story of stuff and reproductive justice

Today's class discussion about power and control reminded me of the Story of Stuff video we all watched last week in addition to a course that I took my freshman year. Of what I took from today, one of the biggest points seemed to be that the marginalized or "other" in society do not in fact create the environment that they are subjected to. They are not stuck there because they haven't taken the initiative to rise above or because they created the situation for themselves. Rather, often their situation is a result of what the government, corporations, or those above them have enforced upon them. This is an issue that is presented broadly in the Story of Stuff video, and one that I studied a specific example of in my "Amazonian Rain Forest in Brazil" seminar that I took freshman year.
Like Annie Leonard describes in the video, people with power are destroying the environments of people in poorer countries. With this displacement they are forcing them to work in factories that pollute the world even more. This very thing is happening in the Amazon rain forest in Brazil. Corporations and wealthy upper class people are taking over the land of indigenous farmers and exploiting its resources. This wrecks the entire system of life of the indigenous people. The land that they work on and get food from is being taken over and they are being displaced from their homes into cities and slums. With none of their original farms and no access to traditional hunting and gathering, these people are forced to work for money. And from there, their only work opportunity, due to poverty and poor transportation, is to work for other corrupt corporations and factories. These factories only pollute the world and exploit its resources more. It is a seemingly hopeless situation.
Side note - this situation ties into modern slavery again. There are actual cases in which families will sell their children into slavery in order to have money to survive. Sometimes they will send them away to what they think are apprentice jobs or waitressing jobs, hoping they will send money home, and really, they are sending their kids to brothels and human trafficking chains.
Annie Leonard provides astounding statistics for this problem. One third of the planet's natural resources have been used in the past three decades. And globally, 200,000 people a day are being displaced and going to work in factories. Whole communities are being wasted. She even quotes that two thousand trees in the Amazon are being chopped down every minute. This misuse of resources and displacement of indigenous people is wrecking havoc on Brazil. And truly, as seen here, their situation is not the result of their own mishaps, rather it is all the result of powerful systems controlling their freedom.
Finally, it is important that we do not automatically label corporation's treatment of land as bad, and indigenous agriculture as good. The slash and burn agriculture of indigenous groups in the Amazon can be really bad for the soil. It strips the soil of its nutrients and isn't particularly sustainable in large amounts. Areas such as this are in need of a totally new and different system.