Martín von Hildebrand

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Martín von Hildebrand ( Rio de Janeiro , 2009)

Martín von Hildebrand (born January 26, 1943 in New York ) is an ethnologist and one of the leading figures in the enforcement of indigenous rights in Colombia and throughout South America. As head of the Colombian Indian Authority, he was able to enforce that 246,000 km² of the traditional territories of the indigenous peoples in the rainforest area were returned. Building on this success, he established other programs. He was also the founding director of the Fundación Gaia Amazonas .

life and work

Martín von Hildebrand was born in 1943 to Franz von Hildebrand and the Irish woman Deirdre Mulcahy. Thus, through his father, he was a grandson of the philosopher Dietrich von Hildebrand , who had to flee Germany after Hitler came to power in 1933, was then appointed professor to Vienna and from there after the Anschluss in 1938 emigrated again at risk of death . Franz von Hildebrand was also forced by the National Socialists to leave the country in 1938 and went to the USA, from where he and his wife helped political refugees and Jews to flee. Franz von Hildebrand met Mario Laserna from Colombia who wanted to found a university. He and his wife were called to Bogotá in 1949 to found the Universidad de los Andes , Colombia's first private university.

Martin von Hildebrand studied at the local Lycée Français, then sociology and archeology in Dublin . There he completed his studies in 1968.

A four-month stay among Indian groups in 1970 and more in the following years, especially under Tanimuca and Letuama (language: Tanimuca-Retuarã ) in the rainforest of the Amazon in southern Colombia, prompted him to stand up for their rights and their culture, which by Rubber entrepreneur was threatened. He dealt with their cosmology and their traditional practices with which they protected their natural environment. This was made all the more difficult for them the more colonial and economic forces acted on them. The latter were triggered by the exploration of raw materials, such as oil and rubber, but gold was also sought and coca was grown. The indigenous peoples threatened to lose their rights to their land through created facts and through violent attacks, which continue to this day.

Hildebrand founded the Amazon branch of the Colombian Anthropological Institute in 1972. In this way he brought together biologists, doctors and teachers, lawyers and anthropologists or ethnologists who were trained to give the indigenous peoples the opportunity to take control of their own development again according to the criteria of their own cultures. They were given access to relevant information and the legal framework to address contentious issues. Hildebrand himself, with the support of the Indians, pushed through the legal enforcement of their claim to their traditional territories. In 1979 he went to the Sorbonne in Paris for a short time to complete his dissertation in ethnology . He then returned and worked with the Ministry of Education on a project to educate the indigenous people.

In 1986 he became chairman of the indigenous authority and advisor to President Virgilio Barco Vargas . With his support, the Convention on Indigenous and Tribal Peoples in Independent Countries , which became part of the constitution, was enforced in 1989 . Between 1986 and 1990, the government recognized over 200,000 km² of rainforest in the Amazon region as collective indigenous territories (resguardos) with the status of a community. In addition, a separate commission for Indian affairs and one for environmental affairs was set up.

For Hildebrand, however, the establishment of the territories was just the beginning of a long process. He left the government and started a network of non-governmental organizations , a foundation called Fundación Gaia Amazonas . that strives for new ways of environmental protection in cooperation with indigenous groups. The program is supported by the World Commission on Forest and Sustainable Development, the European Commission and the governments of Denmark , the Netherlands , Austria and Sweden . In order to overcome the narrow state borders within the Amazon region, he founded a cross-state initiative called CANOA. She works for the protection of the forests in Colombia, Brazil and Venezuela. Funds from the program reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation in developing countries (REDD) would, if it were decided, provide monetary compensation. The indigenous peoples see the forests not only as CO 2 sinks or as guarantors of biodiversity , but as areas in which shamans influence and heal energy processes and which may have to be completely withdrawn from human access.

Beyond the recognition and the independent government beyond its territories, von Hildebrand's aim is to have indigenous cultural techniques and skills, such as certain forms of teaching and instruction, ways of shamanic healing, justice according to their own tradition, priesthood and midwives recognized. After that, like the activities of their non-indigenous colleagues, they can be paid by the state. Similar to the mountain farmers in the alpine area, they should be rewarded for the care and preservation of the rainforest. Ecological projects have to be monitored in order to prevent corruption, at the same time money may only flow into projects, never to individuals, in order to undermine corruption on both the government side and the Indian side.

Hildebrand himself described the changes since his first visit in 1970. He found the following situation: Most of the children went to mission schools that taught them not to be Indians. Their language and religion, the food, everything was wrong. Everything would be right if they became like the whites. The first step in change was owning the land, then self-determination in health care, education and land management. In the next step, people were employed who now had an income, their own house, means of transport or food. They investigated their own culture, asked the old people again, whose knowledge matched the reality of their lives, no longer migrated to the cities, and many returned. The boys began with this knowledge - e.g. B. Negotiating with the government - from a position of superior knowledge - by having accurate maps of their area with the types of usage and the correct times, age of users and gender. Their pride in their knowledge and skills increased. At the same time, it turned out that the indigenous healing methods are extremely effective, so that health costs have been more than halved. On the one hand, the state costs have been reduced considerably, on the other hand, the stability of the communities in a country in which fighting between guerrillas and the military, drug gangs and paramilitaries is the order of the day, benefits state stability. This is based on the 1991 constitution and strong courts. In 2008, a forest law was defeated because it contradicted the constitution, which gave indigenous peoples a say, like all groups. Gold prospectors who believed they could do without the consent of the indigenous peoples had a similar experience.

In 1999 Hildebrand's COAMA project received the Alternative Nobel Prize , and in Colombia the national prize for environmental protection. In 2004 he became official in the Dutch Order of the Golden Ark , in the same year he received the Simón Rodríguez Ecology Prize . In 2009 he received the Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship in Oxford for his Gaia Foundation.

Publications (selection)

  • Origen del Mundo segun los Ufaina. In: Revista Colombiana de Anthropologia. Volume 17, 1975, pp. 321-381
  • together with A. Andrade, Y. Campos: Archeology and Ethnology of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta , report for the program for ecological development of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, Bogotá 1982.
  • The Indians' Problem is White. In: EFETECE. Bogotá 1983.
  • Education and Research. In: Indian Communities, Science & Technology Magazine. Volume 3, No. 4, 1984.
  • Notas etnográficas sobre el cosmos Ufaina y su relación con la maloca. In: Maguars. Volume 2, 1984, pp. 83-84 (Bogotá: Universidad Nacional).
  • An Amazonian Tribe's View of Cosmology. In: Peter Bunyard and Edward Goldsmith (Eds.): Gaia, the Thesis, the Mechanism and the Implications. Wadebridge Ecological Center, Wadebridge, Cornwall, 1988, pp. 206-236.
  • Teachings of the Ash people of the Amazon forest. The teachings of the ash people of the Amazon rainforest. Naturschutzbund Steiermark 2004, pp. 221–231.

literature

  • Martin von Hildebrand. In: Gerhard Drekonja-Kornat: Gabriel García Márquez in Vienna and other cultural stories from Latin America . In the series: Latin American Studies, Volume 8, Lit , Vienna [ua] 2010, ISBN 978-3-643-50141-7 , pp. 161–163.

Web links

Remarks

  1. ^ Website of the Universidad de los Andes .
  2. ↑ COAMA ( Memento from January 5, 2001 in the Internet Archive )
  3. ^ World Commission on Forests and Sustainable Development ( Memento of August 11, 2011 in the Internet Archive )
  4. ↑ CANOA ( Memento from September 29, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
  5. ↑ Consolidation of the Amazon Region, COAMA (Colombia) ( Memento of September 29, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) on rightlivelihood.org
  6. ^ Fundacion Gaia Amazonas. Martin von Hildebrand ( Memento from July 22, 2012 in the Internet Archive )
personal data
SURNAME Hildebrand, Martín from
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American ethnologist
DATE OF BIRTH January 26, 1943
PLACE OF BIRTH New York City