And we call ourselves human?
Coming together to make the world a better place
GREG MCVICKER, VOLUNTEER STAFF
A few years ago, I received an e-mail with an attached picture. This is not unusual for many of us, as we regularly receive e-mail, whether warranted or not. Such attachments may be cartoons or a picture depicting what the photographer captured through her or his lens. However, this was not some ordinary picture to look at, laugh, and delete. This picture cast an image in my mind, and one that I have not easily forgotten.
The picture shows a young child in Sudan, being stalked by a vulture merely feet away. Kevin Carter took this picture on March 11, 1993, but not long after, Kevin took his own life, seemingly fraught with desperation due to his work as a photographer capturing countless images of children dying from famine. The horror that accompanies this picture is one that I cannot seem to shake. To view this picture and other images Kevin captured, simply search his name on the Internet. Be prepared, though; the images are haunting.
While having a few moments this weekend to glance at the television, I watched a program that asked viewers to send money to help children from Third World countries attend school. Often, our television screens are filled with images like this one, whereby Canadian celebrities such as Alex Trebek and Rod Black have gone overseas on missionary trips to highlight the impoverished conditions the people of these countries face. Personally, I find it overwhelming that we still live in a world where poverty and the right to basic human dignity is seemingly only afforded to the world’s richest countries. Or is it?
We here in Canada are afforded the luxury of living in a country filled with many natural resources, employment opportunities and an environment lush with beauty and splendor. However, let us begin taking off our rose-coloured glasses, look a little further outside of this concrete jungle called Winnipeg, and cast our eyes toward communities that are within a few hours of driving. Right here in our own back garden we have communities filled with abhorrent living conditions and houses without heat or running water, and the residents face some of the worst living conditions people can endure: reserves.
If anyone needs to read about the impoverishment aboriginal people have suffered, I suggest you pick up the book Night Spirits: The Relocation Story of the Sayisi Dene as authored by Ila Bussidor and Ustun Bilgen-Reinart. This book depicts some of the horrors and traumas that the Sayisi Dene have faced, including children and families having to feed in rubbish dumps with full-sized bears only feet away from them, also scourging for food.
To highlight a few other discrepancies that exist here, in 2002, the cost of milk in northern Manitoba First Nations communities was on average $12 for a four-litre jug, whereas we in Winnipeg pay around $3.38 for the exact same product. Fruit and vegetables are often bruised, wilted or spoiled, so a packet of chips, a bottle of pop or a chocolate bar often becomes the preferred choice amongst many within reserve communities. Do we now understand why diabetes is rampant amongst First Nations people?
We have also heard stories in the larger media about children within reserve communities being mauled to death by wild dogs. We cannot easily forget about the absolute horror of the five-year-old boy who was killed last year on the North Tallcree Reserve in Northern Alberta. RCMP Sgt. Ryan Becker stated the attack was so vicious that the facial features of this little boy were destroyed. Countless children have been killed by dogs on reserves, such as the three-year-old boy from the Sayisi Dene First Nation near Tadoule Lake, Man. in 2004. But these images do not flash across our television screens, nor do we find celebrities from this country bringing heightened awareness to such atrocities. The death of any child, however, regardless of their location in this world, is a complete and utter tragedy.
No, we do not have projects established to drop bags of rice or corn into these communities, only for mothers to leave their children unattended for a few moments, to gather up what they can to feed their families while vultures land behind their children. But, how is it we have a country plentiful with running water, a resource used to create hydro electricity, creating outrageous profit margins, but we cannot take some of those profits and create better living conditions in a land that we share with our aboriginal sisters and brothers? It is their land and their resources, but they are the ones who receive minimal or zero profit from such resources.
Regardless of the luxuries we have or the opportunities we are presented with due to our geographical location, we can no longer ignore conditions that are not only completely against human dignity right here in Canada and Third World countries alike but exist throughout this very world. We need to come together collectively, as humans, for humans, and do everything possible to eradicate famine, poverty and disease; to create a world that provides for each and every one of us, regardless of race, culture or ethnicity, the chance to flourish in our little place in space, Mother Earth. Otherwise, do we have the right to call ourselves human?
Greg McVicker is a fourth-year undergraduate social work student.
