In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Pardonnez ma présence 83 many Aboriginals and non-Aboriginal thinkers ‘linear thought’, which means in practical terms the incapacity to see and feel the sacred relation that exists between all beings in the universe. As well, the European newcomers saw the spiritual and social order in this land as an invitation to universal and anarchic competition to convert every created thing into power and material wealth. Obviously, this kind of thinking can only result in violence, racism, anthropocentrism , sexism—in other words, the denial and the destruction of life, which is the most precious treasure that we possess. As I have said in the past, the typical behaviour of Euro-Americans and the Euro-Americanized on our sacred island must not be attributed to an inherently evil character, but to the linear thinking that made many of the European immigrants abandon their own continent in the first place, and afterwards continue here with the same destructive result. This said,I wish to give my opinion on the anthropological discourse,occurring throughout the entire continent, about the indigenous peoples. I disagree with social sciences as a whole about the theory they have developed.According to this theory, social and economic liberation of the oppressed majorities must be based on the unification and solidarity of all the marginalized elements of these dispossessed majorities. I disagree for two reasons. First, my response to this theory is that history teaches that in this way we can only succeed in exchanging our common oppressors for other, new ones. As many of our elders and sages believe, along with a growing number of nonindigenous scholars, what we do not need is this discourse about marginalization , which has always brought about continuing oppression and suppression of the indigenous nations, whose civilization and circular “cosmovision” are fundamentally incompatible with the linear vision that we all know will never produce harmony and order. What is needed is the recognition, by the social sciences in general and anthropology in particular,of the existence of a properly American civilization—which Guillermo Bonfil Batalla and I and others have called ‘the deeper America’. The thought of this civilization is circular; that is, its principal and fundamental characteristic is to give the human being the capacity to see, to feel and to respect in its social practice the complementarity and dignity of all components of our society. This society we Indians name Our Responsibility as Indigenous Peoples 84 the sacred Circle of Life. This regenerating social vision, and not the obsolete destructive vision imported from Europe today, denounced by the continent itself, constitutes the key to the liberation of all the human and non-human beings marginalized and mistreated, on this continent and others. The second reason for my disagreement with the conventional anthropological discourse resides in the universal ideological and social values of the indigenous peoples. If the oppressed majority marginalizes all the oppressed minorities, it will deprive itself of the important, strategic capital for change that it possesses. (We have said that the indigenous nations are the possessors of the true civilization of this continent and that therefore they cannot be relegated to the status of sub-class of the societies that oppress them.) The vocation of anthropology is laudable if it recognizes that indigeneity by itself constitutes a unique potential for real change. Without such change we will see an increase in times to come of the misery of our own species and of the other orders of beings that share our Earth. Nothing but the recognition of the true civilization of this continent,our Great Island (now called Abyayala by many Aboriginal peoples), can realistically bring about change in our collective world. Life is not a linear process directed by a few individuals unaware of the misery and the violence that they are inflicting on the rest of creation: life is a sacred circle of relations uniting all beings. Life is a circle; we are all a family. Some of us have forgotten what life is; others of us can remind us once again about this. At this time in our common history, it is vital that we, indigenous members of the human family, carry out our responsibility to the rest of the human family.This is what I have desired to help us all understand in this brief presentation. “To Be Indian Is to Know That We Are All One Family” In this second part of my presentation, I wish to speak about a...

Share