"I find it kind of incongruous that we readily defer to what is the equivalent
of "Mr/Ms Joe Public" in Indian land and consider them as "experts" in all
matters pertaining to Indian-ness. If we reversed the role and asked the common
American (whomever that is) to comment on something, we call that "an opinion."
My sentiment is that we need to create or access a pool of Indian people who
are qualified to present these issues on the basis their accomplishments
(whether culture-based or academically learned)."
Film-making is not my field, but this question of who is an "expert" IS
something I have given a bit of thought to in another domain of inquiry.
I believe that making this sort of dichotomizing distinction between "expert"
and layperson, or "specialist" and "non-specialist", has some significant
disabling effects, and should therefore be avoided. I also believe that more
credit should be given to "non-specialists" for experience and knowledge that
directly informs decisions that "experts" or "specialists" often feel should be
reserved for themselves.
In my field, which has to do with how people from different cultural backgrounds
come to judge technology as more or less risky, the tendency is to exclude
non-specialists from any dialogue about the acceptability of a given technology,
with specialists labelling their non-specialized counterparts as either
ill-informed, politically motivated (and therefore not "objective"), or both.
Two well-documented consequences derived from excluding non-specialists from
arenas where choices get made are:
(1) a lack of trust on the non-specialists' part as to the wisdom of the
decisions, and
(2) a felt lack of control over the source of potential hazards associated with
these decisions.
Whether the issue is deciding whether to permit industrial development to take
place on reservation lands, or deciding who should be authorized to represent
Indian perspectives in popular media, I believe it can be demonstrated that the
so-called "non-expert" indeed HAS expertise to offer. The judgments of such
persons need to be given greater credence by so-called "experts."
In the field of technological risks, we might distinguish between three types of
recurring events: *everyday* events, *exceptional* events, and those lying
*between the extremes.* Everyday events, of course, are widely observed,
measured, labelled, discussed, and otherwise given shared meanings. Exceptional
events do not even occur once in a lifetime, but their effects are of extreme
magnitude. Because they recur so infrequently, however, the calculus needed to
gauge their effects may be outmoded by the next occurrence. Comparing these
effects over such a lapse of time is all but impossible, with the full meaning
of the earlier experience often imperfectly conveyed to latter day citizens. In
contrast, the "in-between" events are recalled from the past, and expected in
the future. Because they are likely to occur at least once within one's
lifetime, a model of interpretation is required, and cultural practices must
ensure that experience of an older generation will be brought to bear when the
event recurs.
I call these "in-between" events "sub-critical." They signal the possibility
that a potentially greater hazard awaits. Among the collective effects of these
sub-critical events are the maintenance of community recall and a refinement of
the calculus for gauging their implications. Thus, a local model is developed
and reinforced, calling attention to the potentially hazardous consequences not
only for the infrequent events of lesser magnitude, but also the exceptional
event. Expectations of sub-critical events are modified by experience. A
discount rate is applied (defining roughly the horizon beyond which events
become largely irrelevant). The event remote in the past is perceived as remote
or unlikely in the near future.
Although a dramatic environmental crisis recedes historically, it can be revived
by an event of magnitude. Thus, a collective model is developed for exploring
the environment and for searching our social experience for strategies of
response. Such strategies are continually subject to testing. The point is
that problems of forecasting and contingency planning can occupy AS LARGE A
PLACE IN THE POPULAR DOMAIN as they do in some more specialized domains of
knowledge. Conflicting views of the world outside a reservation community, as
an agent of both devastation and prosperity, have developed over long-standing,
repeated exposure to sub-critical events.
When we think of these events, we think of ravaging disease, loss of land base
and traditional subsistence resources, removal from local communities of whole
cohorts of children sent to boarding schools where strong sanctions were
levelled against speaking one's native language or visiting home, revelations of
unannounced accidental, routine, and experimental releases of ionizing radiation
and toxic chemicals that may have exposed workers and nearby residents to
contamination -- you know the littany of insult added to injury better than I.
In each of these episodes, it is probably the case that even more exceptional
consequences were averted. It is also true that in each case, accompanying the
trauma and visible signs of destruction were assurances from agents outside the
community to the effect of either (a) it's for your own good, or (b) a higher
national purpose is being served. Far from reassuring, however, such statements
have served only to engender mistrust; they resonate with inequity and cast
doubt on the technical expertise of those who discount (or fail to acknowledge)
the dire consequences of their decisions. They are offered as self-absolution
of responsibility, and in some instances, such statements have been misleading
if not patently inaccurate.
What am I trying to say? Even in a matter that may seem cut-and-dried, like how
"risky" is this factory to human health and the bioshpere, risk is as much a
matter of resolving questions of equity, trust, consent, and liability as it is
an engineering problem. At issue is who has seats at the table where choices
get made, and my advice to "specialists" is to relinquish their control over
these choices, giving credit to non-specialists for their intimate familiarity
with issues in the domain of equity, trust, consent, and so forth.