Blood on Their Hands

Photo: The Guardian

I’ve been reporting on extractive industries and the violence they bring into Indigenous territories for years. I’ve documented it in Canada. In the United States. And now, for almost two years, in South America.

The deeper I go, the more I uncover. Atrocities. Injustices going unchecked. Blood on the hands of companies and governments, while the people are left defenseless — fighting back with nothing but their ancestral bonds, their rights, their knowledge, to defend their homelands and their very lives.

In many cases, they are losing.

What wins out is the power, the evil, the greed. This machine. This beast of colonialism that is legless — it doesn’t need legs to keep moving. And I cannot stress this enough, because I have said it before and I will keep saying it: colonialism has never ended. It is ongoing. We are complicit in it. We are the consumers of this relentless extraction, and human beings all over the world are paying the price for what we consume. Most of them are Indigenous. Men, women, children, grandmothers, whole families.

People are being murdered. Slaughtered.

Yesterday I heard testimony from a community I’ve been reporting on — three Indigenous men murdered in the last couple of weeks. The police aren’t paying much attention. These companies are backed by armed groups and foreign interests, and they have the money to pay off whoever needs paying off. It is complete corruption.

A Kichwa man shows me a scar from a June attack by the mines hired men.

Last week I was in another community in the south of Ecuador, where I am right now, where three Indigenous leaders have been murdered over the last ten years for speaking up, for standing against this destruction. And still — they are standing. Still fighting. Yes, they are terrified. Many of the people I speak with cannot go on the record. They have to stay anonymous to protect themselves, or they become targets. These families are living on the edge, and still trying to hold onto what we are all craving, what we are all yearning for: a return to the sacred. To what life actually is — the land, the health of the water, the air. A return to respect, instead of this relentless grabbing. This relentless rape of the land. Taking, and taking, and taking.

I understand this is dangerous work. I also understand exactly how crucial it is, because we are on the precipice. We are on the edge, all of us. Humanity is coming to a place we won’t be able to turn back from. We’re already seeing the impacts — not only socially, not only psychologically, but physically. Mother Earth is fighting back too. We’re seeing it in the chaos: the earthquakes, the hurricanes, the wildfires, the rising heat killing people in masses.

We need to stop. And we need to hold the powers that be accountable for the violence they keep enacting, unchecked.

People have told me I’m treading in dangerous waters. That I better be careful. Okay. I hear you. I am careful. But I believe I am protected. I believe God is with me on this assignment I’ve taken on — to expose this injustice. And if I’m not out here doing it, who is? Where the hell is everybody else? Because they aren’t here. They come in, they get their headline, and they’re gone. A one-hit wonder.

I’m here for the long term. I’m here to do whatever I can to drag this deep, deep darkness into the light — into a light we can no longer turn away from. We have to face this. Because one way or another, it’s coming for you too.

Indigenous people have been pushed aside, ignored, and trampled on for too long. I am sick and tired of it. It enrages me.

Yesterday I learned that the company operating in the community I was visiting is feeding alcohol to the Indigenous workers they hire, paying them next to nothing, and getting them drunk. It’s horrifying. It’s the same old colonial tactic — the same thing that happened to my own people. It’s human rights abuse, and it’s not confined to South America. We hear about it in the Congo and elsewhere, wherever people are pushed into poverty with no real option but to become part of the corruption that exploits them, over and over again.

I am enraged by it. And the people behind it need to be exposed for everything they are doing — no matter how much money, no matter how much power or influence they have.

Enough is enough. These are human beings. This is injustice. And it is not right.

So I’m going to continue on this path. I’m going boldly forward.