Friday, November 27, 2020

Letter from the Parrot Nations

 

Letter from the Parrot Nations

August 2017

Dear Homo sapiens,

     Whoever you are in the Americas, you are tied to the harvesting of parrots. If you claim indigenous blood, you took parrots for food and home long before Europeans ever came ashore. And if you are claim European descent, your ancestors started taking parrots form the Americas with the very first return voyage of Christopher Columbus. Those of African descent perhaps captured parrots in their homeland, and traded in them as well once in the Americas, especially in the Caribbean. If you are currently in North America, you too have been importing parrots for decades, especially if you are from the USA. You also were part of national genocide that wiped out not just the indigenous humans, but North America’s indigenous parrot, the Carolina parakeet. And if you are a parrot, your genetic background knows of a plentitude of your kind that darkened skies with the size of your flocks, whereas now your diminished size only clouds both human and avian spirit.

     Let us not judge one another, for none of us escapes the domination system under which we live. Our cultures taught us well the habits of oppression, white supremacy, racism, colonialism, and speciesism. Whether agent or recipient of a harmful act or thought, both are prisoners in world less beautiful, more dangerous, and less biodiverse. We have been led to believe that we must sell or extract what is rightfully ours, our native and biological heritage, our children’s future and the future of all earth’s children, to survive in the oppressor’s world.

     Every parrot we poach, sell, or home are the pieces of silver that betray our own well-being and that of others. For we are saying that life does not matter, earth does not matter, the future does not matter, I do not matter, and neither do you. You are being bribed with a false sense of connection and security, needs which cannot even remotely be met by captive parrot alone.

     Rise up poachers, lay down your slingshots, machetes, axes, and climbing ropes and spikes.  These are all tools of the oppressor which enslave you as you capture others.

     Traders and buyers, empty your pockets of greed, for earth’s temple should not be a den of thieves. When you sell a being, you have sold your soul.

     You with homed parrots, open up the doors to your caged minds, for when you imprison another, you imprison yourself.

     And you parrots, beat your wings against those cage doors until the sounds of the captive’s cry can be heard around the world.

      Let your lament be the wind upon which we all rise. If one is fallen, so are we all.

     Choose liberation. Let us all be free at last.

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  A member or supporter of a revolutionary force working for social and ecological transformation through solidarity with all life and who...