Indigenous peoples are submitted to a museum role without recognizing their millenary experience

SANTIAGO , Chile, April 28, 2006

The VI International Event “Migration and Indigenous Peoples” held in Arica denounced the critical situation Taxi Heathrow Airport of many indigenous peoples like the Aymara who live in northern Chile and are “submitted to a mere archeological and museum role” rather than a recognition of their millenary existence and experience.

The event held April 20 – 22 with the participation of 32 indigenous leaders from Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador and Chile maintained that indigenous people have been stigmatized and that they have been “uprooted” despite being aboriginal to these lands.

The meeting was convened by the Ecumenical Network for Refugees, Migrants and Displaced in Latin America, the Andean Region of the Latin American Council of Churches (CLAI), the CLAI Indigenous Pastoral, the World Council of Churches (WCC) and the Fraternity of Pastors of Arica and the Social Help Foundation of Christian Churches (FASIC). The theme was “Migrations; training us for a good response from faith.”

The meeting addressed the Andean cosmovision, its spirituality and contribution to Andean society. The organizers said that the destructive practice against indigenous peoples on the part of current day society “destroys our habitat including all living beings and nature, necessarily leads us to rescue ancestral principles.”

They affirmed that the problem of migrations in current times, in the light of scripture, allows us to understand what it means to be expelled, to be a migrant, to be a refugee, to be displaced.”

The participants announced that they will continue the training to seek strategies of accompaniment, orientation and aid, from a Christian identity, in the face of the situation that migrants and refugees face in the region.

Among the main conclusions of the event was the establishment of permanent networks to exchange information and communication among countries and the related institutions as well as training migratory law.