The Amazon storms the COP30 climate summit

Indigenous peoples do not offer us hope; They present the truth that demands that we dismantle the systems that make hope necessary, he writes Yuki Lindley.

HUNDREDS OF INDIGENOUS people flocked from Amazon lands storm The gates of the last COP30 summit, a powerful reminder that the appropriation of indigenous lands has always been at the heart of capitalism and its parasitic relationship with the lands it colonizes. Indigenous peoples are the living embodiment of this truth and that is why they continue to be at the forefront of environmental struggles.

They embody a very different relationship with the land; They understand that their lives are deeply intertwined with the health of the soil. Their relationship with the land is based on an understanding of tutelage that sees the land as the legacy of their teachers, ancestors and children; it is a relationship of respect and responsibility that calls on them to protect their land against those who seek to destroy it.

Land has meaning when one is a native of the land; It becomes much more than possession, and destroying it becomes unimaginable. As we see vividly in Palestine, the wanton destruction of the colonizers stands in stark contrast to the Palestinians’ desperate protection of their ancient olive trees and ancestral lands.

It is becoming increasingly clear to many that global capitalism is incompatible with a healthy, thriving planet, but at this late stage, it is an unfair burden to look to Indigenous peoples for hope without considering our own position as settlers and beneficiaries of colonization.

when you were young Greta Thunberg once scolded global leaders:

“How dare you come to us for hope?”

But once again, global leaders and those in the West appear to have placed the burden of hope on those who contributed the least but fought the hardest with the fewest resources to protect their homeland from those who pursued it. ‘Tales of endless economic growth’.

Indigenous people see clearly because they have a worldview that is completely outside Western liberal perspectives, based on an understanding of land as property and an ideal of individual freedoms rather than a relational understanding of connectedness and interdependence. Indigenous peoples understood the interconnectedness of all life long before Western science caught up, and through careful observation of human nature, they created social systems that guarded against our more destructive impulses: selfishness, greed, and hoarding of resources.

They based their laws on their connection to the Land, ensuring that their relationship with the land became the blueprint for their relationship with each other. This political system allowed for the diversity of developing nations; About 250 language groups coexisted in the land we now call Australia, with no need to create a language for domination; A word meaning slavery, colonization or genocide.

We desperately need Indigenous futures; by this we mean centering Indigenous perspectives and worldviews as we imagine our future. However, it would be unfair to place the burden of hope on Indigenous peoples without acknowledging our position within global systems that prioritize our lives over the lives of the majority. Climate justice requires that those who benefit most from the destruction of the planet also bear the greatest responsibility for undoing the damage they have caused.

But it also requires us to accurately diagnose the root causes of environmental destruction, the flawed thinking that got us here, and work to dismantle these colonial systems and create space for Indigenous relationships with the land and each other. We need Indigenous futures and social/political systems, but this requires breaking free from the current colonial structures we live under, systems that we in the West continue to benefit from.

Western liberalism arose to justify the new social classes that capitalism was creating in Europe and conditioned us to view ourselves as propertied individuals in whom the hoarding of wealth was normalized. Capitalism often rewards selfishness, greed, and privilege, convincing ordinary people that they have more in common with billionaires than refugees and that poverty is inevitable because resources are scarce and competition is necessary. Overwork and exhaustion are valued, and corporate media keeps us cynical, passive, and compliant.

The few who disrupt the status quo, challenging the system by closing weapons factories, standing between bulldozers and old-growth forests, and disrupting rush hour traffic to draw attention to the fact that the world is on fire, are seen as too radical, free-riding, or naive. If only they had asked nicely, corporate media would have complained instead of interrupting hard-working people trying to get to work.

But we cannot hope to dismantle the systems and thought that brought us to this point by simply working within those systems. People often enter institutions like law enforcement, politics, or education to create the change they want to see, but long before they can change the system, they find that the system is changing them.

As an American author and activist Audre Lorde famous in question:

‘The master’s tools will never destroy the master’s house.’

To change these institutions, we need to work collectively not only from within but also from outside. It’s great to see more indigenous people than before at the COP30 summit with the Brazilian president in attendance Luiz Lula da Silva We put indigenous people at the center of COP30 and insist that they have decision-making capabilities, not just representation.

While such an alliance is welcome in the halls of power, we must remain open-minded about the colonial underpinnings of institutions such as the following. United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCCThe organization that organizes the COP summits. This is not an invitation to lose hope, but a challenge to hold on to the truth.

For those living comfortably in the heart of empire, hope is seductive, comforting, and for most remains passive. We see indigenous people storming into COP30 and we are hopeful, then we move on without assuming our own position as beneficiaries of colonization. Hope without reality easily becomes an opioid for the masses.

When colonists insist on hope without showing any willingness to take a hit, make sacrifices, and take responsibility, hope becomes another tool of oppression because it is hollow and designed to calm and maintain the status quo. After all, things aren’t bad enough in the empire headquarters yet.

Indigenous people often act with hope even when they know there is no hope. Perhaps this is shortsightedness that comes from never having had the privilege of not understanding the enormity of the task, the inherent injustice of colonial structures, and the intent to dismantle them and seize their lands. The hope of the natives is not passive because it is in their existence, their determination or sumud As the Palestinians show us; their resistance is the source of their collective strength and embodied hope.

To be colonized is to understand the necessity of community, relationality, and collective care for each other and the land; because without these, no one can survive the inhumane environment of colonization.

So, to ensure that “Indigenous futures” do not become just another hopeful slogan in environmental spaces, we must ensure that Indigenous worldviews and systems are truly at the center, that power is shared, and that we move away from liberal ideologies that have led to so much destruction and preventable suffering.

If we are to begin the work of exposing our colonial minds, we must begin with a humble attitude, listening rather than leading, and allowing ourselves to be unsettled as settlers and therefore beneficiaries of stolen lands.

American activist and author Bell Hooks reminds We:

‘There can be no love without justice.’

And justice requires truth; If we are to survive, it will be not as individuals but as a global community. When we begin to understand ourselves as interconnected and interdependent relational creatures with each other and the more-than-human world, we can stop acting like children and begin to take responsibility for creating a future where we live in balance with the planet and each other.