"In", "for", or "with"? (was Re: [ILAT] LSA 2006)

[Mia Kalish]

I run into this a lot, too. 

I take a somewhat different approach, though, because when I was building
large computer systems in Manhattan, I would see the same theme expressed by
different departments: a particular department would want to see everyone
else's data, but wouldn't want anyone near theirs. Usually, logic and reason
wouldn't work, so I would tell them that if they couldn't share with others
that their department would be left out of the development plan. Funny how
that made everyone want to play nice. 

I'm not a person who does well with divisiveness and side-taking and
exclusion, so I avoid situations like that. I also don't like how people
wield the power and prestige against each other. I saw this happen a lot in
one particular place, where some people where employed on a dictionary grant
on and off for 20 years. They really profited from their work but other
tribal members were excluded, both from the work and the opportunity to
benefit financially. 

Financial benefit doesn't always sound like much, but some of the people are
so very poor that equity becomes a real ethical issue, or should. There are
difficulties with equity, of course. Sometimes the battle against the things
like alcohol and drugs is just enormous. Sometimes it is devastating and
just makes me want to cry (sometimes I cry). 

But the fact of the matter is, we are working with PEOPLE. Human beings.
With hopes and dreams and cares and wants. With struggles and experiences,
with brains and hearts and hands and goals. People. Many of the people I run
into forget that Ndns are People. Makes me mad. 

But back to the topic, exclusion of other tribal members doesn't produce a
good result. There is a funny "belief" about "fluency" (I don't think
Chomsky Ever Did think this through): not everyone knows all the words. Not
everyone knows all the ways the words are used. And not everyone is equally
sophisticated in all the different ways in which the language can be used. 

What is collected from an individual is technically "idiolect"; "language"
requires lots and lots of people using lots and lots of words with lots and
lots of grammar and syntax. 

Also, some tribes are big enough to do everything all by themselves. But not
everyone is. And some tribes are lucky enough to have technie tribal
members. Again, that's not true of everyone. 

So to summarize: There is no 1 Right Way. (That's kind of
Enlightenment-Modern-Positivist). There are lots of right ways, and the
right way is what works at a particular time for a particular group of
people, and that changes over time as time, the group, and the needs and
understandings change. 

That's what I think, anyway. But I'm one of those postmodern,
post-structuralist types who believes that learning, understanding,
technology, and social relations are all dynamic and constantly changing. 

:-) Mia
 

-----Original Message-----
From: Indigenous Languages and Technology [mailto:ILAT at LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU]
On Behalf Of Anggarrgoon
Sent: Wednesday, January 11, 2006 1:22 PM
To: ILAT at LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU
Subject: Re: [ILAT] "In", "for", or "with"? (was Re: [ILAT] LSA 2006)

Me again,
I have run into problems with this notion of "community" - in 
particular, it quickly becomes problematic in areas with patrilects, or 
clan/family groups, and areas where the "community" is not isomorphic to 
the "language" or "speech community". For example, if I am employed by a 
particular family to work on their language, they might not want the 
work that I do to be more widely available, and that includes to other 
speakers of the same language.
Sometimes the elders in the community want to work with a linguist, but 
the younger people don't. It's often the younger people in charge of the 
community council, and they are the people who have most of the 
experience negotiating with government bodies and who as a consequence 
have most of the power in current social structures. BUT traditionally, 
and until quite recently, it would be the elders who would make 
decisions about who had access to cultural information, including language.
So if I take the full community consultation route, I am disregarding 
the wishes of those who have the knowledge to impart and who want it 
recorded in the first place. Here "community" is just another external 
social construct.
This is not a hypothetical example, it comes up all the time.
Claire