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Uncontacted Indian Tribes; Big News in Brazil

According to the Associated Press on Thursday Brazil has released photographs of one of their last uncontacted indigenous tribes located in the far western Amazon near the border of Peru. 

Roughly a dozen Natives were photographed in the Jungles of Brazil amongst six grass huts.  The stories claim that Anthropologists have known about this tribe for some 20 years.  I immediately have to wonder if this is the same tribe that Sydney Possuelo spoke about in National Geographic in 2003 whom he called the Fletchero, or “arrow makers.”  I’m inclined to make an educated guess and say that they are. 

The pictures show a half dozen or so men in red paint shooting their arrows at the aircraft as it flies overhead.  Beside them in a couple of the pictures are two other people wearing black paint. The men in red are obviously the community’s warriors.  The two people in black are women. 

In 2003 when Possuelo spoke to National Geographic about the Fletchero, he theorized that they, like many other Amazonian Indians may in fact be the descendants of refugees of European expansionism who fled the Spanish invasion for homes deeper in the jungles.  If this is true, what must these natives think about the outside world?

 As we know Native peoples maintain their histories for countless generations in oral traditions and folklore.  When they teach their children about the outside world do they recite the Native experience as we know them to be?  I wonder if they recount the horrors experienced by their ancestors at the hands of the corrupt conquistadores and the deadly diseases unleashed against their people.  Is it any wonder that they shoot arrows at the strangers who buzz their village in a huge mechanized monster bird?  What legends, warnings and taboos have grown up around this tribe’s choice to exclude themselves from interaction with the outside world?

And herein lies the outsider’s dilemma; to contact or to NOT contact this tribe.  For a number of years FUNAI in Brazil has had a no contact policy for these Indians, and I certainly appreciate that.  The last thing we need are the eager missionaries pushing their way into the jungles hoping to secure more converts, blazing a trail for logging companies and real estate speculators to come in right behind them and exploit their new human resources.  And as if that isn’t bad enough Indian rights activist Miriam Ross, makes the point; 

First contact is often completely catastrophic for “uncontacted” tribes. It’s not unusual for 50 percent of the tribe to die in months after first contact … They don’t generally have immunity to diseases common to outside society. Colds and flu that aren’t usually fatal to us can completely wipe them out.

As an Indian, mixed-blood as I may be, I feel great joy in knowing there are a few of us left who still live the old way.  But I also feel great sadness over this because I realize just how few of them there really are … what maybe a few dozen?

Jose Carlos Meirelles, coordinator for Brazil’s National Indian Foundation says; “We put the photos out because if things continue the way they are going, these people are going to disappear.”

I hear you brother.  I hear you.

Does Obama See Dead People?

Barack Hussein Obama was pointed out by Michelle Malkin as a virtual Gaffe Machine. Aside from the fact that Obama apparently thinks there are no less than 57 United States of America,

nevermind that he thinks Arabic is a primary language spoken in Afghanistan, now Obama proves his ignorance of American culture by confusing Memorial Day with Veterans Day.  Either that or he sees ghosts! 

 

Monday was Memorial Day.  This is a holiday commemorating our American service men and women who have died in the line of duty.  Veterans’ Day celebrates America’s living veterans.  While delivering a Memorial Day speech in Las Cruces, New Mexico yesterday Barack Obama made yet another memorable gaffe that left more than a few people scratching their heads.  He said;

 On this Memorial Day, as our nation honors its unbroken line of fallen heroes — and I see many of them in the audience here today — our sense of patriotism is particularly strong.

 

Mr. Obama, what the hell is going on inside your head? “Unbroken line of fallen heroes … And I see many of them in the audience here today?”

 

I think this little quote says quite a bit about Barack Obama.  It tells us that he doesn’t have a clue what’s going on.  He apparently just talks and doesn’t even think about what he’s just said before he says something else.  Was he not paying attention when HE said “fallen heroes” just a second before?  What happened, did they get back up?  Does he just speak the words that pop in his head without taking the time to engage his logical faculties first?  Is Barack Obama so dense that he doesn’t understand the meaning of the metaphors he uses?  Or Does Barack Obama have a psychic connection to the otherworld?  Maybe he sees ghosts.

 

Now I’m not knocking Barack Obama because he has extra sensory abilities.  That’s something to be admired for sure.  I think it’s pretty cool that he sees ghosts.  Imagine the possibilities of having a president who can easily contact the otherworld.  Maybe Obama can use this gift to act as a medium, contacting the spirits of our fallen heroes of World War II, and ask them how they feel about his endorsement of appeasing the West’s genocidal enemies.  Maybe Barack Obama can use his abilities to contact the spirits of the Jews who died in Auschwitz– the ones that he claims his American uncle helped liberate.  He could ask them how they feel about his stance on unconditionally meeting with national leaders who have endorsed the full scale destruction of Israel and the slaughter of the Jewish people.

 

Maybe I’m being facetious.  But in reality I’m sure Obama didn’t actually mean that he saw dead people in the audience.  It just shows that he doesn’t think before he speaks.  He does not actually pay attention to what’s going on and that he has no idea what American culture and values are really all about.  Obama doesn’t seem to know much about history either.  It was after all the Soviets who liberated Auschwitz, not the Americans.

 

None of this really inspires much confidence in Obama as a presidential candidate.  Can Americans really risk electing another president who has no clue about American culture and doesn’t think before he speaks?  Wouldn’t we like a president who takes the time to at least familiarize himself with the nation he’d like to lead, our culture and history? C’mon 57 states with one to go and then Hawaii and Alaska? That’s 60 states.  What country has he been living in all his years?  Is Obama smarter than a fifth grader?

 

It’s no wonder Barack Obama is so clueless on issues of foreign policy when he doesn’t even know what’s going on at home … either that or Obama sees dead people.

Native Tribalism in the 21st Century

 

by Jay Moody               

          In the twentieth and twenty-first centuries “Family Values” have been at the forefront of many a politician’s rhetoric in the United States.  Though these social servants may think that they mean well, in truth they often have done and do more to hinder family values than they do to help.  Indigenous family values have been steadily attacked for the greater span of history, often by the goals and aims of the capitalist mainstream of American and Western society through the colonial process.  It is through this process of colonialism and the perpetuation of the values inherent in this philosophy of conquest and assimilation that has brought the plague of impoverished, powerless families in crises to the world.  Indigenous peoples in general have always been the primary targets of these acts of aggression against family values, and since the close of the fifteenth century, Native Americans have been the victims of this war on the family.  As an Indian and a Stomp Dancer at a traditional ceremonial grounds I have some close ties to this subject as I have witnessed first hand some of the destructive policies of the government in these matters which have long standing and far reaching consequences for people of all races.

          Traditionally Native Americans have lived in social organizations that anthropologists and sociologists have called bands and tribes.  As Andre Cherlin points out;

Before the twentieth century, kinship ties provided the basis for governing most American Indian tribes.  A person’s household was linked to a larger group of relatives who might be a branch of a matrilineal or patrilineal clan [→p38] that shared power with other clans. Thus kinship organization was also political organization.  Under these circumstances, extended kinship ties reflected power and status to a much greater extent than among other racial ethnic groups in the United States.  American Indian kinship systems allowed individuals to have more relatives, than did Western European kinship systems (Shoemaker, 1991).  Even today, extended family ties retain a significance for American Indians that goes beyond the sharing of resources that has been noted among other groups (Harjo,1993).  Kinship networks constitute tribal organization; kinship ties confer an identity.[1]

 

          Vine Deloria Jr., renowned Native American author and former Executive Director of the National Congress of American Indians develops the idea further into more practical detail;

Indian tribes have always had two basic internal strengths, which can also be seen in corporations: customs and clans.  Tribes are not simply composed of Indians.  They are highly organized as clans, within which variations of tribal traditions and customs govern.  While the tribe makes decisions on general affairs, clans handle specific problems.  Trivia is thus kept out of tribal affairs by referring it to clan solutions.

Customs rise as clans rise to meet problems and solve them.  They overflow from the clan into general tribal usage as their capability and validity are recognized.  Thus a custom can spread from a minor clan to the tribe as a whole and prove to be a significant basis for tribal behavior.  In the same manner, methods and techniques found useful in one phase of corporate existence can become standard operating procedure for an entire corporation.[2]

 

However, this tribal structure has never suited the palate of Western colonialism which seeks to consolidate its power and authority over national as well as individual resources. (read more)

 

God is a Verb

Naming God can be one of the most challenging ideas presented to the religious mind. The Spirit from which all things emanate, the creator of everything is truly the unfathomable force throughout the universe. It is beyond gender and similar terrestrial attributes, but everything that is male and female exists within It. This Supreme Being is the most exalted of all things in creation. It is also the most misunderstood simply for its incomprehensibleness.(read more at the Moody View)

Indigenism and Native Revivalism

By Jay Moody

 

The middle of the twentieth century saw an upsurge in Native Revivalism in western countries.  With the ‘back to nature’ trend sensationalized by the 1960’s Flower-Power generation many doors were opened in the realm of altered-native religion.  Many hippies, realizing the difficulty in being accepted within Native American communities began a quest for connections with their own roots religion.  This movement progressed into the modern cultural revivalist movement.  Primarily, there are three wings within this movement.  I name them as such; Paganism, Heathenism and Indigenism.  On the surface, they all share many similar qualities, but represent three very different attitudes and beliefs concerning roots religion. (read more)

What is Enlightenment?

by Jay Moody

“In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep Then God said, “Let there be light;” and there was light. And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night.” This first passage from the Book of Genesis hearkens back to the earliest times, the times even before light. Though allegorical at best, these words illustrate the scene of our great creator, for the first time shedding light on an infant world.

Similar creation myths from around the world illustrate the same basic imagery of a world in darkness which only truly comes to life after the divine powers create the sun, bringing the land out of darkness, enlivening it so it may become fruitful and prosperous. The lesson in these stories seem to be pointing us toward a certain direction, as if to suggest that only after being brought from darkness to light can a person truly live to his full potential. This is the earliest seed of enlightenment. (read more)