Language Is An Old-growth Forest Of The

All Cultures Through All Time Have Constantly Been Engaged In A Dance With New Possibilities For Life. Change Is The One Constant In Human History.

We Accept It As Normal That People Who Have Never Been On The Land, Who Have No History Or Connection To The Country, May Legally Secure The Right To Come In And, By The Very Nature Of Their Enterprises, Leave In Their Wake A Cultural And Physical Landscape Utterly Transformed And Desecrated. What's More, In Granting Such Mining Concessions, Often Initially For Trivial Sums To Speculators From Distant Cities, Companies Cobbled Together With Less History Than My Dog, The Government Places No Cultural Or Market Value On The Land Itself.

To Have That Powder Blown Up Your Nose Is Rather Like Being Shot Out Of A Rifle Barrel Lined With Baroque Paintings And Landing On A Sea Of Electricity.

Cultural Survival Is Not About Preservation, Sequestering Indigenous Peoples In Enclaves Like Some Sort Of Zoological Specimens. Change Itself Does Note Destroy A Culture. All Societies Are Constantly Evolving. Indeed A Culture Survives When It Has Enough Confidence In Its Past And Enough Say In Its Future To Maintain Its Spirit And Essence Through All The Changes It Will Inevitably Undergo.

The Problem Is That Those Of Us Sympathetic With The Plight Of Indigenous People View Them As Quaint And Colorful, But Somehow Reduced To Margins Of History As The Real World [(our World)] Moves On We Will Be Known As An Era In Which We Stood By And Either Actively Endorsed Or Passively Accepted The Massive Destruction Of Both Biological And Cultural Diversity On The Planet.