You Know, Once Something Freezes,

All Cultures Through All Time Have Constantly Been Engaged In A Dance With New Possibilities For Life. Change Is The One Constant In Human History.

We Accept It As Normal That People Who Have Never Been On The Land, Who Have No History Or Connection To The Country, May Legally Secure The Right To Come In And, By The Very Nature Of Their Enterprises, Leave In Their Wake A Cultural And Physical Landscape Utterly Transformed And Desecrated. What's More, In Granting Such Mining Concessions, Often Initially For Trivial Sums To Speculators From Distant Cities, Companies Cobbled Together With Less History Than My Dog, The Government Places No Cultural Or Market Value On The Land Itself.

Cultural Survival Is Not About Preservation, Sequestering Indigenous Peoples In Enclaves Like Some Sort Of Zoological Specimens. Change Itself Does Note Destroy A Culture. All Societies Are Constantly Evolving. Indeed A Culture Survives When It Has Enough Confidence In Its Past And Enough Say In Its Future To Maintain Its Spirit And Essence Through All The Changes It Will Inevitably Undergo.

If We Accept That We Are All Cut From The Same Genetic Cloth, All Cultures Share The Same Genius. And Whether That Genius Is Placed Into Technological Wizardry Which Has Been Our Great Achievement, Or, By Contrast, Placed Into The Unraveling Of Complex Threads Of Memory Inherent In A Myth Is Simply A Matter Of Choice.

Genocide, The Physical Extinction Of A People, Is Universally Condemned, But Ethnocide, The Destruction Of People's Way Of Life, Is Not Only Not Condemned, It's Universally Celebrated As Part Of A Development Strategy.