With Rudolph C. Ryser and his guests
Dr. David Price
Mr. David Martinez
Dr. Steve Niva

Program Synopsis

Before September 11, 2001 indigenous nations in many places in the world had been engaged in low-intensity conflicts either in defense of their peoples and territories or in movements of self-determination (as many as 80 different conflicts). These conflicts had been described in the press and by foreign policy spokespersons as "internal conflicts" or as regional conflicts. The efforts of the peoples of Kashmir, for example, to exercise self-determination had been thwarted by the interventions of India and Pakistan. Similar conflicts between indigenous nations and states' governments (i.e., Tibet and China, Chechnya and Russia, Papuans and Indonesia, Tamils and Sri Lanka, Palestinians and Israel) had been underway for as many as fifty years. Guests on Fourth World Dialogue point out that these conflicts involving questions of political self-determination, resource access and cultural rights were transformed by President George Bush's declaration of war into conflicts between "terrorists" and states acting in their self-defense on September 11, 2002.

The U.S. "war on terrorism" is being used as a justification for states' governments to use American force to attack and quell legitimate movements of self-determination. America's war on terrorism is drifting into a generalized war on indigenous nations instead of a war focused on defeating the bigotry and violence of a movement driven by religious zeal, fueled by elicit drugs and precious resources like diamonds, conducted with the tactics of organized crime and systematically organized like a transnational corporation.