Let me present you with my dilemma and ask for suggestions, rather than
simply announcing and implementing a policy which at least a few of you
find distasteful enough to make me need to reconsider it as a method of
doing what I am trying to achieve in attempting to at least temporarily
limit the scope of what is handled on the list. Though there have only
been a few messages to me generated as a result of my announcement, some
expressing reservations about what I said, and some voicing support and
offering thanks for my efforts, they have caused me to reconsider how to
go about accomplishing what I intended to accomplish by the means talked
about in yesterday's article. Moreover, I have come to realize that the
amount of energy I would have to spend trying to defend such a policy
would exceed whatever energy I might save by enforcing it, so I'll just
return to the previous policy for now (of permitting reasonable questions
to be asked but limiting discussion which is better handled via NATCHAT
and other avenues) - but I still want to work for some method of dealing
with the problems that I hope to identify more clearly in what follows
having to do with the amount of effort required to handle things -
effort that I want to spend in some other areas related to what I had
intended originally for NativeNet and having to do with what I feel is a
need to provide a better method of distributing and differentiating
information. I hope to get your help both in thinking through a process
of adjusting to a changing reality and in doing what is necessary to
keep things running as smoothly as possible.
I want to thank those of you who have taken the time and trouble to
write. Though I may not be able to answer each note personally, except
perhaps with a brief "thank you," I do read and ponder each one I get
as thoughtfully as I can. To those two or three of you who have sent
responses to the NATIVE-L list, except for Tristine Lee Smart's article
yesterday, I have to say I have not relayed these messages, and have
considered them as personal comments for the time being. If I can find
the time to do so, I'd like to open a separate channel, probably via a
combination of mailing list and Web forum, so that those of you who are
most interested in the subject can "tune in" - either as active
participants in the conversation or just as electronic "flies on the
wall," so to speak ("lurkers," in net parlance). Meanwhile, I'd like to
ask that you direct your comments to me personally, along with a note as
to whether you are willing to let your words be public, either with your
name attached or anonymously, at some future date.
I'd like to try to put things into something of a historical context - to
tell you why I began in the fall of 1989 what has become the NativeNet
mailing lists and what I am presently trying to achieve in operating them.
Perhaps if I help you understand my motivations, my original objectives
and my more immediate ones, and if I simply present the problem I have to
this community, you can help me find a way to deal with it that can find
a place for postings on various subjects, even if it results in certain
lists being restricted in certain ways simply to keep traffic at a manage-
able level, for you as well as for me, and so as to enable subscribers to
be more selective in what they receive, based on their own priorities.
At the very least, I want to begin some kind of dialogue that gives us a
sense of ourselves as a community - one that has some choices before it,
rather than the view some of you seem to be developing of suddenly having
become the victims of someone with arbitrary and capricious tendencies
and a desire to judge what is worthwhile and what is not.
Before I launch into this historical treatment, let me talk for a moment
about more immediate matters. I want to try to explain again what I was
trying to say yesterday, but to do so in a way that makes clear my under-
standing that I did so in what I now see was an unfortunate manner - one
that requires that I apologize to you. My objective in saying that I want
to at least for the present use the NATIVE-L list for important bulletins
is primarily to reduce the traffic on the list to something that seems
more manageable - for myself at least. I am attempting to solve what I
see as being certain problems in the way things are going now and to work
on new NativeNet-related projects, primarily involving the World Wide Web,
but in order to do so, I need to free more time for myself to think about
things and to engage in productive dialogue with this community.
Unfortunately, I stated things in a way that made it sound at least to
some subscribers that I intended to introduce a rather arbitrary change
in policy, rather than simply to state the existence of a problem and to
solicit suggestions for dealing with it. Secondly, I made the announce-
ment I did with a kind of language that made it seem to some that I was
making a judgement about the importance of some particular subject
matter. I hope that you will permit me to retract the word "trivial"
from the statement I made. I should have realized at the time, but
somehow failed to, that the statement that contained that word could
easily be read as implying a value judgement and, even worse, as a
personal offense against the subscriber who had introduced a certain
topic. I also regret having suggested the standard of judging whether
a given article should be posted on the basis of whether you would make
such a statement in a room containing over a thousand people. I was
feeling a bit cranky at the time and went considerably overboard in
saying what I did. I ask you all for your forgiveness. I should have
been more careful in saying what I was trying to say and I should have
tried to think through the possible consequences both of using the
language I did and of saying what I wanted to say in a manner that left
me open to some of the charges that have been levelled against me in
personal correspondence pertaining to certain dictatorial tendencies.
The fact is that I do realize and acknowledge that the question asked
about a certain song is every bit as important in its own way as any-
thing else we deal with on this list, and it is a legitimate use of a
mailing list to ask the kind of question that was asked. However, I
think that it is also reasonable to attempt to find a way to define our
subject matter such that people interested mainly in more "informational"
kinds of articles or even articles on some well-defined facet of the
general subject of Native peoples have a way to restrict their partici-
pation along such lines, even if it means setting up one or more
separate channels to deal with cultural matters. Similarly, it seems
justifiable for me to try to find a way to cut back on the amount of
time and energy that I put into this activity and to redirect my efforts
toward undertakings that represent my own primary interests and the
areas where I want to be effective.
Anyway, let me try to draw back from the immediate situation, so that I do
not operate simply from a defensive position and try to put this whole
discussion into the context of a presentation of my primary goals in the
founding of what has become NativeNet. Perhaps if I do a better job of
explaining what I see myself trying to achieve, we can together find ways
of letting us all get what we most want out of our shared experiences,
and I can do what might be possible to support those of you whose own
priorities lie in areas other than those I identify here so that we can
work in ways that are complementary.
As many of you will know from the introductory material that is automatic-
ally sent to you within a day of your subscribing (at least those of you
who have joined the lists during the past year or so during which the setup
I designed for sending out this material has been operating), NativeNet was
established shortly after I returned from a conference that I had attended
at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts in September of 1989. The
title of that conference, which was sponsored by the Vermont-based Arctic
to Amazonia Alliance, was "From the Arctic to Amazonia: A Conference on the
Industrialized Nations' Exploitaton of Tribal Lands." Perhaps it will help
you all to understand something of my experience if I present to you the
description of the theme of the conference as conceived by the organizers:
Various strategic, geopolitical, and economic considerations make
tribal "resources" attractive to industry, and to a system and per-
spective which views continued expansion as the primary measurement
of growth, and growth as a prerequisite for economic health. This
same perspective tells us that significant inequities between payment
and receipts for basic resources are the foundation of healthy trade,
and views continued exploitation of the world's remaining natural
systems as more pragmatic than the creation of systems to repair and
insure a healthy and sustainable future for our planet. As industrial
and political power continue to exert pressure on natural ecosystems
and less powerful economies and peoples, conservation issues meet
those concerning human rights.
Much of the political strife and abuse of human rights occurring today
is in fact a struggle between post-colonial societies and indigenous
peoples who seek to maintain their resource base for physical, cultural,
economic, and spiritual survival, and to receive recognition as either
sovereign nations, or as rightful participants within the larger society.
In order to provide a forum for presentation of tribal resource issues,
and in order to facilitate local (Northeastern US) understanding of
and support for seeking alternatives to the current pattern of envi-
ronmental destruction and human rights abuses, we are coordinating a
two-part conference for September, 1989. The conference will be
presented at Smith College and Darthmouth College.
The speaker balance will be weighted towards tribal representatives,
as the best source for information regarding the topic of the confer-
ence. There will be further representation from academic and envi-
ronmental professional workers from New England, and the Northeast, as
well as from other areas of the United States and other nations.
It is our intention in holding this conference that those attending be
made aware of both the reality and the immediacy of the issues pre-
sented, and that they are empowered to act directly in support of
solutions. It is our further intention to utilize the conference as
a catalyst to bring interested parties throughout New England into a
close working relationship as a cooperative whole regarding the issues
presented.
Prior to attending this conference, I had been going to a series of pre-
sentations about threats to rainforests organized by a graduate student
in the philosophy department at Harvard University, which is near where
I live. I had become very concerned about what is happening in the world
today with regard to how we are treating the earth - how so many ecosystems
are threatened and how so many forms of life, to say nothing of our rivers,
oceans, and even atmosphere, are being killed or at least injured / damaged.
I find myself unable to avoid reacting to the realization of this situation
in a fairly emotional way - I feel a kind of tightness and sickness within
myself knowing how far we have come from living in a way that can be called
"harmonious," either with respect to our planet or with respect to one
another.
The experience I had during the three days of the conference helped me to
re-orient myself and to place my concerns and feelings within what seemed
like a larger or more inclusive context. As is indicated by the descrip-
tion I have quoted above, the speakers at the conference were mainly repre-
sentatives of indigenous peoples from all parts of the world. But they all
had very similar things to say about their experiences and those of their
people on whose behalf they spoke. They talked about how industrialization
and the legacy of colonial forms of government imposed on them by those who
came to their lands seeking land for settlement and raw materials (human as
well as physical) had impoverished them in one way or another and had done
so much to affect their way of life, both by destroying the physical base
on which they and their forebears had depended and by consciously setting
out to destroy the language and culture of their people.
I remember particularly the words of Tanzanian Parliament member Moringue
Parkipuny, who was at the conference representing his own Masai people.
He showed a set of slides portraying the place where his people live and
tried to give some idea of how they live. He also spoke of how possibly
well-meaning people and organizations (he mentioned the World Wildlife
Foundation, for one) set the goals for protecting the environment in
such a way as to exclude considerations of the fact of there having been
people living in those areas for tens of thousands of years in many
cases, and he spoke of the need to understand how indigenous peoples are
a necessary part of any realistic and ethical undertaking that seeks to
preserve and protect nature in particular regions.
I remember also a speaker from the Yanomami people of Brazil, who are
being killed, either directly or indirectly, as the result of goldmining
activities in the lands where they have been living as long as anyone
remembers. The goldmining is illegal, but the government fails to
enforce its own policies based on an acknowledgment of their rights.
Davi Yanomami talked about how he and his people had used video cameras
to document the destruction that was taking place and about how they
mounted public demonstrations in Brazilia, the capital city of the
country, concerning how their people were dying as a result, both of
actual murders carried out by goldminers (there was an actual massacre
of Yanomami people in 1993, which was never properly investigated), and
as the result of mercury contamination of the rivers (mercury is used in
separating gold ore from the rock in which it is embedded when dug from
the ground).
There was a speaker from the Sami territory, which extends throughout
the northern region of the Scandinavian countries and through part of
the western part of the former USSR, who talked about the effects of the
Chernoybl nuclear accident on the reindeer-herding way of life that some
Sami still maintain, and a Chippewa man from Wisconsin who talked about
how his people are being harrassed and physically threatened at the boat
docks when they attempt to carry out rights guaranteed in treaties to
spearfish in their traditional waters, and a man who talked about the
sacred medicine wheels built by his people on the American continent and
how they were being desecrated and threatened, though presumably under
the protection of the U.S. National Park Service. There were speakers
from Malaysia, New Zealand, Canada, and from various countries in
Central and South America as well. (Nilo Cayuqueo, a Mapuche man from
Argentina, and director of the South and Meso American Indian Rights
Center (saiic@igc.apc.org), which sometimes posts to NATIVE-L, also spoke.)
Perhaps at some point I can make a fuller report of what was said at this
conference and we can attempt as a community to investigate the kinds of
issues discussed there. The experience was really a transformative one
for me, at any event.
My point in telling you about this conference is that I'd like to give
you all a sense of the original foundation for my setting up a mailing
list to exchange information and ideas about indigenous peoples. This
article is long enough as it is, so I'll just send it as it presently
stands, along with a promise to continue in subsequent days, telling
you as best I can what I see as being some of the potentials for using
the mailing lists in a more conscious way, perhaps, as the basis of mutual
investigation and activity. I want to stimulate us to come up with some
kind of vision - or maybe a multiplicity of visions, that can become the
basis for actually working together in various ways on issues and projects
that we feel are important, both personally and collectively.
One reason that I am trying to "shift gears" rather consciously right now
is that I face a personal dilemma - I need to spend more time in ways that
enable me to survive. I would like to find a way to combine that need with
the interest I have in issues like those just mentioned, possibly with the
assistance of grant funding. But maybe NativeNet can and will never be for
me more than a "labor of love," as it has been for more than six years now.
Another reason that I am trying to re-define what we're doing somewhat is
that I see there being great potential importance in attempting to utilize
the new "World Wide Web" (WWW) technology which has become so immensely
popular during the past couple of years. I need to make more time for
myself to learn about using the Web effectively for NativeNet purposes.
(I hope to have more to say on this subject in subsequent installments of
this essay.)
I hope that these words are understood in the spirit in which I intend
them. I want to try to stimulate some thought about what I feel are some
important matters. I want to give subscribers a better view of at least
some of what goes on "behind the scenes." And I want to invite you to
work with me on developing NativeNet into something that helps address at
least some of the matters we each feel to be important with regard both
to the lives and cultures indigenous peoples and to some of the larger
issues in the world as a whole which I feel these things represent. Again,
if anyone has comments on anything I've said, please address them to me.
Thanks for taking the time to read my words.
Gary
--
Gary S. Trujillo gst@gnosys.svle.ma.us
Somerville, Massachusetts {wjh12,bu.edu,spdcc,cdp}!gnosys!gst