Hi readers!
This week, our CAP stream will be holding a joint lecture on Friday, and our major topic will be discussing the Amazonia exhibition held in Museum of Anthropology.
When I first walked into the exhibition, the white wall with black words caught my attention first: it is with information about the population of the south america continent and countries holding control of a few proportion of the Amazon. There are also numbers on the wall that represent the percentage of Amazonia which have been industrialized and damaged by the oil plants, and the timbers that have been cut down for the massive interests they would produce in the industry. As I turned around, I see various artifacts and ceramics created by the Amazonian tribes. There is also a video clip being projected on the wall, in which an Amazonian woman is playing a traditional musical instrument.
The subtitle of the exhibit, “the rights of nature”, brings me to think about the consequences of industrialization and the hopeless resistance of Amazonian people. The black-and-white style of the wall seems to make a huge contrast with the lively, colorful artifacts. Those numbers and information reflect a sense of coldness and soullessness of modern industrialization and the silent anger of Amazonia and its inhabitants. We, as the visitors of this exhibit, are invited to consider about the morals of modernization and industrialization. What have been left behind since modern human started to seek for resources without limitation? Does nature and traditional cultures become worthless when it comes to modernization and industrialization? The same questions can apply on the early colonialism in North America.
In the geography discussion section on Monday, we talked about four articles: two of them talk about the British principle of land ownership and administration of New England colony in North America; the other two are online articles that both focus on the #Idlenomore , which is a modern nonviolence indigenous movement. During the discussion, I talked about the “respect of nature”, which I picked up from my American History textbook in high school, of the indigenous cultures in New England and the fact that it was never understood by the British settlers. British thinkers at that time also had the tendency to understand indigenous principles of the use of land through eurocentric lenses. Perhaps, instead of trying to understand them, the British scholars and settlers opposed western values on the indigenous cultures and be critical on them. Some scholars even described Indigenous nomadic characteristic as “unproductive” and that it is the major cause of their poverty, while the truth behind it is their love for nature and belief in natural law. Why would the British care? All they were looking for is the potential economic benefits on colonial lands. The situation in New England colony was similar to the one in Amazonia.
History has proved to us that the similar issues will keep on happening in other part of the world. As technology continues to develop, this problem will deteriorate and backfire on all human beings.
