Why should we care? The Belo Monte is just some dam in Brazil built to meet the growing needs of cities like Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. Five years ago, the Volte Grande, or Big Bend of the Xingu River teemed with fish, turtles, and other wildlife. Now 80 percent of the water is gone.
The dam, the third largest in the world, funded and supported by big power interests that have resisted efforts to let more water flow into the Xingu. They ask, why should some indigenous tribes put a halt on urban growth? Why don’t they move out of their traditional ways of living and become part of the modern world?
That is the argument being used by the dam operators and increasingly by the central government. As satellite images show, the loss of water does more than rob the many indigenous peoples of Brazil of their water. It is also robbing the rest of the world of a world of culture that has much to teach us.
Prayer for the Day
Conflicts seem to beset us on every side, O God,
As we try to balance growth with harmony, old and new;
Striving to be live faithfully as we should in the world,
We face what we truly need versus our desires.
Be with us, O Lord, as we seek a sustainable future
That does not forget the needs of those beyond ourselves.
In the name of the One who remembered all,
Even Christ Jesus our Lord, Amen.
Thoughts for the Day
Sustainability is a political choice, not a technical one. It’s not a question of whether we can be sustainable but whether we choose to be.
- James Gary Lawrence, WGI, University of Georgia
The global Indigenous cause reached a major milestone in 2007 when the UN General Assembly passed the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Only four members of the assembly voted in opposition, all of them Anglo settler-states - the United States, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia.
- Roxanne Dunbar Ortiz, An Indigenous People’s History of the United States
Have you commanded the morning since your days began,
And caused the dawn to know its place,
So that it might take hold of the skirts f the earth,
And the wicked be shaken out of it?
The Lord to Job, 38: 12-13