I am relaying this article both to NATIVE-L and to NATCHAT, since
some people subscribe to only one of these lists, and the issues
talked about apply to both communities. Also, NATCHAT subscribers
might find the conference in Vermont briefly described at the end
of this article to be of some interest with regard to our recent
discussion on the film "Clearcut" and the issues it raises about
how habitat of indigenous peoples has been ravaged by industrial
society.
I would really like to get some feedback on this article, which
was prompted by Peter d'Errico's comments and some things that
have been building up for some time.
--Gary ]
Peter says:
Gary Trujillo (gst@gnosys.svle.ma.us) writes:
> Well, I don't actually intend to make the list of subscriber names public
> under any circumstances I can forsee, but I am willing to work with others
> to set up a database to which subscribers can voluntarily submit information,
> ...
> it takes more work for someone to create junk mail lists if they have to
> keep track of postings than if they have access to a raw list. Call me
> paranoid, perhaps, but I don't feel I have the right to make subscribers
> "easy pickings" for such things.
I appreciate and support Gary's willingness to help create a personal
info database for those who want it, and to keep the subscriber list
confidential. I'm not sure why this is even an issue.
-- Peter d'Errico voice: 413-545-2003 Legal Studies Department fax: 413-545-1640 University of Massachusetts/Amherst 01003 derrico@legal.umass.edu
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Comments from NativeNet moderator, Gary Trujillo (gst@gnosys.svle.ma.us):
I take responsibility for bringing up this issue, actually. On 27 January, Cynthia Chambers (chambers@hg.uleth.ca) posted an article entitled "Any Canadians Out there?" to which I attached a note saying that we might want to create a database, which I could set up and administer, to let people who want to provide information about them- selves do so, so that people with similar interests could more easily locate one another. In the course of describing this idea, I mentioned my policy of keeping the NativeNet subscription lists confidential, and I explained my reasons for doing so. I also solicited comments on this policy.
Subsequently, on 4 February, Lyn Dearborn (lyn@anchor.esd.sgi.com) took me up on my request for comments in her article "membership confidentiality." Lyn said:
I suspect that most of us don't care if our names be made public ... I'm also not sure that it is of any value, since it doesn't specify whether or not we are native and why we are here. But it would certainly be simple enough to settle the confidentiality issure: Give us 10 days, or 30 days to notify you if we want our names kept secret. Anyone not responding within that time frame would be relinquishing their right to remain anonymous.
I responded in a note appended to Lyn's article by saying that I did not intend to make the lists public, which probably left some wondering why I had solicited comments. I think what I was looking for was something in the way of a discussion of the advantages and disadvantages of public accessibility of the lists. I don't think the issue is really settled by means of devising a heuristic for people to indicate their desire to have their names kept confidential, and such a scheme has the basic flaw that it assumes that such a message would be read and acted upon - and it makes no provision for new subscribers learning of this option.
I feel that I may be too timid in some cases about just deciding on a policy and sticking to it. Providing a mechanism for those who want to make as much information about themselves as they desire should satisfy those who feel that subscriber names and/or addresses should be generally available. The database I've proposed could contain, in addition to name and electronic mail address, any information we choose to include, such as ethnicity, for those to whom things might be important, as well as profession, organizational affiliations, and personal interests relating to the subject matter of the lists.
I think one reason I've been wanting to say something about this subject of subscriber confidentiality is that it has recently come to my atten- tion that someone who has long been critical of my policy of keeping the subscriber list confidential has been quoted as claiming that I have been selling this list for personal profit. I feel more than a bit outraged by this scurrilous charge. I have never done such a thing and wouldn't even think of doing so. I challenge anyone who thinks such a thing to be true to produce a single scrap of evidence. I would like to say more about this matter, but my "better judgement" tells me that it's not worth the time and effort. I just wanted to get this whole thing "off my chest."
But I think this subject really deserves to be placed in a somewhat larger context of where we can take our activities and what we want from the NativeNet mailing lists. I'm sure that some people are quite content to simply read NATIVE-L articles something like one would read a newspaper or a magazine, just looking for interesting items, and some like to use it to get questions answered, or to put out bulletins about situations requiring urgent action. And many NATCHAT subscribers seem to like to grapple with semi-philosophical questions, or to spar with one another about matters of deeply-held feelings or beliefs.
But I think we really can do a lot more if we want to.
We're living in a time that is being described as something of a classic "watershed," in which electronic communications are really "taking off," and pundits using metaphors relating to the "data superhighway" which it is claimed will revolutionize our lives (at least those of us in the so- called "developed" world) abound.
I like to see these mailing lists as a simple prototype of a kind of communications mechanism that can do far more than what we're presently doing. We should probably be investigating some of the newer technologies, such as gopher, WAIS, and World Wide Web (which I heard being referred to at a conference at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government last summer as "dub-dub-dub" :-). These technologies can enable us to create searchable databases containing sounds and images as well as textual material, for those equipped to deal with such things. Already, in fact, a project is underway whereby photographic images and text from K-12 students participating in exchanges between both Native and non-Native schools, in South Dakota, Indiana, and elsewhere are being stored in a gopher database, courtesy of AISESnet director Borries Demeler in Montana. Classroom teachers equipped with Macintosh computers and Hypertext(tm) software will be able to display this material in order for students to communicate with one another across potentially vast distances, in order to learn more about one another's cultures. Some teachers are thinking of developing curricula specifically to take advantage of such technology, and are planning discussions concerning indigenous peoples in which their classes will participate, involving American Indian students, as well as the Native people of Canada and Australia. Other groups, both indigenous and non-indigenous can be expected to join later once the project becomes more fully developed.
In addition to the NativeNet lists, others are springing up on similar topics, such as that of the National Indian Policy Center in Washington, and John Burrows' Fourth World Documentation Project ftp archive, and Preston Hardison's INDKNOW mailing list (both in Seattle), and Michael Wilson's ftp site at Cornell, and the INDIANNET-L list of AIO in New Mexico, and the Coombspapers archives in Australia, and Ken Hunt's gopher site in Colorado, and Robert Clinton's Iowa Indian Defense Network, etc. (Actually, the IIDN is the one service of those listed above that pre- dates NativeNet.) I think these many repositories of information could better coordinate with one another and provide descriptions of what they offer in a unified listing so that people know where to go to answer questions in specific areas.
But in addition to providing a tool for scholars whose main interest in these subjects is academic, these electronic resources can also be a good source of information for activists wanting to work on specific issues, and to the growing numbers of people gaining access through low-cost commercial services such as America Online (tm), who are now subscribing in increasing numbers to the NativeNet lists.
And let us not forget indigenous peoples themselves! Rather than being merely the *subject* of these discussions and information interchanges, let us not forget that communities of indigenous peoples all over the world have needs for information and for communications with one another. Various efforts have been proposed for linking communities with each other to the extent they feel a need to communicate - or perhaps the increasing ease of communications can provide a greater incentive.
Back when this enterprise got started in late 1989, I wrote a series of articles suggesting to the people then subscribed, who were only a small fraction of present subscribers, that we might want to spend some time discussing how we could through our collective efforts develop these resources beyond what is generally provided by mailing lists. "The silence," as they say, "was deafening." Perhaps things have changed now - so I would like to put out another call for those interested in helping to think through how we might better utilize this medium to take part in some behind-the-scenes discussions to plan the evolution of what we have into something that extends the system into new areas and that serves more directly as an effective vehicle for providing information, helps people with similar interests easily locate one another, serves as a forum for discussing important issues, helps coordinate various kinds of activities, provides assistance to indigenous communities which want to more easily communicate with one another, and whatever else our collective imagination might permit us to realize.
There are a number of specific projects that have been discussed in the past, such as online study groups to have guided discussions on specific topics of mutual interest, led by specialists in the field of study, where participants agree to read certain books and articles together (the articles could be made available via ftp, gopher, filelist archives and other forms of email-enabled retrievals) - and such as creating a bibliographic database to provide information on and reviews of the various books which have been talked about and recommended by a few members of NATIVE-L, such as Lisa Mitten and Steve Brock.
I've been getting a number of inquiries lately about myself - people wanting to know who I am and what makes me tick and why I'm so inter- ested in these subjects. The last question isn't easy to answer, so I'll save it for another time. But suffice it to say that I'm a pro- fessional computer specialist with a good programming background - so I know how to implement these ideas I've been describing. I can set up special-purpose mailing lists to enable the planning discussions and study groups I mentioned, and if and when machine resources are located, I can set up ftp, gopher, WWW, and/or WAIS services. I have already set up the bibliographic database, which is accessible via email - it's just a matter of getting the data into the database and writing a set of instructions on how to do retrievals from it. The subscriber database is really no more difficult.
I would appreciate anyone who is interested in helping think through some of these projects, or who has ideas and proposal for other projects, or who has questions about anything I've said here to get in touch with me. If there's sufficient interest, I may permit a discussion thread on NATIVE-L on this topic so we can think about these things as a community.
Speaking of community, we might even think about sponsoring "birds-of-a feather" (BOF) sessions at conferences people might be likely to attend, so at least some of us have an opportunity to meet one another and, until such time as the technology evolves for us to see images of one another on our computer screens (which some of the seers tell us may not be too far off), let us meet one another. (I have had the pleasure of getting together during recent months with NativeNet subscribers in both the Washington, D.C. area and in Berkeley, California, and it seems that contacts made at these meetings have turned into friendships, which I find very gratifying.)
Speaking of conferences, it might be good to remind folks that there is a conference coming up 5-9 May 1994 in Brattleboro, Vermont sponsored by the Arctic to Amazonia group that sponsored the conference in 1989 which served as the specific inspiration for NativeNet. I'm hoping to attend that conference myself. Anyone wanting more information on the conference can get complete details by retrieving the article posted to NATIVE-L by its organizers in early October 1993 using the following commands:
// job echo=no database search dd=rules //rules dd * select * in native-l.5147 print all /*
sent in a message to the address "listserv@tamvm1.tamu.edu" (use the letter "l" in "native-l" and the numeral "1" in "tamvm1").
Here is a bit of a description of the conference:
October 8, 1993
INVITATION TO CO-SPONSOR AND PARTICIPATE IN SEEDS OF HOPE: RECLAIMING THE FOREST An Arctic to Amazonia Congress at The School for International Training Brattleboro, Vermont: May 5-9,1994
CONCEPT
The industrialized nations, including their environmental organizations, seem locked in a debate on forest and wildlands management which recognizes just two main alternatives: The creation of wilderness reserves which exclude all human activity but recreation, and industrial management for resource exploitation. The "new" forestry thinking offers many sub-plots to the industrial theme, some more environmentally credible than others, but none of the alternatives posed within this duality of preserve vs. clearcut see human beings as holding valid membership within the interspecies forest community.
Well, this is all I have to say for now. I'm sorry to have rambled on for so long. Anyone wanting to reply, either to me personally or to NATIVE-L or NATCHAT should feel free to do so - in fact, I really hope you will!
Gary