A RELATIONSHIP WITH THE LAND

Folks, Starting a new thread here. Belgium has answered my call for a guest posting.

NOTE

This is a response to Murph’s request for guest posts.
I had many ideas in my head and it seemed I could not tease a single thread from the tangle or at least it would have taken more space than would have been possible for a single posting. My original intention was to explore the relationship, if any at all exists, between Ethnicity, Nationhood and the State. The ethnicity part took over and
what emerged was a comparison of the different ways that primitive peoples and more civilised peoples regard the land on which they live. Perhaps, the bigger work will be for another time.

A RELATIONSHIP WITH THE LAND

Peoples that do not own the land have a closer relationship with it and a more cohesive relationship with each other. Conversely, people who do own the land have little regard for it and tend to become more isolationist and comparatively less happy.

I regard these two statements to be true although I have no way of proving them in an absolute way. All I am able to do is give examples to demonstrate my point and hope that I will not be accused of cherry picking.

Primitive peoples have a stronger spiritual relationship with the land than more ‘developed’ peoples. This spiritualism has less to do with superstition about a greater being which holds the answers to eternal questions and more to do with reverence and respect for that which exists around them and on which their continued life depends. The major difference is that more primitive peoples regard themselves as part of nature, coexisting with other animals; forests; rivers and even the rocks of mountains; whereas modern society believes nature is there to be mastered for gain. Ancient peoples believe Mother Earth is the origin of their identity both connecting them with their ancestors and holding her in trust for the benefit of future generations. Thus they have a sense of oneness of belonging to a place and not of a place belonging to them. It has been suggested that since original peoples do not set physical limits on the land which supports them, they have scant regard for the land. In fact the exact opposite is true. For example, the Penan people of Brunei have a great regard for the forest where they live. They have a concept of conservation and stewardship over their habitat which they call “Molong”. Molong, for instance, dictates that the forest is harvested in such a way as to ensure a continued supply of their staple diet of rattan and sago. This seems pretty obvious when it is written down but is a concept that does not enter the heads of many western people. The Penan also hunt wild boar and make sure that there is enough of the boar’s natural diet of acorns and seeds from the diptercorp trees available in the forest to conserve sustainable numbers. The boar also eats plants which grow on the river banks so the Penan take great care to maintain these banks and not pollute the rivers. Their greatest fears come in the form of indiscriminate loggers who are gradually approaching their lands.

The Karen people of Thailand grow hill and swamp rice. The hills are terraced to prevent soil loss and swamp areas are left seven years between successive plantings so that the ground may fully recover. If students today ever hear of the three field system it is a quaint anachronism from a history lesson which could never be used today to support the developed nations’ portion of the worlds present 6.5 billion population. Instead, we transfer minerals from one part of the earth to put life back into an exhausted different part of the earth but time will come when there are insufficient minerals left to distribute. The short-sightedness of this approach is as obvious as are the pitfalls of returning to the old proven ways.

Even at a time when the World is facing an ecological crisis, very few western leaders would admit they could learn anything from peoples whose economies they regard as primitive and whose technologies they deride as stone-age. Such leaders assume they can only learn from salaried employers with university degrees. Yet many of these same scientists are coming to believe that homeopathic medicine practiced by primitive peoples may hold the key to finding cures for many of the western world’s major killer diseases. Although the popularity of such an approach of treating the whole body including the mind with natural products is increasing, it is unlikely to cure the unhealthy relationship that exists between the allopathic drug companies and the FDA. Worldwide, over 3000 plants are used for contraceptive purposes alone amongst undeveloped peoples.

The Karjat peoples of western India have a plant extract which is said to be an effective contraceptive when taken only twice a year. Many primitive cultures regulate their populations to the available food supply and although the theories of Thomas Malthus certainly appear to hold good for more developed cultures they are certainly not true for primitive societies.

It should not be assumed that primitive peoples spend a few hours a day hunting or harvesting their habitat and the rest of the time is spent on music making; dancing and general indolence. Aggression between neighboring tribes sometimes occurs. For perceived major offenses like the stealing of another’s animal then war may break out. This is not the ethnic cleansing exercise we recognise in the west but more a release of tensions in not too violent combat. In a way it is more like
Saturday afternoon football. For example, in Papua New Guinea rival tribes square up to each other across a field but most of the release of aggression is verbal insult throwing. Sometimes flightless spears are also thrown but these are not very well made and their trajectory is often haphazard. Fatalities do sometimes occur, mainly from young braves who are trying to prove themselves to their group but such happenings are very rare. To the Tsembaga and Mae Enga peoples, hostilities are a precursor for peacemaking; inter-group marriage and festivities which bind the groups closer together for a while. At least until someone decides to steal another pig and the process starts all over again. Generally speaking though, peoples who have no desire for ownership of the land have no desire for war, at least in the sense we understand it.

Modern warfare is sometimes about physically wanting to own more land, maybe to put a buffer zone between you and someone else, like Chinas annexation of Tibet. This was easy pickings since the Buddhist monks were no match for military aggression. Mainly though it is about one group wanting to own what is either on top of or underneath the land belonging to another group. Sometimes this is done through proxies, for instance like the CIA funding the Contras of Nicaragua to bring down the democratically elected Sandinista Government for the ultimate benefit of the American Fruit Company. Sometimes it is out and out aggression in its own right like the oil war in Iraq. Either way it is a fight to own the land and deplete its resources until they are used up by the West and the profits go to international financiers. A modern twist to this is the use of economic instead of military warfare.
The World Bank and the IMF throw money at the heads of some third world leaders whose land resources they want to exploit and then wait until repayments are reneged upon. The debt is then restructured in such a way that the country has to forfeit its resources to those who hold the debt. Some world leaders are smart enough to see through this little scam, like former President Sukarno of Indonesia who stuck a finger up at the World Bank’s hand of friendship and so he had to go. That is when the CIA was called in to destabilise the country and install Americas’ choice of President Suharto. Then the benefits derived from Indonesia started to flow to the West instead of the Indonesian people. One thing for sure is that people don’t fight over nothing to have. Whilst the self sustaining indigenous peoples of South Africa; together with those from North and South Rhodesia were made into slaves in their own country in order to work the diamond mines, no one ever started a war, economic or military, with Botswana. There is sand on top of it and sand underneath it and the bush people can bask in relative safety.

The largest ethnic group today without a homeland is the Kurds. They occupy most of Eastern Turkey; a bit of Northern Iraq; a small bit of North West Iran and a scattering throughout Western Europe. They are a largely cohesive group often attacking Turkey from out of Northern Iraq for an independent homeland. It is my contention though, that if they were ever to achieve this goal they would loose this cohesion since it would be no longer necessary to band together in a common struggle and they would become like the inhabitants of any other nation. In this way, it is probably better to travel hopefully than to arrive.

Here is a cute little trick that was worked on the people of the west, particularly America, which is probably an easier example to pick. After the Indigenous Americans were beaten into the back room, who did the newly acquired lands belong to? Well the American Settlers. Who represented these ‘new’ Americans? Could it be the American state? So when you want to have a plot of land to build a house on, then who do you buy it from? The American state in one of its various forms, that represents who? Well we got there; you are actually spending 20 – 30 years of your working life buying something that should be yours anyway. How did this situation come about? I don’t know but it sure seems that when somebody was asked to ‘find the lady’ they turned over the wrong card.

Since I have got into questions and answers here is a final one, it should be easy for most of you. Find a four letter word to finish this late 2001 quote from President G W Bush “The events of 9/11 should not stop the American people from going out to _ _
_ _ “? If I did not know the answer, I would have plumped for Work but that is dead wrong, the answer is Shop. The answer to “Why shop” is that your government needs you as dutiful consumers. They want you to own more stuff so that just like third world countries you will get into debt and they will have control over you. As the benefit of your working hours trickles upwards you will be left with relatively less.
As the credit card companies remind us, “Plastic takes the waiting out of wanting” and boy do we want our stuff but this is mostly trading a short term gain for a long term loss since we will be still paying for the stuff even after its novelty has long worn off. As debt mounts, we will become less happy, at least until the next shiny thing that you can put on your plastic, catches your eye. For companies it is just the same, their next deal eventually becomes your next stuff; Weyerhaeuser’s next clear cut becomes your next garden shed. Both are driven onward in an endless spiral of deals for them and stuff for you. All the time you gradually become poorer and less happy.

Here are a couple of verses from a song that some of you may have seen before. It is a keenly observed indictment on modern society.

People struggle, people fight
For the simple pleasures in their lives
But trouble comes from everywhere
It's a little more than you can bear

People shallow, self-absorbed
See the push and shove for their rewards
I, me, my is on their minds
You can read about it in their eyes

Whatever happened to caring about each other? Where did it all go wrong? Somewhere along the way, we seemed to have traded the wisdom of old for knowledge and we came away holding the short straw.

How can we possibly redress this imbalance? One answer is to reduce our dependence on stuff and as far as possible not be reliant on the big box stores. Grow what food you can and for the rest shop at farmers markets. Try to get involved in community projects to find a common thread with those around you. Try to live a simpler but happier life.