5 Values for Repairing the Harms of Colonialism | Jing Corpuz | TED

(Speaking in Kankana-ey)

And I wish I can continue in my language so that I can make no mistakes.

(Laughter)

I greet you in the language of my Indigenous Kankana-ey Igorot ancestors.

And I acknowledge that I am in the homelands of the Lenape people.

I am Jing,

and I come from the central mountain range

of the northern part of the Philippines.

If you've heard of the Banaue Rice Terraces,

which is one of the wonders of the modern world,

that is the region where I am from.

My ancestors built these terraces by hand,

as a community, through the centuries.

It is their intimate knowledge of nature and of the way that the river flows,

the waters flow and the waters are stored,

that enables these terraces to be irrigated

without the help of machines.

The art and science of building and irrigating these terraces is magical.

They have been sustainably and beautifully irrigated for centuries.

Now, my people are also known as one of the unconquered

and uncolonized tribes of the Cordillera Mountains.

We successfully resisted more than 300 years of Spanish colonization

because the mountains that we nurtured and cared for protected us in return.

Now, to be sure,

the Spanish attempted. They heard about our gold.

So they sent many expeditions into the mountains to mine our gold

and to tax us.

But the historical records show,

I kid you not,

members of the expedition were sent back inevitably

and sometimes without their heads.

(Laughter)

That's right.

We are --

We were a headhunting people.

(Laughter)

And the name of my mother’s hometown, Besao, comes from the word “buso,”

which means headhunter.

And this is why I'm always joking around with my colleagues,

“I am a recovering headhunter.”

(Laughter)

When we drove the Spanish out of the Philippines in the late 1800s,

they were unfortunately replaced by a more creative colonizer:

the Americans.

And the pressure on our homelands increased exponentially.

They wanted to mine our gold,

to dam our rivers and to log our forests that we had cared for

at the risk of our own lives.

When they wanted to dam the Chico River,

which is the lifeblood of the mountains where I'm from,

they were met with fierce resistance and protests from the people.

Our burial grounds, sacred places and amazing terraces

would have been drowned and lost forever.

And this was simply a spiritual and cultural price

that my people were not willing to pay.

This project was funded by the World Bank.

And because of the fierce resistance of Indigenous peoples,

they were forced to back off in the 1980s

and to put in place an Indigenous people safeguard policy

to make sure that development aggression doesn't happen again

in Indigenous territories without consent.

OK, so that's a new word and a big word.

(Applause)

Don’t worry, I’ll explain it. (Laughs)

So what is development aggression?

Well, development --

development is ... physical or economic infrastructure

that's put in place in a community to help them thrive

and reach their goals.

Like, for example,

if there is not enough affordable housing in a community

or inadequate access to culturally appropriate education,

development would build affordable houses

and enable access to culturally appropriate education.

Simple.

But development aggression is the opposite.

It is development that exploits the resources of the community

and not for the purpose of helping the community,

but for the developer's gain.

It is a manifestation of colonialism,

and it is a very colonial worldview

and comes from top-down decision making.

As Indigenous peoples, we perceive it as projects imposed

without the consent of the community

and in a manner that violates our rights.

It falls within the paradigm of overproduction,

overconsumption and accumulation of wealth by individuals,

which has proven to be not helpful at all for humanity and for the planet.

(Applause)

Sometimes I wonder and I really think about,

you know, why did my ancestors,

why did my forebears resist the dam so strongly,

usually at the cost of their own lives?

You know, the mountains are vast

and we could have moved away from the inundated areas.

We could have gone to a different place

that was not poisoned by the mines

or that was not denuded by the logging.

But my people explain that the struggle against the dams,

the mining and the logging

is a struggle for our identity and for our cultural survival.

It is a struggle to make sure that we have healthy territories

to pass on to the future generations.

And this is what I have discovered

through all my travels and interactions with other Indigenous peoples.

This is common among Indigenous peoples worldwide.

The notion that we hold our lands, our waters,

our territories and our resources

not just for ourselves but for the future generations.

Macli-ing Dulag, who is a pangat, or a peace pact holder,

he famously said to the government bureaucrats

who came through the territory to push the dam,

"You asked us if we own the land

and mock us by asking, 'Where is your title?'

When we asked the meaning of your words,

you taunt us by saying,

'Where are the documents to prove your ownership?

Titles, documents, proof of ownership.′

Such arrogance to think that you can own the land

when we are instead owned by it.

How can you own something that will outlive you?

Only the people own the land

because it's the people that live forever."

As Indigenous peoples,

we own our past, our present and our future.

Private development for the gain of the few

and to the detriment of the community,

flies against the face of the reality

of the generational existence of Indigenous peoples.

So development aggression is actually an extension

of a version of capitalism that pushes overconsumption,

overproduction

and has no regard for the future generations.

It’s always “more is better,”

“extract as much value and labor as you can

from the land and from the people

without caring for the future.”

So when I was younger --

Story time. (Laughs)

I grew up with my grandparents and they always told me,

"Eat everything in your plate."

I'm sure you've heard that as well.

But there's a deeper undercurrent there.

Eat everything on your plate in order to honor the hands that planted, nurtured,

harvested and cooked the food.

He taught me about the concept of “inayan,”

or “do not do anything that might harm others

or things that are bad, evil, taboo or unethical.”

So getting more than what you need

deprives others.

Getting more food than what you can eat

deprives the hungry and dishonors those that produced it.

He would ask me, when he sees uneaten rice on my plate,

"Don't you hear the rice crying?"

And I would hear it crying.

So until this day, I can't leave rice on my plate

because I always hear the cries of the rice.

Another concept that my relatives taught me

is (Speaking in Kankana-ey).

Literally, “Spread the good.”

Spread the good values, the good virtues, practices,

even material things.

Another way of saying it in my language is

(Speaking in Kankana-ey).

It means no one person should own what is good.

It is to be shared with the community.

It is an expression of reciprocity and honor for the collective,

and it teaches us to care for the common good.

So these values,

reciprocity,

spirituality,

not taking more than you need,

obligation to future generations

and collective decision making,

all of these values are now finding their way into scientific studies

and global scientific assessments

on the status of biodiversity and ecosystem services,

climate change and land degradation.

So what we all need to do now

is what Indigenous peoples have always known

and have always done.

As we face the negative effects of biodiversity loss,

climate change, extreme weather events

like the flooding, the wildfires, the droughts --

the scientists, they are slowly moving towards the conclusion

that it is only through Indigenous wisdom and values

and ways of caring for territory

that we see the path towards our salvation.

The path towards our salvation is not through more development,

it's not through more consumption or more production.

Overconsumption, development aggression, overproduction,

are all manifestations of destructive colonialism

that has harmed the planet

and that has undermined the Indigenous wisdom

that the scientists acknowledge

that we all need.

So think about it.

In spite of everything,

all the challenges we have faced,

more than 500 years of colonization,

all of the development aggression, we are still here.

Indigenous peoples and our values have thrived and have endured.

We have survived,

and the least we can do is to honor this resistance

by decolonizing our structures,

decolonizing the way we think,

decolonizing our practices,

so that we can stop the destruction of the planet.

Colonization and its tentacles has always deprived people and planet

of the things that we naturally and rightfully need.

It is only by decolonizing our understanding of history

that we will understand

how we have arrived at this planetary crisis.

And it is only through honoring Indigenous peoples

and being inspired by the values,

providing the support and the resources

in order for Indigenous peoples to continue to resist

development aggression and colonialism

that we can save ourselves and save the planet.

So I invite us,

let's listen,

let's be inspired,

let us learn,

and let us support the struggles of Indigenous peoples.

This is the only path forward.

Thank you.

(Applause)