Cover Me With Pretty Lies - Burma and America

The world is a strange and mysterious place. The big things catch our attention and get plastered over the news. The Israel-Lebannon conflict is the latest, but there are lots of conflicts all over the world, with child-soldiers in the Congo and drug-lords in Colombia. Why does it happen? Why do we allow it to happen?

I've been reading 'Letters From Burma' by Aung San Suu Kyi, a collection of 52 letters she wrote in the mid '90s for a Japanese newspaper. It's not an autobiography although some of her letters talk about herself and her family. Her letters are about current events in her life, Buddhist festivals, her friends and colleagues imprisoned in Burma, Christmas in Rangoon, the civil service, the prices in shops and, of course, her constant state of being under house-arrest one day and 'free' the next, almost at a whim of the mysterious authorities.

I've enjoyed reading this book (if enjoyed is the right word). She comes across as a delightful and gentle woman, the language she uses is very measured and delicate, oddly peaceful to read. An elected leader of her country who has never been allowed to lead.

I've wanted to go to Burma/Myanmar for many years but have always stopped short of booking a flight because of the military government. I hope to go one day.

I also watched a DVD documentary this week, 'Broken Rainbow', about the forced relocation of Navajo and Hopi peoples in Arizona so that the land can be strip-mined for coal and uranium. I got it because it is narrated by Buffy Sainte-Marie, with her as the English voice of Navajo and Hopi people speaking in their own languages.

Some of the tales and images seem a bit sensational, designed to tug at the heart-strings. The basic facts, however, remain unchanged in this tale of government-backed big business riding roughshod over a small group of people nobody really cares about. There is a lovely sequence showing little old grannies and great-grannies digging up the fence posts that split their land in two with spades and scooping away the poor desert soil with their hands. Very touching to see them smile when the post topples.

The relocation has been going on since the 1970s and, in part, generated the politicisation of Native Americans but it's still going on today in America, land of the free and the superpower that influences so much in the modern world. The documentary was from the mid '80s with an update filmed earlier this year showing what has happened to some of the people featured in the film. It's desperately sad that so many of the original participants are now dead, with their sons and daughters speaking about them and on their behalf. And the US Congress still supports the relocation. Resistence has spread to the Internet with the Black Mesa Indiginous Support site.

Buffy Sainte-Marie sings about the energy companies and land-grabbing in 'Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee'. It's on iTunes. Listen to it if you get the chance and think of the Navajo and the legal forced relocation programme still operating today.