Everyone of us belongs to several communities: family, reservation, circle, newsgroup, city...It seems like every year, technology shrinks the distances between us a little more: faster planes, clearer telephone connections, and now, the Internet, with its e-mail, on-line chats, and the WWW. The result is more interaction amongst people who just a few years ago would never have even met. This is true for us Native people who are on the Net as well: the moccasin telegraph has never been so strong! Even though we know that First Nations always had contact with one another, our communities, until very recently, were isolated by a certain regionalism, one that was perceived as much as it was physical, because, I think, in our collective mind we felt restricted by the reservation system.The events of 1990 (widely known as the Mohawk Crisis) helped to change that; Native people came from across Turtle Island to support the Mohawks, knowing that they were showing solidarity with people with whom they had the most important of issues in common. Since then, a new community has been forming, one whose membership criteria is self-determined, not imposed by colonialist guidelines. This community doesn't have a territory, because it doesn't need one: it has the infinite expanses of cyberspace.
[World Wide Wal-mart?] [CPW: FAQ] [Moccasin Telegraph] A Nation to Nation event in collaboration with Oboro and Circle Vision Arts Corporation |
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