Solidarity with Indigenous Land Defenders

(THEME) (DOWNLOAD FULL SHOW)

You’re listening to Back in the USSR, I am Siegfried, and welcome comrades and friends to a new episode of the show in a new time slot here on CFRU 93.3 FM.  I realize it’s a little late, it’s 11 PM on Mondays, but, what can I say? I’m too hot for prime time! Of course, if you’re familiar with the show, you know that I’m an unapologetic communist, an unapologetic Marxist-Leninist, who is primarily interested in the struggles of working class and oppressed people all over the world as they fight against the exploitation imposed on them by capitalists, colonizers and imperialists.  So when I talk about indigenous land defenders, indigenous people defending their ancestral lands against mining companies, timber companies, agribusiness, power dams etc. – whether it’s in Brazil, Canada, India, Indonesia or Hawaii in the United States – it’s always in the context of this global struggle against these exploitative forces.  Even when the stated goal of capitalists and colonizers is seemingly benign, for example in Mauna Kea Hawaii where they want to build an 18-story mega-telescope on sacred indigenous land in the name of studying the cosmos, we need to understand the bigger picture and what is at stake for indigenous peoples who have been struggling for self-determination for centuries against colonial rulers bent on crushing them and their way of life.  That’s also what’s at stake for the indigenous land defenders of Muskrat Falls in Labrador, Canada, who are standing up against a massive dam project and defying the Canadian government, why? Because it’s indigenous land and indigenous people will pay the costs of such projects that, while they might produce power for Canadian cities, will also devastate the environment and ecology that indigenous people depend on for their way of life.  It might mean cheaper hydro for settlers, but for indigenous people it’s a new chapter of genocide.

And just so everyone knows where I’m coming from here, I’d like to read you a quote from British Political Scientist, Mark Neocleous’s fine book “The Monstrous and the Dead”, in which he quotes Karl Marx’s words in the first volume of Capital:

Towards the end of volume 1 of Capital Marx employs one of his usual dramatic and rhetorical devices: ‘If money’, he says, ‘comes into the world with a congenital blood stain on one cheek’, then ‘capital comes dripping from head to toe, from every pore, with blood and dirt’.  The comment is a reminder of the extent to which the theme of blood and horror runs through the pages of Capital.  According to Stanley Hyman, there are in Capital two forms of horror.  The first concerns the bloody legislation against vagabondage, describing the way that agricultural peoples were driven from their homes, turned into vagabonds and then ‘whipped, branded, tortured by laws grotesquely terrible, into the discipline necessary for the wage system’.  The second concerns the horrors experienced by people in the colonies, ‘the extirpation, enslavement and entombment in mines of the aboriginal population,…the turning of Africa into a warren for the commercial hunting of black skins’.  But there is in fact a third form of horror: the constant sucking of the blood of the working class by the bourgeois class.  This form is nothing less than the horror of a property-owning class which appears to be vampire-like in its desire and ability to suck the life out of the working class. – Mark Neocleous, “The Monstrous and the Dead”, pg 36

This is the real foundation of the modern world, brothers and sisters.  From the ongoing genocide of indigenous peoples, to the ongoing exploitation of workers, to the original enslavement and ongoing oppression of people of color.  This is what we need to remember when we see indigenous people struggling to defend their ancestral lands today.  They are fighting for survival, and, in a world degraded by capitalist-driven climate change, so are we all.  And they recognize this truth.  They understand that the struggle against capitalism, colonialism and imperialism is a shared struggle, an international struggle, in which working class and oppressed peoples from all over the world must stand together.  They understand this, and so must we. 

Before I get into the main clip I want to play, talking about the present struggle of the Mauna Kea land defenders in Hawaii, I want to play an excerpt from progressive scholar Michael Parenti and his talk from about 1990 on “Human Nature Politics”.  In it, he describes how ruling class interests throughout history have tried to portray the most horrific systems of exploitation, from slavery to feudalism to capitalism, as being somehow grounded in nature.  Listen to this and let me know if it sounds at all familiar:

Michael Parenti – “Human Nature Politics” (Capitalism)

Brothers and sisters, I think we’re all familiar with the “people are selfish” justification for capitalism.  I think Michael puts that myth decisively to rest in that clip we just heard.  But capitalist exploitation, operating hand-in-glove with empire and colonialism, can go far beyond that in tainting our understanding of the world and of our place in it.  Take, for example, how Charles Darwin and cutting edge 19^th Century scientists and their theories were shaped by ideas of empire and racism.  And this feeds directly into the Mauna Kea example where developers say they want to bulldoze a sacred indigenous site in the name of science.  This is what Michael Parenti has to say about that.

Michael Parenti – “Human Nature Politics” (Imperialism)

Comrades and friends, I think it’s safe to say that empire and exploitative class orders like capitalism taint and corrupt everything that they touch, including science and scientific research.  Afterall, who does the science, for whom and for what purpose? The same goes for technological development, whose interests are being served? Nothing is really neutral if you look at it closely.  So whose interests are served by this proposed 18-story mega-telescope atop Mauna Kea mountain in Hawaii? Is the ability of wealthy research foundations, Ivy League universities, private companies, and US government institutions to peer deeper into outer space worth the destruction of an ecosystem and those indigenous people that rely on it? Is it worth continued genocide and the trampling of those indigenous peoples rights and self-determination? Think about that as you listen to the following story from the Real News Network about the Mauna Kea land defenders.

TRNN – “The fight for Mauna Kea is part of the global fight for indigenous people”

Brothers and sisters, Marxism-Leninism as a creed and way of understanding the world, stands for the complete liberation of working class and oppressed people from capitalism, colonialism and imperialism.  Thus it stands in full solidarity with indigenous land defenders everywhere.  From Muskrat Falls to Mauna Kea, real communists stand with those fighting for self-determination against the oppressive forces that must be defeated if the world is to have a livable future.  Red salute comrades and friends, I am Siegfried, this is Back in the USSR and I’ll see you all again this time next week.