5 Values for Repairing the Harms of Colonialism | Jing Corpuz | TED Talks

(3) 5 Values for Repairing the Harms of Colonialism | Jing Corpuz | TED - YouTube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mshEFTm3beM

Transcript:

(00:04) (Speaking in Kankana-ey) And I wish I can continue in my language so that I can make no mistakes. (Laughter) I greet you in the language of my Indigenous Kankana-ey Igorot ancestors. And I acknowledge that I am in the homelands of the Lenape people. I am Jing, and I come from the central mountain range of the northern part of the Philippines.

(00:48) If you've heard of the Banaue Rice Terraces, which is one of the wonders of the modern world, that is the region where I am from. My ancestors built these terraces by hand, as a community, through the centuries. It is their intimate knowledge of nature and of the way that the river flows, the waters flow and the waters are stored, that enables these terraces to be irrigated without the help of machines.

(01:23) The art and science of building and irrigating these terraces is magical. They have been sustainably and beautifully irrigated for centuries. Now, my people are also known as one of the unconquered and uncolonized tribes of the Cordillera Mountains. We successfully resisted more than 300 years of Spanish colonization because the mountains that we nurtured and cared for protected us in return.

(01:59) Now, to be sure, the Spanish attempted. They heard about our gold. So they sent many expeditions into the mountains to mine our gold and to tax us. But the historical records show, I kid you not, members of the expedition were sent back inevitably and sometimes without their heads. (Laughter) That's right.

(02:28) We are -- We were a headhunting people. (Laughter) And the name of my mother’s hometown, Besao, comes from the word “buso,” which means headhunter. And this is why I'm always joking around with my colleagues, “I am a recovering headhunter.” (Laughter) When we drove the Spanish out of the Philippines in the late 1800s, they were unfortunately replaced by a more creative colonizer: the Americans.

(03:03) And the pressure on our homelands increased exponentially. They wanted to mine our gold, to dam our rivers and to log our forests that we had cared for at the risk of our own lives. When they wanted to dam the Chico River, which is the lifeblood of the mountains where I'm from, they were met with fierce resistance and protests from the people.

(03:31) Our burial grounds, sacred places and amazing terraces would have been drowned and lost forever. And this was simply a spiritual and cultural price that my people were not willing to pay. This project was funded by the World Bank. And because of the fierce resistance of Indigenous peoples, they were forced to back off in the 1980s and to put in place an Indigenous people safeguard policy to make sure that development aggression doesn't happen again in Indigenous territories without consent.

(04:10) OK, so that's a new word and a big word. (Applause) Don’t worry, I’ll explain it. (Laughs) So what is development aggression? Well, development -- development is ... physical or economic infrastructure that's put in place in a community to help them thrive and reach their goals. Like, for example, if there is not enough affordable housing in a community or inadequate access to culturally appropriate education, development would build affordable houses and enable access to culturally appropriate education.

(04:48) Simple. But development aggression is the opposite. It is development that exploits the resources of the community and not for the purpose of helping the community, but for the developer's gain. It is a manifestation of colonialism, and it is a very colonial worldview and comes from top-down decision making.

(05:18) As Indigenous peoples, we perceive it as projects imposed without the consent of the community and in a manner that violates our rights. It falls within the paradigm of overproduction, overconsumption and accumulation of wealth by individuals, which has proven to be not helpful at all for humanity and for the planet.

(05:43) (Applause) Sometimes I wonder and I really think about, you know, why did my ancestors, why did my forebears resist the dam so strongly, usually at the cost of their own lives? You know, the mountains are vast and we could have moved away from the inundated areas. We could have gone to a different place that was not poisoned by the mines or that was not denuded by the logging.

(06:15) But my people explain that the struggle against the dams, the mining and the logging is a struggle for our identity and for our cultural survival. It is a struggle to make sure that we have healthy territories to pass on to the future generations. And this is what I have discovered through all my travels and interactions with other Indigenous peoples.

(06:39) This is common among Indigenous peoples worldwide. The notion that we hold our lands, our waters, our territories and our resources not just for ourselves but for the future generations. Macli-ing Dulag, who is a pangat, or a peace pact holder, he famously said to the government bureaucrats who came through the territory to push the dam, "You asked us if we own the land and mock us by asking, 'Where is your title?' When we asked the meaning of your words, you taunt us by saying, 'Where are the documents to prove your ownership?

(07:20) Titles, documents, proof of ownership.′ Such arrogance to think that you can own the land when we are instead owned by it. How can you own something that will outlive you? Only the people own the land because it's the people that live forever." As Indigenous peoples, we own our past, our present and our future.

(07:49) Private development for the gain of the few and to the detriment of the community, flies against the face of the reality of the generational existence of Indigenous peoples. So development aggression is actually an extension of a version of capitalism that pushes overconsumption, overproduction and has no regard for the future generations.

(08:13) It’s always “more is better,” “extract as much value and labor as you can from the land and from the people without caring for the future.” So when I was younger -- Story time. (Laughs) I grew up with my grandparents and they always told me, "Eat everything in your plate." I'm sure you've heard that as well.

(08:38) But there's a deeper undercurrent there. Eat everything on your plate in order to honor the hands that planted, nurtured, harvested and cooked the food. He taught me about the concept of “inayan,” or “do not do anything that might harm others or things that are bad, evil, taboo or unethical.” So getting more than what you need deprives others.

(09:07) Getting more food than what you can eat deprives the hungry and dishonors those that produced it. He would ask me, when he sees uneaten rice on my plate, "Don't you hear the rice crying?" And I would hear it crying. So until this day, I can't leave rice on my plate because I always hear the cries of the rice.

(09:31) Another concept that my relatives taught me is (Speaking in Kankana-ey). Literally, “Spread the good.” Spread the good values, the good virtues, practices, even material things. Another way of saying it in my language is (Speaking in Kankana-ey). It means no one person should own what is good. It is to be shared with the community.

(10:00) It is an expression of reciprocity and honor for the collective, and it teaches us to care for the common good. So these values, reciprocity, spirituality, not taking more than you need, obligation to future generations and collective decision making, all of these values are now finding their way into scientific studies and global scientific assessments on the status of biodiversity and ecosystem services, climate change and land degradation.

(10:37) So what we all need to do now is what Indigenous peoples have always known and have always done. As we face the negative effects of biodiversity loss, climate change, extreme weather events like the flooding, the wildfires, the droughts -- the scientists, they are slowly moving towards the conclusion that it is only through Indigenous wisdom and values and ways of caring for territory that we see the path towards our salvation.

(11:12) The path towards our salvation is not through more development, it's not through more consumption or more production. Overconsumption, development aggression, overproduction, are all manifestations of destructive colonialism that has harmed the planet and that has undermined the Indigenous wisdom that the scientists acknowledge that we all need.

(11:41) So think about it. In spite of everything, all the challenges we have faced, more than 500 years of colonization, all of the development aggression, we are still here. Indigenous peoples and our values have thrived and have endured. We have survived, and the least we can do is to honor this resistance by decolonizing our structures, decolonizing the way we think, decolonizing our practices, so that we can stop the destruction of the planet.

(12:18) Colonization and its tentacles has always deprived people and planet of the things that we naturally and rightfully need. It is only by decolonizing our understanding of history that we will understand how we have arrived at this planetary crisis. And it is only through honoring Indigenous peoples and being inspired by the values, providing the support and the resources in order for Indigenous peoples to continue to resist development aggression and colonialism that we can save ourselves and save the planet.

(13:00) So I invite us, let's listen, let's be inspired, let us learn, and let us support the struggles of Indigenous peoples. This is the only path forward. Thank you. (Applause)