (the adoptive parents of 'Hanaki'), often live with tribes for decades, learning their ancient languages and providing health care and education. Despite their religious orientation, Ribeira says, they do not proselytize. "Our main mission," she says, "is to provide access to means of survival."
(And yet...)
At one site where YWAM works, deep in the jungle near Porto Velho, an Indian girl wears a Jesus T-shirt.
Francisca Irving, one of the missionaries working there, admits preaching the gospel to Indians. "Yes, we teach Jesus," she says. "I would lie if I told you we didn't talk about Jesus."
The legislative push against infanticide is gaining steam in the Brazilian legislature. One house of the Brazilian legislature has passed a bill that would allow children whose lives are "at risk due to cultural practices" to be removed from their homes.
Vaz says the Department of Indian Affairs is developing a policy.
"Infanticide is a serious issue, which needs to be discussed," he says. But "this is not a discussion that must only be seen through the Christian perspective."]
What has me bothered most by this legislation of 'Muwaji's Law' is the rush of it over a more educational approach. Why this demand for a law of a practice that is rare and, in fact, fading in tradition? Is it impossible to communicate and educate in the language of these tribes that killing infants or children is unnecessary and cruel? Is there an assumption that because of cultural traditions or perhaps their primitive conditions that education is an impossibility?
Personally, I believe, if such an assumption exists, that these people have more to teach us than we them. These are individuals who have lived hundreds (arguably thousands) of years in a tumultuous environment following the same cultural traditions as their ancestors, and despite all odds and adversity have thrived without modern economical advancements such as grocery stores or modern technological advancements such as television, computers, or automobiles. Inventions that most of us can't imagine existing without.
Yet, aside from much needed medical and scholastic education intervention, the modern world feels compelled to force its religious ideology and dogmas on these unique people in an effort to replace their cultural beliefs. The very beliefs that make them who they are.
In conclusion, as this is turning into one of my notorious, long winded rants. How much of cultural, social, and religious history has to be annihilated (See; The Ancient Celts or Native Americans) before we destroy this idea that the entire world must fall in line with one belief system/religion at the cost of all others? The endless proselytizing of what we all should believe, that seems to always drop the names of 'God' and 'Jesus' concluding only with the word 'Hell'... I am so SICK of it. I am sick of Christianity, and now, thanks to the Pope's obscene misinformation about condoms aiding in the AIDS epidemic in Africa , I am sick of Catholicism.
"One Nation, under God" sounds more like the accolades of a religious war by crusaders than the patriotic dogma it portrays. We are not, in fact, one Nation under God, but rather one Nation under Gods, Goddesses and varying belief systems not necessarily of religious roots. But I suppose that is too wordy for a national motto.
Anyway, brightest blessings, and be well.