By Michael McComiskey and Julia McEvoy
Ed. Note: In the Fall 1981 issue of Religious Socialism, Michael McComiskey and Julia McEvoy wrote of their experiences at a Theology in the Americas conference held on Native American land in July of that year. Representatives from Indigenous peoples of South America, Central America, Canada, and the Philippines were there, as were those from other groups within the TIA project (“Blacks, whites, Hispanics, Asians, feminists, and labor people”). We reprint excerpts here on the week when we mark Indigenous Peoples Day in the United States. We have made some slight changes in punctuation but kept the original language. Judge for yourself whether the questions they pose have been answered.
As we sat on the earth and listened to the voices of Indigenous people from many parts of the United States, from Canada, from Argentina, Bolivia, and Nicaragua, several things became quite clear. For one, their struggle tends to be the same all over. Indigenous peoples fare equally poorly under rightist, leftist, or the liberal capitalist regimes of North America. For all of them the Indians are merely outdated ignorant people who are standing in the way of national progress.
However, the indigenous people who spoke at the Haudenosaune Dialogue proved themselves to be anything but ignorant. Their analysis covered the local, the national, and the international. They spoke of the spirit of the earth and the relationship of the two-leggeds and the four-leggeds as easily as they spoke of the international crisis of capitalism. They were at home with the Marxist critique of capitalism and to it they added their own critique. They do not start from a base of Western capitalist civilization and culture as Marxism does in its effort to go beyond it. They start from a completely different experience and have no desire to go through either Western civilization or capitalism or, for that matter, industrial socialism. Symbolic of their attitude and position was the gentle correction made by an Indigenous [person] from Argentina when someone referred to him as Latin American. “No,” he replied with a smile, “call us South American. We are Americans but we are not Latins.”
As a result, some of the fundamental criticisms which they direct at capitalism they also apply to socialism. Although they are anticapitalist, they are not about to run into the arms of socialism, either. Their vision is both beyond and different from it.
One glaring difference between the Indigenous peoples of the earth and those who have grown up in Western civilization is their sense of relationship to the earth and to creation. Western Man (we use the term consciously) feels that it is his role to dominate the earth, to subdue it, to bend it to his will. Indigenous peoples feel no such compulsion nor any such right. The earth is a gift and is to be treated with the utmost respect. Things may be taken from it, but it is not to be damaged. The earth is a relative and is to be treated as such. It is not to be exploited. Its riches are to be taken according to need, not to excess. The technology which springs from Western civilization comes from a very different philosophy than that of the Indigenous peoples. . . .
. . .Native Americans are obliged by their tradition to consider the consequences of any of their actions “to the seventh generation.” They must calculate the welfare of those who come behind them when making their plans. They are highly critical of Western civilization and its technology for its consistently short-range planning and for the selfishness implied in its technology. They want nothing to do with our technology, and they challenge us to rethink it. They remind us that our technology threatens to make them and their way of life extinct. . . .
. . .So far, so-called socialist regimes have shown themselves to be no more sensitive to their Indigenous peoples than have the regimes they replaced. It would appear that neither capitalism nor what passes for socialism can tolerate the Indigenous way of life. Is this true? And if it is, what are we losing? It is surely not a question of trying to turn back the clock to a simpler time. The Indians do not expect us to become Indians; they simply want us to stop demanding that they become “western.”
If nothing else, we came away with an increased awareness of the limitations of socialism as a human vision. It is limited simply because it comes from the history and experience of one part of the human family. However, is our technology the only technology—or even the best? Is our understanding of human life on the earth the only understanding—or even the best? We were taught to work by people who wished to oppress us. Will we ever be able to free ourselves by staying with the philosophy of work and the work technologies (productive as they are) which were designed to exploit human beings? As we try to envision and work toward a new socialist economy, can we afford not to listen to the voices of our Indigenous brothers and sisters? Will we be guaranteeing our own doom and that of the seven generations that follow us? Is the contemporary socialist vision a place to finish, or is it a place to start? Is it resilient enough to be challenged on some of its fundamentals—especially with regard to its assumption of capitalist technology (albeit in a socialized form)? Are our own attitudes and the political structures of democratic socialism democratic enough to allow genuine cultural diversity, i.e., can there be room and respect for Indigenous peoples and their ways as a genuine human experience and expression?. . .
. . .Are we capable of learning from the “peoples of the earth”? As they pointed out very clearly, it is a question of great importance not only to them, but to us.
Michael McComiskey and Julia McEvoy are educators, parents of two children, and activists in their Brooklyn community. Mike is with the Alternate Theology Project of TIA and Julia is with the TIA Women’s Project.