By
Michelle McCollum
Arizona Daily Wildcat
U.S. lifestyle decimating the environment, American Indian speaker says
He started with a prayer.
"Grandfathers, great spirits," said Mala Spotted Eagle Pope. "Help us to see each other's hearts, to be able to open them up, to stop what keeps us from being one people."
The prayer asked Pope's American Indian ancestors to help all nations to unify and heal the earth from the Western value system that he said is killing it.
He argued that American Indian values are ultimately better for "Mother Earth" than those imposed on the land by European-Americans.
Because of Western culture, toxic pollution is ruining the planet, the Western family system is very unstable and individuals' relationships with the earth is non-existent, Pope said.
"At one time we all had one teacher - Mother Earth. The earth taught us to live in harmony and only take what was given. But when you take all the time, you begin to take things for granted," Pope said.
Pope, an elder of the Western Shoshine and Cherokee tribes, came from Oregon yesterday to discuss such Western issues as anti-whaling laws and genetically altered foods.
Anti-whaling laws, Pope explained, have good intentions in trying to save the environment and its wildlife, but they are decimating communities - like the Makah, a tribe living on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington, which depends on whale for food.
"(The activists) never took into account what it would do to the native village. They had no food, nothing," Pope said. "Some of the women had to resort to prostitution."
Such culture clashes are the reason the department of Africana Studies and the Native American Activities Board sponsored the talk.
They wanted to make students are aware of the value systems associated with those whom Western culture defines as minorities.
"There is fundamentally a common thread that runs through the experiences and cultures and heritage of most indigenous peoples around the world. This includes the African people too," said Julian Kunnie, acting director of Africana studies.
"We are not the minority in the world; we are actually part of the world's majority. It is this Euro-centric view that is the minority view, which tends to impose its minority views."
Kunnie said the capitalistic Euro-centric society has created stigmatized races like African Americans and American Indians. Pope's talk gave the audience, consisting of 30 people, an altruistic alternative to that way of life by proposing a unified earth where Euro-centrism and the greed of corporations would end.
Pope criticized the Monsanto Corp., which creates sterile seeds altered to include pesticides in their genes. The corporation, Pope said, was killing the environment and greedily controlling farmers who had to buy the company's seeds every year.
The majority of a flock of 10,000 monarch butterflies were killed while migrating across the continent when they happened to feed on genetically altered pollen from Biotech corn, Pope said.
Biotech corn is one of the corporation's most controversial products, but the company claims their products are not only safe, but also better for the environment because they promote the quality of human life around the world.
Research from Cornell University, however, states that 44 percent of monarch larva eating Biotech pollen-coated leaves died after four days. The Monsanto Corp. dismisses the Cornell University research as invalid.
"It's funny how our values can misguide us in what we do," said Andrea Williams, a creative writing and English senior. "I can't believe those people out there are making seeds so they can have control over all the power and all the money and all the food. It's ridiculous that people go so far."
While he may have started the discussion with a prayer, Pope ended it with a warning.
"If (Western people) had the right values, they would not have started this," Pope said. "Mother Earth will only take so much."
