O N P L A C E
Remarks by
Rudolph C. Ryser, Chairman,
Center for World Indigenous Studies
National Grant-Makers' Annual Conference, Seattle, WA.
Edgewater INN, October 27-30, 1994
For all beings on our planet there is no greater pull
on the body and the soul than the attraction felt for the
earth itself. It is in this place that each precious being
develops its community, its way of consuming and producing,
its spiritual life. This intimate relationship between
being and place, the evolving oneness, that each community
of beings has is what we all know as culture--the worship of
land, of place. The bear and the salmon alike draw
sustenance, spiritual and material, from the great power of
this place. The salmon must use speed, stealth and its
knowledge of the waters in which it swims to return to its
place of birth--at the beginning of a stream. It spends
most of its life swimming, living and eating from the ocean,
but it always returns to its first place. The bear roams
far from its place of birth, yet when it must seek security,
sustenance and salmon it returns to the place it knows.
Like our brothers and sisters among the bear, Cedar Tree,
salmon, the elk, the Vine Maple, the raven, the Alder Tree,
the eagle and the beaver, and all the others, we humans must
have our place too.
The drama of our quest for place has been playing out
for thousands of years and is continuing as the central
theme of our politics, society and economy even now.
Everywhere you look, when human beings are in grave
conflict, you can recognize land as the most common first
issue of dispute; politics, economics, religion and social
differences come after. So powerful is the drive to have
land, to have a place, we humans will fight to the death to
have it.
In the United States there are lots of "haves" and
"have-nots." There are those who have good health care, and
there are those who have not. There are those who have
wealth, and there are those who have not. There are those
who have a life without violence, and there are those who
have not. All of these divisions signal a grave sickness in
the wider society that threatens to break to pieces the
social, economic and political fabric of the United States.
Underlying all of this division is the greatest division of
all: Those who have land, a place, and those who have not.
In the State of Washington, when I was a boy, most of
the nearly one million citizens owned their place, their
land. Now more than half of the state's nearly five million
people rent the place where they live and do not own their
land. Across the United States this is more or less the
case. The more people do not have their place, the more
they feel insecure. They feel unable to control their
lives. They are increasingly dependent on faceless
officials, abstract powers like business and government, and
their fears of real and imagined threats grow. They become
ripe for deceitful pretenders to power who offer themselves
as leaders. The people become tools for tyrants.
All people must feel secure in their place lest they
become fearful for themselves and a threat to others.
Everyone must be guaranteed the right to live freely in
their place. They must have a place to which they can
return when they have been away; a place to labor, a place
to commune and a place to worship. But saying that everyone
must have a place is simpler than organizing a way for
everyone to have a place. It is to the subject of arranging
human affairs for the common good, establishing new methods
and applying intellectual and material resources in support
of assuring security of place that we must turn our
attention. We must open new channels of communications
between our different groups and find new approaches to
mediating differences. And in all of this we must recognize
the importance of individual self-interest as an underlying
reality that determines how or whether differences are
mediated.
It is from Adrian Esquino, the great leader of the
Pipil Indians of El Salvador that I draw a final thought for
you. Fifteen years ago at a meeting in Australia, a meeting
of Indian leaders from the western hemisphere and other
leaders of indigenous peoples from around the world, my
friend Adrian Esquino grew impatient with the long speeches
that seemed to float in the air but failed to rest in the
heart. He stood up, all five feet of him, and asked for the
floor, careful not to interrupt the last speaker--a great
orator from the Quechua peoples of Bolivia. When he won the
attention of the chief spokesperson he then made a simple
request: "Would it be possible for the speakers to bring
their heads out of the clouds and plant their feet on the
ground? For it is on the ground that all of our peoples
live, and it is from the ground that we are enriched and
nourished. We are more likely to make good decisions if we
plant ourselves where the people live and leave the clouds
to the wind."
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