The following speech was given by Russell Means in July 1980, before several thousand people who had assembled from all over the world for the Black Hills International Survival Gathering, in the...
As a person who would certainly be dead without modern medicine, I always find it off-putting when people decry scientific thinking and technology as "defying the natural order of all things," as if I was fated to die and my continued existence is merely some aberration.
I've got cystic fibrosis so anprims get the wall, but I don't think Amerindian skepticism about Western science and medicine is off base. Given that native peoples in the United States have been forcibly sterilized, experimented on for the sake of science with live-virus vaccines that often have blowback, condescended to and called "savages" by racial science and phrenology etc etc it'd be ridiculous not to look at modern medicine with a skeptical eye. As I explain in my other comment here, the primary contention is with the idea that modern medicine is "progress" when that very modern medicine has been weaponized against native peoples of the United States and therefore has not resulted in "progress" for them in the slightest.
Western scientific thinking and modern medicine are neither the whole of scientific and medicinal practice nor incompatible with indigenous/traditional practice. We don't need to abandon scientific advancements that we've already made, but we definitely need to rethink how we conceive of "progress" or we descend into scientism which is just colonialism with a "rational" face on it. Exploitation and culture erasure is not a prerequisite for medicine.
We, who? Because I have no desire to mistake moving away from systems of life that give each human greater capacity to seek and achieve joy and towards bizarre forms of unnecessary spirtualism for the sake of tradition for a good thing.
If you think capitalist modernity is a system of life that gives each human greater capacity to seek and achieve joy then I have a bridge to sell you. The relative improvements in quality of life seen in the imperial core were built on the blood of indigenous peoples. The entire "developing" world is daily exploited and ravaged to support this QOL. Calling our world "progress" makes sense for some groups, especially if you're in a settler colony, but it is downright insulting to label our world as "progress" to an Amerindian. Rethinking what "progress" means is evaluating what that idea is and how to call modernity "progress" is to whitewash the genocide and slavery that world is built on.
I agree with you, but I'm trying to explain that it's not ridiculous for native peoples to link the two and be suspicious. It's not reactionary to watch your people die and say "hey all the stuff that helped to kill my people is bad." I'm not trying to throw out science, I just want to contextualize.
I don't think anybody here is about throwing out modern science; without modern science I would have been dead by the age of 12, so I'm not even close to advocating for that. I'm just trying to give context for why it's not a totally ridiculous argument for native peoples to make, based on their history with "modern science." Science is progress for some but not for all. There is nothing "in the abstract" or devoid of historical and social context. "Modern science" allowed Europeans to steamroll over native peoples and did not bring them any modicum of "progress." Therefore, it's a natural consequence that many will be skeptical of any accounts of "progressive" science making life better for everybody. Even Marx in his later years began to doubt his own "progress" narrative about the necessity of capitalist development and "science" for communism—see Karl Marx and the Iroquois. I agree that there is tremendous potential to re-purpose a lot of the "progress" we've seen under capitalism for the benefit of all the world's peoples, but right now that's not the case, and this "progress" has only resulted in increasing levels of misery for some.
Until my city's science museum releases the stolen, desecrated remains of some local Indogenous people, I fully understand why none of them are willing to trust western science and medicine.
"Science has become the new European religion for both capitalists and Marxists; they are truly inseparable; they are part and parcel of the same culture. So, in both theory and practice, Marxism demands that non-European peoples give up their values, their traditions, their cultural existence altogether. We will all be industrialized science addicts in a Marxist society."
"Distilled to its basic terms, European faith--including the new faith in science--equals a belief that man is God."
"All European tradition, Marxism included, has conspired to defy the natural order of all things."
As a person who would certainly be dead without modern medicine, I always find it off-putting when people decry scientific thinking and technology as "defying the natural order of all things," as if I was fated to die and my continued existence is merely some aberration.
I've got cystic fibrosis so anprims get the wall, but I don't think Amerindian skepticism about Western science and medicine is off base. Given that native peoples in the United States have been forcibly sterilized, experimented on for the sake of science with live-virus vaccines that often have blowback, condescended to and called "savages" by racial science and phrenology etc etc it'd be ridiculous not to look at modern medicine with a skeptical eye. As I explain in my other comment here, the primary contention is with the idea that modern medicine is "progress" when that very modern medicine has been weaponized against native peoples of the United States and therefore has not resulted in "progress" for them in the slightest.
Western scientific thinking and modern medicine are neither the whole of scientific and medicinal practice nor incompatible with indigenous/traditional practice. We don't need to abandon scientific advancements that we've already made, but we definitely need to rethink how we conceive of "progress" or we descend into scientism which is just colonialism with a "rational" face on it. Exploitation and culture erasure is not a prerequisite for medicine.
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If you think capitalist modernity is a system of life that gives each human greater capacity to seek and achieve joy then I have a bridge to sell you. The relative improvements in quality of life seen in the imperial core were built on the blood of indigenous peoples. The entire "developing" world is daily exploited and ravaged to support this QOL. Calling our world "progress" makes sense for some groups, especially if you're in a settler colony, but it is downright insulting to label our world as "progress" to an Amerindian. Rethinking what "progress" means is evaluating what that idea is and how to call modernity "progress" is to whitewash the genocide and slavery that world is built on.
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It's not a superstition when they literally killed your family. Being skeptical of Western definitions of progress doesn't mean anarchoprimitvism.
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I agree with you, but I'm trying to explain that it's not ridiculous for native peoples to link the two and be suspicious. It's not reactionary to watch your people die and say "hey all the stuff that helped to kill my people is bad." I'm not trying to throw out science, I just want to contextualize.
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I don't think anybody here is about throwing out modern science; without modern science I would have been dead by the age of 12, so I'm not even close to advocating for that. I'm just trying to give context for why it's not a totally ridiculous argument for native peoples to make, based on their history with "modern science." Science is progress for some but not for all. There is nothing "in the abstract" or devoid of historical and social context. "Modern science" allowed Europeans to steamroll over native peoples and did not bring them any modicum of "progress." Therefore, it's a natural consequence that many will be skeptical of any accounts of "progressive" science making life better for everybody. Even Marx in his later years began to doubt his own "progress" narrative about the necessity of capitalist development and "science" for communism—see Karl Marx and the Iroquois. I agree that there is tremendous potential to re-purpose a lot of the "progress" we've seen under capitalism for the benefit of all the world's peoples, but right now that's not the case, and this "progress" has only resulted in increasing levels of misery for some.
Until my city's science museum releases the stolen, desecrated remains of some local Indogenous people, I fully understand why none of them are willing to trust western science and medicine.
Jesus christ he's not saying medicine and science bad, holy fuck way to dunk on him with your medical conditions.
"Science has become the new European religion for both capitalists and Marxists; they are truly inseparable; they are part and parcel of the same culture. So, in both theory and practice, Marxism demands that non-European peoples give up their values, their traditions, their cultural existence altogether. We will all be industrialized science addicts in a Marxist society."
"Distilled to its basic terms, European faith--including the new faith in science--equals a belief that man is God."
"All European tradition, Marxism included, has conspired to defy the natural order of all things."
Can confirm. I am a scientist, and I feel like a god on occasion. I highly recommend it.
I've just finished a microbiology project and man do I feel godlike now, DNA is mine to manipulate mwa ha ha ha
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