TEXT B It is over five hundred years since Columbus "discovered" America. The celebration of the anniversary has at least produced one benefit. It has so effectively focused on the worldwide problem of the rights of aboriginal peoples. Developments in America demonstrate: the problem more clearly than anywhere else. This was a whole continent, the population of which in Columbus’s day may have numbered as many as 100 million. Today only a fraction of these Indian peoples survive, and any truly Indian culture can only be found isolated in small pockets. Why was the Indian culture less able than others to resist the European pressure Any processes elsewhere resembling the one in America have only taken place in more marginal areas of the world. Such processes are complex, and this is not the place for a more detailed analysis. What is clear, however, is that at certain times and in certain places we are confronted by a different force from infectious diseases and mortality or the haphazard outcome of wars and rapacity, and that is the systemic "ethnic cleansing" of the aboriginal population--better known as genocide. There is a most urgent need to define the rights of aboriginal peoples and to respect those rights in a manner which makes it possible to live in peace and mutual understanding. To succeed in this, we need people like Turn. For this Committee it was a happy coincidence that it was precisely in the year of Columbus that she emerged as such a strong candidate for this Prize. Tum chose to dedicate herself to political and social work for her people. She tells us in her autobiography what a difficult choice it was not to have a family. She was engaged, she tells us, and felt an obligation to the ancestral principle of seeking happiness not only for oneself but for one’s family. A threat of ethnic cleansing of course lends extra weight to such an obligation. But she chose otherwise. She became an active member of the CUC. Then she participated in the founding of the organisation called the Revolutionary Christians. "We understood" revolutionary’ in the real meaning of the word: ’ transformation’. If I had chosen the armed struggle, I would be in the mountains now." Owing to her political activity, she has had to spend twelve years in exile in Mexico. In her book A Strategy for Peace, the Swedish-American moral philosopher Sissela Bok describes what she calls the "pathology of partisanship", or the brutalizing effect of the use of violence. Whoever commits acts of violence will lose his humanity. Thus, violence breeds violence and hate breeds hate. She quotes the English poet Stephen Spender, who experienced this process in himself when he took part in the Spanish Civil War.. "It was clear to me that unless I cared about every murdered child impartially, I did not care about children being murdered at all." But how can one break out of the vicious circle of the pathology of partisanship It is easy enough to keep out and call for non-violence or an end to hatred when one is not oneself confronted with the blind violence of the other side. Nor is it indeed our responsibility to judge or to condemn in such cases. What we can do, however, is to point to the shining individual examples of people who manage to preserve their humanity in brutal and violent surroundings, of persons who for that very reason compel our special respect and admiration. Such people give us a hope that there are ways out of the vicious circle. Tum’s autobiography’ is an extraordinary human document. It describes cruelty in sober and matter-of-fact terms. Its driving force is moral indignation. In some connections, she also mentions her hatred of those responsible for the violence and repression. But at the same time, the account reflects a disarming humanity. Almost gaily, she notes funny little concrete details in an otherwise ruthless existence; with love, she describes Indian customs. I know no better example of her disarming attitude than her description here in Oslo last year of her meeting with Colonel Roderigues: "We greeted each other and exchanged a few words. The man who killed my mother congratulated me on my nomination for this Prize and called it a national honour. I realised then that at bottom we are all human beings. It was like meeting a distant acquaintance. I had a feeling of calm as I spoke to him." It is stupid to meet the world with too much trust, but even more stupid to meet it with too little. The goal of Tum’s work, as she has said on many occasions, is reconciliation and peace. She knows, better than most, that the foundations for future reconciliation are laid in the manner in which one conducts one’s struggle. Even in the most brutal situations, one must retain one’s faith that there is a minimum of human feelings in all of us. Turn preserved that faith, it is with the deepest respect and in admiration of her efforts that the Committee today awards her the Prize.
A．its isolation from other culturesB．the influence of infectious diseasesC．the result of avarice and cupidityD．the genocide of the Indian people
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