First I'd like to correct the statement I made recently about how it
was feather eaglerock who was looking for information about the
"Northern Exposure" song. It was actually Joe Don Chipps (jdc@onr.com).
If anyone else has information about that subject or wants to offer
comments, please send them to Joe directly, not to the mailing list
(I will forward one last article on the subject from Joe and then
declare the thread closed - and I'd like to request that anyone else
having questions about contemporary cultural expressions to find some
other mechanism for researching them, at least until we figure out
together what we want NATIVE-L to be.)
More importantly, I'd like to say that I have been doing a lot of thinking
lately about what NativeNet has become and about the NATIVE-L list in
particular - and about what I'd like for it to be. I feel a need to find
time to write my thoughts and feelings about how I conceived these things
when I started the initial mailing list in 1989 and about some new direc-
tions I'd like to take. For those who have been with us a while, you'll
know that I've made such statements periodically, but I probably haven't
done much to carry out whatever realizations I might have come to at any
particular time. This time I want things to be different...
So before I leave the subject, I'd like to ask that questions about trivia
relating to Native people not be asked via the NATIVE-L list. I'd like to
reserve the list for passing on important informational items and for those
who have serious research interests which cannot be satisfied in other ways,
such as consulting books generally available in public or university library
collections. I'll have a more precise set of guidelines to offer once I
have a chance to develop and express them.
I do not in any way mean to denigrate what I am here characterizing as
"trivial" kinds of questions, it's just that I feel a need to set some
priorities and to try to articulate a vision for what we are doing
together, rather than to simply permit things to happen of their own
accord, as they have been doing by and large for the past several years.
I also do not want to say that what we have been doing has not been
worthwhile; in fact, I have been fairly satisifed on the whole. But
as electronic communications has moved out of being the plaything of
academics to being a tool used daily in business and industry and now
is even catching on in the home, I think we need to kind of "take stock"
of our activity as a community and to make some conscious decisions
about how we want to proceed. (And let me suggest that those who feel
a need to ask casual questions concerning Native people, you might want
to try the Usenet newsgroup "soc.culture.native" or "alt.native" (which
largely overlap with one another). You should be able to find out about
Usenet news from your campus administrative staff or your Internet
service provider - please don't send questions about that subject to
me, since I really don't have time to answer them). The NATIVE-L list
is automatically transmitted to those newsgroups, so those who have a
more casual interest may want to drop their NATIVE-L subscription and
use the Usenet route instead.
With what time I can find, I'd like to write a series of essays addressed
to the NativeNet community which attempt to articulate or at least serve
as an inital part of developing a vision that can be shared by enough of
us that we can work together to achieve some common purposes. Though my
time during the next couple of months will be limited, I'll do what I can
to let you know what I've been thinking, and when I get a chance, I'd like
to set up a Web-accessible archive of hypertext versions of these essays
(which I anticipate having links to various things that I'd like to refer
to), as well as a mechanism for others to contribute their thoughts and
feelings, so that we can work together consciously.
Meanwhile, I'd like to ask those who would consider posting an article
to NATIVE-L to do your best to ensure that whatever you post is of some
considerable importance and is likely to be of interest to at least
eleven hundred people (that's how many active subscribers we presently
have on the mailing list, with many more accessing NATIVE-L via other
means). Ask yourself whether you would stand up in a room containing
that many people to make an announcement or ask a question. I don't
mean to discourage postings - only to try to give us a quiet space to
start the new year so that we can do a bit of reflecting together about
what we want to do with the community that we have formed during these
past six years. We may find that it will be necessary to define some
new channels for dealing with specific subjects - and I'd like to try
using World Wide Web technology to handle some of these things (which
should not really disenfranchise anyone - maybe only encourage you to
investigate the Web if you have not already done so - it is really
easily available, even to those with fairly old equipment and slow
connections to the 'net - I'll have more to say on this subject as we
get closer to implementing such ideas).
Thanks for reading my words. You'll be hearing more from me over the
coming days and weeks.
Gary
--
Gary S. Trujillo gst@gnosys.svle.ma.us
Somerville, Massachusetts {wjh12,bu.edu,spdcc,cdp}!gnosys!gst