"This is the crying COP."
– Bill Hare, Australian scientist with Climate Analytics, interviewed on Democracy Now
This blog is spozed to cover collective and collaborative work In the field of art. Most I’ve considered has been political, and much of it explicitly so. This recent series of posts is about work around the COP 25 meeting in Madrid, where the “art” component, called “artivism” has been primarily direct actions, launched by the relatively new group Extinction Rebellion – XR.
I wasn’t part of the affinity groups which launched these actions, nor did I see them. My information comes from mainstream media, mainly the online Democracy Now and broadcast La Sexta channel in Spain, and social media – Facebook, Twitter, and the Telegram streams of the XR artivist groups.
That’s how I learned about #SoundSwarm, the work of the Enmedio collective which includes originators of the word “artivism” (the coinage came during the Global Justice Movement) – and the “Disco-becience”, two hours of dancing in the Gran Via shopping street to disrupt holiday consumption – and the “oil” vomiting at the COP site itself, carried out by XR.
There have been other actions at the main COP site as well. But the main actions of the indigenous groups have been stage occupations and walkouts. These are old-school political actions by the beleaguered minority. They are cries of rage and frustration, as the majority moves on without them – refusing to help indigenous land and water defenders; and refusing to put a leash on oil gas and mining industries.
"Land Back" – "Oceans Back"
– International Climate Action Network (CAN) banner slogans
Traditional indigenous people live off the land, and they feel first the impacts. Both north and south, First Nation peoples are pressed by the continuation and expansion of resource extraction and the workers, including corporate and government thugs, who invade indigenous lands to continue their violent plunder.
“Stop Climate Colonialism” banner slogan condemns the insidious carbon trading scheme. This weird financial product resembles the medieval sale of indulgences, although in this case Mother Church is capitalism itself.
Quentin Massys, “The Money Changer and His Wife” (1514)
If Trump’s USA has left the COP, why are the corporations still here, watering down every measure, with the European nations right behind them?, asked Karin Nansen, Friends of the Earth International. It’s necropolitics.
Wednesday Democracy Now reported the dramatic protest by indigenous land defenders and their allies at the COP 25 conference zone which climaxed in a walk-out. The action happens during the on-screen interviews with leaders of Indigenous Environmental Network and Friends of the Earth. Tom B.K. Goldtooth warns them, Don’t go, you’ll lose your badges. That is just what happened. Some were arrested, others were “debadged” so they could not re-enter the COP. (Video is about 18 min. with transcript.)
https://www.democracynow.org/2019/12/11/cop25_walkout_indigenous_leaders_global_south
Second half of the Wednesday walkout broadcast on Thursday -- talking outside.…
It wasn’t exactly a “walkout”, but rather a kettling by UN security forcing protestors out of the conference and into the cold for hours.
https://www.democracynow.org/2019/12/12/cop25_protesters_forced_out_of_summit
“Matriarchy Is Not the Opposite of Patriarchy”
In the room named for Camilo Catrillanca, a Mapuche farmer killed by Chilean police last year, I attended an IEN talk on indigenous feminism. My partner wanted to go, so I went along. I did not get the names of the two speakers (could they have been with the Indigenous Feminist Organizing School?), but the talk was fascinating. One of them, from the Minnesota Anishinaabe people, spoke from historical perspective.
The two women do workshops on indigenous feminism lasting several days. They are trying to “right the imbalance that was created by patriarchal colonialism. … Matriarchy,” she said, “is not the opposite of patriarchy.”
A major issue among North American natives now is the missing and murdered indigenous women (MMIW). Many if not most of these crimes relate to places where extraction is happening – mining, oil and timber.
This Matter is Murder
Women are delberately attacked, she said, because they are the backbone of native societies and lead activism. “Violence on the land goes with violence on the body” of women. She spoke of traditional native culture, and of the centuries of attacks by white governance on their education, food systems, governance – in all of which women had strong roles.
Her mother was active in AIM (American Indian Movement) during the 1970s. Because of “terrible health care”, she said, “I am now older than my mother and grandmother lived to be.” She was not able to learn things from them. “Patriarchy has robbed me of my matriarchal line,” the knowledges and practices that should have been hers.
When the trade in beaver skins developed in the 18th and 19th century (Astor Place), the colonists would only trade and negotiate with the men. This had been women’s traditional role. Thus the tribal system was upended. Only men were trained and hired to be writers and recorders, she said. We are still living with that “introduced patriarchy” among our men.
Vomiting “petroleum” at COP 25. Photo from XR Madrid Facebook page.
Subsequent impositions of systems of governance modelled on U.S. systems limited or eliminated the role of women in decision making.
(This has been very clear in the many clashes between “traditionals” – tribal elders, both men and women, coming from traditional systems of governance – and elected tribal leaders and bodies of governance set up by U.S. agencies. The latter tend to be the ones that sign extraction contracts with oil gas and mining companies.)
Lunch and a Tribunal
The Cumbre Social was extremely lively during its first few days, before people emptied out to go do actions at the COP itself, which was far away.
We ate our lunch that day, at a stand outside run with Campo Adentro, a long-running artistic project that visibilizes herders in rural communities. Earlier children and their parents had waited by the forest across the street, but the transhumante animal herd scheduled for the parking lot never showed up. Even so, we enjoyed a simple guisado with meat and vegetables as a herder, wearing a reflective vest and leaning on his staff, stood by.
Next I looked in on the International Tribunal on Evictions organized by the International Alliance of Inhabitants. This group, long active in NGO level defense of both rural and urban peoples’ housing occupations, has been producing live-streamed presentations of cases of climate related displacements. “We are not insects!”, to be pushed from one place to another without provision. The first case was Venice, Italy, where “extinction tourism” has emerged. Come, enjoy the ruin your way of life is creating.
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LINKS
Missing and murdered Indigenous women - Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org › wiki › Missing_and_murder...
The missing and murdered Indigenous women epidemic (MMIW) is an issue currently affecting Indigenous people in Canada and the United States,
The American Indian Movement, 1968-1978
Overview and set of Primary Sources
https://dp.la/primary-source-sets/the-american-indian-movement-1968-1978
Campo Adentro - Inland
https://inland.org
International Tribunal on Evictions – by the International Alliance of Inhabitants (IAH)
https://www.tribunal-evictions.org
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