WORK IN PROGRESS

by David Monticelli
President Peace Culture!

So I ought to you all a first comment about these recent weekend when, first in Urbino and then in Rome, I partecipated to a couple of events in which the protagonist - as for our campaign for Rwanda - was peace, (in other latitudes of this same planet and with other protagonists of this same mankind).
In Urbino on the 3-4 october weekend the conference entitled "By the side of the impossibile" has seen the partecipation of our friend Lance Henson, Cheyenne poet and human rights activist, of Kendall Black Elk, Crow dancer, of Tlahkuilo Arreola Zuniga, Yaqui and Aztec artist, of Prof. Luigi Alfieri lecturer at the Urbino University and finally of the undersigned. We talked of the philosophy, but mostly of the political activism, the claims and the tragic contemporary situations of the so-called indigenous (or native) peoples of the world, minorities more and more risking further phisical and cultural genocides by that exploitation and oppression machine that is the current global economical and political system.
In Rome, at the "Town of the Other Economy" in the Testaccio's district, on the 10-11 october weekend an event called "Native Events" took place. The partecipants were our Francoise Kankindi, president of Bene-Rwanda association, Tlahkuilo Arreola Zuniga, Apirana Taylor, Maori artist and civil rights activist for his people, Francisco Vera Millaquen, spokesman of the indios Mapuche community of Chile, Kevin Annett, former Reverend of the United Canadian Church who denounced the genocide of the native american children in the infamous boarding schools of Canada (also called residential schools).
The official aim of the event (come to its second edition after the Genoa's one, last year) is to ask the institution of the "Remembrance Day of the Genocide of Native Peoples" and to ask to the Italian State the ratification of the ILO 169 Convention about the indigenous and tribal peoples rights, adopted on 1989 by the International Labour Organization (ILO), an agency of the United Nations, (see http://www.survivalinternational.org/material/431).
This Convention recognize to the indigenous peoples a set of fundamental rights, essential to their survival, including rights on the ancestral lands and the right to decide independently about their future. Currently, the Convention is the only international legislative tool to protect the indigenous peoples' rights. By its ratification, the states commit themselves to effectively guarantee the physical and spiritual integrity of the indigenous peoples and to fight any form of discrimination against them.
On Saturday conferences about these peoples genocide took place, and in the afternoon we saw the poignant Kevin Annett's documentary "Unerpentant: the Canada's genocide", that you can see in full at the following website: http://www.hiddenfromhistory.org/ (prepare yourself and hold tight).> In the evening, at the "Teatro Valle" in the historic centre of Rome, a joint performance of Tlahkuilo Arreola Zuniga and Apirana Taylor translated these topics in artistic representations by dances, music, painting and poetry with the voices of five italian theatre actors who partecipated to the performance. Most of the second part was dedicated to the rwandese genocide.
On Sunday morning it was the turn of the moving testimony of Francisco Vera Millaquen about the recent escalation of violence and repression against the Mapuche people of Chile (despite the democrat proclamations of the socialist government) and the one of our Francoise about Rwanda. Their words touched everybody in the deep of the heart.
From this double weekend, (which will become triple, since next Saturday and Sunday 17-18 October Zura Kurahimbi and Jaqueline Mukansonera will be awarded by the City of Padua with the "Garden of the rightenouses of the world" prize, (http://www.padovanet.it/dettaglio.jsp?id=13091), is coming out clearly the universal and the "transversal" perspective to which our activism for peace must necessarily refer. Only in the spirit of being part of a movement wide as the whole humanity oppressed, exploited and victim of the genocides, (and in the conscious recognition of this membership), our Nobel campaign for Rwanda will find out the strenght and the right energy, as our native friends would say, to be accomplished.