Suriname Indigenous Health Fund
The Suriname Indigenous Health Fund (SIHF) is a Seattle-based nonprofit founded by a Mennonite couple to address the effects of pollution from mining on environmental and human health in the interior of Suriname. They are responding to a system of administrative evil by cultivating “right relationship” with the affected communities. Their goals and methods manifest Christian teaching on social justice from several traditions.
We know justice largely by observing or experiencing injustice. “Above all, it [liberation theology] gives us the sense of a justice known primarily through the experience of injustice.” (Lebacqz, 1986, p. 115) “We name as evil the actions of human beings that unjustly or needlessly inflict pain and suffering and death on other human beings.” (Adams & Balfour, p.3) These characteristics of evil appear more subtly when masked in instances of “administrative evil.” A recurring theme in Adams and Balfour’s Unmasking Administrative Evil is an insight they draw from J. R. Saul’s Voltaire’s Bastards, which is that “the fundamental flaw of technical-rational management is its lack of historical consciousness and dismissal of the past as an uncontrolled variable.” (Adams & Balfour, 2004, p.123) By deleting the knowledge of injustice “administrative evil” thrives in a state of denial, self-referencing its own goals as the measure of justice and contently oblivious to comparisons it shares with injustice.
Suriname is a country on the northern coast of South America, bordered by French Guiana, Brazil, and Guyana. It is most densely populated along the coast, where its major city, Paramaribo, is located. The interior of the country is a network of rivers and jungle, populated by village communities and more recently, mining companies. In order to develop the nation’s economy the government opened the lands of the interior of the country to industry so that the natural resources might be harvested and sold. Adams and Balfour highlight, “Administrative evil is different in part because the culture of technical-rationality drives consideration of ethics out of the picture altogether, not to mention the rational calculation of how much good can legitimately be traded off against evil.” (Adams & Balfour, p.7) Providing an illustration of just such a rationalization in the name of the greatest good for the country, the administration in Suriname neglected the interests of the indigenous and Amerindian communities living in the interior, such as their land rights and physical health. In some cases villages have been displaced from their homes, in other locations they have witnessed the decline of the soil, waterways, and fish species upon which they rely. These issues have been brought to the attention of the government in Suriname by international human rights groups as well as by scientific reports commissioned by the government itself. Yet, it persists.
The foundation for this kind of administrative evil was laid in Suriname when the government exchanged its function of protecting its citizens for that of brokering the land in which they live. In Systems of Survival: A Dialogue on the Moral Foundations of Commerce and Politics Jane Jacobs outlines two casts of mind, or “syndromes” of related characteristics that operate in human societies. They are named “Commercial,” referring to trade, and “Guardian,” pertaining to governance of territory. (Jacobs, 1992) Interpreting a statement of Plato through this lens, Jacobs asserts that justice is when each syndrome keeps to its own matters. (Jacobs, 1992, p. 153) The Suriname government’s responsibility for the economy of its territory is one location where we observe the intricate enmeshing of Commercial and Guardian casts of mind. When the government of Suriname sold the rights to parcels of the interior, it subjugated the people living there to Commerce, and treated them as obstacles to profit. In the language of Adams and Balfour, they became “surplus populations” (Adams & Balfour, 2004), cast off by their Guardian, denied their rights to the places they live and their ways of life, and subject to death and displacement. This abuse is part of the means to economic development for Suriname. The Bishops Council counters, “Institutions exist for people, and individuals may not be harmed in order that others may prosper or that a ‘system’ may work.” (Lebacqz, 81) This is the context that Sarah and Dan Peplow entered as they started out on public health endeavors regarding risks of toxicity from mining.
Dan Peplow, Ph.D., co-founder of SIHF, is an ecotoxicologist with an expertise in mine waste. As an intern with the United States embassy, he was one of the scientists researching the impact of mining and in that position he observed that results indicating harm were reported but the information never returned to the affected communities of the interior. It is that omission which he and his wife, Sarah (a sociologist with extensive background in human rights and community organizing) hope to rectify.
How is it that the Peplows were able to identify and engage with what others could justify and deny? Adams and Balfour offer a hint about that, “Whether one sees evil or not depends on where one stands” (Adams & Balfour, p. 17). The Peplows, as citizens of the United States and Mennonites, are not invested in the “calculation” of good that will be produced by economic development by any means in Suriname. To them, the evil of the system had been unmasked in the research Dan conducted, and in the context they had in which to make meaning of it. The Peplows gave especial attention to how their organization would act in order to be in “right relationship” and to ensure that its work was for people rather than its own existence. They act from an assumption of human rights, confirmed for them by their religious faith and able to be acted upon through the knowledge and resources they have access to through their position in the US. But Adams and Balfour provide a warning too:
One can only stand elsewhere by a mental act of critical reflexivity, in which one has to critically reflect on one’s own position, which entails both a recognition of context and empathy – seeing from the perspective of others. (Adams & Balfour, p.17)
This is a process that the Peplows try to practice with every step of their work.
The goal of the Suriname Indigenous Health Fund is to provide the communities living in the interior of the country with access to tools and technical support to answer their own questions about the impacts of pollution on their health. This function also serves to implement and advance a change in the distribution of power, by way of information, between these communities and the country’s governing bodies. With data, the people can determine answers to their own questions, assess risk, correlate mercury levels to health, advocate for themselves with the government, industry, and non-governmental organizations. With quantified evidence they are in a position to determine their own preventative measures as well as prove their own case in national and international venues. “Justice in social systems, therefore, is not simply a matter of how goods are distributed, but is also a question of the proper ordering and balancing of power.” (Lebacqz, p. 89) That is the position Niebuhr takes, but Liberation theology suggests something more revolutionary: a transfer of power, “the cry for liberation and justice is an attack on the entire system or social order, not merely on isolated instances of injustice.” (Lebacqz, p. 104) As Mennonites, the Peplows are pacifists and certainly do not advocate the use of violence in resolving the relationship between these parties. However, by providing access to information their efforts effectively transfer the power in the relationship from the oppressor to the oppressed groups, upsetting and realigning the existing system.
The goal of SIHF holds the intention of social justice, but the organization is young and the ends are yet to be realized, for example, they might be facilitating communication between communities of the interior and other stakeholders in the future. Their means also bear the qualities of social justice. Liberation theology affirms their approach:
Justice is not a simple formula for distribution. Justice would not be accomplished merely by offering programs that meet basic needs of the poor. Justice requires the kind of liberating activity that characterizes God’s behavior toward the poor and oppressed. (Lebacqz, p. 107)
SIHF could have followed the routine of the previous scientists to visit the region, collecting samples from individuals, and then, in the habit of other nongovernmental organizations, distributing the results with prefabricated plans for how the villages ought to respond to the risks. But that would perpetuate a power imbalance that characterizes injustice. “Justice is not a norm or law, but establishment of and maintenance of right relationships, or ‘righteousness.’” (Lebacqz, p 108) Instead, SIHF makes itself available and awaits invitation. When it has been invited into a village, it starts with listening to the needs and interests of the community that sought it. Entering in the wake of prior researchers, SIHF has been met with distrust. That’s where training people in self-assessment had the greatest impact. It is an act that reassures a community that the members of that community own their own samples, from collection through processing, interpreting results and determining further action. This coincides with the advice of the Bishops Council regarding the correction of inequalities, “programs that do things ‘with’ the poor are to be preferred to those that do things ‘for’ the poor in a paternalistic manner.” (Lebacqz, p.74)
Further, the Suriname Indigenous Health Fund rejects the use of the individual as the unit of social justice. They focus on communities and co-create the plans for their work dependent upon the input of each community with whom they commit themselves. They seek and heed the authority of the community to design the village’s vision. This establishes an integration of SIHF’s technology and expertise in relevant processes and the community’s expertise of how and where they live. In this way, both parties are acknowledged as equals on their own terms, cultivating an equitable relationship between two who have different knowledge and skills to share, all of which is necessary and employed together. For example, one village has requested a fish study to determine which fish, their primary foodstuff, hold which degrees of risk to their health. SIHF doesn’t know what is eaten at which time of year or from where it is caught etc. Without the insight and participation of a village, all the technology and translation and prevention plans are insignificant and worthless
Although the Peplows are from the US, the quality of social justice in their efforts is derived from their Christian faith more than from any conventional thinker associated with social justice. Rather than Rawls admonishment to incorporate some benefit for the poor within the societal structure, SIHF starts with the ones who have been treated as last and reserved only leftovers. The couple’s focus on how they do their work rejects teleological justification of the means and utilitarian formulas that might justify rounding down to eliminate dealing with an inconvenient underserved social “remainder.” Even Kantian attention to human reason and the means by which the thing is done doesn’t account for the seemingly irrational use of time and personal funds the couple expends to travel into unknown places bearing heavy and expensive equipment with a guide and maybe a translator, in hopes of reaching new colleagues and friends.
Nor does their work entirely fit within a given religious theory on social justice. Although they have cited a particular regard for liberation theology, in practice they seem to borrow across several modes of thought. Honoring God by doing the work of loving the unknown neighbor, by reaching out for right relationship, by starting with respect for the dignity and competency of others, they uphold Christian principles named and valued in multiple traditions. And they do it in the contemporary times. More than a strict attention to economic inequality, for example between the government in Suriname and the communities living in the interior, they address a more ambiguous perhaps more encompassing issue of information. But they don’t simply distribute information to those who don’t have it, they offer the means to produce it. This is radical, as in pursuing the source of the unequal relationship and facilitating a more balanced position. From that position, the communities may be better equipped for decisions and advocacy in other arenas, beyond public health issues, including economics.
In her critique of the Bishops Council statements about social justice, Lebacqz notes that they: “raise the profound question of how one speaks out of the faith stance of a particular community to a larger constituency.” (Lebacqz, p. 82) The Suriname Indigenous Health Fund articulates their response with action. After recognizing the blank space of crimes of omission, they responded to that injustice with human participation.
Social justice regards questions of how humans ought to treat each other, and that stretches to include the expectations that past human behavior has led us to believe we can expect and deserve from each other. Where that expectation hovers, for example that a government ought to guard rather than exploit or profit off of its citizens, the absence of action functions as an offense. However intervention does not guarantee a just result either. Hence the great care and consideration that shapes how SIHF does what it does even as care and consideration have shaped the goals of their endeavors. To their benefit, I want to note that they are actively asking questions about how they are acting, aware that they may trigger unintended consequences that they cannot yet perceive, and they make efforts to prevent harm. In that process alone, lies a model, or at least a principle, to foster social justice in other institutions, like a government or a school.
When designing the means by which to deliver a vision, the institutions must plan for and verify that in each mission and method that the values inherent to the vision are what is actually administered. This requires regular reflection, and not just of individuals performing a given function within the system, but for as many stakeholders as possible to convene and consider together what is truly being administered by the work. There will be mistakes and unforeseeable harm, because of human fallibility or pernicious masks, and that’s where we start to perceive our need for another element inherent to Christian traditions, the qualities and means of mercy.
Sources Cited:
Adams, Guy B. and Balfour, Danny L. (2004). Unmasking administrative evil (Rev. ed.). Armonk: M.E. Sharpe
Jacobs, Jane. (1992). Systems of survival: A dialogue on the moral foundations of
commerce and politics. New York: Vintage Books.
Lebacqz, Karen. (1986). Six theories of justice: Perspectives from philosophical and theological ethics. Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House.
We know justice largely by observing or experiencing injustice. “Above all, it [liberation theology] gives us the sense of a justice known primarily through the experience of injustice.” (Lebacqz, 1986, p. 115) “We name as evil the actions of human beings that unjustly or needlessly inflict pain and suffering and death on other human beings.” (Adams & Balfour, p.3) These characteristics of evil appear more subtly when masked in instances of “administrative evil.” A recurring theme in Adams and Balfour’s Unmasking Administrative Evil is an insight they draw from J. R. Saul’s Voltaire’s Bastards, which is that “the fundamental flaw of technical-rational management is its lack of historical consciousness and dismissal of the past as an uncontrolled variable.” (Adams & Balfour, 2004, p.123) By deleting the knowledge of injustice “administrative evil” thrives in a state of denial, self-referencing its own goals as the measure of justice and contently oblivious to comparisons it shares with injustice.
Suriname is a country on the northern coast of South America, bordered by French Guiana, Brazil, and Guyana. It is most densely populated along the coast, where its major city, Paramaribo, is located. The interior of the country is a network of rivers and jungle, populated by village communities and more recently, mining companies. In order to develop the nation’s economy the government opened the lands of the interior of the country to industry so that the natural resources might be harvested and sold. Adams and Balfour highlight, “Administrative evil is different in part because the culture of technical-rationality drives consideration of ethics out of the picture altogether, not to mention the rational calculation of how much good can legitimately be traded off against evil.” (Adams & Balfour, p.7) Providing an illustration of just such a rationalization in the name of the greatest good for the country, the administration in Suriname neglected the interests of the indigenous and Amerindian communities living in the interior, such as their land rights and physical health. In some cases villages have been displaced from their homes, in other locations they have witnessed the decline of the soil, waterways, and fish species upon which they rely. These issues have been brought to the attention of the government in Suriname by international human rights groups as well as by scientific reports commissioned by the government itself. Yet, it persists.
The foundation for this kind of administrative evil was laid in Suriname when the government exchanged its function of protecting its citizens for that of brokering the land in which they live. In Systems of Survival: A Dialogue on the Moral Foundations of Commerce and Politics Jane Jacobs outlines two casts of mind, or “syndromes” of related characteristics that operate in human societies. They are named “Commercial,” referring to trade, and “Guardian,” pertaining to governance of territory. (Jacobs, 1992) Interpreting a statement of Plato through this lens, Jacobs asserts that justice is when each syndrome keeps to its own matters. (Jacobs, 1992, p. 153) The Suriname government’s responsibility for the economy of its territory is one location where we observe the intricate enmeshing of Commercial and Guardian casts of mind. When the government of Suriname sold the rights to parcels of the interior, it subjugated the people living there to Commerce, and treated them as obstacles to profit. In the language of Adams and Balfour, they became “surplus populations” (Adams & Balfour, 2004), cast off by their Guardian, denied their rights to the places they live and their ways of life, and subject to death and displacement. This abuse is part of the means to economic development for Suriname. The Bishops Council counters, “Institutions exist for people, and individuals may not be harmed in order that others may prosper or that a ‘system’ may work.” (Lebacqz, 81) This is the context that Sarah and Dan Peplow entered as they started out on public health endeavors regarding risks of toxicity from mining.
Dan Peplow, Ph.D., co-founder of SIHF, is an ecotoxicologist with an expertise in mine waste. As an intern with the United States embassy, he was one of the scientists researching the impact of mining and in that position he observed that results indicating harm were reported but the information never returned to the affected communities of the interior. It is that omission which he and his wife, Sarah (a sociologist with extensive background in human rights and community organizing) hope to rectify.
How is it that the Peplows were able to identify and engage with what others could justify and deny? Adams and Balfour offer a hint about that, “Whether one sees evil or not depends on where one stands” (Adams & Balfour, p. 17). The Peplows, as citizens of the United States and Mennonites, are not invested in the “calculation” of good that will be produced by economic development by any means in Suriname. To them, the evil of the system had been unmasked in the research Dan conducted, and in the context they had in which to make meaning of it. The Peplows gave especial attention to how their organization would act in order to be in “right relationship” and to ensure that its work was for people rather than its own existence. They act from an assumption of human rights, confirmed for them by their religious faith and able to be acted upon through the knowledge and resources they have access to through their position in the US. But Adams and Balfour provide a warning too:
One can only stand elsewhere by a mental act of critical reflexivity, in which one has to critically reflect on one’s own position, which entails both a recognition of context and empathy – seeing from the perspective of others. (Adams & Balfour, p.17)
This is a process that the Peplows try to practice with every step of their work.
The goal of the Suriname Indigenous Health Fund is to provide the communities living in the interior of the country with access to tools and technical support to answer their own questions about the impacts of pollution on their health. This function also serves to implement and advance a change in the distribution of power, by way of information, between these communities and the country’s governing bodies. With data, the people can determine answers to their own questions, assess risk, correlate mercury levels to health, advocate for themselves with the government, industry, and non-governmental organizations. With quantified evidence they are in a position to determine their own preventative measures as well as prove their own case in national and international venues. “Justice in social systems, therefore, is not simply a matter of how goods are distributed, but is also a question of the proper ordering and balancing of power.” (Lebacqz, p. 89) That is the position Niebuhr takes, but Liberation theology suggests something more revolutionary: a transfer of power, “the cry for liberation and justice is an attack on the entire system or social order, not merely on isolated instances of injustice.” (Lebacqz, p. 104) As Mennonites, the Peplows are pacifists and certainly do not advocate the use of violence in resolving the relationship between these parties. However, by providing access to information their efforts effectively transfer the power in the relationship from the oppressor to the oppressed groups, upsetting and realigning the existing system.
The goal of SIHF holds the intention of social justice, but the organization is young and the ends are yet to be realized, for example, they might be facilitating communication between communities of the interior and other stakeholders in the future. Their means also bear the qualities of social justice. Liberation theology affirms their approach:
Justice is not a simple formula for distribution. Justice would not be accomplished merely by offering programs that meet basic needs of the poor. Justice requires the kind of liberating activity that characterizes God’s behavior toward the poor and oppressed. (Lebacqz, p. 107)
SIHF could have followed the routine of the previous scientists to visit the region, collecting samples from individuals, and then, in the habit of other nongovernmental organizations, distributing the results with prefabricated plans for how the villages ought to respond to the risks. But that would perpetuate a power imbalance that characterizes injustice. “Justice is not a norm or law, but establishment of and maintenance of right relationships, or ‘righteousness.’” (Lebacqz, p 108) Instead, SIHF makes itself available and awaits invitation. When it has been invited into a village, it starts with listening to the needs and interests of the community that sought it. Entering in the wake of prior researchers, SIHF has been met with distrust. That’s where training people in self-assessment had the greatest impact. It is an act that reassures a community that the members of that community own their own samples, from collection through processing, interpreting results and determining further action. This coincides with the advice of the Bishops Council regarding the correction of inequalities, “programs that do things ‘with’ the poor are to be preferred to those that do things ‘for’ the poor in a paternalistic manner.” (Lebacqz, p.74)
Further, the Suriname Indigenous Health Fund rejects the use of the individual as the unit of social justice. They focus on communities and co-create the plans for their work dependent upon the input of each community with whom they commit themselves. They seek and heed the authority of the community to design the village’s vision. This establishes an integration of SIHF’s technology and expertise in relevant processes and the community’s expertise of how and where they live. In this way, both parties are acknowledged as equals on their own terms, cultivating an equitable relationship between two who have different knowledge and skills to share, all of which is necessary and employed together. For example, one village has requested a fish study to determine which fish, their primary foodstuff, hold which degrees of risk to their health. SIHF doesn’t know what is eaten at which time of year or from where it is caught etc. Without the insight and participation of a village, all the technology and translation and prevention plans are insignificant and worthless
Although the Peplows are from the US, the quality of social justice in their efforts is derived from their Christian faith more than from any conventional thinker associated with social justice. Rather than Rawls admonishment to incorporate some benefit for the poor within the societal structure, SIHF starts with the ones who have been treated as last and reserved only leftovers. The couple’s focus on how they do their work rejects teleological justification of the means and utilitarian formulas that might justify rounding down to eliminate dealing with an inconvenient underserved social “remainder.” Even Kantian attention to human reason and the means by which the thing is done doesn’t account for the seemingly irrational use of time and personal funds the couple expends to travel into unknown places bearing heavy and expensive equipment with a guide and maybe a translator, in hopes of reaching new colleagues and friends.
Nor does their work entirely fit within a given religious theory on social justice. Although they have cited a particular regard for liberation theology, in practice they seem to borrow across several modes of thought. Honoring God by doing the work of loving the unknown neighbor, by reaching out for right relationship, by starting with respect for the dignity and competency of others, they uphold Christian principles named and valued in multiple traditions. And they do it in the contemporary times. More than a strict attention to economic inequality, for example between the government in Suriname and the communities living in the interior, they address a more ambiguous perhaps more encompassing issue of information. But they don’t simply distribute information to those who don’t have it, they offer the means to produce it. This is radical, as in pursuing the source of the unequal relationship and facilitating a more balanced position. From that position, the communities may be better equipped for decisions and advocacy in other arenas, beyond public health issues, including economics.
In her critique of the Bishops Council statements about social justice, Lebacqz notes that they: “raise the profound question of how one speaks out of the faith stance of a particular community to a larger constituency.” (Lebacqz, p. 82) The Suriname Indigenous Health Fund articulates their response with action. After recognizing the blank space of crimes of omission, they responded to that injustice with human participation.
Social justice regards questions of how humans ought to treat each other, and that stretches to include the expectations that past human behavior has led us to believe we can expect and deserve from each other. Where that expectation hovers, for example that a government ought to guard rather than exploit or profit off of its citizens, the absence of action functions as an offense. However intervention does not guarantee a just result either. Hence the great care and consideration that shapes how SIHF does what it does even as care and consideration have shaped the goals of their endeavors. To their benefit, I want to note that they are actively asking questions about how they are acting, aware that they may trigger unintended consequences that they cannot yet perceive, and they make efforts to prevent harm. In that process alone, lies a model, or at least a principle, to foster social justice in other institutions, like a government or a school.
When designing the means by which to deliver a vision, the institutions must plan for and verify that in each mission and method that the values inherent to the vision are what is actually administered. This requires regular reflection, and not just of individuals performing a given function within the system, but for as many stakeholders as possible to convene and consider together what is truly being administered by the work. There will be mistakes and unforeseeable harm, because of human fallibility or pernicious masks, and that’s where we start to perceive our need for another element inherent to Christian traditions, the qualities and means of mercy.
Sources Cited:
Adams, Guy B. and Balfour, Danny L. (2004). Unmasking administrative evil (Rev. ed.). Armonk: M.E. Sharpe
Jacobs, Jane. (1992). Systems of survival: A dialogue on the moral foundations of
commerce and politics. New York: Vintage Books.
Lebacqz, Karen. (1986). Six theories of justice: Perspectives from philosophical and theological ethics. Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House.
