EVERY PLANT…
Every Plant… is a “church version” of the earlier article GENOCIDE … ECOCIDE.
The phrase Every Plant… comes from Matthew 15, specifically verse 13:
10 And he called the people to him and said to them, “Hear and understand: 11 it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but what comes out of the mouth; this defiles a person.” 12 Then the disciples came and said to him, “Do you know that the Pharisees were offended when they heard this saying?” 13 He answered, “Every plant that my heavenly Father has not planted will be rooted up. 14 Let them alone; they are blind guides. And if the blind lead the blind, both will fall into a pit.” 15 But Peter said to him, “Explain the parable to us.” 16 And he said, “Are you also still without understanding? 17 Do you not see that whatever goes into the mouth passes into the stomach and is expelled? 18 But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this defiles a person. 19 For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander. 20 These are what defile a person. But to eat with unwashed hands does not defile anyone.”
I’m using the timeless promise “Every plant than my heavenly Father has not planted will be rooted up” as a modern church context for this GENOCIDE … ECOCIDE article by looking at what happened in February 2012.
From Wikipedia: “The World Council of Churches is a worldwide inter-church organization founded in 1948. Its members today include the Assyrian Church of the East, the Oriental Orthodox Churches, most jurisdictions of the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Old Catholic Church, Anglican Communion, most mainline Protestant churches (such as the Lutheran, Mennonite, Methodist, Moravian, and Reformed) and some evangelical Protestant churches (such as the Baptist and Pentecostal). Notably, the Roman Catholic Church is not a member, although it sends accredited observers to meetings.”
In February 2012, the Executive Committee of the World Council of Churches formally renounced the Doctrine of Discovery. Based on two Papal Bulls (the Pope speaking in highest authority) in the 14th Century, the Doctrine of Discovery became the religious and legal basis for European colonization of indigenous peoples.
In it’s formal renunciation of the Doctrine of Discovery, the World Council of Churches is encouraging member churches to develop Advocacy Plans for the indigenous peoples in their area. Has your congregation developed one yet?
GENOCIDE … ECOCIDE
INTRODUCTION-GENOCIDE-ECOCIDE-CONCLUSION
INTRODUCTION:
I’m part of the Arts & Culture committee of Los Angeles for the Poor Peoples Campaign: a national call for moral revival (PPC). After ten years of advocacy work, in June 2012 I was made an honorary Gabrielino-Tongva in a sacred ceremony through the San Gabriel Band of Mission Indians. My Native name is Woorypot Moompet, translated as Man of the Sea.
This short paper is inspired by the work of the California PPC. Forty days of Non-Violent Action takes place in Sacramento along with 40 other State Capitals and Washington DC from May 13 to June 23. The Four Pillars of the PPC are Poverty, Racism, Militarism, and Environmental Degradation.
GENOCIDE:
Genocide — from the Greek word for Tribe/Race and the Latin word for kill.
Winner of the 2016 Los Angeles Times Book Prize in History — “An American Genocide: the United States and the California Indian Catastrophe” was written by UCLA History Professor Benjamin Madley.
Some endorsements:
“Madley has documented his charge of genocide with prosecutorial ferocity”.Peter Nabokov, New York Times Review of Books
“Gruesomely thorough … others have described some of these campaigns, but never in such strong terms and with so much blame placed directly on the United States government”. Alexander Nazaryan, Newsweek
“California history tells us much about the gold rush and the mass migration it inspired, but very little of the mass destruction of its native peoples. Benjamin Madley corrects the record with his gripping story of what really happened: the actual genocide of a vibrant civilization thousands of years in the making”. Governor Edmond G. Brown, Jr — California
From a May 2016 article by Benjamin Madley in the Los Angeles Times:
“Between 1846 and 1870, California’s Indian population plunged from perhaps 150,000 to 30,000. Diseases, dislocation and starvation caused many of these deaths, but the near-annihilation of the California Indians was not the unavoidable result of two civilizations coming into contact for the first time. It was genocide, sanctioned and facilitated by California officials.
Neither the U.S. government nor the state of California has acknowledged that the California Indian catastrophe fits the two-part legal definition of genocide set forth by the United Nations Genocide Convention in 1948. According to the convention, perpetrators must first demonstrate their “intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such.” Second, they must commit one of the five genocidal acts listed in the convention: “Killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.”
California’s Legislature first convened in 1850, and one of its initial orders of business was banning all Indians from voting, barring those with “one-half of Indian blood” or more from giving evidence for or against whites in criminal cases, and denying Indians the right to serve as jurors. California legislators later banned Indians from serving as attorneys. In combination, these laws largely shut Indians out of participation in and protection by the state legal system. This amounted to a virtual grant of impunity to those who attacked them.
That same year, state legislators endorsed unfree Indian labor by legalizing white custody of Indian minors and Indian prisoner leasing. In 1860, they extended the 1850 act to legalize “indenture” of “any Indian.” These laws triggered a boom in violent kidnappings while separating men and women during peak reproductive years, both of which accelerated the decline of the California Indian population. Some Indians were treated as disposable laborers. One lawyer recalled: “Los Angeles had its slave mart [and] thousands of honest, useful people were absolutely destroyed in this way.” Between 1850 and 1870, L.A.’s Indian population fell from 3,693 to 219.
It is not an exaggeration to say that California legislators also established a state-sponsored killing machine. California governors called out or authorized no fewer than 24 state militia expeditions between 1850 and 1861, which killed at least 1,340 California Indians. State legislators also passed three bills in the 1850s that raised up to $1.51 million to fund these operations — a great deal of money at the time — for past and future anti-Indian militia operations. By demonstrating that the state would not punish Indian killers, but instead reward them, militia expeditions helped inspire vigilantes to kill at least 6,460 California Indians between 1846 and 1873.
The U.S. Army and their auxiliaries also killed at least 1,680 California Indians between 1846 and 1873. Meanwhile, in 1852, state politicians and U.S. senators stopped the establishment of permanent federal reservations in California, thus denying California Indians land while exposing them to danger.
State endorsement of genocide was only thinly veiled. In 1851, California Gov. Peter Burnett declared that “a war of extermination will continue to be waged … until the Indian race becomes extinct.” In 1852, U.S. Sen. John Weller — who became California’s governor in 1858 — went further. He told his colleagues in the Senate that California Indians ‘will be exterminated before the onward march of the white man,” arguing that “the interest of the white man demands their extinction”.”
National poverty statistics according to the U.S. Census show Native Americans have the most poverty followed by Blacks a close second and Latinos a close third. According to the Census, 696,600 Californians identify as Natives, the largest in the country. The second highest number of Natives is in Oklahoma. Many of the current California Indians came here through the Indian Relocation Act of 1956.
A major obstacle for Native Tribes of California is the challenge in getting Federal recognition. Federal recognition of Tribes brings financial assistance and the ability to engage Washington in Government to Government relationship. Of the 196 State recognized California Tribes, only 106 have Federal recognition. One reason it’s difficult is the Genocide makes it difficult for California Tribes to show the cultural history Washington requires for Federal recognition.
ECOCIDE:
The California PPC is also using the word Ecocide for the Environmental Degradation Pillar of the PPC.
From Wikipedia: “Ecocide or ecocatastrophe is the extensive damage to, destruction of or loss of ecosystem(s) of a given territory, whether by human agency or by other, to such an extent that peaceful enjoyment by the inhabitants of that territory has been or will be severely diminished. Ecocide may have been previously used to refer to a very potent pesticide, particularly 1080 (sodium fluorocetrate). The term ecocide is more recently used to refer to the destructive impact of humanity on its own natural environment. As a group of complex organisms we are committing ecocide through unsustainable exploitation of the planet’s resources.”
One of the powerful dynamics to emerge at Standing Rock in 2016 was fusion between the Native American movement and the Environmental Movement. So much so that in Los Angeles leaders of the Environmental Movement began approaching Native American leaders and telling them they need to lead the Environmental Movement.
Natives have a deep cultural and spiritual connection to Mother Earth. Native culture, similar to Japanese culture, is very much based on honor and so places high value on ritual and protocol.
The word Ecocide fits Native belief systems. Ecosystems are profoundly interconnected in ways it can be difficult to perceive. Pour chemicals in a pond and a tree a hundred yards away dies. Why? The ecosystem.
CONCLUSION:
One of the major aspects of Native American culture is the circle. Circle is most often expressed with the Talking Circle and the Circle Dance.
In the book “The Circle Way: a leader in every chair” by Christina Baldwin and Ann Linnea, they propose two shapes define Western Civilization — the triangle and the circle. The circle has no beginning or end and every point is equal to every other point. A triangle has three distinct points connected by three distinct lines.
The book says, and I agree, that Western culture is unbalanced with a lack of circle.
“The Circle Way” tells the story of Christina Baldwin sitting on a plane next to a man and as they strike up a conversation she tells him about circle and triangle with her on her way to conduct a workshop on circle. His response was he’s an airline pilot himself and if people don’t do exactly what he tells them to do when he tells them to do it, alot of people could die. They conclude their conversation agreeing both triangle and circle are important with her gravitating towards circle and him gravitating towards triangle.
I want to take that story one step forward. It’s not just that both circle and triangle are important; they actually need each other and each functions best when they complement one another.
Triangle, the giving and receiving of direction through authority, needs the consensus building spirit, the sharing of experience and opinion in safety found in circle, to be healthy and mature. Healthy and mature triangle empowers circle to explore, to discover, to go deeper.
We are in the 50th anniversary of the original Poor Peoples Campaign. A trilogy of Pulitzer Prize winning books by historian Taylor Branch tells the story of the Civil Rights Movement using Moses as a metaphor for Dr. King. The first book is“Parting the Waters: America in the King Years 1955–63” then “Pillar of Fire: America in the King Years: 1963–65” and finally “At Canaan’s Edge: America in the King Years 1965–68”.
On behalf of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Dr. King announced the launch of the Poor Peoples Campaign on December 4, 1967 with a Poor Peoples Campaign March on Washington planned for the following summer.
Dr. King decided to hold a weekend strategy summit mid-March in Atlanta and dispatched his trusted lieutenant, Bernard Lafayette, to travel the country looking for non-black leaders of poor people to invite to this summit at Paschal’s Restaurant and Motor Lodge.
The summit was tense, held together by King’s credibility, as the seventy-eight leaders wrestled with this possibility of a new coalition.
From “At Canaans Edge”:
“At Paschal’s, Tijerina asked what mention of land issues would be offered in return for nonviolent discipline, and King said the answer flowed from the movement’s nature: a common willingness to sacrifice put all their grievances on equal footing. On reflection, Tijerina proposed that particular stories from Native American groups be dramatized first in Washington, followed by black people second and his own Spanish-speaking groups last. His offer, which deferred both to historical order and the spirit of King’s presentation, received acclamation that extended to Chicano leaders sometimes at odds with Tijerina, such as Corky Gonzalez of Denver. The summit closed on a wave of immense relief. Myles Horton, who helped recruit the white Appalachians expressed euphoria after nearly four decades of cross-cultural isolation at his Highlander Center. ‘I believe we caught a glimpse of the future,’ he told Andrew Young.”