From: gst@gnosys.svle.ma.us (Gary S. Trujillo)
Subject: Re: STRAW VOTE ON NAME FOR NATIVE AMERICANS NEWSGROUP
Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1992 19:54:36 GMT

In article <1992Dec16.193706.28951@dartvax.dartmouth.edu>
	hades@Dartmouth.Edu writes:

> gst@gnosys.svle.ma.us (Gary S. Trujillo) writes:
> 
> >...I ask why the newsgroup should be exclusively by and
> >about indigenous Americans, when they share so much with the indigenous
> >peoples of other countries.
> 
>     Well, here's one reason: because many of them already have
> appropriate soc.culture.* groups. Below is a list of most of the current
> soc.culture.* groups in UseNet (I've removed a few that don't apply). If
> you can show that the creation of soc.culture.native[.misc] doesn't
> duplicate the functions of about 80%+ of the groups listed there, then I
> have no problem at all with its creation. But, instead, if these groups
> already cover topics that have to do with indigenous people in these
> geographical locals, or at least the charter doesn't say it doesn't,
> then soc.culture.native[.misc] is a completely redundant group

The treatment of indigenous people in newsgroups devoted to general topics
of some geographical region can be expected to be very unsatisfactory, since
the content of those newsgroups will be swamped by topics dealing with the
dominant culture of those countries, which is the culture of the colonizers
in most cases.

Need I say more on this subject?

> with the exception of discussion about natives of the Americas...

And what is different about natives of the Americas?  Using the logic you
employ above, a soc.cultures.americas should be sufficient, and we could
talk about American Indians along with all the other various aspects of
the cultures of the U.S. and Canada and Central and South America.  :-?

Before being able to talk about names in any substantial way, maybe we
should spend some time talking about the issue of what it is we really
want to use the new newsgroup(s) for, so we don't end up letting the
tail wag the dog.  It does seem fairly clear from our discussion so far
that we need a soc.culture.{native,indigenous,aboriginal} newsgroup
hierarchy, and that whatever newsgroups are created should be linked with
the existing NativeNet mailing lists in some fashion.  What is still
unclear is whether we should use the "soc.culture.<whatever>" as a news-
group itself, or as the base of a new hierarchy.  I am in favor of the
latter arrangement, as I've stated and explained a number of times already.

I think it would be useful to bring in some of the folks on the NativeNet
lists, who have a great deal of content knowledge, since I feel they could
be very helpful in the thinking through of the issues that shoud be dis-
cussed prior to getting into the details of naming.  Also, they will be
invovlved in the voting process, so we might as well get their opinion
included in a straw poll.  I move that we wait until after the holidays to
issue an invitation to those folks to participate in such a discussion,
and that we spend a week or two figuring out what the topic areas are and
how they are best arranged before we get down to the nuts and bolts of
naming the newsgroups.

How does that idea sound?

Gary
--
    Gary S. Trujillo                            gst@gnosys.svle.ma.us
Somerville, Massachusetts              {wjh12,bu.edu,spdcc,ima,cdp}!gnosys!gst