Berto 'd Sera wrote:
Ray,
Pls explain what language is missing the concept of "change" (edit),
"move",
"discuss", nickname, etc.
I can't do much of that getting into a lot of research. The Russian
system of nicknames and patronymics can be very complicated for one that
is unfamiliar with the culture. The idea of changing things by edit
makes no sense in a culture that is completely oral.
Calling "genocide" what you do would
perfectly qualify for the forced
education in Italian imposed after the Italian Unification. Children were
beaten and publicly humiliated for generations, just for having said a "word
in dialect". Some 20 years ago I saw the last case of a piedmontese family
being taken away the custody of their daughter because "they could not even
speak Italian".
Yet, calling this "holocaust" seems quite a strong terminology to me. While
I agree that we were object of cultural deletion I cannot say that we were
physically mass slaughtered or gassed, as it happened in the Holocaust.
I didn't use the word "holocaust". "Genocide" ned not
imply the
physical killing of the target culture. Cultural genocide is achieved
when the exercise of a culture is no longer functional.
There was an deliberate plan to delete us all as a
culture, this much is
true and must be documented. Besides, it's mostly still happening. Let alone
Italy, there are extremely worrying things happening in France, where recent
studies implies that people "exposed to regional languages in their youth"
become socially lesser. This is nazi POV, although I doubt they fully grasp
the implications of what they say.
(
http://www.europe1.fr/informations/articles/714735/les-illettres-ne-sont-pa
s-ceux-qu-on-croit.html ). To make things even sadder the UNESCO
"International Mother Language Day" this year was held in Paris. Apparently
some French officers are unaware of what UNESCO is :)
My impression is that nobody in Europe likes the gypsies.
For most people belonging in majorities, minorities are
simply "weird
people" who must be "corrected". They actually feel they are helping you,
which makes things pretty cruel, but I'd say it excludes a comparison to
genocide in principle.
Genocide doesn't need to be malicious.
BTW, the same behavior applies to left-handed vs
right-handed people (I was born left-handed and personally experienced the
joy of being "educated" to "do it RIGHT", and yes, I still "do it
WRONG" any
time I can :p ).
My son is left-handed, and has not run into these problems. The
educational system here hasn't tried to change people here for a long
time. A left-footed person can be an advantage on the left side of a
football field. Most often he would end up on left defence.
It's really a matter of defending your own rights
without getting to
hysterics. Whether we like it or not, minorities will remain minorities
anyway, and they can only loose in direct brute force confrontation. So take
a stand, defend the rights and NEVER get to compromise on that, but pls
let's avoid a terminology that can only generate further lost conflicts. We
need rights NOW, not a formal recognition about past mischief while the
current mischief keeps going.
Defending rights and needing rights are a different matter from using
them. If, for example, the government permits you to teach your
language in the public schools and even pays the salary for the needed
teachers, it will still be up to you to find the teachers.
It's mostly a matter of learning how to market
minorities to a wider
audience, and make them recognized for what they are: one culture as another
(with robbers, idiots, saints and lots of ordinary people as anybody else).
Pride is important, but hatred won't do any good.
Why market to a wider audience when it's not the culture of that wider
audience? Even when one wants to encourage a tourism industry it
becomes somewhat voyeuristic. The past history helps us to understand
the nature of the current problem, but it cannot be changed.
The pride and
positive self-perception cannot be supplied by outsiders.
For the successful native populations in North America cultural revival
has needed to be accompanied by economic opportunity within their own
territories.
I can only agree in full. I won't rewrite what I already wrote in full, so I
can only invite you to read this:
http://eng.i-iter.org/project-presentations-0 and especially this:
http://eng.i-iter.org/quest-effective-policy-0
It's not a WMF project and it cannot be, since while being 100% no-profit it
involves commercial activities, but it moves exactly in that direction.
I think that the weakness in that argument lies in building expectations
that the written material can be sold. That is something that would
need to be marketted to a wider audience that already has access to more
than it can handle.
I do agree that making yet another series of political claims will get
nowhere. It takes considerable skill to write effective political
commentary; most of what I see is just too whiny.
It says
something about governments when they put such facilities in the
capital instead of the indigenous territory where it would involve more
people. If the most capable individuals among the Veps are being
marinaded in the culture of the capital they may no longer be useful to
their own people.
Maybe... only no such a place as "native Veps place" exists anymore,
they
are all mixed among other nationalities and always in a minority position
(Karelians enjoy a much better survival chance, because they live in compact
groups and it was possible to open schools in Karelian).
I was not aware of that. Their struggle will not be an easy one.
Besides, in a society whose main values are
"living in Moscow" and "making
lotsa bucks", I would have expected more people to use a facility that was
opening them an easy road to a diplomatic career and to a "rich life
abroad". Yet, it did not happen. It's matter for reflection, indeed. Since
we deal with very small entities you might be interested to know that the
last pagan community in Europe is based in Yoshkar Ola (Russia) and it's
close to extinction, too. In their case the behavior of the Russian
Authorities seems to have been quite aggressive, but the results are
substantially the same. Governments, although sometimes very unpleasant in
their stance, seems to be mostly non influent on these dynamics, when it
comes to final results. So possibly the one and only answer is in the native
community itself, as you suggested.
This is not to say that when they go to Moscow they become fanatic
supporters of Russian culture. Because of the easy availability of
other cultural attractions they tend not to have the time to do the
extra work needed to maintain the minority culture.
A lot of these
documents could fit into the
mandate of Wikisource.
We are already exploring that possibility. Yet it would take some
commons.wikisource, with individual page language tags, so that admin work
is shared and kept to an absolute minimum.
Spend more time on the contents, and less on the packaging.
Outsiders can
provide the means in the form of such things as hardware,
but they need to avoid introducing their expectations, and the
presumptions that they take for granted.
This is obviously a respectable POV, but when you have small resources you
need help, and help is better found from a neutral party. UNESCO seems the
only neutral party available.
I understand the "leave me alone" stance, as it's quite natural for
cultures
that have long being offended. But if you take that stance... then why
should WMF be any better than UNESCO? It's filled up with yanks, after all
:) Anyway, all tribes make their own decisions in full freedom, as it must
be :)
I admit ignorance of what UNESCO is offering.
I'm not suggesting an isolationist "leave me alone" stance. What I'm
saying is that you need to take the initiative because nobody else can
do it.
Ec