colonos

It is still early days of planning, but a small group of people are planning to travel, for the second time, down the Napo river - doing workshops relevant for indigenous peoples’ struggles, such as shamanic civil rights, and healing sessions in communities along the 1000km long and very exciting route from the beginning of the River Napo in Tena, Ecuador to Iquitos (where it meets the Amazon and the Ucayali rivers). The journey goes through one of the most biodiverse regions in the world - right past the Yasuni National Park, before crossing the border into Peru. After visiting The 4th International Amazonian Shamanism Conference: Magic, Myths and Miracles, which will be held in Iquitos, Peru - July 19th - 26th, 2008, we might continue to Pucallpa….

Contemporary developments in the global economy are very significant for the Amazon rain forest. While this might be said to be true for anywhere at any point in time there are nevertheless good reasons for paying special attention to what maybe the last battle for the survival of the largest rain forest in the world, the loss of which it should need no further justification to lament – and that is the basis upon which this invitation is written….

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One of the basic philosophical and political questions that concern us here at colonos is that of property: what does it mean to own something, what is private property and what is collective property? How does property relate to the historical and political developments of capitalism? A good place to begin is the writings of Carol Rose:

Rose, Carol M. (1994) Property and Persuasion: Essays on the History, Theory and Rhetoric of Ownership. Westview Press. Download the complete book.

More about Rose here

Stop shitting in the drinking water, for f#c>’s sake:

    - by False Flag Thursday, Mar. 01, 2007 at 3:06 PM

“For ten long years, our operatives have honed their skills, testing their wits and mettle against the global capitalist empire, the most formidable adversary in the history of life on earth. We have learned how to redecorate the walls of cities occupied by armies of riot police, to transform random groups of damaged, isolated individuals into loving communities capable of supporting one another through the most severe bouts of repression and depression, to shut down corporate summits and franchises armed with little more than plastic piping or eyedroppers of glue. Now, the notorious CrimethInc. ex-Workers’ Collective has compiled many of the techniques that made these feats possible into a 624-page manual entitled Recipes for Disaster.“

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Although the funders of the International Institute for Environment and Development clearly are of the higher echelons of the established society they promote community rights over, essentially, intellectual property rights (a distracting debate around traditional knowledge being protected by private property rights based systems - obviously utter nonsense) in order to “protect” indigenous ways of being and living; which is a good thing - since there are other ways to live than the liberal-conservative order of things.

This page gives a good introduction that concludes:

“We are therefore focusing our research and policy work on the concept of ‘Collective Bio-Cultural Heritage’. This concept, initially developed by ANDES, Peru, recognises the interlinked nature of traditional knowledge, biodiversity, landscapes, culture and customary laws.”

Private property rights cannot save communities - community rights (with added self-determination and autonomy) can (hopefully) save communities, it can’t be that difficult to see, init?!?

The foto shows a gathering above 4000m for a ritual (Febr. 07) to solidify the bonds between the communities in the Parque de la Papa, Pisaq, Cusco, Peru - an amazing place and project where theory and practive of public policy making, autonomy and self-legislation come together. They have 1016 species of potatoes growing there!

This entry comes from a post to a thread on Tribe.net that became much too long winding - perhaps even for the blog, haha, well, not really - this should give some political ideas that might be useful for anyone performing shamanic practices (the links, abbreviated by Tribe, look funny but work

These statements are interesting (and the comments they afforded long):

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Hi World,

This letter was sent in an email to a conference organiser, but it looks like it could be read by anyone interested in these matters:

One of the projects that I am fiddling with here (on the side of my PhD) concerns a network of community-based botanical gardens in the Napo-Ucayali corridor.

As you might be aware, Correa, Lula and Chavez (for instance an oil pipeline to Argentina), as well as of course the Peruvian state, have great plans for “corredores inter-oceanicos” which will essentially, finally, cut the Amazon apart in order to bring cheap consumer goods, in the short term, to the Brasilian cities, and in the long term to all of the continent, of course, –and the last trees and oil and other natural resources back to China, so that they can produce the plastics to come here….

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Drank ayahuasca tonight, for the fourth time. One thought worth reporting might be explained by way of the great fiction of Carlos Castaneda and his concept of “assemblage point”. Anyone is free to think what they like about his work, but like flies to shit the figures speak for themselves: it is popular. For me the books were instrumental, formative, eye-opening in my early 20s - great metaphors and possibilities for thought patterns, well wrapped in humourous prose in words attributed to Don Juan.

So what did he say? Well…. get off your flippin’ tits, init? Almost.

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