Indigenous Leaders Gather In NM, Dismiss UN Efforts: "I Have Nothing To Say To Them"

[hatrack]

EDIT

Here amid the hills and mesas that painter Georgia O'Keeffe made famous, these elders presented a different palette with which to look at environmental woes. They placed little faith in the weighty United Nations process that opened Monday and will draw thousands of people to Warsaw over the next two weeks to try to find a way to stem emissions of greenhouse gases.

"I have nothing to say to them," said Angaangaq, an Inuk known here as Uncle and who since 1975 has been "runner" for his elders in Greenland, spreading their words worldwide. "Not one of those United Nations people responsible has ever changed. They are orators of the highest quality, but ... the time for excuses has gone long ago."

The dismissal of the UN was all the more striking given that it came from those who, in the 1970s, spearheaded the quest to have the world body recognize indigenous rights. Forty years later, they have moved on. Oren Lyons is faithkeeper of the Turtle Clan of the Onondaga Nation in the Haudenosaunee, formerly the Six Nations Iroquois Confederacy. In the late 1970s he saw the UN as a "beacon" that would finally begin to address and restore indigenous rights. No longer.

He spent years traveling to and talking before various global forums. At a summit in Davos, Switzerland, a few years ago he realized he had a "guaranteed prophecy" to offer. It still applies today: "You will meet again next year, and nothing will have changed."

EDIT

http://tdcplone.dailyclimate.org/tdc-newsroom/2013/11/ancient-voices-climate-change

[Nihil]

1. "You will meet again next year, and nothing will have changed."

He's not the only one to have noticed this.

It's just such a shame that none of the people who really *could* make such
a difference actually gives a shit as they are all in the plutocracy who will be
insulated from the effects for such a long time that they believe themselves
to be totally invulnerable.