How we can undo injustice and help indigenous communities

He was in his mid- 20s, a young, dedicated defender of the trees and the ecology of his native Amazon rain forests and guardian of his community. Paulo Paulino Guajajara is the latest of many Indigenous People shot and killed in a cruel and treacherous murder by illegal loggers. His companion, Laércio Souza Silva, was seriously wounded but survived. It happened in the Arariboia reservation in Maranhao State, Brazil.

the members of the indigenous Guajajara community of the Amazon have organized themselves as forest guardians to stop the encroachments of loggers and agricorporations on their ancestral lands and rain forests. the corporate elite covet the land for growing monocrops like soya, cattle-raising and mining, and try to drive away the Indigenous People. the people in these remote regions are also victims of coronavirus and many have died, infected no doubt by the invaders and exploiters of the forests.

forest trees are chain- sawed to death and burnt on a funeral pyre of devastation and greed. What the exploiters deliver is death and destruction. What the indigenous communities want is life, peace and solitude and what is rightfully theirs.

In the Philippines, 46 land defenders and protectors of ancestral rights of filipino Indigenous People were murdered in 2019 on Negros Island and in Mindanao. they have been wrongly branded subversives by government officials out to crush dissent and silence opposition by Indigenous People.

the intensity of the incursions has greatly increased since the dismissal and death of environmental campaigner Gina Lopez who, as secretary of the Department of environment and Natural resources, cancelled dozens of licenses and permits for mining firms for violating environmental protection rules and failing to respect the rights of the indigenous communities. Since then, the murder rate of environmentalists has greatly increased to 46. Previously, in 2018, the number of land defenders killed was 29. the Philippines was declared the world’s most dangerous place for environmental protectors in 2019.

the sacred rights of Indigenous People who have occupied and dwelled in Philippine lands and forests for thousands of years, while clearly stated in the Constitution and law, are trampled upon and ignored. the Indigenous People are disgracefully considered inferior human beings subjected to racist slurs and humiliation and their rights continually violated. the environmental nongovernment organizations Mongabay and Kalikasan keep records of the number of environment defenders killed. they said, “63 percent comprise agribusiness workers and farmers, followed by government officials and forest rangers (35 percent), Indigenous Peoples (20 percent), and lawyers and church workers (4 percent).”

In Brazil, the campaign of President Jair Bolsonaro to open up the Amazon and allow agri-business to destroy the forests for soya production and cattle farmers has been called a genocide against the Indigenous People. the people will lose their lives, families, culture and way of life. they risk their lives every day to protect their rights and the environment. Guajajara was the most recent victim.

Millions of unique wildlife will also perish and disappear from the face of the earth as the landgrabbers cut and burn the trees and destroy the wildlife habitat. A July 2019 report by NGOs stated that over 7,200 square miles of the Brazilian rainforests were deforested and burnt between 2017 and 2019.

With the destruction of the rainforests around the world, the absorption of carbon dioxide has greatly decreased, causing greater global warming. the more than 1 billion beef and dairy cattle on the planet emit methane gas that is even more destructive to the atmosphere than carbon dioxide. the global warming dries the forest and woodlands around the world, and they are devastated by wildfires. More than a billion creatures and many people were killed in the massive bushfires that raged across Australia recently. the

Guardian newspaper reported that a royal commission was told by a professor that “… 96,000 Aboriginal and torres Strait Islander people, including 35,000 children, were affected by the fires… That amounts to 29 percent of the indigenous population in affected states, and 12 percent of the national Indigenous population.”

the United Nations Declaration on the rights of Indigenous Peoples in 2007 set a standard for national laws to follow. Philippine laws protecting Indigenous People are weak and mining and agri- corporations run by local elites exploit loopholes to violate indigenous ancestral land rights.

Indigenous Peoples are the original inhabitants and occupiers of the lands and they have natural rights over the mountains, forests, seas and lakes. they ought to be honored, respected and affirmed in dignity and the first beneficiaries of wealth generated from the natural resources, as original owners of the sources of wealth stolen from them everywhere.

A great wrong perpetuated by invaders and never righted was committed against the Aeta of the Philippines, the original occupants of the islands for some 20,000 or 30,000 years, who have been driven into poverty. Most Indigenous Peoples have practically no representation and have few spokesmen. they are victims of systematic racism, rejected and treated as throwaway people. When and how can such gross social and racial injustice and selfishness be overcome? How will the world change for the better?

Great social and environmental change to undo wrongs and injustice, to restore human dignity and to overcome evil and poverty so people can live in peace, respecting and trusting each other, can only happen when inner change is pursued by the people as a whole.

that change can only be realized when one of the greatest and most profound virtues, a heart-felt feeling of the human person, is offered, accepted and lived. that is compassion. this is a strong feeling of empathy and concern for the plight and suffering of others. It empowers and creates a desire to help strangers. It is a spiritual force that inspires and compels a person to take effective action to alleviate the suffering, deprivation, oppression or exploitation of any kind and it never seeks a reward or imposes conditions.

to bring about compassion that will transform the unjust and uncaring world, we need to have compassion ourselves and to act upon it so that by example we will inspire others to show it and cause it to spread. then, then the people of compassion can change the world for the greater good of all people.