The resistance of being at the receiving end of the spear of extractive capitalism is what ties the experience of Indigenous peoples worldwide. In collusion with global corporations, governments facilitate neocolonialism and mercantilism in the name of progress while lying about their real intentions: profits. The price extracted from Indigenous peoples for these profits is extermination.
What makes my heart grieve, as a Khasi, an Indigenous person from the Khasi tribe in the corner of northeast India, is the desecration of our sacred spaces and forests in the name of development and progress when, in fact, it’s about profit. Just like Chi’chil Biłdagoteel, also known as Oak Flat, where Apache Stronghold—a coalition of Apaches, other Native peoples, and non-Native allies— is trying to save their sacred site from a multinational copper mining company called Resolution Copper. From time immemorial, the Apache have performed rituals and ceremonies at Oak Flat; it is a site of relationship to the divine, where they connect with their Creator, their faith, their families, and their land. To destroy Oak Flat is to destroy Mount Sinai.
Spread across Khasi hills are sacred forests. These old-growth forests are home to our guardian Spirits, Labasa. For millennia, our people performed rituals and ordained kings in these forests, and everything was preserved for the benefit of the clan and the tribe. The sacredness of these forests is at the centre of the identity of the clan/tribe; therefore, nothing can be brought in, and nothing can be taken out. It is said that misfortune will befall the person if anything, even a twig, is removed from the forest. Our children are taught about our traditional way of life in these forests, and our herbal healers pass on their knowledge to the next generation. But what threatens these forests are the cement factories and limestone mining projects encroaching on the land.
“There are no sacred and unsacred places; there are only sacred and desecrated places,” says Wendell Berry. Similarly, as a Khasi, and I can imagine for a San Carlos Apache, the killing of our lands is a tearing apart of our identity and a colonisation of a people. To be desecrated is to be treated with violent disrespect.
Labasa shows us the way; she appears as a clouded leopard, a good omen, or a snake if she is displeased. Does the violent extraction industry see the signs? Do we see the signs? How will we act?
