My Blue Room

Avatar’s story is being played out in real life.

Reposted from “For the Next 7 Generations” blog…originally posted at Survival.org “The Movement for Tribal Peoples” 25 January 2010

Following the film ‘Avatar’’s win at the Golden Globes, tribal people have claimed that the film tells the real story of their lives today.

A Penan man from Sarawak, in the Malaysian part of Borneo, told Survival, ‘The Penan people cannot live without the rainforest. The forest looks after us, and we look after it. We understand the plants and the animals because we have lived here for many, many years, since the time of our ancestors.

‘The Na’vi people in ‘Avatar’ cry because their forest is destroyed. It’s the same with the Penan. Logging companies are chopping down our big trees and polluting our rivers, and the animals we hunt are dying.’

Kalahari Bushman Jumanda Gakelebone said, ‘We the Bushmen are the first inhabitants in southern Africa. We are being denied rights to our land and appeal to the world to help us. ‘Avatar’ makes me happy as it shows the world about what it is to be a Bushman, and what our land is to us. Land and Bushmen are the same.’

Davi Kopenawa Yanomami, known as the Dalai Lama of the Rainforest, said, ‘My Yanomami people have always lived in peace with the forest. Our ancestors taught us to understand our land and animals. We have used this knowledge carefully, for our existence depends on it. My Yanomami land was invaded by miners. A fifth of our people died from diseases we had never known.’

Director James Cameron received his Golden Globes awards for ‘Avatar’ last week, and revealed one of the central ideas of the film.

‘Avatar asks us to see that everything is connected,’ he said in his acceptance speech, ‘All human beings to each other, and us to the earth.

Cameron was inspired by the Maori language of New Zealand when devising the language spoken by the Na’vi.

Survival’s director Stephen Corry says, ‘Just as the Na’vi describe the forest of Pandora as ‘their everything’, for most tribal peoples, life and land have always been deeply connected.

‘The fundamental story of Avatar – if you take away the multi-coloured lemurs, the long-trunked horses and warring androids – is being played out time and time again, on our planet.

‘Like the Na’vi of ‘Avatar’, the world’s last-remaining tribal peoples – from the Amazon to Siberia – are also at risk of extinction, as their lands are appropriated by powerful forces for profit-making reasons such as colonization, logging and mining.’

‘One of the best ways of protecting the our world’s natural heritage is surprisingly simple; it is to secure the land rights of tribal peoples.’

Please pray for those on board the MV Rachel Corrie, carrying humanitarian supplies to Gaza today.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ep9MFiWXR8M&feature=player_embedded&fs=1″ type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” allowfullscreen=”true” allowScriptAccess=”always” width=”640″ height=”385″>

Well, it was just last August when we discovered our adult son Joel carries the dubious honor of having celiac disease. Celiac is a genetic autoimmune response to gluten which causes the immune system to “read” the gluten as a pathogen, attacking it as it would a germ. This immune response releases an enzyme which wrecks the villi in the small intestine, rendering them unable to digest food.

It’s nasty, the celiac attack. I’d rather not go into the details to preserve his dignity, but trust me, it’s so bad that it’s painful just watching him go through it. Even more disturbing was how long he suffered before learning what was wrong and what to do about it. But the results of going gluten-free were almost immediate, and a huge relief for our family. Many, many thanks to his sister Jennifer who tipped us off, having recently being correctly diagnosed, after years of being mis-diagnosed and therefore years of suffering, herself.

Few friends, even few doctors, understand how real the celiac attack is, and how devastating the effects of eating a meal containing even the slightest amount of gluten. Joel’s celiac attacks usually take him down for a solid month, and the extra sensitivities that celiacs can also have usually take about 2 weeks to clear up. For Joel, these include any rice other than certified organic brown or wild rice. Mistakes and accidents are very costly, both in well-being and productivity.

At first it’s hard to wrap one’s brain around how pervasive gluten is in our diets, and how hard it can be to find nice foods and recipes to replace the old standbys. Read a few labels in your kitchen and see how often modified food starch, caramel coloring and monosodium glutamate show up. These are things referred to by celiacs (and those who cook for them) as contaminants, and we must be unfailingly diligent to keep contaminants out of our kitchens as it’s just too easy for tiny amounts of gluten to make its way into food that’s got to be clean. I can’t emphasize enough how agonizing the consequences are, and how debilitating the long-term health risks are.

Fortunately, the population explosion of celiacs has made this the best time (if ever there’s a good time) to find out that a gluten-free diet is a necessity for you, as the availability (if not affordability) of gluten-free products has increased dramatically, as has the amount of information. It’s no tragedy, actually. Living gluten-free forces one into eating a much healthier diet than before, and to be more creative with the preparation of food, which does result in some mouth-watering recipes all can enjoy. We actually pulled off a magnificent Thanksgiving dinner with no gluten that made all our tastebuds sing! So, for those friends, family members and anyone else who reads my blog (does anyone else read my blog?) I’m posting a very informative entry from Karina’s Kitchen, a terrific blog about living and eating gluten-free, which gives a basic overview of the foods celiacs cannot have, and shares lots of wonderful recipes you’ll love, whether you need to eat gluten-free or just like eating great food with healthy ingredients. Enjoy! The Gluten Free Cheatsheet: How To Go Gluten-Free
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