I come from a community that has been impacted dramatically by a) colonisation, b) urbanisation, c) de-forestation, d) by agro-chemical / pesticide use. Some of the impacts are not necessarily immediate or easy to establish, but we have noticed certain things like the breast cancer rate amongst of Maori women living near the timber industry is higher than amongst Maori women who live in the cities. Does this mean that it is automatically connected to agro-chemical use? That would be very hard to prove. We however have no doubt about some of the impact that have happened. When you look at the life span for Maori compared with Europeans (we all live in the same country) there is an average 10 year difference. We die 10 years earlier than the settler descendants, for many reason: One, we eat more so we have more heart diseases. But there are also other (factors), for example, we are more likely to be exposed to pesticides and agro-chemicals than many of the Europeans who live in suburbs where they don’t use such (chemicals). There are other impacts. We are 15% of the population. We are 3% of the population that goes to university. We are 52% of the jail population. That’s a horrific impact of colonisation. We are 25% of children who drop out of school before the legal leaving age.

We have started to address these as a community. We have a advantages over other communities. Although we do not have automatic (access) to the benefits of a developed economy we do live in a country with a developed country and that does give us some advantages. We also have one indigenous language for the entire country (which most of us don’t speak properly), but it does give some advantages to be able to communicate. And we also have one common cosmology for the entire country amongst Maori, (with) some slight variations. It gives you advantages because you come from a very similar political perspective. You’ve all heard the phrase, “resistance is futile.” Eighty years ago we changed that to “resistance is fertile.” And we believe it, we raise our children to continue the battle when we die, and they will raise their children to continue the battle when they die. We have a view of history that says that it’s circular, so two hundred years is nothing. It’s a blink. We are very connected to the past, and we believe that if you are not connected to the past, then you have no comprehension of what may happen in the future.

First of all, I want to tell you about the organisation I’m from, and one of the programs we’ve got which may be a solution, not just for us, but help with other people. I’m from the global forest coalition, which is a group of non-governmental organisations and indigenous people’s organisations who are working together on rights based forest related policy. We are very adamant that we are not interested in forest solutions that do not include the assurance of human rights and indigenous rights. We have a small grants facility, which covers underlying causes of deforestation and forest degradation, which groups can apply to get a grant from. We are very restricted in the number of grants we can give. There are only seven more for this year, and only one per country. My email address, if you want to apply for a grant, is sandygauntlett@hotmail.com. The grants are specifically to look at underlying, not direct causes of forest loss, or forest degradation. We are particularly interested in economic and trade related underlying causes. We are particularly interested in what other people describe as radical underlying causes. The total grant is 9000 euros per grant, given in three instalments. There are 5000 euros to run a workshop, which should include case studies on specific areas. There is 2000 euros to put in a full report of that workshop. There is a further 2000 euros to do more outreach work, from the results of that workshop.

One of the other things that my people are doing, that I believe that we need to be innovative and creative in what we do to try and regain control of our genetic resources. We have a land rights decision making body in New Zealand, called the Whytungi tribunal. We have put a claim into that, on behalf of all of the Maori tribes of New Zealand, to the indigenous flora and fauna of New Zealand. So what we are saying is that you have not done a good job of conservation, you have not done a good job of protecting these species, you have wiped out more species since your arrival in 200 years than we did in 1200 years…..

(Break due to gap when tape was turned over)

The mechanisms that exist in our country to stretch(?) their boundaries a little, the greater our chances of success. The more that we can share with each other what we are doing in our countries, and the successes and/or temporary failures that we have had, then the greater chance of success we have globally, because while we come from different world viewpoints, we have one world, and we all live in it. And unless we all do our best to protect and save our part of that world, then we all lose, including the colonizers. My people know that we do a much better job at protecting it, than they have done, even though that’s not what they say. You only have to look at the statistics and figures to prove that. I urge you all to share your information with us all, because we can learn so much from each other, about new creative ways, about what works and what doesn’t work. We have a saying amongst my people that I will finish with which goes, “Be strong, the fight goes on forever, there is no end, we will not give up.”

End.

The speeches from Regaining Control of the Commons: WSF 2007 are provided for information and educational purposes. The transcription has been undertaken on a volunteer basis. Due to resource limitations we are unable to provide a complete transcription. We apologise for the breaks in the text.

Disclaimer: The view in this and the other articles do not (neccessarily) represent the position or views of Friends of the Earth Australia nor Friends of the Earth International.