On april 5th of 2008 in Bruxelles has been read and submitted to signatures a 1st Poetical Declaration of Recognition of the Amerindian Genocides.
This Declaration was submitted to the signature of people present at the Maelström FiEstival in Brussels on Saturday April 5 and was given to Charles Coocoo-Matotoson Iriniu shaman and storyteller attikamewk (Canada) from Wemotaci. HEREAFTER, you can: SIGN UP the Declaration on line - download the Declaration in pdf format as well as the first 114 physical signatories of April 5. LOW, you can read the all text of the Declaration…
SIGN ON LINE the DECLARATION (click here)
Download and Spread the Declaration HERE in English
Download the first 114 SIGNATURES HERE
*** VERSION EN FRANCAIS DE LA DÉCLARATION!
*** VERSIONE ITALIANA DELLA DICHIARAZIONE!
Poetical Declaration of Brussels, April 5 2008
of Recognition of the Amerindian Genocides
Declaration written and called in place of our American friends of all the continent, from the Far North to the Great South, who for multiple reasons cannot speak yet as we do today. Because the Taboo it represents for them all, citizens of Americas, the question known as “indigenous”, of the first nations, of the natives or the Amerindians are still as a fire burning in the depth winter, cold heart which cannot still see or feel, because it is necessary to go on, it is necessary to burn, conquer all the territories without asking too many questions, and yes, without being posed, always running far far and quick quick and even further and more far and quickly… towards the west, at the opposite from where the sun rises…
We,
Belgian, French, English, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian… and thus Europeans. We, great, great, great-grandchildren of all of those who from here saw leaving or were obliged to leave or decided to leave this old continent to conquer a New Continent however as old as ours.
We,
recognize that in the name of asylum, of the conquest, of greed, of possession, of hope and sometimes even in the name of our gods,
We,
Perpetrated the Unnameable and that here with these lines
We,
declare as Unacceptable, as a regret arriving too late: systematically we, over there, still Europeans then American, Canadian, Mexican, Brazilian, Colombian, Argentinean and other centre and South American, tore off other men from their grounds and their dreams, the grounds and the dreams of their ancestors, their values, their memory…
We,
considered them first as being without ground, then “without a soul” (as we used to consider our wives formerly), then plundered, exhausted, grounds and humans, and took the field against brothers, killed them, massively and then expelled them…
We,
drove them back with the occupation of thin zone-territories where we keep on to maintain them still today. If we let them leave these places, it is to require of them to give up themselves, to forget who they are, from where they come and where their dreams carry them, so that they cannot go elsewhere than in the Invisible : Make them change their culture, change their names, baptize them with our religions, rape them in what they have most personal, in the depths of themselves, the depths of us.
The Reserves lodge the Casinos, Free-taxes zones, at the only purpose to make them drunk – Thirst of Gold which lost all true Spirit values !
These Camps of Slow Death invite us to name this series of acts which has lasted for more than 500 years by its name: one of the longest, lasting, and massive Genocides known in the history of Humanity, the one of the populations known as Indian of Americas!
We, great, great, tiny children of these men and women who however dreamt of better futures, new worlds, Utopias… and who made these acts…
We ask for your PARDON
Through you, Charles Coocoo, we humbly and insufficiently ask for your PARDON
We give to you, Charles, you, master of ceremony, Matotoson Iriniu, to you and to your ancestors, this Declaration, signed by all the people of good will who gathered together here this evening, whose list is shown hereafter… all people who gathered together around Poetry, Music, Art and the search for meaning…
This Declaration is an act of Recognition and Repentance. Its limit is the delay with which it came. Its horizons are its sincerity and the people who carry it.
This Declaration is also an Assertion: the human being can open out, go on discovering and widening its territories without plundering, killing, slaughtering, destroying. This Declaration wants to be finally a Promise: henceforth, let us build together new forms of coexistence of the souls, thoughts, hearts, actions and aspirations…
The Word is for us all the possibility of a capacity of Transformation of our limits into achievements of Life and thus of the Sublime.
A French poet, said that if there was a mountain which connected the Earth to the Sky, this Mountain was invisible to our ordinary vision but that however, the Base of this Invisible was well to be somewhere and to be Visible! Inevitably…
To you, Poet, shaman, Human, we give this Declaration. It will travel after this evening, will join other Embassies than the one we symbolically constitute this evening.
May from this small visible base, your people and all the sisters countries which from immemorial times and since the expansion of homo sapiens, lived such abominations, since the invisible one, prepare real food for the Celebrations, Dances and Creations we have to live together!
Done in Brussels, Belgium, on April 8th, 2008
At the Espace Senghor, during the Maelström FiEstival #2
SIGN ON LINE the DECLARATION (click here)
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