TOKYO: The deliberate marginalizing of ethnic minorities in the fight against climate change is equivalent to genocide, according to Juan Mancias, the Tribal Chair of the Carrizo/ Comecrudo Tribe of Texas.

Speaking at a press conference at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan in Tokyo on Tuesday, Mancias expressed anger that exploration companies dig up his people’s tribal lands and even skeletons in pursuit of commerce.

“It was a lack of understanding that there was a genocide that began through tribal erasure by getting rid of the people that were there,” Mancias said of his community in the southern United States. “That’s what’s been happening for the last 500 years.”

“At the same time, you have to understand that everything that [Europeans] came in there for 500 years ago was exported out. All the resources, gold and silver, anything they could export, were exported to Europe. So that settlement mentality is still there, and they’re still exporting resources 500 years later.” 

Mancias described the ongoing disruption of his people as a “continuing genocide” and the destruction of his ancestral lands and people: “What we’re trying to say is, look, this is genocide. The very beginning of Texas was to get rid of all the Indians. We have a right to be who we are.”

Mancias points out that his tribe isn’t one of the recognized tribes of the United States and accuses the authorities and exploration companies of ignoring history.

Mancias also accused Japanese banks of financing environmental destruction. “These banks in Japan need to come and visit us and see the real history and what has happened there,” he said. Let us tell our story because you’re not getting the story from the companies. Let us have our rights. We didn’t write the Constitution. We didn’t have any representation of the Constitution, and we deserve that representation because we’re not the ignorant people they think we are.”