The Uncontacted vs. The Disconnected

I recently came across a French blog article that left me deeply perturbed. It highlighted in a few words the failings of our so-called modern civilisation in coming to terms with the precept of race equality, tolerance and acceptance of a lifestyle model that has been in place for millennia in harmony with all aspects of the natural world, from land to wildlife, and governed by indigenous cultures who are living models of sustainability, ecology, cohesion, coherence, balance, infinite wisdom and spiritual forte.

Pict source: Survival International

Here is the plea of the indigenous Guarani Tribe in Brazil, whose livelihood and survival have been increasingly severely compromised in their own land, on their home turf, on their ancestors soil. Spoliated by the biofuel industry, displaced, chased away, beaten up, broken down, belittled, condemned to make do on land cast-offs, in improvised ramshackle camps by the roadside, reduced to being treated like aliens on their homeland, as refugees deprived of their livelihood and undergoing other dehumanising treatments in the process like forced labour confining them into poverty, and alcoholism, The Guarani addressed the Brazilian government in one last ditch attempt, telling them that they would rather be killed than give up their lands.

The Guarani's livelihood is under threat, and other indigenous tribes across the globe have been going through the same pattern of habitat and lifestyle destruction, since 'modern' civilisation has started poking their noses into the jungles and cloud forests of remote lands so as to commercially extract and exploit their resources, in other words rape out anything that could be turned into cash. In a case of history repeated, we witness the death of a civilisation via the organised legalised commercial looting of its natural resources and the wreckage and pillage of its natural habitats: extensive logging, mining and monoculture farming activities, road and infrastructure building, new towns sprouting, wildlife trafficking, death threats from ranchers, loggers and farmers, and other nuisances. Pollution and the spread of diseases have made the local populations even more vulnerable.

Pict source: Survival International

What is happening is short of a legalised human and ecological holocaust in support of the modern lifestyle model, the super highways that link up the supersize malls across fields of super GMOs, to end up with the Starbucks Soy Latte we sip on the freshly-laid-out timber decking shipped from the Amazon, with the blood splatters from The Guarani coated in lashings of paint. But if corporate banking and the likes of Rio Tinto and Monsanto only care about the bottom line, why would this make us feel complicit as consumers? Because it should.

The irony is that the upwardly mobile super-connected that we believe to be are disconnected from the harsh reality of the world, especially the losing battles that are raging on in those remote forests that our mainstream media shun and block out like this is not to be cared about as long as the suburbia of America, Europe and China can carry on being supplied in decking and soy lattes.

Pict source: Survival International

Let down as always by the Brazilian government long sold out to Corporate America, 170 members of The Guarani, including 70 children, resorted to suicide. They killed themselves so that Corporate may carry on regardless its consumeristic car-crash down the capitalistic road to nowhere. A chimera!


Further Reading:

• (05-June-2016 Update): Survival International explains why forced contact with Amazon tribes would sign their undoing. 
• (31-Aug-2016 Update): Yet another poignant report on native South Americans resorting to suicide, this time in Vaupés, eastern Colombia.