As a Pacific woman, I am a member of Water Country. I am an ocean person. By that, I mean I am the ocean, as a person.
The layers of ancestors I returned to the ocean are recorded and can be recalculated. Each of these ancestors exists in my body, including my ancestor ocean.
This is why we say so easily in the Pacific: “We sweat and cry in salt water, so we know that the ocean is really in our blood.”
this Series of articles Published in collaboration with Dalia Gebrial and Harpreet Kaur Paul and Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung in London.It first appeared in a Global Green New Deal Outlook.
imperialism
Therefore, from the perspective of my aboriginal people, water is a matter of relationship. The severance of these relations is one of the greatest wounds of imperialism.
The imperialists chopped up my indigenous maritime nation and distributed control of it to all parts of the world.
It is said that in the next ten years, more than 700 million people worldwide will be displaced due to lack of water.
Water, in my world, is a great connector, but in the hands of the empire, it is used to divide, replace, and impoverish.
Maori
The Maori fight for the inherent rights of water because we understand it as a kind of wisdom. The wisdom of water is composed of various life forms in and around it and the body of water itself.
Therefore, to understand water and respond adaptively, a localized relationship is required. Managing water resources from a centralized power center is the least effective water resource protection model.
For thousands of years, indigenous peoples have kept our waters clean, sustaining life and abundance.
source
In a short period of time, imperialism undermined this in many ways. Therefore, if we really want to protect water sources, we must fight imperialism.
To know the source of imperialism, to know its extension. We must understand not only its role in multinational companies, but also its role in non-governmental organizations, governments, and the global institutions that provide services to them.
As Arundhati Roy said, we must force the empire to be public, and we must let it take off its mask.
Pollution
In the context of the Global Green New Deal, this is a mask of paternal love, which conceals the global power complex rooted in imperialist power.
Without this exposure, we will continue to fail to fulfill our climate promises, sustainable development goals, and the global green new deal.
In my culture, polluted water is a metaphor for a polluted mind.
This is a tainted mind telling me that my indigenous rights are not as good as imperial rights.
This is a polluted thought, indicating that the oppressed should call on the oppressors to master the global green new deal.
champion
This is a polluted thought, showing that slave owners will protect the interests of slaves. As the oppressor and beneficiary of imperialism, you are either interested in justice or not.
You cannot establish its parameters for your own benefit and maintain your role as a humanitarian donor.
Therefore, the Global Green New Deal requires the establishment of a new global power infrastructure that is independent of the imperialist behemoth, and has full power to hold that behemoth accountable, and the real human benefactor will support this step.
This author
Tina Ngata is an environmental, aboriginal and human rights advocate living in Te Ika A Maui.
