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| October 6, 2006 Red Alert by Soren Wuerth Chavez hears the song of the “real people”
This is what I heard: A group of Alaska Native students, wearing kuspuks and waving grass and fur fans, sang and danced in the Mt. Olivet Church in Harlem before the great Hugo Chavez. They likely sang about hunting geese, or hauling in seal; songs from the delta, or treeless islands, or the frozen Arctic plain. Movements shaped by wind. Then, addressing representatives of Venezuela and beyond, members of the “nonaligned” countries, a young man tells a story about his village, about the burden of his life. His people are losing their language and their identity. They fight high rates of alcoholism, poverty, alienation, lack of access to education, insufficient preventive health care, and, above all and most insidious, unaffordable oil. Afterwards, Chavez dressed in a blood red shirt, takes a deep breath, glances at a translator, nods and stands. He is an old-growth spruce tree facing resolutely the buffeting surf of an ocean, growing stronger from the salt spray, fed through the roots by a nourishing wellspring of energy. “I can not believe your tribes are suffering from $7 per gallon oil in the richest state in the richest nation on the planet,” he said. An Inupiaq elder, Virginia Commack of Ambler, attended the signing ceremony and later wrote that Chavez “gave us a great role model of a government governing its economics and putting the profits of its economics back into helping its needy people.” “And what is wrong with a foreign government owned company doing business in America responding to the request from our own American congressmen and (giving) a helping hand on oil cost for American people?” the elder wrote. Elstun Lauesen, who was at the New York ceremony and who is working with Chavez’s Citgo on its humanitarian oil relief effort, said he had a call from someone injected with a dose of Fox News’ junk. The man on the phone called Chavez “a tyrant.” “You know the thing about Chavez that you need to understand,” Lauesen explained, “is that he won by 70 percent of the vote in his country. He is taking his oil money and investing in clinics, in education, and he is eliminating poverty. He is investing his money in people.” The caller had no reply. (As for the reliability of Fox News, Lauesen suggested I check out Arianna Huffington’s blog. I did. Mark Foley, the disgraced Republican pedophile, was labeled a Democrat on Fox’s O’Reilly Factor and other programs.) Elstun and I talked about the chance of building a government-to-government relationship between Alaska tribes and Venezuela and about sending a delegation of students to Caracas. In the midst of the all the sickening news (the bill limiting habeas corpus, the violent Amish school shooting by a Lancaster gun nut, the sectarian violence of the Bush Administration) I am lifted to my feet, once again, by the Bolivarian Revolution and the beat of the indigenous drum. What is the difference? According to Virginia Commack: “We are Native … we share … we give … we have compassion.” Soren Wuerth is perhaps Alaska's best known community activist, and is the winner of the Alaska Press Club's 2006 'Best Columnist' award. He resides in an undisclosed location in rural Alaska and can be reached at soren@insurgent49.com. |
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