Letters to the Art System

Letter on behalf of the Bushmen for president Ian Khama

H.E. President Ian Khama
Office of the President
Private Bag 001
Gaborone
Botswana

27 February 2009

Your Excellency,

I am extremely concerned about the situation facing the Bushmen of the Kalahari.

After being forcibly removed from the Central Kalahari Game Reserve, many Bushmen living in the resettlement camps are exposed to diseases including HIV/AIDS, which they never experienced before. Alcoholism and depression is widespread.

The High Court ruled that the evictions of the Bushmen were illegal and unconstitutional. I urge you to embrace the spirit of this ruling by allowing all of the Bushmen who wish to return home to do so, and by allowing them to hunt for food and to access their own water using the pre-existing borehole at Mothomelo, within the reserve.

Refusal to allow the Bushmen to use their existing borehole at Mothomelo can only be interpreted as a clear sign that you are determined to continue the past government’s misguided policy of keeping the Bushmen from returning home.

Yours sincerely,

Ana Amorim
Artist

--Survival calls on Kate Winslet and Penelope Cruz to boycott Graff's jewels for Oscars 17 February 2009 - http://www.survival-international.org/news/4238

...Mountaintop removal is the dirty secret in [the US] energy supply

http://www.alternet.org/story/127877/

Dear Mr. President,

As I write this letter, I brace myself for another round of nerve-wracking explosives being detonated above my home in the mountains of West Virginia. Outside my door, pulverized rock dust, laden with diesel fuel and ammonium nitrate explosives hovers in the air, along with the residual of heavy metals that once lay dormant underground. 

The mountain above me, once a thriving forest, has been blasted into a pile of rock and mud rubble. Two years ago, it was covered with rich black topsoil and abounded with hardwood trees, rhododendrons, ferns and flowers. The understory thrived with herbs such as ginseng, black cohosh, yellow root and many other medicinal plants. Black bears, deer, wild turkey, hawks, owls and thousands of [other] birds lived here. The mountain contained sparkling streams teeming with aquatic life and fish.  

Now it is all gone. It is all dead. I live at the bottom of a mountain-top-removal coal-mining operation in the Peachtree community.