By Vince Emanuele
December 29, 2012 | Emanuele: In Chapter One of your new book, Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt, you
describe the horrendous conditions endured by the Native American
population living in Pine Ridge, South Dakota. This population earns, on
average, anywhere from $2,600-$3,500 a year, with 49% of the total
population living in official poverty status. However in a broad sense,
and to inject a historical context, you describe the systematic
destruction of Native culture and society; namely, through the practices
of physical termination and cultural genocide. Can you talk about why
you began this journey in South Dakota and the importance of recognizing
previous national injustices?
Hedges: Well,
it's important because that's where the project of limitless expansion
and exploitation, especially the plundering of natural resources, began.
There you had the timber merchants and the railroad magnates, mine
speculators, and land speculators seizing territory on the western
plains and exterminated the native populations who resisted. Many of
which did not even resist. Then, herding the remnants into what were
originally prisoner of war camps, which then finally became tribal
residencies and eventually reservations--breaking the natives capacity
for self-sufficiency, while creating a culture of dependency. Remember,
all of this is for profit. This became the template for which the
American Empire expanded: the Philippines, Cuba and all throughout Latin
America. And today, places like Iraq and Afghanistan. So that's why we
wanted to examine where this ideology first took root; where it was
first formed; and what happened to these peoples, because in an age of
corporate capitalism, where there are no impediments left, what happened
to them, is going to happen to us. In the end, we're all going to be
herded on some form of a reservation.
This
book is about these "sacrifice zones." Whether its in Pine Ridge, or
southern West Virginia in the coal mines, or whether that be urban decay
such as Camden, New Jersey, which is per capita the poorest city in the
country, and on target this year to be the most dangerous, per capita
in the country. As we've reconfigured American society, there's no
longer any mechanisms to restrain these forces. And I think the other
reason Pine Ridge is important, is because the native communities were
structured very differently. People who hoarded and kept everything for
themselves were disposed; everything was communal; there was an
understanding that all forms of life, including the natural world, were
sacred. This is unacceptable in a capitalist society where human and
natural life are commodities that you exploit for money until exhaustion
or collapse. We see the devastation visited on the western plains now
being visited in places like the Arctic, where 40% of the summer sea-ice
now melts, and the response is that it's a business opportunity, where
people go and slam down half a billion dollar drill bits. It's insanity
of course, because in the end, these forces will not only kill us off,
but they'll kill themselves off as well. That is the awful logic behind
it. I think Pine Ridge provides a window into how this ideology took
root, and how it works.
