I just added a wonderful clip to the video section, showing how communities in Northern Canada are taking back their food security and how community gardens and gardening are changing the dynamics of their daily lives.

I think this is excellent watching for those of us in the ‘developing world’ whose food security is dependent on Barbados Shipping and Trading.

Excellent watch, and I found it on the most excellent site: http://intercontinentalcry.org/

via Video – Growing Hope in Northern Manitoba Communities | ndelamiko.com.

In an AP report, briefing activities and news in the Caribbean, I found a small story on the illegal adoption of Carib babies.

It seems couples from neighbouring Martinique, Guadeloupe and other islands, are travelling to Dominica, and convincing impoverished Carib mothers to give their babies up.

The families are bypassing the legal procedures, and after the children reach adolescence, they are sending these displaced children home to their biological parents.

Francis Joseph, who works with the Christian Children Fund in Dominica says, “Babies are babies, they are cute and nice. But now that the child has grown up, you can’t just send the back.”

The story goes on to say, that the Dominican government, nor the independent social workers on the island can estimate the number of children taken. However, 15 teenagers who returned home this year alone, has been cause for alarm. Although, this is not quite as dramatic and certainly not as institutionalised, this almost echoes the same kind of stolen children syndrome that was brought to the movie screen in Rabbit Proof Fence.

I wonder how these children must feel, to be given away, lured away, taken away and raised by people whose concept of parenthood includes a disposability of their responsibilities towards these children. How can you want a child so much as to go to such lengths to get one, and then get rid of the child when they no longer satisfy your egotistical and selfish motivations and appetites.

It’s disturbing to contemplate, but the Caribbean community needs to be more responsible towards it’s indigenous populations. This report is merely another example in the further weakening of the Carib communities, and who is to say it’s not happening elsewhere? Who is to know how many of these children are growing up in conditions that speak to the emotional cruelty of their adopted ‘parents.’

My ancestors must be greatly saddened by the ongoing plight of their children, to be used up and wasted by societies that care nothing for the people they’ve deposed.

This story hurts me on a personal level, because I have roots in Dominica, and who knows if my cousins are part of this tragedy and are somewhere hurting and in need of family torn from their roots, alienated and marginalised?

During all the talk of reparations in the Caribbean, and the plight of it’s

African descendants, it is easy to forget that we stand on ground that once belonged to someone else. It’s easy to forget that we have usurped this land from others, when we are so occupied with squabbling over breadcrumbs. It is easy to forget them because for 500 years the Arawak Nation has been a deposed minority with a stifled voice.

These days though, that voice is starting to get louder and unashamedly angrier.

Three years ago, when I interviewed Damon while still a cub reporter for this very magazine, I got a very personal story. We talked of his family, and the death of his first daughter. How his title as Fifth Isau of the Bariria Korobahado Lokono (Eagle Clan Arawaks), came down to him through his great grandmother, the last Arawak Princess of the Eagle Clan Arawaks in Guyana (1879-1928), before Damon’s new blood and fire came along.

Then he was a 23-year-old man, whose passionate idealism and activism on behalf of all Guyana’s Amerindians would lead him into both dangerous situations and court the displeasure of governments that would rather activists like him not shake the status quo. He was one of the few who had taken up the reins of leadership to help create a Pan-Tribal Confederacy that was proud of it’s heritage and to fight for full recognition by the countries that sprung up around them of the Amerindians’ inalienable right to self-government.

When you first meet him, he strikes you as a quiet almost shy man. He speaks so softly sometimes, it belies the gritty steel of what he has to say. His people are hungry, they are poor, they are denied access to their own vast natural resources which could provide all 50,000 of them with tertiary level education and full employment; and the governments of the Caribbean do not care.

The genocide that wiped millions of Amerindians from the face of the Caribbean, is barely a murmur when talk of reparation and justice are being bandied about and the last remnants of a once massive population are yet to be treated with dignity and concern.

Damon cannot wait for the enlightenment of the masses, the truly gross injustice that continues to this day has forced him to take action. He has clothed himself in a history that that reaches far into antiquity and obscurity, and taken the burden of Amerindian suffering upon his shoulders. He does not preach anti-government vitriol, his concern is for the human rights of his people.

He is 26 years old now. A telephone call from Brazil earlier this week confirmed that he is the only candidate who came forward to take the post as Sovereign Chief of the Pan-Tribal Confederacy, and his election to the highest post in the what is poised to become the traditional government of the first autonomous Amerindian state in the Caribbean – is a foregone conclusion (the formal election will take place on December 31st).

His family is growing. He has a new baby daughter, Princess Sabantho Aderi (Beautiful Little Dove) who is the first Arawak born in Barbados in over 500 years, and who joins brothers Hatuey and Tecumseh, Damon’s father still thinks he needs to get a ‘real’ job; his mother still worries about him when he is dancing the fine line between diplomacy and open rebellion, but he is still a warrior.

He is still fighting against the myopia of a region that refuses to acknowledge their defrauded Amerindian landlords’ presence. In that respect we in the Caribbean are no better than cold, callous America, who has wiped out entire cultures in pursuit of a pie in the sky and greed.

May the world fill up with people who illuminate the truth, and who are right to do so. May Damon’s fight end one day when the human race no longer disenfranchises ethnic groups merely because they don’t fight back or can’t. Until then the Amerindian struggle (and Damon’s) is our struggle.

First Published: December 4, 1999

The Pan Tribal Confederacy of Indigenous Tribal Nations, is trying to raise money to help Amerindian communities in Guyana develop sustainability.

Among their projects that need sponsorship are a fish-rearing programme, designed to eliminate mercury poisoned fish from the diet of these communities.

They are also trying to develop an iguana breeding programme to bring back the population of the Iguana in the Pakuri Arawak Territory, in Guyana. Because of over hunting, the local iguana population has dwindled dramatically. This is part of their very specific conservation efforts of the Arawak territory, that also include a wildlife sanctuary project.

Other projects: an Arawak-Lokono school, to work against the dying out of the Lokono language, a documentary project to preserve and introduce Arawak culture in South America and to provide school children a glimpse into the Amerindian history of the Caribbean.

The dollar amounts that the Confederacy are asking for are nominal and piddling to a rich country, but it means survival for this vanishing race.

Please take the time to visit The Pan-Tribal Confederacy’s Project Page, and if at all possible, contribute to their efforts.

By Alistair Scrutton

MALARGUE, Argentina (Reuters) – In this desolate corner of Argentina, scientists are using a network of observatory stations spread over an area 10 times the size of Paris to uncover one of the the universe’s deepest secrets.

Researchers have littered 1,160 square miles

with hundreds of UFO-like containers to scour the heavens for mysterious, rare and powerful cosmic rays that bombard Earth.

Subatomic particles known as “cosmic bullets” are one of science’s great unknowns. They pack more energy than any known particle in the universe, and determining what propels the “cosmic bullets” could challenge the laws of physics, such as the theory of relativity.

It could “make Albert Einstein turn in his grave,” said Carlos Hojvat, an astrophysicist who manages the project funded by nations including the United States, Argentina and Brazil.

“We call these rays messengers from the cosmos. They could tell us about universe’s origins. We are on the very edge of science and the unknown,” he said.

The $50 million Pierre Auger Observatory in western Argentina was originally a project of the 1980 Nobel Prize-winner James Cronin of the University of Chicago.

Observatory construction began in Malargue, Argentina, in 2000. This year, the observatory started to measure particles blasted onto the atmosphere from outer space.

Scientists are unsure from where these tiny, but powerful, rays come. The rays are so rare that one hits an area the size of a football stadium every century.

The size of this observatory will give researchers unparalleled access to the “cosmic bullets” by allowing the measurement of about 50 rays every year.

Some scientists say the rays may be left over from the start of the universe, split seconds after the Big Bang. Others say they could be emitted from black holes.

Either way, discovering how the rays work will help explain how the universe operates, Hojvat said.

‘THESE RAYS SHOULDN’T EXIST’

Low-energy particles constantly rain down on Earth, generating a background radiation long known to science. But it is the punch the “cosmic bullets” pack that baffles scientists.

“Physics offers us no explanation. These rays shouldn’t exist,’ said Xavier Bertou, a French astrophysicist who works on the Malargue project.

In 1991, U.S. researchers discovered a subatomic particle traveling toward Earth with energy inside it six times more powerful than Einstein’s theory of relativity allowed.

According to the observatory’s Web site, it was as if “they went out to catch butterflies and caught an F-111″ fighter plane that can travel at supersonic speeds.

“One possibility is Einstein’s laws may not work,” Bertou said.

So the observatory was built on the plains of Malargue, Argentina, to study the cosmic ray phenomenon. The area’s flat land, clear skies and location — about 3,960 feet above sea level — made it an ideal spot to take accurate measurements of the “cosmic bullets.”

By 2006, about 1,600 particle recorders — roundish containers filled with tonnes of pure water — will be spread over the plain. More than 200 recorders, set about a mile apart, are up and running already.

Each of the 1,600 particle recorders act as a sensor. When a cosmic ray hits the Earth’s atmosphere it “sprays” particles. The more powerful the ray, the bigger the “spray of particles,” which are detected by the sensors.

When a ray hit the sensors, information about the size and direction of the ray is transmitted to a computer so scientists can later analyze it.

“We can guess within about 40 meters where the particle would have fallen. We’ll go … and place a flag and of course drink some more champagne,” Bertou said with a laugh.

Researchers say the immense power of these particles could be harnessed one day as a new energy source.

“It was the discovery of electrons that was crucial for electricity use,” Hojvat said. “Practical impact often follows theory.”

REUTERS

Okay, you guys may not know this about me, but I come from an assimilated Amerindian family.

We have a good deal of African blood, with a healthy dose of various European ethnicities, but we are mostly Ameridian, Caribs to be exact.

My mother says that there are many families like ours, assimilated into other cultures, and going under the guise of African or what is called in the Caribbean as ‘red’ aka ‘coloured’ aka ‘mulatto’.

I have, since I was a little girl, identified strongly with Native American and Amerindian populations, and one of my best friends in primary school turned out to be the Eagle Clan in Guyana’s Hereditary Chief. (I knew we were vibesy for a reason, I was the only girl allowed in his gang!) And this was an instinctual affinity, because although my family acknowledges our Amerindian roots, we have no knowledge of it as a culture or as an identity.

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