Alaska Inter-Tribal Council : Advocating for Alaska Tribal Governments

Alaska Inter-Tribal Council passed a Joint Declaration of Indigenous Nations Titled "Let's Save the Planet with Millennial Energy".

Let’s Save the Planet with Millennial Energy

Message to the World on Climate Change and other crises

JOINT DECLARATION
of the Indigenous Nations Originating from Abya Yala, the First Nations of the Americas

As Indigenous Nations Originating from the Americas, as the First Nations of Abya Yala, represented here today by indigenous leaders of the continent, we recognize our brotherhood as human beings and our essential, natural, and harmonious relationship to Mother Earth;

Guided by our love and respect for Mother Earth and all the peoples who inhabit this planet, we recognize our duty to preserve the good health of our natural environment in all ways possible;

Noting that due to the impact of the activities of human beings on the environment, in particular the activities of industrialized nations, much more than the nations of the southern hemisphere, our planet is paying the highest price for pollution, climate change, over-exploitation of natural resources, and other disastrous effects of these activities;

Understanding that these events are nothing more than tangible manifestations of the natural, social, and economic systems of the planet on the brink of a catastrophic change, a Global Crisis for which a few societies are preparing us. The combination of climate change and the other crises can soon bring, if the world does not change course immediately, a collapse in the balance of nature and the basic coexistence of society, with grave consequences for life on earth and our communities, which will affect in particular the indigenous peoples and nations, that we will be the first and worst hit by the impact that can spread throughout the earth up to and including the most modest ways of life, not to mention how it could affect the construction of Living Well in our communities;

Aware of the importance of protecting our respective Indigenous cultures, languages, heritages, and traditions, which offer alternative models of preserving our earth and living in harmony with nature within the limits of what the health and resources of the planet permit.

We solemnly proclaim that we will adhere to the following principles and agreements from this day forward:

Article 1: As the indigenous Nations Originating from the Abya Yala, we recognize that all indigenous peoples share the duty to work together to protect our sovereign life, our respective cultures, languages, heritages, and traditions. No higher authority on earth can exist that infringes upon these sovereign practices and the self-determination of our nations.

Article 2: As the First Sovereign Nations and Original Sovereign Nations from the Abya Yala, members of the same large family, we proclaim the legitimacy of our diverse spiritual celebrations and millennial practices that we continue to keep alive; we set forth the sovereign will of our peoples to practice our own form of health maintenance, where the health of the community is as important as that of the body and where abundant healthy nourishment is our medicine, as are all the cultural practices that express our way of life. Conforming with this, we energetically denounce all attempts to devalue our cultural practices, including, but not limited to, the efforts to continue criminalizing the coca leaf and its legitimate uses by the original inhabitants of the Andes.

Article 3: We set forth that we will cultivate and strengthen our indigenous cultures and languages, not only with respect to our peoples, but also for the original indigenous nations as a reserve of ancestral wisdom and scientific knowledge of life to defend life, and the contribution of our cultures and languages that could aid in the search for the root of climate change, the energy and economic crises, and the convergence of these and other crises.

Article 4: With this motive, the indigenous nations look to persuade the current economic systems of development, the industrialized countries of the Northern Hemisphere, in order that they understand that the earth is our mother, in order that they respect Mother Earth and our way of Living Well in community. We urge them to assume the responsibility for the damages caused by their actions against nature, that they stop the emission of greenhouse gases that generate climate change, that they cease the squandering of natural resources and non-renewable energy of the planet, and that they curtail the generation of garbage that pollutes and damages Mother Earth.

Article 5: We insist that they abandon the luxury and excess consumption, that they not think only in money, in accumulating capital for a few families or regions, only that they think of others, think of life, in humanity, in the planet, in Mother Earth. In other words, it is required that the western economies immediately make a radical turnabout, substituting current models of development based on the irrational exploitation of natural resources, the squandering of energy and consumerism, that they abandon irresponsible industrialization without considering the sustainability of economic, progress and development measures.

Article 6: We recognize the government of Bolivia and her democratically elected President by a large majority of the people of Bolivia, brother Evo Morales, for carrying out policies that re-value, as much in word as in deed, the cultures and languages of all indigenous peoples, and also for taking the initiative to propose and impel the Ten Commandments to Save the Planet Earth, Humanity, and Life, by means of which all the nations of the world are invited to unite in the struggle to make this millennium a millennium of balance and complementariness, a millennium to defend life and the planet.

Article 7: In the spirit of the Ten Commandments, the original Indigenous Nations of the Americas are propose the building of Living Well with abundance and harmony between man and nature based on the identity, principles, values and codes of our nations, in the organization, technology and knowledge of our people, Living Well that points toward living in community, brotherhood, and especially in complementariness.

Article 8: From the experience of our sovereign communities, we plan to wake up, galvanize communal energy, consolidate and rebuild life and the community ways of life of our ancestors, where life is communal, harmonious and self-sufficient. Rebuilding together life and the economy in the countryside and small towns, based on our cultural practices and community, the wealth of our communities, fertile lands, clean water and air.

Article 9: To ensure Food Sovereignty, we resolve ourselves to return our communities to being sovereign and productive, to build strong local economies that achieve communal and national self-sufficiency from all the wealth bequeathed to us by our ancestors, to not be dependant on anyone, to prioritize local production for local consumption, using our own knowledge and local materials. Promote the interdependence between our communities, organizing our local and national production between self-sufficient regions to supply them with our own production and the exchange and distribution of products between our communities and the different regions by altitude (eco-strata).

Article 10: We seek to reinstate agriculture in the communities, in Mother Nature and in the cultivation of basic food needs that conform with agricultural practices that are a part of the traditional life of our communities. Ensure that food produced through agriculture is for humans, not for cultivation of agro-fuels, for cars, that Mother Earth does not become a commodity based on a lack of gasoline and diesel supply. Ensure water as a natural resource of life for all living beings on this planet, preventing the economic models from bringing climate change that affects water sources.

Article 11: We assume to be the protagonists of new destinies of change so that together we can strengthen the progress and the ownership of our principles, values, codes and knowledge, of our identity and the practice of our spirituality. Recover our own communication and enhance our own learning in social schools that are our community, where we create communal energy and learn that we cannot live outside of communal life.

Article 12: We offer the world our principles and codes of culture, spirituality, linguistics and history, the knowledge and ancestral wisdom of our grandparents, the historical memory that lies in the architecture, ceramics, textiles, in the whole saved Wisdom that our elders whisper in the silence and we can "read" in their wrinkles and books made of stone, the talk of our ancestors through the lakes and seas moisten our tongues, the ancestral events that our genes awaken and that speak through us, the mountains and snow that dialogue with us, the winds that blow in our ears.

Article 13: Finally, as representatives and legitimate leaders from the First Sovereign Nations and Original Sovereign Nations from Abya Yala, we agree to work together as brothers, from this day forward on issues of mutual concern, convinced that our brotherhood will positively and immediately impact our Mother Earth. Inspired by our spirituality, identity and cultural practices, we will work together to stop the destruction of the planet and all those attempts that seek to criminalize our most sacred symbols and practices, and build understanding, cooperation and brotherly ties between our respective peoples, sovereign nations and states in order to rebuild the brotherhood among all our ancestors who lived in Yala Abya, to protect Mother Nature and ensure the sustainability and preservation of our planet Earth, to build horizontally a culture of patience, a culture of dialogue and especially a culture of life, a way of life that is not dependent on the excessive consumption of non-renewable energy that emits greenhouse gases but is based on the harmonic relationship between man and nature.

GIVING WITNESS THEREOF, we the undersigned, acknowledge that this Joint Statement, signed the twenty-third day of April 2009, in the city of Anchorage, Alaska, fully interprets the desire of our peoples to work under the principles of good will, balance, consensus, respect for life, complementariness, non-discrimination and good faith.