ELL: "Best Practice"

[Matthew McDaniel]

David:

A number of thoughts.

I think the first issue that I look at is being effective.
There is short term effective called anethesia and long term effective where
people actually begin to think.

Short term effective is tactics that people at first may notice but then go to
sleep, nothing really changing.

Long term effective does't allow this to happen.

The other aspect is how "polite" one wants to be.

Some may take that tact and have it work for them but defending language must
also have its "Hamas" wing.

In my project about two years ago or more I had to make the decision was I
going to be polite or was there a whole lot more going on here than people
would ever admit to and was I going to say something about it.

I took the latter.

I identified three aspects of damage being done to the Akha language.

The first effect of all this damage was that potential readers and speakers
died.
The second effect of all this damage was that potential readers and speakers
would never be given the chance to speak their own language.

None of the three aspects of the problem were going to reward me for
identifying them or challenging them.

So it boiled down like this.

Forestry, an ongoing battle of confrontation, identification and protest.

Missions, an ongoing battle of the same.

The drug production/enforcement industry, the same.  These two by the way are
one and the same.

Naturally this took me into discovering that number two, Missions, and number
three, drug production and enforcement were very closely related.

Missions used drug issues to portray the Akha as bad and justify taking their
children en masse.  At the same time, missions are involved with the very Wa
people who are passing the drugs through the Akha neighborhood. Can't loose
there.

The more aggressive I got, the more effective I got, while at the same time I
lost all my "normal" sources of funding.  Nobody who was nice, and didn't want
to bother to educate themselves about the issues stuck around, just way too
much dissonance whatever the truth might be emerging as.

I mounted a sticker campaign in both english and Thai.  Protesting the removal
of Akha children and Culture on the part of group two, the missionaries.

I put stickers up in half of north Thailand and continue to do so.  Oddly
enough missionaries know that I am here, you can see on the road locations
where they went to incredible length to take them down.

Thai society tolerates missionaries, not particularly loving to Akha.  But the
outside intruder since IMF is now being challenged on the intruder basis, not
just the fact that they are targeting the Akha and other hilltribe.

Maesai is about 50,000 people.  The head man for the west half of town asked me
yesterday for a bunch of the stickers, the stickers are seen as anti intruder.

The Thai stickers say simply this.  Christian Missionaries from America and
Chinese Missioaries from Taiwan make destruction to old traditional culture of
the Akha people, please refuse them.

Most foreign tourists have no idea that what they consider to be objectionable
behavior now, trashing indigenous cultures, is still going on.  So when they
see stickers plastered all over north Thailand guest houses, on vehicles and
elsewhere, "Missionaries Suck" they get the feeling it is still going on.

The effect has been that we have created a very hostile environment where the
missions can no longer do what they want with impunity and disregard.

I am also working at exposing their drug connections, which are funding a lot
of their projects.

The results are that they all know about the oposition, if they have half a
brain they know their pics are up on the web and I am going after their
constituency in the west.

The results on this end are battles for villages, keeping them out of certain
villages, any village they are trying to move into.

How do I measure success?

There are many villages that have not converted, there are many Akha who know
there is a battle going on over the villages.

And hits on the web site are around a 1000 pages served out a day.

Destruction of language is not the unevitable price of progress.  Destruction
of language comes with the destruction of people.  It is not polite.  It spends
money on church buildings and pine trees instead of medicine and books.

It is terrorism and violence against a people, it is when forestry comes and
plants trees in the rice.

Matthew






David Wilson wrote:

> A Chairdean (Friends),
>
>     When campaigning for endangered languages, many of us will have
> experienced institutional opposition of one kind or another. I was
> wondering; what strategies have some of you have developed and found to be
> the most effective ?
>
>     Depending on the circumstances, my own initial "tactic" is to go in
> quite strongly. Then, having "kicked up some dust", smooth things out, and
> enter, if possible, into dialogue with those involved. I believe that this
> dialogue is, or should be, the most important part of the process, since
> this is where *real* communication occurs. Is it enough simply to "coerce"
> people in positions of power into making "laws" ? Maybe ! But I feel it's
> also important, especially in the medium and long-term, that those in
> positions of power and responsibility begin to view endangered and minority
> languages in different ways as well. How, for example, do we persuade some
> people that a language group isn't a threat to "national unity" or their own
> identity ? How do we show them, without causing offence, if possible, that
> their prejudices and hostility are unreasonable ? And what are the best ways
> of conveying ideas they can understand and use to help promote a culture of
> tolerance and understanding ?
>
>     I would be very interested to hear the experiences of others and hope
> that we might be able to find a kind of "Best Practice" in these situations.
>
> sonas is adh ort (success / prosperity to you)
>
> David Wilson.
>
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