Of Stories With Uncertain Endings.

"Indigenous people and their beliefs are to this very day viewed by the dominate society at large as second-class castes. Indigenous identify is still perceived as a novelty, feathers in the hair, paindal faces, dancing in circles or hugging trees. As individuals, these people are rarely seen for their true selves, not are they recognized for their accomplishments or contributions. They are the world's first doctory, chemists, pharmacists, ecosystem managers and technicians, educators, and humanitarians. Today, however, the identify and value of a doctor, scientist or technicial is judged more often by the number of framed degrees prominently displayed on a wall--not by centuries of tested and proven indigenous methodologies which are in many cases superior to their synthesis and/or high-tech counterparts, and also far less expensive.

"The incorrect belief is that the data is more important than the people who hold it. Traditional indigenous peoples are not just databases is squared and discard once science and large multinationals have extracted when they believe are the only important clements of their cultures. The data or indigenous knowledge base is valuable only as long as the living system of knowledge crisis. Data is only viable if the people who have the expertise to use it are still are still alive. People make the system, not the data in and of itself."

So wrote Lahe'ena'e Gay, Chairman and President of the Pacific Cultural Conservancy, who was killed in March this year by abductors who had kidnapped her while she was visiting Colombia. As the United Nations reaches the mid-point of the International Decades of the World's Indigenous People and for Human Rights Education (both 1995-2004), the Chronicle is priviledged to publish these excepts from a paper she presented to the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development on 10 April 1997.

A long, long time ago, when men and women mingled with the deities of earth and sky, one of the demi-gods who dwelled in the clouds woke from a sound sleep. As he stretched and looked over his ethereal perch, there on the mountain top, he saw his woman embracing another man. In a rage he leapt down upon the earth, picked up the man he believed to be his rival and threw him down on the top of a nearby hill. With a stroke of his hand, he turned him into a large phallic stone. The demi-god then picked up his wife and, throwing her to the base of the hill, turned her to stone in the shape of a vulva.

As the demi-god looked at what he had done, he realized that his actions were based on presumption, not fact. Was the man his wife's lover or merely a friend with whom she shared a friendly embrace? To question it now was too late, for his actions could not be undone. As all elements of indigenous life, including the lives of deities, exist in circular motion, the demi-god knew he was required to provide balance for the shift...