[huridocs-tech] Indigenous Media Network web site

Weaving a Global, Native Web
By Diana Michele Yap
Wired News
URL: http://www.wired.com/news/print/0,1294,52769,00.html
2:00 a.m. May 27, 2002 PDT

NEW YORK -- When Moana Sinclair, a former TV reporter from New
Zealand, came here this month to participate in a United Nations
conference for native peoples to develop a network of journalists
from a native background, she was taken aback by some of the
attitudes she found.

"I was talking to a U.N. official, a very American cameraman, and
told him I was working with indigenous journalists. And he said,
'Well they must be a hopeless, hapless group.' He must have thought I
was European. I said, 'I am indigenous. I am a Maori.' That stopped
him in his tracks."

She smiled slightly at the thought, then shook her head. "Some things
never change."

Formerly an employee with New Zealand's national TV station, TV One,
and now a lawyer for Maori land-right claims, Sinclair was hired by
the United Nations last year to work as a human rights officer in
Geneva, where she's coordinating the fledgling Indigenous Media
Network.

Its website, http://www.indigenousmedia.org/, goes live Monday.

As another example of using the Internet to attempt to advance human
rights, the Advocacy Project-built network is intended to train,
publish and link working native journalists from far-flung,
under-reported regions around the world. An estimated 300 million
individuals are classifiable as native people in more than 70
countries, according to U.N. statistics.

The site is central to a U.N. conference of about 500 people who have
been discussing the rights of indigenous populations this month,
coinciding with the United Nation's self-declared "International
Decade of Indigenous Peoples" from 1995 to 2004.

"Something is better than nothing, but if it's strategically placed
in the hands of groups who ... want to change the situation ... it
goes miles," said Aspen Brinton, a researcher for the Advocacy
Project who wrote much of the site's content and has been fighting
for funding from the United Nations and private foundations.

Meanwhile, native peoples face extra obstacles to influence a
mainstream audience.

Most indigenous people are not connected to the Web, said Sharon
Venne, a Cree indigenous-rights activist in Canada and the author of
a definitive book on indigenous rights, Our Elders Understand Our
Rights: Evolving International Law Regarding Indigenous Peoples,
which was published in 1999.

"Here in the Northwest Territories, we're having all these problems
with technology, and people who don't work in English when most of
the stuff on the Web is English," she said by phone from the town of
Yellowknife in Canada's Northwest Territories.

How can the Internet be made useful for grassroots activists?

In urban areas, as the Internet matures into mainstream use
internationally, human rights groups are increasingly dependent on
the Web to speak up for their interests, said John Emerson, a Web
campaigner based in the New York office of Human Rights Watch.

"More and more (non-governmental organizations) are posting their
research for the press, the public and policy-makers," Emerson said.
"And then there's the indie media movement, a collection of
websites that critique the powers that be. Grassroots journalism is a
form of advocacy for social change."

In rich countries, diaspora communities of native people are making
"extensive" use of the Internet to save money or to communicate more
easily in areas such as Nevada or New Mexico, where people live far
apart. And in poor regions where there's very little telephone-line
infrastructure and wireless hasn't yet arrived, cybercafés are
becoming more common.

"In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, there is no postal system,
there are very few faxes -- but even the rebel leaders use e-mail,"
Emerson said. "They use e-mail to communicate, but also to publicize
their cause."

Meanwhile, the battles over areas of particular legal interest to
native people -- limited self-rule, widespread poverty and lack of
land rights -- continue.

On top of instant prejudices, outsiders must overcome more difficult,
insidious obstacles to achieve mainstream success.

And that's why to Sinclair, her pet project is important. "It
originates from there," she said, "from having been on the outside."


Copyright © 1994-2002 Wired Digital Inc. All rights reserved.




========== HURIDOCS-Tech listserv ==========
Send mail intended for the list to <huridocs-tech@hrea.org>.
Archives of the list can be found at:
http://www.hrea.org/lists/huridocs-tech/markup/maillist.php
To subscribe to the list, send a message to <majordomo@hrea.org>,
with the following text in the message: subscribe huridocs-tech
To unsubscribe from the list, send a message to <majordomo@hrea.org>,
with the following text in the message: unsubscribe huridocs-tech
If you have problems (un)subscribing, contact <owner-huridocs-tech@hrea.org>.