News from the frontier (2)

“Newcomers to native societies … are there because they want things of great importance to them: land, trees, minerals, oil and gas and, as a means to getting these, administrative and ideological control. Hence you can see certain kinds of economic exploitation, aggressive greed, missionary zeal …”. From an Open Democracy interview with anthropologist Hugh Brody.

What are the latest developments where the financially rich clash with those outside our culture?

In India, the Dongria Kondh tribe is fighting for survival in the face of threats by British mining company Vedanta to bulldoze the side of their sacred mountain. Survival International describes how Vedanta plans to dig an open pit mine on the Dongria Kondh’s mountain in the Niyamgiri Hills, Orissa state, to extract bauxite, an aluminium ore. The mine would devastate the ecology of the region and bring an end to the Dongria Kondh’s independent and sustainable way of life, polluting the streams and destroying the forests they rely on.

Palestine dreaming: sailing out of the storm

If only there were a ten-point plan that would safely navigate Palestine and Israel out of the eye of the storm – for good. Such a thing seems like a far-fetched dream, as the silence of a thousand funerals hangs over Palestine and the pall of grief and despair drifts towards its belligerent neighbour; as a thousand brows furrow their restrained anxiety around the offices of governments and NGOs worldwide and talks of a ceasefire brush the charred remains of shattered lives under the carpet.

But dreams, as we know, can come true.

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