The resistance and historical struggle of the Indigenous Peoples of the Americas in defense of their territories and cultural identity today extends to every corner of the continent. Throughout the hemisphere, the Indigenous Peoples movement of self-determination confronts the contemporary neoliberal-capitalist model of colonization, a model attempting to consolidate an imperial project of domination and unlimited plunder. This economic model of expropriation and genocide has absolutely no loyalty whatsoever to human cultural identity or nationality, but is supported by those countries trying to reinforce their hemispheric power base in pursuit of global hegemony: the U.S. and Canada.

Across the centuries, two political blocs can be identified clearly in what has been an endless conflict of colonization: on the one side, a consortium of economic interests without identity or nationality but with governments in open collusion, and on the other, the Indigenous Peoples of Abya Yala. Presently, between these two central protagonists in this historical conflict appear the 34 States of Central and South America. It is a time of decision. The Government States must either distance themselves from North American hegemony or, replicate the master’s policies of oppression and repression within those States. The choice is clear: Either to subordinate the respective national economic resources to the U.S. corporate interests or, to assert sovereign policies, together with their Peoples, in pursuit of sustainability.

It is in this context that the Canadian Government is presently orchestrating an “Indigenous Summit in Buenos Aires, Argentina”, a week before all of the Presidents of the Organization of American States, including President Bush, gather in Mar de Plata, Argentina in November. We cannot accept this manipulation and intrusion by the Government of Canada while Canadian transnational companies continue to exploit and pollute our territories and, jointly with the U.S., are in the forefront of the imposition of inhuman regimes of economic globalization across the continent.

The “summit” being orchestrated by Canada is an attempt to manipulate Indigenous organizations into meeting in Buenos Aires a week before the Presidents’ Summit at a distance of almost 300 miles from Mar del Plata, far removed from the decision making processes and with a prefabricated agenda that is safely depoliticized and mostly folkloric in content. The indigenous delegates will be unable to travel to Mar del Plata. The intention is clear: to divide the Indigenous Movement and to separate us from those sectors of civil society and popular organizations going to Mar del Plata to debate the future and to denounce the unjust globalizing policies imposed upon our continent. With U.S. political support, Canada is brazenly funding the Buenos Aires event, an overt act of attempted manipulation, colonization and control over the indigenous movement at a continental scale.

For that reason, we call our brothers of the Indigenous Organizations of the Continent not to be manipulated by a “summit” which will only serve the political and economic interests of the government states of the North. As relatives, we invite all Indigenous Nations to join forces to attend our own Indigenous Summit in Mar del Plata to genuinely deliberate about our future, and from there to send a clear message to all the governments and civil society across the continent.

The Chiefs of State of the 34 states will be meeting on November 4th and 5th in Mar del Plata, Argentina, at the IV Summit of the Americas, organized by the OAS. The center of attention in this event, the main items on the agenda – where we as Indigenous Peoples cannot be absent – will be the mechanisms for control and exploitation of the wealth of our territories, biodiversity and traditional knowledge.

>From this agenda we can expect the tools for pillage and destruction to be honed, greasing the path for compacts under the W.T.O., reinforcing the so-called Free Trade Agreements, including promoting the imposition of the FTAA, while new threats will be created making payment of the fraudulent national external debts impossible. We can expect accelerated militarization across the region to contain and repress resistance, along with the criminalizing of our just demands and the imposition of privatization of the main public services. In all, we shall face the deepening of existing poverty, inequality, and marginalization. Fundamentally, we as Indigenous Peoples are confronted with a pogrom of advanced ideological extermination, intent on the destruction of any cultural position that will cast doubt upon the economic hegemony of the northern countries.

For these reasons we call now to our Nations, Pueblos and Organizations to mobilize across our continent from one shore to the other. We shall emerge from the valleys and pampas, from the forests and deserts, from mountains and snow-capped peaks, for the world to witness and listen. We shall arrive from our territories where biodiversity is a way of life, a way of life nowadays threatened by invasion, where ecological devastation must be reversed for the well being of the entire planet.

This is not a new struggle. We assert with dignity and give full historical value to our collective history as a movement of Indigenous Peoples of the entire continent. We recall for clarity and with self determination the First Continental Encounter of Indigenous Peoples in Quito, Ecuador 1990, the Second Continental Encounter of Indigenous Nations, Pueblos and Organizations in Temoaya, México - 1993, as well as the First Continental Indigenous Summit of Teotihuacan, México - 2000, and the Second Continental Indigenous Summit, Abya Yala, held in Quito, Ecuador - 2004.

To confront the impunity of centuries of systematic violations by the colonizers, we have always relied upon the strength and the power our elders and ancestors. It is their teaching to venerate and preserve Mother Nature, which is source of all life. Over millennia, we have created the political, cultural and social institutions of our Nations and Pueblos, realizing in the present a practical and spiritual alternative to the dehumanizing regimes of globalization.

With this responsibility in our hands, in facing the current situation, our analysis must be crystal clear:

• On what basis can the U.S. and Canada legitimize the imposition of “free trade agreements”, such as the Central American Free Agreement - CAFTA, the Free Trade of the Americas - FTAA and other trade regimes upon the Indigenous Peoples, we who have sustained our nations for millennia with economies of reciprocity, redistribution and complementarity with nature?
• What mechanisms and safeguards will be effectively implemented to guarantee the survival of our peoples in such a multi-national corporate market-driven world, where power is more and more concentrated and controlled by macroeconomic powers?
• What model for the State must we demand, when the diversity we represent (cultural-biological and geographic) is targeted within the same strategic ecosystems where the “competitive” natural resources are located?
• How shall we implement our continuing diversity, as reflected through our systems of collective identity, with our communally legitimized institutions, built upon legal principles supported by millennia of development? How shall we confront the dominant models of civil relations based on racism, colonization, corruption, clientelism, and the “partyocracies” of the empresarial democracy of the States?
• We must emerge with self determination from the context of centuries of colonization, challenging the OAS as a regional organization of the United Nations system, in violation of the right of “Self Determination” of Peoples as proclaimed by UN General Assembly resolutions 1514 and 1541 (1960).

Towards that goal, we now propose the transformation of the present Government-States in our hemisphere to in Pluri-National Status with implemented policies recognizing and supporting our rights to exercise:

• Self Determination as Indigenous Peoples, being Nations and Pueblos of prior historical existence in the continent, preceding the establishment of the modern states now recognized within the OAS.
• Full Control of our territories, which we claim by history and by inalienable legal right, undiminished and in the context of the present.
• Models of our own development based on our traditional forms of knowledge and practices that will guarantee our peoples’ survival, the perpetuation of our Nations in harmony with our environment, in happiness and equilibrium.
• Autonomy in political, juridical, fiscal, territorial and cultural affairs.

Today we face a formidable challenge, which calls for us as Indigenous Peoples to connect and articulate in common with those social and cultural movements of the continent struggling for diversity in opposition to the monopoly regimes of “free trade”. We shall join with those who also resist against violence and relocation, with those resisting removal from their homelands and cultural and physical repression; we shall join with those who continue to create the world in spite of the regimes of colonization and impunity.

We now share this message with our indigenous relatives across the continent, with the goal to meet in

Continental Summit
at
Mar del Plata from October 30th to November 1st
as
Indigenous Peoples and Organizations

MARICIWEU – JALLALLA – KAUSACHUM! Todos Unidos Avanzando!
! ALL AHEAD TOGETHER !

Por ONIC – Organización Nacional Indígena de Colombia - LUIS EVELIS ANDRADE CASAMA
Por AIDESEP – Asociación Interétnica de Desarrollo de la Selva Peruana Perú, HAROLDO SALAZAR ROSSI
Por Kus-Kura, Proyecto Ecológico Kan Tan- COSTA RICA José Carlos Morales
Por el Comité Inter-Tribal, BRASIL, Marcos Terena
Por el Enlace Continental de Mujeres Indígenas –ECMI: Margarita Gutiérrez
Por Wara-BRASIL Azelene Kaingang
Por Congreso General Kuna, Panamá, Representante Provisional Héctor Huertas
Por CIDOB – BOLIVIA, Presidente de Confederación Indígena del Oriente Boliviano, Saúl Chávez
Por la Confederación de Nacionalidades Indígenas de Ecuador–C.O.N.A.I.E.- ECUADOR Luis Macas
Por Indigenous Environmental Network – I.E.N., ESTADOS UNIDOS, Tom GoldTooth
Por TONATIERRA - AZTLAN, Tupac Enrique Acosta
Por Abya Yala Nexus, ESTADOS UNIDOS, Nilo Cayuqueo
Por el Consejo de Organizaciones Lencas de Honduras, COPINH – HONDURAS, Salvador Zúñiga
Por Organización Fraternal Negra de Honduras, OFRANEH - HONDURAS.
Por Comisión de Juristas Indígenas en la República Argentina – C.J.I.R.A.- ARGENTINA, Dr. Eulogio Frites – Dr. Eduardo Nieva
Por la COORDINACION DE ORGANIZACIONES MAPUCHE – ARGENTINA, Jorge Nahuel, Werken – Huilipan Verónica, Werken –

Secretaría de la Cumbre Continental de Pueblos y Organizaciones Indígenas
Lavalle 437 4º ‘B’. (CP 1047) Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires –
Tel./Fax: 0054 11 4326 2940

E-mail: cumbrecontinentalindigena@yahoo.com.ar

cumbreindigenabyayala.org

Secretaría Cumbre Continental de Pueblos y Organizaciones Indígenas
Lavalle 437 4º ‘B’. (CP 1047) Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires
Tel./Fax: 0054 11 4326 2940
E-mail: cumbrecontinentalindigena@yahoo.com.ar
Pagina Web: www.cumbrecontinentalindigena.org