Call for Pre-Columbian Specialists

From: "Dr. H. Micheal Tarver"
Date: October 3, 2006

Colleagues,

I am writing on behalf of ABC-CLIO, the leader in history reference publishing. We are currently working on an ambitious twenty-one volume Encyclopedia of World History, and are in need of Pre-Columbian specialists to write some critical entries. If you are interested, please contact me at your earliest convenience.

Arrangements can be made to translate essays (500 to 1000 words) into English.

With best regards,

Micheal Tarver
Editor, Era 8


Dr. H. Micheal Tarver
Department Head -
Social Sciences and Philosophy
Arkansas Tech University
Witherspoon 254
407 West Q Street
Russellville, AR 72801-2222

Tel: 479.968.0265
Fax: 479.858.6452

micheal.tarver@atu.edu

Caledonia, Ontario: Beware the Big Bad Indian

Several months ago I watched a CBC News television report of a protest by non-Native residents of Caledonia, Ontario, where Six Nations protesters have reclaimed land that they insist, and eagerly demonstrate, was illegally usurped. In that report, a young blonde woman, veins bulging on her throat, rose over the other non-Native protesters to scream that the Natives were "terrorists" and that her children were afraid whenever they drove past the Natives.

The immediate question that came to mind was: "Lady, what kind of racist rubbish are you teaching your children?" Why are three Mohawks carrying placards the new definition of terrorism now? Is it the old prejudice that when Natives gather "trouble's a brewin' "?

Such gratuitous prejudice did not end with one speaker, of course, after all this is "Canada" and fools roam in herds over our vast open spaces. Once again, the CBC reports the following in its latest article from the scene: "VanSickle, who said her elementary-school children are afraid to be home alone, also took aim at Prime Minister Stephen Harper for engaging in negotiations with the Six Nations while Caledonia is 'held hostage.' " Afraid to be home alone? As a parent, what has she done to assuage what hopefully is only the irrational fear of a child...or has this irrational fear been taught to the children by the mother? Held "hostage"? Why are such images, accusations and bogey men dredged up in Canada whenever protesters lack the deathly pallor that has been associated with "civilization"? I suppose that I have just answered my own question.

The question that does remain for me is this: how can one live as a "Canadian" citizen without feeling a deep sense of shame and anger over the obvious failure of our school system to raise our compatriots from the gutters of nineteenth-century European racism? One possible answer, for some anyway, has been to pretend that Canadians are a fundamentally just and even handed people, "unlike Americans." This has been a useful lie some of us have told ourselves for some years now, using George Bush as a convenient foil. That lie had to wear off, as soon as we woke up to realize that we too have secret detentions, that Muslims are targeted for surveillance and abuse in the streets, that our newspapers have frontpage stories linking immigration with terror plots, and that our troops are fighting a pointless dirty war in Afghanistan.

I admit that I have been much more polemical in my writings than in the past on this blog. What has not changed is my belief that the way "Canada" acts toward indigenous peoples is symptomatic of a much larger web of domestic and international social relations and cultural politics that remain fundamentally colonial in nature.

Upcoming News from Arima, Trinidad

Well everyone, in a few hours I am off to Arima, Trinidad. I will be covering events surrounding CARIFESTA (see http://www.carifesta.net/), focusing entirely on the Santa Rosa Carib Community as it plays host in Arima to numerous Amerindian delegations from across the Circum-Caribbean region. At the same time, the Caribbean Organization of Indigenous Peoples (COIP) will be entering a new phase as Ricardo Bharath Hernandez, head of the Arima Carib community, becomes COIP's new chair.

Despite the many shortcomings and disarray that have plagued CARIFESTA IX, this should still be a momentous occasion for many of the region's indigenous communities.

I return to Montreal on October 1st, and I should post some materials, and some news, on this blog soon after I return.

[My thanks to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for funding that made this trip possible. Funding was received in the form of a Standard Research Grant for my project titled, "Indigenous translocals in the Caribbean: place, intimacy and the quotidian dimensions of the regionalized Carib resurgence."]

Tainos and DNA Studies: Ayes' Art Blog

One "blogger" (I cannot get accustomed to this new terminology, this word sounds offensive somehow), John Ayes, a Florida-based artist with a blog available at

http://ayesart.blogster.com/

is featuring a number of articles and links on the study of DNA to show Taino biological survival in Puerto Rico. Some of you may be interested in chatting with him and providing any further information that you might think could be useful.

Best wishes to John Ayes.

[In the meantime, someone should explain to me what Bluetooth is--it sounds like a disease--as well as what getting Yahoo messenger on your FiDo is supposed to mean.]

Tainos por las calles dominicanas

In the newspaper, Hoy Digital, from Santo Domingo, a story was published titled "Taínos por las calles dominicanas", which is available at:

http://www.hoy.com.do/app/article.aspx?id=88056

CAC editors Lynne Guitar and Jorge Estevez also appear in the story, from which the following was extracted:

"La idea de esta desaparición fue una especie de plan de supervivencia desarrollado por los frailes dominicos, según la teoría de Lynne Guitar, arqueóloga norteamericana actualmente trabajando en el país. Este plan tuvo algún éxito, a juicio de la arqueóloga Guitar: 'En comparación con la cantidad de los taínos en La Española, muy pocos españoles llegaron y los que llegaron eran, en su mayoría, varones. Aunque ha habido mucha discusión acerca de la población original de los taínos, el consenso hoy día es que habían unos millones en la isla en los años de 1490 en adelante –la cantidad sube año tras año–. Los españoles, entonces, eran una minoría; pero, arrogantes con el éxito de su Reconquista (la expulsión final de los moros de España en 1492), implantaron su propio orden social, económico y político en la isla, con el apoyo de sus aliados invisibles –muchos virus y bacterias– en contra de las cuales los indios no tenían ninguna inmunidad. El impacto de la colonización europea en los taínos los devastó. Hizo una reestructuración total de la trayectoria de su modo de vida, pero no los eliminó'."

Garifuna Protest at Disney: Photographs

Photographs for the Garifuna protest of Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean can be viewed online at:

http://www.picturetrail.com/gallery/
view?p=999&uid=5555295&gid=11089644

The protest was against the release of Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean sequel. This took place on Disneyland's Main Street on Saturday June 25, 2006 from 2:00 to 4:00 pm in Anaheim, California.