Xahw Chakash barely had time to pack his bags before his first visit to Iyiyuuschii. “I didn’t bring any documents, not even a sweater,” he laughed.
But as soon as he arrived in Waswanipi a few weeks ago, the Mayan chief from Chiapas, Mexico, felt right at home.
“They told me I couldn’t come here to live because it’s too cold. But I saw I could survive here. I could share with my brothers,” he said. “I felt like in my own family. I feel it’s the same society.”
Chakash traveled from one end of North America to the other in order to build bonds with other indigenous cultures, and help preserve his own. On his way back to Chiapas, he stopped by The Nation to explain the threat his people face from foreign pharmaceutical companies.
Chakash, whose Spanish name is Sebastian Luna Gômez, is from the Tzeltal Nation, who are part of the ancient Mayan civilization. He founded and heads the Chiapas Indigenous Healers Association, which now has 1,800 members. He is 15 years into his 20-year term as chief. In July, he will be running in Mexico’s federal elections.
In 1994, Chiapas was the scene of an indigenous insurrection led by the Zapatista Army of National Liberation. Today, there is an uneasy truce, but Chakash said Chiapas is still overrun by government soldiers and military-backed death squads.
Chiapas, like Iyiyuuschii, is rich in natural resources. Hydro-projects in the state provide 35 percent of the country’s electricity.
Most of the healers in Chiapas are Elders. Like in Iyiyuuschii, they are working hard to pass on their knowledge to the younger generations, even children. But this ancient knowledge is under the gun from pharmaceutical companies that are eyeing local plants and indigenous knowledge, and seeing big bucks.
Could a root found in Chiapas cure diabetes? Can the herb your grandmother uses to make medicine cure cancer?
Multinational corporations are already moving fast to patent the biological resources of the world. In Chiapas, a Western-led business consortium is pressuring Chakash’s association to allow research on the state’s vegetation.
“They’ve been stealing our knowledge all over Mexico. What happens when they do research is they patent information and they start producing pharmaceutical products, and there is no return (to Native peoples),” he said.
“And then the communities can’t use the same knowledge to heal ourselves after that. We have to pay for it. And it’s our own knowledge,” said Chakash.
The companies aren’t just trying to patent one or two plants, he said.
“They’re going to do the whole region’s biological resources – all natural resources of Chiapas. If they find a plant that has very strong properties that can cure cancer or diabetes, the multinationals are going to patent that, and then they will sell this medication at a very expensive price,” he said.
“It’s going to happen here (in Canada), too. We have to find ways to defend our knowledge. We can help each other.”
