NDN Support North America

From charity to selfsufficiency

I guess that most people starting charities mean well with what they're doing or they wouldn't be doing it, but although we all have the tendency to have our own ideas about what we should be doing, it does help to ask the Indians what kind of help they really want instead of drawing our own agenda and think we know what's best for them. There are people who think they need Jesus in their lives because it worked for them. Or people who think the exact opposite and think that "traditional" means lving in tipi's and hunting buffalo like in the "old days". With the current infra-structure this is however no longer possible now and the number of buffalo has deminished so much that bufallo hide tipi's are today no more than a museum piece. Maybe "traditional" means living in the past for people like the Amish of Pensylvania, but that doesn't mwean that Indians see it that way. I've also seen people say that Amazon tribe shouldn't

Joseph and the baby Jesus, in Navajo style by Father John Guiliani

have short pants or plastic water bottles, but we are now way beyond the first contact situation now. Nobody lives in "paradise", just to use a christian concept here. No matter how idyllic we want to portray things, also in the Amazon there have always been diseases, disputes and tribal warfare. It's just that they're exempt from our traffic jams, our pocessed foods, our nagging employers, annoying car alarms or time based society. In fact, toaay's Amazon people really do need iPods, mobile phones and such in order to be able to report illegal logging to the authorities. They can make pictures and send it to the authorities. And if they want to have a ardio or television in their forest hut, who are we to say that they can't have it? And let's just be realistic about it. However much we want these people to be "left alone" and "live their way of life like they always have", it will only be a matter of time before they uncontacted tribes will contact the so-called "modern world" with all its consequences of diseases and destruction of habitat, so it would be better for them to have some defense instead of living like in the days of before the Spanish conquistadores came to explore the Amazon and then be too vulnerable to survive it all.                                           (to be continued)

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