From: alanm@igc.apc.org (Alan McGowen)
Newsgroups: alt.native
Subject: Re: NativeNet Chat's Direction
Date: 3 Oct 92 07:32:00 GMT
Nf-ID: #R:9209230814.AA02915@mamia.uucp:-1112169643:cdp:1308200080:000:5133
Nf-From: cdp.UUCP!alanm    Oct  3 00:32:00 1992


Lyn Dearborn writes:

>Regarding Alan's posting, especially to Peshe urging an all Native American
>network, list, etc.  But damn it Alan, you can't end two pages of really
>positive urgings by switching the !@#! subject:
>
>> But let's not forget South American Indians, or people in
>> Indonesia or Africa. They are voiceless, and have far less power
>> than you do. They have no modems to interface with internet. And
>> when we have tricked them into dependence on such things, their
>> culture is already destroyed. Please think about that.
>
> .... what can I say without evoking the Almighty ... which would be counter-
>productive in this case.
>
>There have been VOLUMES written about the plight of those poor abused,
>dependent, pitied, innocent, etc., thousands elsewhere.  They are not the
>issue here, and tossing them off in a "P.S."-type ending only CLOUDS the
>issue.  What do they have to do with our need, here & now? 

I think there is more than one "issue here." I've supported the 
idea of a network AIMed (excuse me) at political empowerment of 
north American Indians for the simple reason that some say they 
want one, and it is not difficult to see why a separate forum 
could be very productive, for *that* issue. In much the same way, 
feminist groups have found that separate groups are useful -- 
even essential. But a separate forum still has to connect back to 
something larger and more global, both to be effective and to 
have perspective. 

I am more interested in those "global" questions, especially 
questions about human ecology. Questions of this sort are very 
obviously pressing for indigenous people in South America, 
Indonesia and its neighborhood, and parts of Africa. They are 
perhaps no more more likely to seem pressing for many Indians in 
the US and Canada than they are to most non-Indians
in these parts.

I don't agree with the suggestion that these issues have been 
adequately covered elsewhere.

>You can't help
>not having a drop of Indian blood to your name, 

Hm. I might, but I don't see that this is relevant to my views, 
one way or the other. I am not a member of any Indian culture 
group, and I wouldn't try to foist my views into any forum aimed 
exclusively at such a group's interests, any more than I would try 
to tell the Veterans of Foreign Wars what is best for them -- not 
being a veteran of a foreign war. But I don't think that 
alt.native or its Natchat extract are such a forum. In fact, no 
forum over a partly publicly-funded network really can be, legally.

Although I don't usually cite movies as evidence for anything, 
I've often recalled, while reading this group, the final scenes 
from "At Play in the Fields of the Lord", when Louis Moon, who 
was half Cheyenne, and who has half-inadvertently set himself up 
as a god called "Kisu Mu" in a fictitious Amazonian tribe, is 
told by the chief he has just shot: "You are not Kisu Mu... You 
are a white man!" Even more tragic than that was the fact that 
most of the tribe died from a viral infection which he had 
introduced: even from the standpoint of immunology, Louis Moon 
was effectively a "white man", and all his efforts to paint 
himself otherwise couldn't hide that fact from virus populations.      

I leave it to the reader to find the moral.

>but you CAN be sensitive
>enough to see THIS need without going
>onto the pulpit to remind us not to
>forget their plight.  Hell Alan, we can't even relate easily to Native
>peoples in South America without you dragging up the possibility of us getting
>distracted by the Indonesians or AFricans .... hey, lets not forget the
>poor defenseless Vietnamese ..NOT.  Are you proposing we add them to our
>cultural crises? 

I'm not at all sure that the "cultural crises" of indigenous 
people facing life in increasingly degraded ecosystems aren't a 
foretaste of what even we technological elite may be facing 
ourselves in 50 or 100 years... I'm not averse to general 
liberalism, but that isn't the kind of point I've been trying to 
raise for the most part. 

[...]

>YOU CAN'T LOVE ANYONE UNTIL
>YOU LEARN TO LOVE YOURSELF

Though it may sound heartless, love is not enough. Love has to be 
informed with real understanding or it can lead to the tragedy of 
Louis Moon (ok, I did draw a moral). I agree that there is too 
little love in the world, but there is also far too little 
understanding. Perhaps the two facts are not unrelated.

[...]

>We really can't afford to have our issues diluted right now with "Guilt"
>about the situation in Indonesia and Africa... we feel helpless enough
>without adding that hideous stuff .... 

This sounds to me like a very good reason to have a separate 
group focused specifically on doing something about that feeling 
of helplessness. Separation from other problems and agendas could 
be essential to that. Perhaps you need a room of your own, in network 
space, to come to clarity about how to deal with the other 
network rooms -- and other kinds of rooms -- beyond. It wouldn't 
be the first time in history that such a need has arisen. Or has 
been opposed.


------------
Alan McGowen