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.’

Well, after a time, my “Renewal” mandala design served its purpose at Janet London’s Hummingbird Arts Mandala Store as a free download, and we took it down to make room for another lovely design by one of Janet’s students. Recently, Janet called me to say that people had contacted her asking for a more complex design to color and asked if I’d mind adding “Renewal” back to her Mandala Store! Of course I was thrilled to hear this, so it’s back, and available for free download so you can have fun coloring it yourself. That’s not all. Janet has finished three new pressed flower pieces for an art event in the Rogue Valley, Oregon area called “Dark Night of the Soul,” produced by Betsy Lewis of Art Event Productions. She’s added them to her Print Gallery in hopes that people will be interested in prints of the work, which is dramatic, lovely, and an advancement of her style.Technorati Tags: linkedin, website design

Where we stay at the Baines’, we live downstairs in the basement, which has been finished into a beautiful gallery filled with James’ incredible work. Since I’ve been so busy and the guys are away, I wind up spending most of my time down here and don’t venture upstairs much until it’s time to cook. Well, the other night I ran out of milk and, since I planned to work late, really needed some for a cup of joe. I went upstairs around 8pm with the amber glass creamer Lea lent me for just his sort of thing, went into the frig and opened a new thing of milk, only to have Lea come in and tell me there was an open one on the counter, and I had just opened her upstairs visitor’s milk! Well, Kay walked in right behind her and consoled me. She and her elderly mum had been there a couple of days as mum needed to go to hospital for some tests, and we had met briefly, but aside from some friendly exchanges hadn’t made a connection. Boy did that change! Three and a half hours later I felt like she was my older sister as we exchanged a kiss and hug goodnight…
Kay is an artist who lives in Cooktown, and it turns out she’s close with an aborigine man and his wife who live nearby. Ronnie is the son of a certain tribe’s medicine man, Jack, and she had a deep friendship with him for many years until his recent passing at age 97. This paints some of the picture of what this woman’s beautiful heart is like, but there’s more. The elder chief of Jack’s tribe was Peter, whose funeral was just a week and a half ago (he was 100). As it happens, my husband and son arrived at their mate’s place just as the tribe was congregating – yes, right there – from all across Australia to pay their respects and see him over to the spirit world. As fate would have it, their mate, and his mate too – who came all the way from Singapore for the funeral – were adopted (read:white) sons of Peter’s. They all got right down to making friends, Thomas and Joel completely overwhelmed by the beauty of each one (including one man who was 130 years old!). They made a special, deep connection with Peter’s natural son, too.

As we talked til late in the night, once again I felt the Spirit swirling around us, joining us in that way which cannot be described with words. We touched upon so many subjects – art, tribal culture and healing, poverty and prejudice, old friends and family, Jack’s funeral, her last visit with Peter in hospital, and what it really means to walk with God. When I walked downstairs with my now-warm jug of milk, it was very thoughtfully, and sleep didn’t come easy with the many colorful images now in my mind. The next morning she shared with me pictures, video and audio files (she also plays the flute) of her varied works, her home and views of Cooktown as her dog Karma lay at my feet. I just cannot seem to put into words how deep it all sank into my heart, and that fast!

After taking her mum down to Cairns the next morning for her tests (the results of which were good, thankfully) and spending the night there, she came all the way back up here to see if she could bring me up to where the tribe is (and my husband!), or at least part of the way. It didn’t work out due to the timing on the other end (read: red slippery clay road, so no-one travelling down to meet us just then), but I was so moved by her choice to do this, driving up the Gillies range (you just can’t imagine how many twisting curves there are in that highway) an hour out of her way, and poor thing, she was so tired. Love and selflessness are such amazing, powerful forces, and Kay’s got them both! I now have a new sister…and so do we all.

I had spoken with Peter’s son on the phone a few days earlier, telling him how much I wanted to be there, though I knew my place was here for some reason I wasn’t quite sure of. He said that the presence of my closest family and my own heart’s desire placing me there in spirit embroidered me into the fabric of the tribe. And Kay put the finishing touches on this work, our crossing of paths in Lea’s kitchen finally convincing me it was true, showing me why I was here and not there.

We are one, family both from the loins of Noah and the blood of Christ, one blood, one spirit, one Creator whom we all love with one heart. It’s all true.

Except for those who excuse themselves.

Technorati Tags: Australia, Cooktown, artists, friends, sisters