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Democracy
Mr. DeJoia has a very distinctive comprehension of Democracy. His definition seems to be similar to the one used by the White House.
When mining companies started calling tribal offices last year, Navajo President Joe Shirley Jr. issued an edict to employees: Don’t answer any questions. Report all contacts to the Navajo attorney general.
[…]
After the measure took effect in April 2005, mining concerns kept calling the Navajo capital, Window Rock, Ariz., hoping to secure support for their projects. So Shirley signed Executive Order 02-2005, which instructs tribal employees to avoid any "communications with uranium company representatives."
The directive infuriated mining executives. "You tell me, what kind of a democracy is that?" asked John DeJoia, a Strathmore vice president. "They’ve got tremendous resources out there. They’re a very poor nation. That could change."
Mining firms again eyeing Navajo land
(BTW: This LAT series about Uranium mining and the Navajos is quite good.)
my problem w/ chiurchill’s take, based on what i recall and always subject to correction, is a kind of prelapsarian fantasy about indian life.
This is another of your more ridiculous solipsistic views, slothrop. You, or your blog persona, appears to be some sort of immature skandinavian hyper-intellectual marxist romanticist or idealist, with little connection to the functionings of real society. Churchill is an actual Native American activist who deals with actual real-life situations and protest forms on a daily basis. He has risked his life, livelihood, and freedom for his views. His current struggles with the University of Colorado belie any sort of fantasies about Indian life, pre-lapsarian or otherwise.
as i recall, in some ways, indigenism corresponds to the dialectic of enlightenment arg (mastery of nature is also the domination of men over men) made by the frankfurters, and postmodern args against reason as a master trope of domination.
That is a pretty piss-poor definition of indigenism — which brings into focus both your ignorance and contempt for the concept, similar to your reactionary contempt for Bookchin’s ecological concerns, where you were reduced to calling those making inconvenient arguments “petty bourgeois,” the ultimate juvenile Marxist smear.
I’m not going to take the time or effort to fully flesh out the concept for someone as dismissive as you. However I will point you to a current list of indigenous concerns: Cultural and linguistic preservation, land rights, ownership and exploitation of natural resources, political determination and autonomy, environmental degradation and incursion, poverty, health, and discrimination. Modern indigenism can be seen as an attempt by both indigenous and settler cultures to reconnect with the land, the eco-system, and sustainable ways of relating to it. An indigenist would be more proud of his knowledge of the weeds growing under his feet than how many foreign countries he has visited. (This should give you enough ammunition to distort and attack.)
Some might be interested in this interview with Álvaro García Linera: Marxism and Indigenism in Bolivia: A Dialectic of Dialogue and Conflict.
JRW: You wrote an article recently in Barataria on Marxism and Indigenism in Bolivian history. Can you describe, historically and contemporaneously, what are the contradictions between Indigenism and Marxism, and what are the possibilities of a union between the two?
AGL: Here in Bolivia, Marxism as an ideology is about 60 or 70 years old, with a presence in intellectual circles. In the first period, a very marginal Marxism, whose referent was Tristan Marof, was present in the 1920s. He was very similar to José Mariátegui in Peru toward Indians. According to some historians they were planning an uprising in Sucre, the indigenous people, Tristan Marof, and his four lawyers. It’s a very interesting historical presence. And this, this first encounter between Marxism – small, marginal, a few intellectuals – and the practical indigenous movement was broken in the 1940s when two big currents, already much more consolidated, installed themselves here in Bolivia: the Trostkyists and the Stalinists.
They were already political currents with an organizational structure. They had more people, were more inclusive. And they abandoned whatever close connection with Indians, and dedicated themselves to working strictly with workers. That is, if the revolution was to be from the workers, and socialism was what was coming, the task was to look for workers, and the Indians didn’t exist, or were petty bourgeoisies, or were slaves who had to be liberated by the workers.
A very primitive reading of the indigenous population, and in this way it broke a fruitful, very beautiful, relationship between Indians and Marxists, opting for another type of Marxism better connected to the workers’ sectors. It was an extremely primitive Marxism because it couldn’t be a conveyor of critical tools that could help the theory adapt itself to a reality that wasn’t Europe, that wasn’t Russia, a reality where there were indigenous people, other languages, other cultures, and where workers were a tiny part of the population. In sum, it couldn’t succeed.
This distance between indigenous people and Marxism easily lasted until the 1980s. And in these years, during the 1970s, the indigenous movement and its leaders surged forward once again. And these manual Marxists, primitive Marxists, simply saw the Indians as reactionaries because they wanted to talk about historical themes that weren’t relevant to social revolution, or they were petty bourgeois, or they were racists. This Marxism lasted from the 1940s until the 1980s, and couldn’t get closer to, it didn’t read correctly, the indigenous movements, and so the social facts collided. And therefore here the indigenous movement of the 1970s and 1980s rose up in confrontation with Marxism, not only in confrontation with liberal ideologies. No, they also rose up against Marxists because the Marxists considered them to be counterrevolutionaries and racists. As a result, one of the slogans of the indigenists of the1980s was “ni Marx ni menos” or “neither Marx nor less,” because there had been a confrontation between them, not recognition.
In the 1980s this confrontation between the two would attenuate because there was a defeat of the Left in Bolivia. These Marxists lost influence in the mines that were closing, lost influence in the factories that were closing, and lost historical legitimacy because of the failure of administration of the UDP (Democratic Popular Union) government (in power from 1982-1985). They became a marginal sector. And the indigenists who had been rising up with force would quickly be coopted by NGOs (non-governmental organizations), or by the state that started a series of reforms under multicultural neoliberalism.
Therefore, in the 1980s and 1990s, to talk of active indianisms and marxisms isn’t relevant, because what was prevalent was a debate of modernizing ideologies between liberals. However, small, marginal groups like us, were looking for, continue looking for – very much at the margins, very isolated – an articulation between Indianism and Marxism. Something we did in the 1980s, was an effort to give body to the ethnic demand through a reading of the role of national identities in revolutionary processes, the role of agrarian communities and the possible transformation of capitalism, a study that was detailed, but in these moments was without influence.
We tried to give body to the theme of revindicating nationalities, to transcend mere description of ethnicity and its politicization, like the national identity demand. We tried to transcend mere ethnic discourse to a discourse of indigenous nationalism.
We tried in the 1980s, but without much influence. But these things we worked on in the 1980s – in the distinct scenario of the 2000s, in a scenario of political crisis, in a scenario of the weakening of neoliberal ideologies, and the weakness of the traditional Marxists – were going to find more fertile ground, between certain ideas that we had worked on from the margins, of some Marxists who wanted to dialogue with Indianism. Since 2000 these ideas have had more force. They’ve succeeded in expanding themselves to other intellectuals, to the level of social movement leaders. And there is a revitalizing of Indianism. But already this was not an Indianism in confrontation with Marxists because the Marxists of the old epoch, who had been enemies, had disappeared.
So, now we are in an interesting process, a new open dialogue not seen since the 1920s, a new dialogue still with reticence, still with a certain distance, and certain skepticism. But a new open dialogue between Marxist intellectuals who critique the primitive Marxism of the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s and who approach Indianism not with the intention to control it but to offer tools of analysis, tools of interpretation, to offer tools of comprehension of indigenous social movement. I think we’re in a new historic effort after almost 100 years, of a much more fruitful dialogue between the two grand readings of the transformation of Bolivia, that is Indianism and Marxism.
Posted by: Bob M. | Nov 25 2006 3:21 utc | 23
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