the Gana and the Gwi, like indigenous people everywhere, exist today, and what they do belongs to the present as much as anything anyone else does. There is no scala natura of human validity, which places them at the bottom and us at the top. Faced with a different set of ecological conditions and economic constraints to ours, the Bushmen trying to return to their lands see that their traditional practices and technologies – or some of them at any rate – are more likely to ensure their survival than sitting in a tin shed drinking moonshine. They can also understand the benefits of western healthcare and education, but they want to use them if and as they choose,
A few years back, I was in Wyoming working on a native American reservation in the Wind River area. I was interested to discover that the church we were the guests of was founded by one John Roberts who, I discovered after serving his curacy [first few years of ordained service, apprenticed to a more senior clergybeing] a mere 10 miles from where I grew up in Shropshire and having, like me, Welsh ancestory, went to serve and ultimately die in service to the Shoshone and later also the Arapaho. His ministry, I realised was to teach these peoples how to survive in a settled lifestyle. Their choicse were limited: the USAmerican government had effectively made it impossible for them to continue in their migratory lifestyle, yet they did not have the skills and traditions of pastoralists. These they had to acquire in order to survive. These John Roberts sought to pass on.
I'm not saying that all is now rosy; clearly the structural injustice continues to take its toll. But at least the Shoshone and Arapaho are still in exsitence, and that is partly down to John Roberts.
Who may help the Gana and the Gwi to learn to coexist in terms they have a say in and decide for themselves what modus vivendi they wish to carve out?
George Monbiot � A Bully in Ermine:
Filed in: culture, rights, indiginous, land
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