Indigenous people protest at COP30 in Belém, Brasil. (Texas Impact Photo)
Guest post by Nate Wieland, a hospital chaplain in Southern Illinois.
COP30 has been deemed the COP of Indigenous Peoples. As compared to previous COPs this has largely been true. According to the Coalition of Indigenous Peoples in Brazil (APIB) there are between 2,500 and 3,000 indigenous representatives present this year, a marked difference from previous years. It would make sense that such an astronomical rise in representation would dramatically alter the conversations in decision-making spaces, but as so often turns out to be true with representation, it isn’t enough. This is especially true when structural inequities exist.
Of the multiple thousand indigenous people present, only 360 have been allowed permits into the Blue Zone, the restricted area for official negotiations. On an episode of Outrage and Optimism: The Climate Podcast, climate activist Helena Gualinga of the Kichwa Sarayaku community in Pastaza, Ecuador, reported that there have even been instances of Indigenous representatives having their access to the Blue Zone questioned upon entry. Though Indigenous peoples do not all share one opinion, many have expressed frustration at the barriers to their full participation in decisions that meaningfully affect their peoples, their lands, and the climate at large.
Perhaps nowhere has this frustration been expressed more clearly than the protests happening in Belém throughout the duration of COP30. This COP has also been deemed the COP of Truth, and the protests have certainly told a truth about the state of climate negotiations and the struggle for indigenous sovereignty over their lands. Nato, an indigenous leader from the Tupinamba community, spoke an important word of truth during one such protest.
“We can’t eat money… …We want our lands free from agribusiness, oil exploration, illegal miners and illegal loggers.”
Indeed, we cannot eat money. Nato has named for us a fundamental conflict that exists between Indigenous ways of life and colonial capitalist society. To bring further insight to the truth he’s naming, I want to briefly explore a historic example of what’s taking place currently in Brazil and worldwide.
In the early 1800s colonization was underway in South Africa. The Dutch East India Company had occupied land for decades by that point, converting natural ecosystems into farmland for profit. In the 1860s diamonds were discovered, promoting rapid industrialization and urbanization. Colonial capitalist society, in need of workers to continue extracting resources from the mines and working the plantations, turned its eyes towards Indigenous populations and posed what was called, “the labour question.”
They wondered, how can we get the Indigenous peoples to work for paltry wages when they are content with their ancestral lifestyles in harmony with the land? The Indigenous people at the time had everything they needed; land to subsist on, clean water, natural resources, and a wealth of traditional knowledge by which they could survive and thrive apart from the colonial capitalist economy. So colonial capitalist society did as it has always done. It forced the Indigenous peoples off their lands, made the Indigenous peoples pay taxes in European currency only available by wage labor, then punished anyone who didn’t pay. They enclosed the abundance of Indigenous life upon the generous land, accumulated obscene amounts of private wealth, and manufactured scarcity for everyone else.
This is why it’s been such a struggle to demarcate Indigenous lands; capitalist economies, inherently growth-driven, need more and more workers and natural resources to continue growing. This has been true in Brazil and all over the world. Before last year when Lula recognized indigenous possession of 11 territories, no new Indigenous lands had been declared since 2018. His predecessor Bolsonaro had actively promoted mining on indigenous lands.
The difference between these two presidencies shouldn’t evoke a “left vs. right,” “good guy vs. bad guy” narrative. Even under Lula’s presidency we’ve seen the authorization of new sites for oil exploration. Lula’s successes in demarcating Indigenous lands, even very recently, have been admirable, but even the highest office in the land finds itself caught between commitments. To compete in a global capitalist economy requires growth. History has borne out that limitless growth always comes at the expense of Indigenous sovereignty. We who envision a world where Indigenous peoples, protectors of 83% of the world’s biodiversity, have sovereignty over their lands will always run into a fundamental conflict.
What do we do when the world we dream of threatens capital accumulation?
The story of the enclosure of the commons in South Africa and what we’re witnessing in real time in constant encroachment onto indigenous lands represent a worldview that’s incompatible with United Methodist faithfulness. This colonial capitalist worldview, driven by limitless growth, can only see Indigenous peoples as labor to be exploited and only see the ecosystems of the earth as potential sources of profit.
I don’t know the best way through this conflict, or the role that United Methodists will play in the struggle between capital’s manufactured scarcity and the earth’s free gift of abundance. The UM Social Principles, within the preface of the section titled Community of All Creation, says this:
“We affirm our sacred calling to be responsible stewards and to lovingly tend all that God has wrought. We recognize the inherent worth of God’s creation, celebrate earth’s abundance and diversity, and, along with the entirety of the cosmos, give praise to its Creator. We recognize we are interconnected members of complex ecosystems, intricate webs of life, all of which have their origins in God’s gracious act of creation.”
I’ve been grateful to participate in COP30. It’s given me hope in what Pope Francis, in Laudate Si, called “a multilateralism ‘from below’ and not simply one determined by the elites of power.” Steps were taken at this COP towards a multilateralism from below, but as the voices of some indigenous leaders attest, it’s not there yet. It probably won’t be until nations are less committed to capital than they are to people and the earth. The good news is, we don’t have to wait for them. If the protests show us anything, it’s that indigenous peoples will work to save the planet regardless of whether the elites join them. I hope that we, as United Methodists, join them.