Invaders have no link to the land they conquer. The people living there love the land that has supported them and their families for generations.
There are two issues here.
1) the right of a people to remain on their ancestral land, and all that implies. Centuries of lore passed from one generation to the next, areas children have played in year after year. Familiarity with landscape, flora and fauna. Waterholes.
2) respect for sacred lands.
There is the crass example of Mount Rushmore desecrating the sacred lands of the Blue Hills. To add insult to injury one of the figures depicted on the defaced mountain is the former President Jackson, responsible for driving the Cherokee from their land in a most bitter winter for the sake of the gold he hoped to find on their land.
Listen to Johnny Cash read the Trail of Tears for a first hand account of this most cruel of actions. The thirst for gold was fired by the presentation of a small love token from a Cherokee woman to a white man. It became a precedent for further actions to drive one nation after another from their traditional lands to – usually barren – locations called reservations, but they were not more reserved than the land the nations had been displaced from, as again and again more of the land was stolen. The same policy was followed by the Canadian government regarding the Inuit people, pushed to lands that offered no support for life.
But this is not relegated to history. It is happening today not only in Gaza and Palestine, but among the people of the Amazon, the Saami of the northern lands and so on and so forth. The pressure of commerce is driving the Maasai from their homeland to a place with which they have no relationship.
It is very easy for money to make decisions to gratify itself. In the case of the Maasai, in the name of ‘profitable tourism’, this ancient race is being forcibly removed from their lands. No doubt the politicians who have been approached and had the benefits explained to them, with a bung under the table, believe this will make their country – not a nation – wealthier. But it won’t. The only ones to gain from such an action are the investors whose sole interest is making money and playing at being ‘in Nature’. Meanwhile the land will die without the guardians to protect it. Unhappy for all concerned.
