Well, I've been awfully quiet lately, so much so that lots of folks out
there have probably forgotten about me, and many newcomers don't even
know who I am. Well, that's probably as it should be, and it's a mark
of how well Jay Brummett and Mary Kuhner have been doing with moderation
and administration, respectively, of NATIVE-L and NATCHAT that I've been
able to be as quiet as I have been for many moons now. Still, I feel a
need to say a few things as we prepare to ring out the old year and to get
ready for a new one - and I'd like to make sure that those who will be
going away for the holidays know how to turn off mail during their absence,
lest their mailboxes fill up while they're away (I'll get to that matter
at the end of this article).
It was over five years ago now that I began the first mailing list, and
a lot has happened during the intervening space of time. We now have a
total of six lists (only four of which are very active), and are rapidly
approaching one thousand subscribers to the NATIVE-L list, which remains
our flagship, so to speak. And there are nearly ten thousand (!) articles
in the NATIVE-L archives (perhaps we should throw an electronic party when
we reach a 1K subscribers or 10K articles, whichever comes sooner! :-) .
As some of you know, I've pretty much taken a back seat with respect to
the day-to-day operation of the high-volume NATIVE-L and NATCHAT lists,
though I do still handle articles for NATIVE-L which originate from IGC
and the other APC networks (pick up a copy of articles #8183 and #8241 if
you'd like to know more about those information services, and send a note
containing "get nn-intro archives native-l" to "listserv@tamvm1.tamu.edu"
if you don't know how to get articles from the NATIVE-L archives). I also
moderate the remaining NativeNet mailing lists. Most of my NativeNet-
related activities these days have to do with just keeping the gateways
between the mailing list, Usenet, and IGC/APC running, and I've been
preparing to get a lot more involved in the NativeNet World Wide Web (WWW)
site that's now under construction, largely due to the efforts of Marc
Becker, and with help from quite a number of NativeNet subscribers. We'll
be combing through the archives over the next year or so, putting the best
of what we find out into Web-space onto our own NativeNet WWW home page.
I had the opportunity several weeks ago to meet Marc and a number of west-
coast NativeNet members and supporters during the course of a mini-confer-
ence we hosted on the campus of the University of California at Berkeley,
where we discussed the potential of the Web and of electronic telecommunica-
tions in general to be of benefit to indigenous peoples and to those who
are working on projects relating to their needs. One of the most important
outcomes of that meeting is the idea of trying to put on a real conference,
where we can talk about such subjects in greater depth. We had a general
sense that it would take at least the better part of a year to plan and
organize such an event. If anyone out there would be interested in helping
with the planning and leg-work, please get in touch with me.
There are a number of projects that we've been discussing for several years
that I hope we can tackle in the coming year, one of them being a survey of
our membership so that we can learn something about ourselves as a community,
in order to serve our collective needs better. I also hope we can launch
one or more collaborative learning experiments, whereby aboriginal students
in K-12 grades can learn more about themselves and one another by means of
electronic telecommunications (here's where WWW technology could be a great
boon!). And I hope to accomplish a lot on the bibliographic database idea
that we've kicked around from time to time. I have the names of some folks
who are willing to help in each of these areas, but if anyone else out there
wants to be part of these or any other projects that interest you and which
you'd like to work on with others interested in your idea, please let me
know, and I'll do what I can to help get things going and to provide what-
ever level of oversight and coordination people working on these efforts
feel they need.
I hope to do a bit of travelling in the coming year, and would be glad to
help organize little get-togethers of the sort that we've had in various
locations where I've touched down in the past few years (Washington, D.C.,
Berkeley, California, and Albuquerque, New Mexico). Oh - this subject
reminds me of another project - that of setting up a database whereby
subscribers can make information about themselves known to one another,
making it easier for people in a given geographical area to find one
another to have their own face-to-face interactions.
Well, I have to get on to a few other things now, so I'll close here with
the wish to everyone for a good holiday season and for peace on this rather
troubled earth of ours.
Warm wishes,
Gary
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
In order to unsubscribe from one of the NativeNet mailing lists, you
need to send a message to the appropriate listserver. For the NATIVE-L,
NATCHAT, NAT-1492, NAT-LANG and NAT-HLTH lists, send a message to
"listserv@tamvm1.tamu.edu" saying:
signoff native-l
or
signoff natchat
or
signoff nat-1492
or
signoff nat-lang
or
signoff nat-hlth
(that's the numeral "1" in "tamvm1" and the letter "l" in "native-l").
For NAT-EDU, send the message "signoff nat-edu" instead to the address
"listserv@indycms.iupui.edu"
If you just want to turn off mail during a period of absence, so that your
mailbox doesn't overflow, send instead the message:
set native-l nomail
or
set natchat nomail
or
set nat-1492 nomail
or
set nat-lang nomail
or
set nat-hlth nomail
For NAT-EDU, send the message "set nat-edu nomail" instead to the address
"listserv@indycms.iupui.edu"
(Later you just say "set native-l mail," etc. to re-enable mail to the
accounts.) You can send any number of these requests in the same message.
--
Gary S. Trujillo gst@gnosys.svle.ma.us
Somerville, Massachusetts {wjh12,bu.edu,spdcc,ima,cdp}!gnosys!gst