h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

how sad how far away India indeed the world has strayed from Gandhi's teaching.

speaking of circuit boards, there is cell phone available that can be inserted in place of one of the larger of one of ones lower teeth.

Yes, I know we can feed the people.

We once did it very well, a population equivalent to that in western Europe at the same time. Your O'odham that you wrote about, Pimas, 150 years ago not only could feed themselves but even the immigrants who came into the territory, but because some of those immigrants wanted control, of the water especially, not just food, now the territory is dependent on others to feed them. The Pima fields that once thrived on the middle Gila are a desert, so that golf courses can proliferate in Phoenix. But what can you eat that comes from a golf course, byrdies, eagles, bogies, mulligans?

That I know. The garden that once fed people in the Ruby Valley has been turned into pasture that the people can't use without paying a fee to the government. Do you see the trend a little?

Why is it that we must pay fees to use what was ours from earliest antiquity? Why must we relinguish control of resources we once freely shared even with strangers? Why is that? What benefits accrue? What are the advantages of this awesome system that presumes to be superior? What are they really? Who benefits, really?

Well, I think we should all know that by now. And why it's important to keep people desperate too. I think we all know that most of the problems have been created by those who now presume to solve those problems for us, for a fee of course. I think we all know what a protection racket is after all.

But the thing is, even tourism is fundamentally not staying where one is. Which goes against what you said, still.

the situation in phoenix is particularly acute.they seem to argue that it is water conservation the same sort of thing was done to the people of the grand canyon area with the damining of the colorado ..basically to build las vegas...organised crime again

Nail.

Head.

You've hit it, RAF Wing.

Indeed.

Sorry I was a bit lax at looking at some of the b/log.

tourism is the great excuse

'S why I said travelling at first.

Great excuse for what?

Yeah I'd like to know that as well actually.

people have gotten away with allsorts saying..well i was only a tourist...and a lot of destruction goes on in poorer nations in the name of promoting "tourism"...i recently saw a programme where an entire island community had been overwhelmed by rubbish and sewage after a resort had been put there

Okay, I get it now.

Yeah, there's people they're trying to drive out living on the coasts of Belize and Honduras so they can build resorts on that stretch of beaches.

Tourism is often promoted as a great way to generate income for indigenous people too but it only happens if the people retain sovereignty over the tourism facilities and the development is compatible with the indigenous traditional uses of the land and resources.

What frequently happens is the movers and shakers come in, give the native people a few token menial jobs and then start raking in the profits for themselves. That's not a resort. That's another colony.

aye that's pretty much what i was getting at,,,"tourists" often don't realise the conditions local people have to deal with,,,yet they are the first to complain if there is the slightest thing wrong...i don't mean to lay blame entirely at the travelers feet and in many cases they are helping the local economies,but of course in many places the people are becoming succeeding generations of servants

Ah well largely when I travel I try to disrupt as little as possible.

hey, wing, what d'ya about certain elements of the Piaute in Nevada building golf courses just north of Vegas and then considering things like nomad vehicle parking lots, little tourist huts, etc., etc. all around there? any of it so? is there a way ya think it can be done without causing disruptions; I sure do hope so. all people are entitled to a decent living just so long as they don't cause damage to mama. no jokes, I really want to know if there is a good way of doing it well and touching all who are touched by it in a good way...

I really don't know, Kyaa. Mainly because I'm not totally convinced tourism is the answer to making a sustainable economy.

It's pretty obvious that small scale farming and ranching get hammered just like they do in the dominant culture by the dominant agribusinesses. The same could be said for the dominant entertainment/resort businesses. Casinos work okay if the tribes are small enough and inhabit fairly densely populated areas but otherwise it's kind of iffy.

Resource extraction is usually a one-way street with nothing at the end except a pile of tailings, tainted water or other pollution. Timber sales work fine if you got a forest and it doesn't burn down all at once.

So what's left, golf courses? Guided tours to the "Anasazi Ruins" or whatever? I don't know.

That's why I think the resource base needs to be extended. Whites couldn't make it on most reservations neither. Investment is lower than in inner city ghettos, although the promises keep coming in regular as clockwork.

And once you get something going like a viable livestock operation, the government comes in and culls the herds because you weren't alloted near enough land in the first place, but they blame it on your poor range management practices of course. They couldn't make a going concern on that little pasturage either with all their scientific whatever but you're supposed to be able to do it. Go figure!

So what do you do. You make jewelry and they undercut you with cheap imitations from Taiwan. You make baskets and they spray the willows so you poison yourself when you split the canes. You get the casino up and running and they want to see your books even though they won't show you theirs where they're supposed to have all the money they made off of your land and resources since day one.

No, tourism ain't going to get it until we get the sovereignty and some of the trust land back that's sitting in the public domain waiting to be looted by the oil companies, real estate developers or whoever.

Then, yeah, we're going to have to think real seriously about whether or not the world needs another golf course. A lot of people might figure hey we got the water now, let's do it. But I think we might need to think a little bit beyond the snot in our noses.

Like a coop that grows, processes and packages food or art and keeps control of things just like the monopolies we got to compete with. Or alternatively maybe if they cancel the corporations everybody will get an even break.

The one thing we got that they don't is we know how to live on what they discard and also with existing resources if we're allowed to. And with self-determination or at least the benefit of the doubt they give their own entrepreneurs, you might see some real innovative stuff in tourism or whatever.

But it all begins and ends with land and resources, and frankly I think we can do a better job of managing those things if we don't try to copy them. But that's challenge when the system is set up to favor their way of doing things. And only they can change that.

I think that sovereignty and the return of *all* the trust land is the first step. The US gov't holding land in trust because you poor ingorant savages wouldn't know what to do with it. Yeahright. The BIA coming in and deciding for you what it is you *really* need? Yeahright.

the concept of White Man's Burden isn't dead, it just has a dozen more "politically correct" names.

But if you'll promise to be good indians and not go on the warpath or come into town after you've been drinking that firewater, the great white father just *might* give you a few more beads.

0

the growth of 'organic' farming was a hopeful activity, still is to some extent, even though the big corps are beginning to muscle in.

the questions I asked were really serious. there may be an opportunity here where it may be possible not to do the same old same old.

as I understand it the land is in the hands of the Piaute and the golf courses may already be in now the thought is what next and the lure of the touristas sounds its siren song very persuasive like.

long have I valued persons and related with each - one at a time; if I may be able to influence something for the better I intend to. so, I, of all people am asking you to not be abstract; give me here some concrete ideas and some arguments to support these.

it could be really important if things work out and I hope they will.

You're darn right organic farming growth is hopeful. Any kind of farming we can do is hopeful because if nothing else you can feed yourself, even if you don't got any money. That's the problem with some of the other stuff.

Now the Ningwe communities around Las Vegas are small and have been trying to eke out livings for years. They're the ones who got adversely impacted by the spraying incidently, so it ain't abstractions I'm talking about. If they can make a go of something else, more power to them. But like I said I'm not sure tourism or golf courses are necessarily that great an idea.

But one thing's for sure, we probably need to try a lot of different things until we get some more land and sovereignty, we need to hang on somehow.

My family's been in the livestock business for awhile and I can tell you firsthand it ain't easy. There's still big operators around hogging the range too depending on where you graze. Some of them don't even live there. It's all done by hired hands at starvation wages. And it's probably not the best use of the resources anyways but what can you do until those resources grow back if they ever do?

That's not an abstraction either.

If people want to help I think it's time they started thinking small because once the small guys can make it we'll do fine because we're small, decimated, remember?

So anything you can do to stop all this merger and acquisition BS is going to help. I don't care what they tell you, everytime they get bigger, people lose their jobs and customers lose another option, service goes to hell because the people who are left are overworked and scared, and on and on. I shouldn't have to go through the whole drill for people to be able to fill in the blanks.

Now certainly we can imitate too. We can try to make our own big operations or emulate the dominant culture otherwise. Look at Kayenta, incorporated just like any other town in Arizona. But who knows what'll happen with it? Will it stay navvy or will it end up as a community with a few people with navvy names run by a bunch of entrepreneurs indistinguishable from the people in Reno or wherever?

How much should you give up to get something? And what's the something really worth? Just getting more money don't get it for me. Because the more I look it the more worthless it seems.

If you've got livestock or crops, like I said before, you can at least feed yourself. And it might be that in a very few years people will be paying the doctor or the lawyer with a couple of chickens or a few eggs and they'll be glad to get them because otherwise they'll have to run a tab because nobody'll have enough money to pay just like in the Great Depression.

So that's why I think we got to get the land back or get full sovereignty over what we got already so we can at least make it pay something besides leases that end up lost somewheres in fedhell. And we've got to figure out a way of dealing with an economy that's totally out of balance and will hammer us in a heartbeat because we're small and we try to do things by consensus.

To give you a pretty good example, when some whites started a factory near Zuni, they were having problems with the navvies and Zunis both working there until some lady explained to them that you do things different with indians, like you allow nepotism because people work better with their own relatives and you don't mix up tribes because they don't do better with each other and once that was done, things ran real smooth until the idiots decided to outsource everything to Taiwan.

That's a problem too when you got to compete with people who are getting hammered nearly as much as you. In some sense that might be the common thing here. If we all got to work for money now instead of growing our own, then the labor issues really get important, globally as well as locally because the dominators play us all against each other. They know they can.

So the next time you hear somebody bitching about unions or labor relations, maybe you should tell them go fish or something because the exploitation gets worse every year all over the world, back and forth between labor markets and pretty soon the whole thing will be like some huge slave market.

So again, land and sovereignty, because money and labor don't get it for us anymore than they get it for anybody else except the privileged few who rake everything off the top.

Now we didn't come into the country as indentured servants or contract workers or whatever. We were already here and so we got no social contracts or whatever. All we got is treaties, but those are about as important as agreements ever get because they're between peoples not just individuals or corporations.

And how those things are finally discharged will determine whether the present system has any substance at all. If it doesn't it'll collapse because the whole thing's built on trust or coercion and when the trust is gone all that's left is coercion and that means war, over and over until somebody yells they can't take it no more or they're wiped out. And with six billion mouths to feed, there's going to be one hell of a bonfire before it's done.

Now I'll cling to the rock like people have for longer than anybody knows and if I have to fight like my cousin and other people have fought, then I will. What other choice to I have? And if I don't make it, oh well, but I'll keep trying if I can, but I really think it's better if we can deal with things peacefully, better for all concerned. Even the winners lose in wars.

But maybe enough people will see how insane wars are and the system they support and tell the elite to find another planet. We'll see.

You're darn right organic farming growth is hopeful. Any kind of farming we can do is hopeful because if nothing else you can feed yourself, even if you don't got any money. That's the problem with some of the other stuff.

Now the Ningwe communities around Las Vegas are small and have been trying to eke out livings for years. They're the ones who got adversely impacted by the spraying incidently, so it ain't abstractions I'm talking about. If they can make a go of something else, more power to them. But like I said I'm not sure tourism or golf courses are necessarily that great an idea.

But one thing's for sure, we probably need to try a lot of different things until we get some more land and sovereignty, we need to hang on somehow.

My family's been in the livestock business for awhile and I can tell you firsthand it ain't easy. There's still big operators around hogging the range too depending on where you graze. Some of them don't even live there. It's all done by hired hands at starvation wages. And it's probably not the best use of the resources anyways but what can you do until those resources grow back if they ever do?

That's not an abstraction either.

If people want to help I think it's time they started thinking small because once the small guys can make it we'll do fine because we're small, decimated, remember?

So anything you can do to stop all this merger and acquisition BS is going to help. I don't care what they tell you, everytime they get bigger, people lose their jobs and customers lose another option, service goes to hell because the people who are left are overworked and scared, and on and on. I shouldn't have to go through the whole drill for people to be able to fill in the blanks.

Now certainly we can imitate too. We can try to make our own big operations or emulate the dominant culture otherwise. Look at Kayenta, incorporated just like any other town in Arizona. But who knows what'll happen with it? Will it stay navvy or will it end up as a community with a few people with navvy names run by a bunch of entrepreneurs indistinguishable from the people in Reno or wherever?

How much should you give up to get something? And what's the something really worth? Just getting more money don't get it for me. Because the more I look it the more worthless it seems.

If you've got livestock or crops, like I said before, you can at least feed yourself. And it might be that in a very few years people will be paying the doctor or the lawyer with a couple of chickens or a few eggs and they'll be glad to get them because otherwise they'll have to run a tab because nobody'll have enough money to pay just like in the Great Depression.

So that's why I think we got to get the land back or get full sovereignty over what we got already so we can at least make it pay something besides leases that end up lost somewheres in fedhell. And we've got to figure out a way of dealing with an economy that's totally out of balance and will hammer us in a heartbeat because we're small and we try to do things by consensus.

To give you a pretty good example, when some whites started a factory near Zuni, they were having problems with the navvies and Zunis both working there until some lady explained to them that you do things different with indians, like you allow nepotism because people work better with their own relatives and you don't mix up tribes because they don't do better with each other and once that was done, things ran real smooth until the idiots decided to outsource everything to Taiwan.

That's a problem too when you got to compete with people who are getting hammered nearly as much as you. In some sense that might be the common thing here. If we all got to work for money now instead of growing our own, then the labor issues really get important, globally as well as locally because the dominators play us all against each other. They know they can.

So the next time you hear somebody bitching about unions or labor relations, maybe you should tell them go fish or something because the exploitation gets worse every year all over the world, back and forth between labor markets and pretty soon the whole thing will be like some huge slave market.

So again, land and sovereignty, because money and labor don't get it for us anymore than they get it for anybody else except the privileged few who rake everything off the top.

Now we didn't come into the country as indentured servants or contract workers or whatever. We were already here and so we got no social contracts or whatever. All we got is treaties, but those are about as important as agreements ever get because they're between peoples not just individuals or corporations.

And how those things are finally discharged will determine whether the present system has any substance at all. If it doesn't it'll collapse because the whole thing's built on trust or coercion and when the trust is gone all that's left is coercion and that means war, over and over until somebody yells they can't take it no more or they're wiped out. And with six billion mouths to feed, there's going to be one hell of a bonfire before it's done.

Now I'll cling to the rock like people have for longer than anybody knows and if I have to fight like my cousin and other people have fought, then I will. What other choice to I have? And if I don't make it, oh well, but I'll keep trying if I can, but I really think it's better if we can deal with things peacefully, better for all concerned. Even the winners lose in wars.

But maybe enough people will see how insane wars are and the system they support and tell the elite to find another planet. We'll see.