Indigenous Rights
I witnessed a world where development rapes and destroys the sacredness of the indigenous ways. It carves up the land for personal and corporate gain, separating the native peoples from all that they hold sacred. The Bolivian Indians told me that they now have to walk their path with borrowed laws, borrowed policies and borrowed customs. Many Indians lose access to land and are forced to migrate from their forest homes. One woman said that moving to the city is like becoming an orphan. This is a world that puts the indigenous in museums and their images on postage stamps forgetting that they are living, breathing, loving people. We trivialize the culture of those who have both blessed and preserved this earth.

I stood on a rocky outcrop at 15,000 feet above sea level in the Bolivian Andes, struggling to keep my equilibrium in the high altitude. I had followed the instructions of the locals and kept an ample supply of Coca leaves in my mouth during the long bus ride over the high mountain passes which accounts for the fact that I could stand up at all. I looked down on a small community of stone huts and saw a different rhythm to life. Here people live as shepherds, spending their days roaming the mountains with their sheep and llamas. They live their life as a mantra and appear untouched by the madness of the world. Yet they are not untouched. Natural gas pipelines run through their land. High tension power lines are strung over their heads while few homes have electricity. None benefit from natural gas or have safe water.

Natural Resources
Bolivia is rich in natural resources but many years of corrupt dictatorships have sold off the rights to these assets to foreign business leaving most Bolivians to live without even the basic necessities. We met with leaders of the Yuki, a tribe of hunter/gatherers who have lived their entire lives on the edge of the Amazon Basin. The Yuki community has less than 200 surviving members and are being forced into towns by pressure from economic interests amassing great tracks of land. They are dying of a fungal infection in their lungs and are unable get or afford medical help. They have been visited by missionaries who have left nothing but broken promises. Their Pacha Mama or sacred mother earth is being drained and privatized. Again the indigenous have something else borrowed, the Christian church.

Plant vs Drug
Coca leaves have been consumed and used for thousands of years in Bolivia and are a key element for life, health and sacred ritual. Coca in its natural form provides nourishment for the body, combats the effects of life in high altitude and is vital to every aspect of their lives. The tiny amount of Cocaine in the Coca leaf bears no resemblance to the manufactured Cocaine sold on the streets of NY city yet the US government expects us to naively believe that eliminating the Coca plant will eliminate drug abuse in the US. US policy bent on eradicating the coca plant is irrational at best and cruel at worst. Cocalaros (Coca farmers) recognize the importance of taking Coca out of the cocaine track but also know the importance of preserving it for the value that it has to offer.

Mining
The Huanuni Mines are the richest tin mines in the world and rising tin prices on the world market have fueled desires by both independent and state-employed miners to expand operations. Mining is a rare source of steady employment for Bolivians. When prices began rising in the 1990s, unemployed miners began working idle mines and formed cooperatives. Desperate for work, the unequal access to the mines has pitted brother against brother and neighbor against neighbor in bloody conflict as Bolivia struggles to regain control of her natural resources.

There is a troubling arrogance in the air among the world's most fortunate. Economic and social dislocations are considered “inevitable” on the rough road to capital driven democracy. The gulf between wealth and poverty grows deeper and wider as the middle migrates towards poverty.
Native people have lived organically with the land. There is intrinsic value in their customs where all forms of life are respected for their part in the cosmos. Capitalization plunders that which is sacred by treating nature as a disposable commodity.

History cannot be unlived. It will take great courage to not to repeatedly relive our mistakes and to set forth a new way. We must evolve the wisdom to live life in balance and to look to the indigenous people for this wisdom.