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...
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.
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 guess we disagree on the nature of reactionary then, which is fair enough.
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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.