"Indigenous people and their beliefs are to this very day viewed by the dominate society at large as second-class castes. Indigenous identity is still perceived as a novelty, feathers in the hair, painted faces, dancing in circles or hugging trees. As individuals, these people are rarely seen for their true selves, nor are they recognized for their accomplishments or contributions. They are the world's first doctors, chemists, pharmacists, ecosystem managers and technicians, educators, and humanitarians. Today, however, the identity and value of a doctor, scientist or technician is judged more often by the number of framed degrees prominently displayed on a wall-not by centuries of tested and proven indigenous methodologies which are in many cases superior to their synthetic and/or high-tech counterparts, and also far less expensive." Artwork of Indigenous People in Canada - UN Photo 9307-3202/John Isaac "The incorrect belief is that the data is more important than the people who hold it. Traditional indigenous peoples are not just databases to squeeze and discard once science and large multinationals have extracted what they believe are the only important elements of their cultures. The data or indigenous knowledge base is valuable only as long as the living system of knowledge exists. Data is only viable if the people who have the expertise to use it are still alive. People make the system, not the data in and of itself." So wrote Lahe'ena'e Gay, Chairwomen and President of the Pacific Cultural Conservancy, who was killed in March this year by abductors who had kidnapped her while she was visiting Colombia. As the United Nations reaches the mid-point of the International Decades of the World's Indigenous People and for Human Rights Education (both 1995-2004), the Chronicle is privileged to publish these excerpts from a paper she presented to the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development on 10 April 1997.

A long, long time ago, when men and women mingled with the deities of earth and sky, one of the demi-gods who dwelled in the clouds woke from a sound sleep. As he stretched and looked over his ethereal perch, there on the mountain top, he saw his woman embracing another man. In a rage he leapt down upon the earth, picked up the man he believed to be his rival and threw him down on the top of a nearby hill. With a stroke of his hand, he turned him into a large phallic stone. The demi-god then picked up his wife and, throwing her to the base of the hill, turned her to stone in the shape of a vulva.

As the demi-god looked at what he had done, he realized that his actions were based on presumption, not fact. Was the man his wife's lover or merely a friend with whom she shared a friendly embrace? To question it now was too late, for his actions could not be undone. As all elements of indigenous life, including the lives of deities, exist in circular motion, the demi-god knew he was required to provide balance for the shift in time and space he had created.

The demi-god placed his hands upon the stone which was, but a few moments before, his wife and made a decree: "As long as this stone sits above the earth in the full light of the sun and moon, the male stone which stands atop this hill will have the power to impregnate mortal women for all time." He then vanished into the skies above. For hundreds of years, women who were unable to nourish the seeds of life within their wombs came to the great phallic stone to receive the gift of motherhood. Today, this stone is known as Nanahoa.

Women approach the stone on full or new moons, give a small offering, stand on the high point of Nanahoa and ask to be impregnated with the seed of life. In 1995, a woman was told by numerous doctors that she was sterile and would never be capable of having children naturally. Their basis of opinion came from multiple scientific tests over a period of several years. The woman, greatly distressed, went to see an old Hawaiian aunt. Auntie explained to her niece that she had one option open to her. "Go and see the great stone on the hill, he will give you a child." The woman was appalled, "I am Christian, how can I do such a thing?" Her aunt sternly replied, "you are the origin of your ancestors first, everything else comes second. To deny the power of your heritage is to deny your very existence."

The woman spent many days trying to decide what to do. She finally embraced the wisdom of her aunt's advice. Preparing a small offering, she ventured up the hill and completed the ritual of Nanahoa. Within a few weeks she was pregnant. Soon another obstacle appeared. The woman's husband, who was in the navy, returned home. But he had been at sea for two months prior to his wife's impregnation. He believed that she had been unfaithful and went to live on his ship.

When the woman cried to her aunt, the old woman called the husband to her home. She gave him a stern scolding. "Who are you to say that the ways of our ancient ancestors have no truths. Are you so sure that only doctors and science have the cures and remedies for the world. Would you believe the doctors and not allow life to grow in the womb of the woman you profess to love?

Or would you have faith and try to understand that the world of answers you know is only a tiny portion of the world which exists?" The old woman told the husband: "When your child is born, the first expression will be laughter, not tears. On its behind will be a small birthmark. Bring your baby to me and then you will fully understand."

The baby was born, healthy and strong, its first expression was laughter, and on the baby boy's behind was a small birthmark. The woman and her husband took their small son home to Auntie. She looked at the birthmark, smiled and pulled up her dress to reveal an identical mark on the back of her thigh. "I, too, was conceived through the power of Nanahoa and his partner, the life-giving Wahine (female) stone. Never forget, that which is ancient has not lost its place in these times. Perhaps the ways of our ancestors are even more important now than when I was a child." The woman and her husband have had another healthy child and to this day venture to Nanahoa to give thanks.

But this story does not have a happy ending. Today, the elders of the island speak of wailing in the night drifting down from the hill of Nanahoa. In the morning, when they venture up the hill to investigate, they find deep wounds, graffiti, carved deep into his body, with a clear liquid draining from each new wound. In less than five years, a stone form which stands 10 feet high, 12 feet long and 4 feet wide has been completely covered by these scarring wounds of disrespect and ignorance. The elders have realized that he is slowing bleeding to death. They say: "These generations have no respect, they are taught that all which is part of the past is dead or has no use. They cannot understand, such wonders frighten them, it is their nature that they destroy what they cannot control."

Today, these elders are faced with a painful and difficult decision. If they bury the female stone at the base of the hill, Nanahoa will finally be able to rest in peace. But his life-giving ability to assist those who need him most will be forever lost. The decision has not yet been made.

I chose this story because it illustrates several important points. First being that an ancient deity made a decision based on assumption. Today, policies which affect not only the natural environment but the human environment are made, more and more from a position of assumption, not fact and understanding. Yet the deity was able to recognize the error of his haste; he created a contribution which would benefit future generations. Next, the power and ability of the sacred place at the centre of the story was discounted by the husband because he was taught to believe in only one way, the way of science. When science could not provide the opening, he could not accept the possibility that science is only a partner to the process of evolution, not its master.

And finally, this story is pertinent because it illustrates that we are still teaching our children to discount anything they cannot understand or control, that modern technological science is the primary key to the future. By providing such limited options of explanation and choice, our children have now joined their forebearers in the systematic destruction of the very energy and wisdom that could be their future salvation.

Humans have been a vital part of the living natural environment for thousands of years. Yet, as we sit here today, we are quietly witnessing and excusing away our own slow process of extinction. Thousands of indigenous communities have been driven to extinction, dozens are facing extinction within the next two years, hundreds more are facing their elimination over the next 20 to 50 years. Traditional indigenous peoples are quite possibly the last holders of basic humanity, making decisions from inherent understanding that their choices will affect the next several generations. The jungle, the desert, the plains, the seas, each is an individual identity of one living being; the earth is a living, breathing organism, a single prototype, with multiple identities. Like the earth, the human species is one prototype with multiple identities, each crucial for the long-term maintenance of the entire mechanism. As individual identities disappear, the overall ability of the mechanism to operate at optimal levels decreases. The elimination of certain portions of the mechanism endangers the whole.

Indigenous peoples know that, as they disappear from the planet, the integrity of the world and the human species as a whole weakens. They fight for the preservation of their ecosystems, knowledge and very existence, not for themselves alone, but for the health and well-being of all the world's people. They are not just the old masters of earth sciences and technologies, they are the problem solvers and caretakers of our future, through whose knowledge and wisdom, humanity can be rediscovered and reinstalled into all aspects of policy and planning, allowing for ethics and their subsequent application to be discussed.

Our elders teach us that we are all from an indigenous root, we are all children of the earth and that the health of the mother is our combined responsibility. Indigenous peoples are not ignorant of perils that lie in the future, they have a deep and committed responsibility to shifting, through their knowledge and wisdom, the course which our species presently walks. Boundaries drawn on paper by man do not distinguish segregation of responsibility. We can no longer afford the luxury of believing that our part of the earth is ours to do as we see fit. The environmental and human health of one district, county, country or continent is now the concern of all mankind.

Consider Asia, quickly becoming a consumer of western-based products that will directly affect the future of the natural global environment. If a billion additional fossil-fuel-run vehicles are added to the Asian landscape over the next 10 to 15 years, the effect on the global environmental will be devastating and irreversible. The potential for melding non-aggressive modern technology with a basis of indigenous environmental planning is at our fingertips.

As a human being of mixed heritage, I wish to pass on the following from elders who live in many lands and see the same necessities. Decisions which would be made based on 20-per cent politics, 30-per cent legality and 50-per cent humanity would eventually create a future that could ensure the combined survival and prosperity of all the world's people for generations to come. Global planning from indigenous perspectives is the key to a healthy, natural and human environment. The global community has the opportunity, in Asia, through environmentally progressive consumerism to show that the business of environmental preservation and management is a sound global investment. Solar and electric vehicle technology are widely available and can be manufactured on a large scale-instead of fossil-fuel stations, electric stations.

Agenda 21, adopted at the 1992 Earth Summit, stated that an estimated $600 billion were needed to repair and maintain the global environment. But the percentage earmarked for indigenous people was less than 0.01 per cent, negligible at best and invisible at worst. We lobby, and correctly so, for the survival of whales, birds, trees and even insects; yet what about the human being? We must continue the integrity and diversity of the cultural biology of the human being by preserving all living examples of that biology, melding indigenous sciences and technology with non-aggressive modern technology. One without the other is incomplete and will not be capable of fulfilling the crucial needs of our natural and human environment.

It is still said that we use less than 15 per cent of our inherent biological and spiritual gifts. Traditional indigenous communities, modern science is beginning to recognize, may be using nearly 40 per cent; such abilities cannot be bottled or synthesized. They can only be taught through the human experience.

What a future we would have if all policies and future planning associated with the natural and human environment were based on a solid commitment to the principles of humanity and integrity. The family of man must embrace and remember we are all of the same seed. The indigenous code of moral and cultural ethics is that the needs of the land, the needs of the community and the needs of the family come long before the wants of the individual. The time for action is upon us, may we grasp it -forward ever, backward never. The old ones say, "to see the course of the future, you need only to look at your own reflection."

I am not the first, nor will I be the last, to come before you to speak from an indigenous perspective. Perhaps, hopefully, my words may have awakened the sleeping giant of humanity that lies within all of us, all of you.