This article reluctantly announces what I hope will be a temporary
scaling back in the operation of the NativeNet mailing lists. This
action is made necessary by the fact that I am experiencing frequent
equipment failures which will take time to resolve and by the fact that
I also need time to think carefully about a restructuring of NativeNet
to cope with a number of changed realities. I plan to tell you more
about this restructuring and what effects it is likely to have on the
operation of the mailing lists over the course of the coming weeks and
months.
The fact that no articles have been transmitted for several days via any
of the NativeNet lists except for NAT-EDU is unrelated to the equipment
failures just mentioned. There was a problem with the TAMVM1 system at
Texas A & M University, which handles all but the NAT-EDU mailing list,
since no articles that have been approved since Saturday on NATIVE-L,
NATCHAT, NAT-LANG or NAT-HLTH have been transmitted to subscribers of
those lists. I have just learned that the problem at TAMVM1 is close
to resolution. However, until it is completely solved, I will approve
no articles, since there are already quite a number of articles in the
pipeline, which I expect will be transmitted in a short space of time
within the next several days. I apologize in advance for what I expect
will be a glut of articles that will arrive in your mailbox at that point.
I also apologize for not being able to respond to those who have written
to me recently. I managed to lose more than a week's worth of mail today,
due to a mixup with backup tapes.
Briefly, the problem I am experiencing is with my own machine, which is
nearly a decade old - pretty ancient as computers go. The Convergent
Technologies "Safari 4" (also known as the AT&T "3B1") was a fairly
powerful machine for its class in its day (MC68010 CPU, 3.5 megs memory,
67 meg disk (which I have upgraded to more about 250 megs by means of
some surgery to the motherboard), running the multi-processing UNIX
operating system, but it is becoming difficult to keep running due to
frequent disk failures. Each time the machine fails, it takes at least
a day to rebuild the system.
Without going into unnecessary detail, I need to explain that my computer
is an integral part of the NativeNet system, due to the fact that the
whole operation is fairly automated. The mailing lists run not only by
means of the LISTSERV systems at TAMVM1 and INDYCMS, but also by means of
software on this machine,. I have developed this software over the course
of the past six years, and it has become somewhat elaborate, performing a
lot of functions that would otherwise have to be handled manually, which
is now completely unthinkable. The only real solution is to work toward
replacing the computer with a newer UNIX machine, and installing my soft-
ware on the new machine,which is a process that I expect would take a
period of at least several months after a new machine is obtained, since
it is likely that changes to the software would need to be made, and then
tested and debugged. Also, at the center of the current system is a DBMS
(database management system), which keeps track of articles and subscribers,
to make sure that nothing and no one gets lost as articles go through the
various phases of processing. So not only would a new computer be needed,
but also a new UNIX DBMS, which could be an expensive item, unless public
domain software could be located, installed and adapted.
The immediate change I am announcing by means of this message is that,
until further notice, you can expect that traffic will be reduced on the
NATIVE-L list. The NATCHAT list, though distributed via this machine, is
handled by Jay Brummett (jay@utw.com), so it may be unaffected, except
for periods when my computer is down and undergoing repair. The NAT-EDU,
NAT-LANG, and NAT-HLTH lists are fairly low-volume operations, so they
may also be largely unaffected.
The way I intend to reduce traffic on NATIVE-L, a measure largely aimed
at reducing the amount of time I will need to spend dealing with the day-
to-day operations, is to limit articles to only those items that I consider
to be of significant importance, meaning mainly urgent news bulletins.
(However, many articles from the Association for Progressive Communications
will likely continue to be relayed, since they come in via an automated
("UUCP") link that I have with an APC affiliate, the Institute for Global
Communications (which operates the Peacenet and Econet systems from their
headquarters in northern California).
Routine questions and answers will probably not be approved during this
period. For such purposes, I would refer you instead to the Usenet news
groups "soc.culture.native" and "alt.native." You should be able to get
access to Usenet news via your campus facility or Internet service pro-
vider. If I can find a general facility available via telnet that people
who cannot get convenient Usenet access can utilize, I'll post an article
giving details.
Because of this change, I am requesting that only articles which you feel
are of serious import be submitted to NATIVE-L. I suggest that you keep
a copy of anything you send that you want to retain, since I will not
return copies of articles that I decline to approve. I will, however,
attempt to set up an automatic response system that will send you a short
note if your article is not being approved. If possible, I will retain
copies of some submitted articles, for transmission at a later date.
(Clearly, there is not much time savings for me by simply not relaying
many articles, since it takes some time to take even this action. I am
hoping that by discouraging any articles except the most important during
this period, partly by declining to approve many articles, I will succeed
in reducing the overall article traffic.)
With the time I hope to save as the result of cutting back on my NativeNet
responsibilities, I would like to work toward a state of affairs in which I
can afford to replace this computer and make things more stable. I also want
to spend some time thinking and communicating with people who might be able
to help in one way or another. And I hope to spend more time working with
World Wide Web technology, which I would like to use to a greater extent in
a restructured NativeNet.
Another important project, which I'll say more about in a future essay
posted to NATIVE-L has to do with attempting to put together an advisory
board for NativeNet comprising indigenous representatives who have some
significant standing in their own communities and/or responsibility in
academic roles. I want to work toward defining how electronic communi-
cations technology can be used most effectively in addressing the needs
of indigenous peoples as well as satisfying at least some of the personal
goals that I outlined in a previous NATIVE-L essay.
Though I will also be reducing the amount of time I spend in personal
correspondence (which I find to be a very time-consuming activity), I
do hope at some point to initiate a dialogue through which we can get to
know one another better and to share our ideas for advancing some goals
enough of us share that we can think about working on them together
consciously. This is the idea that led me to announce that I intended
to write a series of essays, which I began recently with the article
entitled "NativeNet: developing and articulating a shared vision."
I'd like to start things off by expressing some elements of my own
vision, which I anticipate taking a number of weeks, and then to create
a new channel (probably independent of this computer, because of its
unreliability) through which those of you who are interested in working
together to refine that vision and make it capable of being shared can
have some dialogue to initiate that process.
During this period of the NATIVE-L slowdown, I'd like to invite you all
to peruse the NATIVE-L archives available by means of the World Wide Web,
via the URL: "http://www.fdl.cc.mn.us/natnet/" I know that visually the
NativeNet archives may leave something to be desired (which I hope some
of you may care to help with at some point), but there's a lot of good
content there. I have begun creating index files for the NATIVE-L
archives relative to various subjects, and now I've gotten help from a
couple of NativeNet subscribers (Jordan Dill and Michael Czwarno) to make
the process move along more quickly. Select the "references" item from
the main page and from there you can select the following subject areas
to see collections of articles from the NATIVE-L archives on the indicated
topics:
Africa (Ogoni environmental/human rights issue (Nigeria))
Human Genome Diversity Project
Japan (Ainu peoples)
Native Studies
Navajo-Hopi Land Dispute
Wounded Knee
Additional indices, on the Yanomami (Brazil), Lubicon (Alberta, Canada),
and Sami (Scandanavian, western former USSR region) are now in the process
of preparation and should be finished soon. (If anyone else with good
editing skills would like to help with this effort, please contact me.)
Eventually, I'd like to enable the archives to be able to be searched on
demand, but I need to make sure that the machine where the archives
reside does not become overloaded.
Again, I'm very sorry for having to slow things down for a while. If you
find that a time comes when you don't receive anything for a few days, it
may be due to another hardware problem. There's probably no point in
writing to me in that case, since I'll likely be engaged in trying to put
the pieces back together again, and by the time I'm able to respond, the
problem will have been solved.
I appreciate your patience and look forward to a time when NativeNet might
be more solidly based, both in a more stable hardware situation and as the
result of the restructuring which I am hoping to undertake soon.
Best regards to you all,
Gary
--
Gary S. Trujillo gst@gnosys.svle.ma.us
Somerville, Massachusetts {wjh12,bu.edu,spdcc,cdp}!gnosys!gst