Last night the Australian 60 Minutes featured a report on a controversial series of dams – up to 60! – that the Brazilian government wants to build along the Amazon river to provide hydroelectric power for its growing cities (an overpopulation issue). This will displace thousands of indigenous tribes who rely on the rainforest for their survival, not to mention flood hundreds of acres of forest. The scheme is an environmental disaster in the making, yet the government is blindly determined to proceed with this massive engineering project, perhaps in the mistaken belief that such things demonstrate its technological sophistication as a developing nation – the same hubris the Chinese government showed in building its Three Gorges Dam, as I noted in my previous entry. They have a chance to look at the history of Europe and other developed nations, and not make the same mistakes these cultures did in destroying indigenous tribes and the environment – yet they appear to not want to learn from these, and resent foreigners telling them so. It is incredibly frustrating to see yet another preventable social tragedy unfolding.
The documentary mentioned James Cameron’s Avatar movie and the assistance he and some Hollywood actors (such as Sigourney Weaver) were giving to the campaign. One hopes that the real-world indigenous people will be able to win their battle also – if they don’t, their culture will be destroyed and the reporter notes their likely fate:
People who for thousands of years have remained independent and self sufficient will be forced into cities, where they’ll become beggars – and live in poverty. They don’t have the skills or the language to survive outside their own world.
It’s the same sorry tale repeated over and over again when indigenous peoples meet industrialized technological cultures.
