YET...I was one of the lucky ones who attended the Arctic to Amazonia
Conference at Smith College in Sept. 1989. While my academic interest
is the Plains Indians, I was amazed at how many problems I thought were
specific to my friends on the Plains (Forest Service, Bureau of Land
Management, racism, unemployment, isolation, etc., etc., etc.) was a
common problem shared by indigenous people worldwide as they stood in
stark opposition to the dominant cultures bent on subsuming them.
Sitting in the auditorium, hearing people from Australia, Canada,
Finland, Brazil, Columbia, Alaska, Nicaragua, Tanzania, Nigeria,
and many regions in this country did not cause me to lose interest
in the problems of my friends but opened up my awareness to the
fact that it all boils down to a power relationship which is sadly
"out of Whack". It is a global problem. It is the same problem.
Sometimes when we work on a particular issue for a long time we can
forget that our piece of the puzzle is only one piece of the puzzle.
For me, this network, which grew out of the conference at Smith as a
way to empower indigenous people from all over the world by providing
an electronic means for them to communicate and formulate strategies
for dealing with common problems.
I guess rather than focusing on the time it takes out of my day to
push a delete button, I could focus on the opportunities which have
emerged because of the network.
My vote, Gary, would be that if it is possible to break the network
down a little into "regional" areas for those who cannot deal with
the volume of mail, but to leave the network intact for those of us
who want to understand the larger picture.
Thanks for all your hard work... :-)
Paula
[ Well, I still maintain that it could be quite a bit of work to figure
out how to break things down. And how do you break things down and
still "leave the network intact?" If some division does take place,
who will administer each of the lists? I appreciate the many notes
of thanks I receive for my efforts, but I can barely sustain this
level of activity, and can certainly not manage to administer a number
of disjoint lists. So again, I ask the question - who is willing to
help?? --Gary ]