Mark Gabrish Conlan/Zenger's Newsmagazine | 02.08.2003 09:59

Native American environmental and animal-liberation activist Rod Coronado spoke in Hillcrest August 1 and delivered a two-hour presentation focused on his people's spiritual traditions and how he's applied them in his work. While he disclaimed any knowledge of the recent burning of an under-construction development at University Towne Center he made it clear that he approves of such actions.

Earth Liberationist Rod Coronado Speaks in Hillcrest August 1

by MARK GABRISH CONLAN
Copyright ? 2003 by Mark Gabrish Conlan for Zenger?s Newsmagazine ? Used by permission

?I don?t have a foundation of commonality with a lot of other activists,? Native American environmentalist and animal liberationist Rod Coronado told an audience of about 100 at the Lesbian/Gay/Bisexual/Transgender Community Center in Hillcrest Friday, August 1. ?My world view isn?t founded on philosophy or ideology. It?s based on one that sees all other living beings and aspects of nature, including plants, animals and rocks, as just as important as all others. My family raised me to believe that not only humans but all living beings and natural things deserve respect.?

Coronado held his audience spellbound for nearly two hours as he gave a well-organized and often dramatic presentation detailing the evolution of his work in earth liberation and animal rights, including the sequence of actions that led to his arrest in 1992 and his four-year term in federal prison. He explained that he could talk freely and frankly about these actions since he had already been apprehended and had paid the legal penalty for them. Coronado frequently referred to ?the Invader,? meaning both the Spanish conquistador Miguel de Guzm?n, who invaded New Mexico in 1533, and the white European presence in America in general.

?Before the coming of the Invader our people lived harmoniously with our human and animal neighbors,? Coronado said. ?We were agrarian people and only occasionally gatherers. Food is determined by what takes the least resources to acquire. You don?t want to be a hunter in the Sonora desert. Instead we grew our food in the fertile valleys.? He said that the Spanish invasion, of which they were forewarned by voices from the natural/spiritual world, forced their tribe to divide in two and some members to join the ??Society of the Bow,? which teaches that we do not belong to ourselves but to the whole tribe.?

Coronado compared this traditional society to the modern-day direct-action groups like Earth Liberation Front (ELF) and Animal Liberation Front (ALF), and said that just as their white adversaries had labeled the warriors of his tribe as ?bloodthirsty savages? and ?Indios diablos,? so modern-day corporate media have labeled ELF and ALF activists as ?eco-terrorists.? ?When we live our lives in peace and harmony, we beat them ? and that is why they label the ALF and ELF ?terrorists,?? Coronado said. ?We?re considered domestic terrorists not because we?re harming people, but because we?re harming profits.?

He noted that a group proclaiming ELF affiliation had burned a major development under construction at University Towne Centre near La Jolla the night before, and while Coronado disclaimed any knowledge of the UTC action he made it quite clear that he approved. ?Last night in San Diego a bunch of townhouses were burned down, and reporters from two corporate TV stations just asked me, ?What good does that do your movement??? Coronado said. ?I said, ?If that hadn?t happened, you wouldn?t be here tonight.? People willing to risk their lives to protect the environment by destroying buildings built on the habitat of endangered species make people take notice.?

To Coronado, it is the capitalists and other people who enforce and execute the property-oriented, profit-driven world view of white culture who are the real terrorists. He pointed out that Native Americans were victims of both chemical (alcohol) and biological (smallpox-infected blankets) attacks from Euro-Americans from the beginning of the white man?s presence in America. ?They introduced horses, guns, steel traps and alcohol, which turned our tribes away from our world view and from our obligation to honor the animals,? he explained.

?As an indigenous person I have no faith this government will do as 360? turn and negate all the terrorism they?ve been involved with for 200 years,? Coronado said. ?From the start the American corporation has been about destroying the environment for profit. ? I have never had patience with writing letters to Congressmembers. Corporations and governments only change when the people no longer obey the laws.?

Coronado said his interest in direct action for environmental and animal liberation began when he was 12 years old, when he saw a PBS documentary on the hunt for baby harp seals in Canada. ?I didn?t want any part of a world that treated animals, let alone people, that way,? he said. He got involved in Greenpeace but decided they weren?t radical enough for him because they were interested in going to the seal hunting grounds only to ?witness? and build public awareness of the hunt. What Coronado wanted was a group that would actually get in the way of the hunt, take the clubs from the hunters? hands and do whatever it took to stop the hunt.

He found this group in the Sea Shepherds and its leader, activist Paul Watson, ?who literally stood in the paths of the icebreakers with his ship.? When Coronado joined Sea Shepherds himself in 1986 their primary involvement was targeting the whaling industry of Iceland. The International Whaling Commission had just passed a worldwide moratorium on commercial whaling after over 20 years of lobbying by activists, but the Icelandic government had announced that they would defy the ban ? and the U.S. government refused to honor its obligations under the international whaling treaty by imposing economic sanctions on Iceland.

?We issued an ultimatum to the International Whaling Commission that if Iceland broke that moratorium we would do whatever was needed to enforce it,? Coronado recalled. ?We ultimately broke into the facilities of the Icelandic whaling industry and spent four hours destroying all their records and computers. Then we went into Reykjavik harbor and found that two of the three whaling ships in port that night had only a single security guard, so we were able to get into the engine rooms of these two ships and alter the engine valves so they would fill the engines with seawater. Then we went to the world media and accepted full responsibility for these actions.?

Their strategy was essentially to dare the government of Iceland to prosecute them ? which would have given them an international forum to expose the abuses of the whaling industry. When the Iceland authorities refused to take the dare Coronado and his colleagues took that as ?confirmation and validation that our actions were not illegal.?

Returning to the U.S., Coronado decided the environmental movement in this country needed to adopt similar strategies. ?I started working with Earth First! and founded my own group, Hunt Saboteurs,? after the California government de-listed bighorn sheep as an endangered species and started selling permits to hunt them for up to $200,000 each.? According to Coronado, the reason hunters would pay such an outrageous price for a permit was to earn what?s called the ?grand slam? in hunting circles ? to kill one each of all five species of bighorn sheep, of which California?s is the rarest.

?We used to go out into the desert with compressed air horns,? Coronado recalled. ?We would follow hunters with the horns and, just when they would aim their rifles and were about to shoot, we would sound the horn so the sheep would hear it and escape. This prompted the California legislature to pass a law protecting hunters from harassment ? just one more example of how this country and its government is there to protect property over life.?

After that project, Coronado started working with the Animal Liberation Front, originally on raising public awareness of the plight of farm animals but then focusing on the fur industry and the industry-funded fur research centers at universities in Oregon, Washington, Utah, Michigan and elsewhere. He also worked on organizing the Redwood Summer in Santa Cruz in 1990 and invited East Bay musicians and activists Darrell Cherney and Judi Bari to perform at the campaign?s opening celebration.

?They never made it to my house,? Coronado recalled. ?On the way a car bomb blew up in their car. Instead of isolating the crime scene, the FBI arrested Cherney and Bari and accused them of making the bomb and supposedly blowing themselves up by accident. Instead of protecting the interests of free speech the FBI decided to arrest these people, and I realized there was no way I could ?work through the system.??

Instead, he spent a year undercover documenting the conditions of the 660 fur farms in the U.S. ?We compiled hours and hours of videotapes showing the horrific conditions of fur farms,? Coronado recalled. ?We saw natural predators being forced to live separated only by tiny bits of wire from others of their species. This forced them to go insane, including running around in circles, chewing off its own fur and eating their own tails. You don?t see this behavior in the wild. You do see it in animals living in captivity.?

Coronado?s campaign against fur farms then took an unexpected turn when he and his group actually bought a farm with the intent to rehabilitate the animals and then release them back into their natural environments. ?I wish I could tell you what it looked like to free these animals and see them running in the wild and drinking from running streams,? he said. ?It was only 66 animals, but it was a fulfillment of a promise I had made in December 1990, when I had filmed the neck-breaking of mink by a farmer in Montana and instead of taking those animals and grabbing them from his hands I rationalized that it was more important to film the abuse than to stop it. But I decided then and there that it was my duty to destroy that industry.?

His determination to destroy the fur industry took him first to the industry-funded fur research lab at Oregon State University in Corvallis. ?I found an open bathroom window, broke into the lab, took out their records, went to Kinko?s and copied them, and then put them back,? Coronado recalled. ?Then I stood on the roof of their building and thought of burning that place to the ground. I knew I?d be identified and either shot by an angry fur farmer or go to prison for a very long time. But I had made a promise to defend those animals. Nothing they could do to me would match what those animals had suffered. So four days later we went back in, five people, one action, $1,200, planted incendiary devices and destroyed that building. The lab was shut down six months later.?

The documents they?d captured from the Oregon lab before burning it gave them names and addresses of both individuals and institutions that received funding from the Mink Farmers? Research Association, a trade group that assesses individual mink farmers and uses the money to fund research on how to ?improve? fur production ? including how to counter the animals? natural instincts and keep them from going so crazy in captivity that they damage themselves and their fur beyond commercial usability. The objective of Coronado and his fellow activists was to target every recipient and ?severely cripple the fur farm industry,? which they did. But after their arson attack on Michigan State University?s fur research lab in 1992 Coronado was indicted in absentia and became a wanted man.

?Fire is a very sacred power, one of the key elements of our planet,? Coronado said by way of justifying the use of incendiary devices to destroy facilities where animals are abused. ?We use fire to cleanse ourselves, and when we address buildings and institutions that have no other purpose but to destroy life, fire is the only way to stop them. When people ask if someday someone might get hurt by one of our actions, I ask them why they don?t get so concerned about the people who are killing animals for a living. That is what the terrorism in this society is. Destroying property to protect life is the most sacred thing we can do.?

After Coronado had justified his attacks on the fur industry by saying that it ?is not trying to find a cure for cancer, but just to sell a luxury product to bourgeois women,? this reporter asked him how he would respond to those who defend the use of animals in medical research. He was forthright and uncompromising in his answer, noting that virtually all medical research involving animals is either controlled or funded by large drug companies. ?The pharmaceutical industry won?t find a cure for any disease,? Coronado said. ?They?re going to find a pill that will make them lots of money. ? There can be no good that comes out of anything so evil as animal research.?

After a year of living underground and fearing that the FBI and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) would simply hunt him down and kill him ? a fear only magnified by the 1993 massacre of the Branch Davidians at Waco, Texas ? Coronado finally decided ?that by living in fear I was falling for their power and taking myself away from my power. ? I decided I was sick of running, I would get rid of the gun I was carrying, and I would die. I heard all the plants and animals speaking to me through the wind and they said, ?We are here for you, but we can only help you if you believe in us more than you believe in them.??

Despite the danger of arrest, Coronado decided to recruit a team and target the Animal Damage Control Center at Utah State University, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and designed to eliminate coyotes and other natural predators of commercially raised sheep and other animals. ?They dispatch helicopters to kill hundreds of coyotes after one coyote has killed one sheep,? Coronado explained. He said that for the first time before an action, along with their usual reconnaissance and scouting the target, they prayed to the animals ? and, he said, the animals responded and became active allies in their own liberation.

?My job was to plant an incendiary device in the office of the lab director, Frederick Knowlton, and then plant another in the field research lab,? Coronado said. ?My friends? job was to release the coyotes inside the lab by cutting the fences. I got the first device planted but I couldn?t get into the field research lab. I prayed for guidance and the coyotes howled so loudly their vibrations loosened the window screen and I was able to wrench it off and plant that device. When my friends met me they were in tears.?

For Coronado, the lesson he learned that night ? ?that the world my ancestors believed in, the world we?re taught exists only in fairy tales and myths, still exists, and that knowledge is still available? ? gave him the moral strength to survive what happened next: his arrest, trial, conviction and four-year prison term. Even in prison, he said, ?the spirits of the animals didn?t forget me.? He said he would see coyotes come to the prison fence and howl greetings to him when he was in the yard, and when he was working in the prison garden hummingbirds would fly towards him.

According to Coronado, he also won the respect of his fellow human prisoners. ?They had seen coverage of my arrest,? he said, ?and they knew I had refused to inform on my comrades, which is always respected in prison. They knew I had refused a sweetheart deal from the FBI by which I could have walked away in six months if I had told them who was funding us.

?Also, my activism didn?t stop in prison,? he continued. ?I talked to them about animal rights and veganism. I did an in-house prison ?zine for Native American inmates and a larger ?zine for outside. I committed myself to come out better and stronger and read tons of books. That showed them I cared about what I was in for.? To maintain his vegan diet in prison he would trade with other prisoners, giving them his meat in exchange for non-animal food ? and when they asked him why he would use that as an education opportunity to talk to them about what veganism and a life free from animal abuse meant to him.

?The government wanted me to forget my tribe, but four years in prison is nothing,? Coronado said. ?Our ancestors made greater sacrifices than that so we might have this valuable life to do things that mean something. ? These gifts, this brotherhood and sisterhood with animals, I was told didn?t exist. When I found out that everything my elders died for still existed, that was the greatest gift I?ve ever received. We need to gather our strength, come back and fight for this earth.?

e-mail:: mgconlan@earthlink.net