Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uwm.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!samsung!caesar.cs.montana.edu!milton!aesop
From: aesop@milton.acs.washington.edu (Jeff Boscole)
Newsgroups: alt.activism
Subject: Re: Akwesasne Notes -- Basic Call to Consciousness 1977
Summary: "It ain't polemics and diatribes, son ..."
Keywords: Native Americans, Indigenous Peoples, Invading Colonizers
Message-ID: <1421@milton.acs.washington.edu>
Date: 17 Jan 90 02:31:41 GMT
Reply-To: aesop@milton.acs.washington.edu (Jeff Boscole)
Organization: University of Washington, Seattle
Lines: 47

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>From: rubin@cbnewsl.ATT.COM (michael.rubin)

> There are certainly advantages to a socioeconomic system like the Native
> Americans had  .... 
  
   Oh?  I wasn't aware that they had a "system....."
   Wasn't nature their "system?"


> Unfortunately, there are some basic problems that make such a society
> unimplementable under conditions that exist in the modern world.
 
   Let's not run to extremes here..   ( Why do these discussions 
go so overboard? )  I think some folks get the wrong idea that this
Native America stuff is another one of those "grand megalomanic schemes"
such as *Manifest Destiny* that Europeans brought to the Americas.  :=:
Nothing could be further from the truth.  This social change is wrought
through one-on-one personal growth.   BTW, some of the most difficult
problems of character development are very elusive; they are not *gross*
social movements, but microscopic and unique to each special case.  :=:  

   The _Akwesasne_Notes_ article certainly presents its share of
idealizations, which were all so evident to me as I typed it up.... :=:
I studied some rhetoric and propaganda at the University for Media Studies.
What I could appreciate about the _Akwesasne_Notes_ writing, though it
is propaganda, is that it is such *great* propaganda !  I share with others
the deepest and highest respect for John Mohawk.     

   A few USENET postings have misconstrued the nature of this conflict
between Invading Colonizers and Indigenous People.  It is not a conflict
among competing "systems."   It is that fundamental ancient struggle
between "systems" and a "non-system."  This is how I understand what it
is all about -- it is so subtle -- one can't see the nose of one's face.
Kurt Vonnegut sometimes spoke of "Man's big brain..."  (this problem).
"Out there" is infinity, but men presume to impose upon it their finitistic
and deterministic "models."  "In here" is also infinity but men presume
again to "comprehend" that which is spiritual, as well.  

    We haven't a secured handle on the definitions of words such as
"objective" or "subjective."  What we can do in the meantime is to make
a conscious decision to abandon the pretense of knowing; then, we 
might be awakened to that road leading to recovery.   :=:

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                                :=: 
( aesop@milton.u.washington.edu )             "The Doctor is In."   $ 0.05