When multinational companies develop the petroleum resources of fragile ecosystems such as Peru's Amazon, US environmental standards should absolutely apply; unless stricter standards exist, in which case, those standards should apply.

As a lifelong business person, I am embarrassed and ashamed by the belligerently anti-environmental-protection position taken by US oil companies, along with the pitiful excuses they have tried to trot out as 'reasons' for not complying with standards mandating strong environmental protection measures.

To not take good care of our Holy Mother the Earth is to commit mutilation and rape of the living being who provides us with every physical thing in our lives. Food, clothing, shelter, modern miracles of convenience and conveyance - Without her, we don't exist.

In the Indn Way, we call it "not showing respect"; with strong emphasis on the word 'showing'. We are the original 'walk your talk' people; something the majority culture has spent most of its existence trying to destroy. Unsuccessfully, for which I thank all that is Holy.

Human beings are not gods. They are not all-knowing. When the environment is not protected while we make use of it, we endanger - and sometimes extinct - other species. We have no way of knowing if those species we extinct could have been of value to us at some later date - or in what ways - and once they are extinct, we can never know.

More than that, when humans extinct one species without regard for it or its place in the Grand Scheme of Things, we decrease the beauty of the world and we weaken the chain of life, since we don't know how all the billions of species interact. We don't know what depends on which other species or for what each depends.

There is a lot of hue and cry today about 'faith' and 'faith-based' activities. One of the primary ways of showing one's true faith is in how a person treats the environment. Companies are made up of people, after all. The fact is, and will always be, actions speak louder than words. Each of us, person or corporate entity, has a track record, and that track record tells more about our dedication to what we say we stand for and against, than words ever can.

The government of the US is, according to the Constitution, "of the People, by the People, for the People". Since corporations are 'people' under the law, then they have an obligation to be held accountable to US environmental standards no matter where they operate. Any other stance is an attempt to cheat.

When a large company tries to claim that they 'can't' meet environmental standards, they lie. When they try to claim it 'costs too much for them', they lie. When they try to claim that 'the stockholders won't support adherence to US environmental standards', they lie. They have more money to work with than small companies, therefore their attempts to claim these things are truly expressions of their greed and of their lack of concern for everybody's children as well as for walking their talk and being responsible members of the world.

Not only should US environmental standards apply when multinational companies work to develop petroleum resources in fragile ecosystems such as Peru's Amazon, so should US Constitutional standards apply, resulting in protection of Indigenous Peoples' spiritual ways. It should be voluntary, but until the majority culture learns its true place in the Grand Scheme of Things and begins to walk its talk on its own, US standards should be mandated.

Learn more about this author, Carel Two-Eagle.
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