State of the World's Minorities and Indigenous Peoples 2012

Latest report on 'State of the World's Minorities and Indigenous Peoples 2012' released. 



"One of the overriding threats facing minorities and indigenous peoples in every region of the world is the risk of being driven from their land and natural resources, which are vital for their livelihoods, their culture and often their identity as a people. Many communities have been closely tied to their territory for centuries. Yet once their land is targeted for development – mining, oil and gas, dams, agribusiness, tourism or conservation – they are deftly and often violently evicted with little or no compensation."


Maori lead the Indigenous world in many respects but I increasingly sense we've plateaued...

This is what it's come to: Greek Neo-Nazi's in parliament in the home of democracy...

The first action for the 28th Maori battalion in WW2 was in the Petra Pass on Mt Olympus against the advancing German army invading Greece. While this action (and most of the next two years!) resulted in retreat and regular hidings for 28MB, the NZ 2nd Division, and the British army, eventually we all kicked them back to where they came from and - we thought - ended all that fascists nonsense.

But fascism never seems to die. It just smells that way.

Greece was the second country I ever visited. A wonderful place, great people, very similar to Maori actually. To think that my children - 2 boys aged 10 and 9, and a girl aged 3 - might have to suit up and help Greece kick up some more fascists chills me.

Ake ake kia kaha e

'Country, Native title, and Ecology': new book on Aboriginal land and its ecology.

Turned up in my inbox a couple of weeks ago - the marvels of modern information exchange. Edited by Jessica Weir...

Available for free download here...

Update on Indigenous Mapping controversy in Oaxaca

I posted on this controversy a while ago, and now thanks to Kieren McKenzie, have been sent a link of an interview with Aldo Gonzalez, the Indigenous Rights Officer of Union of Social Organizations of the Sierra Juarez of Oaxaca (UNOSJO). 


The geographers' sin in this case seems to be one of omission by not informing Indigenous participants of one of the studies sponsors - Radiance Technologies -  a company that specializes in arms development and military intelligence. Resulting and data was also hoovered up by Human Terrain System, a United States Army unit, for their global database that forms an integral part of the US counterinsurgency strategy.  


Serious teko comrades.


Anyways, like Kieren says, all maps are liars so best we geographer always tell the truth.

Tactics of the Left

There is a curious disconnect between the contemporary Left in Aotearoa/New Zealand, and even the mainstream of Maori thought and practice. While I'm aware of old socialists in the Alliance Party and a few of the more rad Greens accepting aspects of tino rangatiratanga (though not the cultural harvest of kereru et alia...), the political scene seems to reserve a small space for Maori - Maori Party, Mana, Brown Nats, Brown-reds - we're missing any of cross-fertilisation that promises true reform and an equitable distribution of power and wealth. Anyways, cut and pasted this from a blog called Woodpile report...

Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals 

Rule 1: Power is not only what you have, but what the enemy thinks you have

Rule 2: Never go outside the experience of your people.

Rule 3: Whenever possible, go outside the experience of the enemy.

Rule 4: Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules.

Rule 5: Ridicule is man's most potent weapon

Rule 6: A good tactic is one your people enjoy.

Rule 7: A tactic that drags on for too long becomes a drag.

Rule 8: Use different tactics and actions and use all events of the period.

Rule 9: The threat is more terrifying than the thing itself.

Rule 10: Maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition.

Rule 11: If you push a negative hard and deep enough, it will break through into its counterside.

Rule 12: The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative.

Rule 13: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, polarize it

Britain destroyed records of colonial crimes | UK news | The Guardian

The British have always kept great records - a boon for researchers with the time and inclination to trawl through archives. But interesting revelations of our colonial master destroying records of their brutality...
 
Britain destroyed records of colonial crimes | UK news | The Guardian

Records were destroyed not just to protect the United Kingdom's reputation, but to help protect the British government from litigation from freedom fighters mistreated in their fight to expel the colonising forces.

A la Recherche du temps Holocaust

Somewhat taken aback by the rapid growth in hits on my recent posting on the terminology of Taranaki colonisation history and the use of the word 'holocaust', I've since been reading on the life and times of one Claude Lanzmann.

Among various exploits which include fighting in the French Resistance and shagging Simone de Beauvoir (mind you, a big club, de Beauvoir that is) he's going down in history for his film, Shoah, 9 1/2 hours of taped interviews of holocaust survivors, witnesses, perpetrators, and neighbours.

'Shoah' is what the Jews call the Holocaust, Shoah being their word for their experience, opening or at least leaving 'holocaust' for others such as Taranaki Maori. Just a thought.

Maori Holocaust: sticks and stones may break my bones...

I knew Keri Opai's use of the term 'holocaust' to describe how Taranaki Maori were treated would cause a ruckus.

Similar Jewish complaints followed Tariana Turia's use of holocaust several years ago.

That a recent Herald report repeated the word to describe the horrific killing of a US family seemed to pass without comment, though in that case it was framed as a 'personal holocaust'. Perhaps we have to qualify it with a ethnic epithet, a Polynesia holocaust? a whakapapa holocaust?! A British-colonial holocaust!

Essentially Taranaki still struggle to find the words to articulate what has happened to them...

Berlin Holocaust monument. Source: Daily Telegraph

Tucson Book Bans?!

Tucson is special to my heart, having been the first US destination I visited (attending Prof. Charles Ragin's excellent graduate course on QCA). So I follow it in the news, and unfortuantely, not enough dull moments in what people think of as a sleep ol' town...

And what to make of recent wire buzz, are they really banning books in this day and age?! Seems Mexican-American Studies teachers were sent a memo from the school district saying that the following books, which are specifically mentioned in a court order, are to be removed from the classroom, boxed up, and stored in the district's textbook depository, presumably until furnace-time can be booked:



Critical Race Theory by Richard Delgado

500 Years of Chicano History in Pictures edited by Elizabeth Martinez

Message to Aztlan by Rodolfo Corky Gonzales

Chicano! The History of the Mexican Civil Rights Movement by Arturo Rosales

Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Fiere

Rethinking Columbus: The Next 500 Years edited by Bill Bigelow and Bob Peterson

Occupied America: A History of Chicanos by Rodolfo Acuña


Seems work by Winona LaDuke's "To the Women of the World: Our Future, Our Responsibility" is also on the banned list, high praise we might say...

Downtown Tucson carpark...maybe they could light the bonfire here?
Salon piece...

UC Davis

Two years ago I was hosted at UC Davis by Dr. Josh Viers. I gave two lectures, cruised about the open campus, attended some drinks, touched base with the Indigenous Studies department (Roger Maaka was visiting the week following my time there). Lovely place, lovely time.

So.

Imagine my surprise and concern at breaking news on the provocative use of pepper to clear students from a seemingly peaceful sit-in...

Disturbing footage on the ubiquitous YouTube (Did the coppers not notice all the tech-ware filming and broadcasting their every move? Worse, did they notice and not care?!)

Is this the tipping point? Plenty of clever people joining the dots (queue Kent State and Civil Rights marches). I can't get NZ once-was-radical Tim Shadbolt's tired response to the Occupy Dunedin movement....'We use to be organised, you'd have a committee, a treasurer...' Yadda yadda yadda as they say (though I acknowledge his support of Orakei protests it seems many years ago now).





A number of UC Davis academic staff have released statements:

From Art Shapiro (EVE and GGE): 

Chancellor Katehi:

The image of the University of California, Davis has been damaged locally, nationally and internationally in a way that will be very difficult to repair. That was made clear to me when an old friend who is a member of the national media called me at home last night to talk about this. We talked for 20 minutes. He said --and I quote -- "This could be a game-changer, like Kent State, only thank God no one was killed!" Whatever decisions led to Friday's debacle and whoever made them, the time for mere "damage control" passed as soon as the video went viral. The video renders ludicrous the claim that the police felt threatened--by demonstrators sitting, arms linked, on the sidewalk!  I have no doubt that a resolution of censure will be introduced and will pass, probably by acclamation, at an emergency meeting of the Representative Assembly of the Academic Senate.

You must assume personal responsibility and apologize on behalf of the University to the entire University community, sincerely and in plain language, without any bureaucratese or references to the task force and its mandate. If you do, there is at least a chance that escalation of the situation can be averted. If you do not...

I am in my 40th year at this institution. I was at Penn and Cornell in the 60s and know campus crisis from the inside. I have seen crises at Davis before, but never anything like this. Not an hour before the police moved onto the Quad, I was observing to a friend that Davis is not Berkeley, and "vive la difference!" Before this incident, that was a fair statement. Now the shock and the fury are all too palpable, and the fundamental dynamic has changed -- and a replay of Berkeley in the 60s looms.

Please make the right decision, and do so at once. Time is an ally only of the forces of unreason now.

                                               Arthur M. Shapiro

                                               Distinguished Professor, Evolution & Ecology

From Artyom Kopp (EVE):

Dear Chancellor Katehi,

I live such a sheltered life that I was not even aware of Friday’s events until yesterday, when messages started piling up in my mailbox from students, faculty colleagues, and friends and colleagues at other universities.  I did not support the student protests because I believed them to be misdirected and therefore ineffective.  When I first saw references to “police brutality” at UC-Berkeley, I assumed in my cynical fashion that it was the usual attention-grabbing ploy by the protesters.  I was wrong.  I finally watched the videos last night and what I saw can only be described as outrageous and disgusting.  Quite aside from being morally indefensible, cold-blooded use of excessive force against peaceful and essentially orderly protesters has done enormous damage to our university’s reputation and will undermine the trust between the administration, faculty, and students for a long time. 

During your short tenure at UC – Davis, you have done much to start turning this university around.  You earned a lot of respect among the faculty for speaking plainly, facing up to our problems, and making hard decisions – something that the previous administration seemed incapable of doing.  All that is now in jeopardy because of one ill-judged decision.  I am aware that many faculty members are calling for your resignation.  I am not ready yet for such a drastic step, as I have a deep appreciation for your accomplishments as well as your interaction style.  However, the fact remains that this outrage was committed by the university police acting under your direction. Whoever gave the order to use force, ultimately this is your responsibility.  What matters now is your response, and I need hardly tell you that your actions in the next couple of days will shape not only your legacy but also the spirit of our university. 

An error does not become a mistake until one refuses to correct it.  In this case, we are long past damage control or task forces, and the 30-day timeline for addressing a rapidly developing situation is unacceptable.  I urge you to apologize, in person, to the victims of police brutality, to identify the failures in the decision-making process that led to the use of force, and to take all necessary steps to make sure this is never repeated.  I am sure you understand by now that this is not “an incident”, but one of the defining moments in our history.  It will not die down or be swept under the rug; neither the students nor the faculty will let it go.  Our future depends on how, and how quickly, you respond.  I am afraid you have only the briefest window of time before the damage becomes irreparable.  One small part of that damage will be my own confidence in your ability to lead our university.

Sincerely,

Artyom Kopp

From Jim Griesemer (Philosophy):

Various groups of faculty are organizing no-confidence in Chancellor Katehi petitions to the Academic Senate. Faculty and staff in my department (Philosophy) sent a letter Chancellor Katehi and to the editor of the Davis Enterprise, which was published in today's paper and online.

Also, I sent the following letter to Chancellor Katehi, to the Provost, and variety of her "cabinet" and senior staff members today. Since I included my CPB, STS, and CSIS affiliations in my signature, I thought you should know what I am saying.

Dear Chancellor Katehi,

With all due respect, you must take responsibility and apologize for the police actions against students on Friday. It doesn't matter if you made the order or those under your command did. What campus police did is so obviously wrong, that only by apologizing on behalf of the entire administration can you even begin to put things right. You must do this on Monday or it will be too late.

Even if you reach out to the campus community in a thoughtful way, you will not be credible in anyone's eyes unless you take responsibility for these reprehensible acts, promise to reform the campus police department personnel, training, and policies, and embrace the student protests by engaging directly and visibly with students on campus without any police presence. You must show that business as usual has been suspended by personally appearing in public to listen to students, faculty and staff. You only have until Wednesday to do this, as Thursday and Friday are campus holidays.

Convening a task force, whether it has a 90-day or a 30-day mandate to report, by itself, will be and is being viewed as a way of deflecting responsibility rather than as a credible means of addressing immediate concerns and a way of evading direct personal engagement with students, faculty and staff about the larger issues that prompted the student protests in the first place. Email, blog and web site pronouncements just will not do. You must face the community, admit to the mistakes, and get on with reform. 

If campus counsel advises against such an apology and admission of mistakes, well, there are times when you just have to go with your gut feeling about what is the right thing to do and risk the consequences. If you do not feel that the advice I am offering is the right thing to do, then I am afraid I will lose confidence in your ability to lead the campus, as many others already have. I am giving you the benefit of my doubt, but I believe you really have only three days, not thirty days, to put things on the right road.

I have been a faculty member at UCD since 1983. This is certainly the most critical moment politically and morally in the entire time I have been at Davis and maybe in the entire history of the campus. I think you have one chance left to lead. I urge you to take the chance and do the right thing.

Sincerely,

Jim Griesemer

From Pete Richerson (ESP and GGE):

Dear Chancellor Katehi,

I am away from campus at a conference but have been watching the news of the very widely reported pepper spray event. I have watched the available videos and reviewed the reporting that is on the web.

 It would appear to me that this is the most botched reaction to the Occupy movement in the nation yet. All reportage is sympathetic to the protesters. Not surprising given the damning video.

 Chief Spicuzza's remark to the Bee that "There was no way out of that circle. They were cutting the officers off from their support. It's a very volatile situation" is utterly belied by the completely non-violent behavior of the demonstrators and the casualness of the officer that pepper-sprayed the seated demonstrators. Other officers stood about for some time in a loose group that seemed to have little if any fear of the demonstrators. They arrested some (all?) of the pepper-sprayed demonstrators with no obvious interference except for shouts of "shame on you". Many never bothered to pull down their face shields. No threatening student nor threatening "non-campus affiliates" of your email seems to have thrown a punch, a rock, or anything that required the police to defend themselves. The health and safety of no one seemed under any threat except possibly for the victims of the pepper spraying. The hearts of Martin Luther King and Gandhi must be beating in their graves; textbook nonviolent tactics.

 The objective of a campaign of non-violent civil disobedience is to demonstrate to the citizenry at large that the authorities are an illegitimate elite that maintains power ultimately by force. The selfish, possibly evil 1% of the occupy movement. The tactical response on authorities determined to win the battle for hearts and minds should be to grant the legitimate rights of the protesters and bend over backwards to tolerate nonviolent disruptive tactics. Respond to whatever legitimate grievances the protesters have, to the extent that the university has the power to do so. If some peaceful protesters want to spend all winter camped on the quad, what harm can they do? Any health threats can be solved with a few chemical toilets and a dumpster. Or if you wanted to lay it on thick, you could set up a medical tent with a nurse to treat any sick Occupiers. You could make a personal donation to help fund all this and ask the rest of the university community to chip in. I would, say $1000.

 If the Occupiers are truly non-violent they'll monitor themselves and liaise with the police to control "non-campus affiliates" or others who threaten the peace.

  At this juncture, you'd have a moral standoff. The university has tolerated non-violent protest and accepted some costs by bending over backwards to accommodate the protest.

  The university in fact has little power over most of the Occupy folks grievances. At the point of standoff, the Occupiers could accept a minor victory and gradually drift home. The university could brag about its tolerance and reasonableness.  Or the Occupiers can escalate out of frustration at the small scale of their victory. If they are smart they'll move on to targets with more power and less legitimacy than the University. If they are dumb they'll become either violent or truly dangerously disruptive. Then they will have blown their legitimacy, and the you will have plenty of support for arrests and eviction. You'd win the battle for hearts and minds, save for some die-hard ideologues.

 They might use the campus as a base to disrupt I-80 or the BNSF rail line. But then other police agencies will have to do the dirty work. Once the their legitimacy has evaporated, you can gently police up the remainder. If they happen to win, you are on the side of the angels!

 Today's incident and your maladroit email make you sound more like a Myanmar colonel than a UC Chancellor. "Non-campus affiliates!" Redolent of the 1960s infamous canard "outside agitators!"

 Sorry to presume to give tactical advice, but I was a student here during the last big wave of student protests in the 1960s and 70s. Emil Mrak, our Chancellor then, was, I believe, somewhat to right of Attila. He is said to have very roughly bullied Prof Robert Rudd, an early anti DDT scientist-activist. But he was a masterful tactician. He kept close ties to activist student leaders, for example student body President and protest leader Bob Black. In one incident I recall there was a Regents' meeting at Davis in which UCD students pressed a controversial question. The Regents tabled the issue with a promise to consider it at the next meeting in Santa Barbara. Mrak sprang for a couple of buses to transport Davis activists to Santa Barbara to make sure the Regents fulfilled their promise. We heard that he took some heat from the Regents and President's office but the upshot was that that the campus was spared large-scale disruptive demonstrations.

 I believe that your attempt to mollify protesters with a committee to report in 90 days will fail. The Occupiers will be back tomorrow and a great deal of significance is liable to happen in the next few days. You need to **lead now**, not deal with the recommendations of a committee 90 days from now.

 At minimum, you ought to suspend or fire Chief Spicuzza, the pepper spray cop, and anyone in the chain of command between them pending the outcome of an investigation you conduct yourself or entrust to someone who reports to you. You ought to establish a personal connection with the Occupy folks, perhaps by giving a mea culpa speech at their encampment. I'd spring for donuts and coffee for the campers every  morning at 7:30 as long as their protest stays peaceful. I'd assign your most sympatico police officer to meet daily with the Occupier's security committee. If they don't have one, I'd have the officer tell them that if they form a responsible one, there will be no police presence at the camp unless requested by the security committee or unless violent incidents are reported by other parties. If the Occupiers want to conduct civil disobedience actions, the liaison officer should try to negotiate a procedure for safe and non-violent arrest. If the Occupiers will not negotiate such procedures, at least you've won a moral point. You may have only 24 hours to save your job and, more important, save UCD from months of turmoil.

 Frankly, I'm highly ambivalent about giving you this advice. I'm deeply sympathetic to the Occupy movement. If UCD goes down in history as a famous incident in the Occupy phenomenon I would tell my grandkids the story with pride. If you're destined to be the villain in that drama so be it. On the other hand, from what I hear you are doing a splendid job as Chancellor. I love what you are doing for a campus that has been in my heart since I came as and undergrad student in 1962. I hope that you can find a way to continue your good work.

 Best luck, you'll need a lot of that,

 Pete

Peter J. Richerson

Distinguished Professor Emeritus

Department of Environmental Science and Policy One Shields Avenue University of California Davis Davis, CA 95616

Fear of a Black Planet? Paul Henry walks the plank...

"Excuse us for the news
You might not be amused
But did you know white comes from Black
No need to be confused
Excuse us for the news
I question those accused
Why is this fear of Black from White
Influence who you choose?
Man c'mon now, I don't want your wife
Stop screamin' it's not the end of your life
(But supposin' she said she loved me)
What's wrong with some color in your family tree"

Public Enemy, powerhouse of the 80s and 90s, hitting heads through the eardrums, morality through the your ribcage, attitude through the gonads. I was a skint dishwasher in London when i bought Fear of a Black Planet on tape and rapped it round on a permanent loop on my Sony Walkman.

I was living in Notting Hill Gate at the time, in a doss house run by an almost creepy Chinese man (I was sitting on the shitter one day when I heard him pledge everlasting love to a rather attractive English girl. She later showed us wicked heads the diamond ring...). There were three South Africans on the run from the army, a girl from Sierra Leone who posed in a porn rag (she showed my roomie, Simon from Oz. I declined to view the spread pages). A beautiful Swedish girl (is there any other sort in a doss house in 90s London?), who had a crush on one of the Saffa's, and who read Bukowski which only I had heard of... ae, there's the rub. All sorts, and it was the diversity which gave it the energy.

Once Ozzie Simon and I had a party in our room - 8' by 10', sink in one corner, cockroaches scurrying behind the peeling wallpaper when you flicked on the single light. I swear we had over 20 people in the space for a time, four on the top bunk, five below, two on the window sill, the others squeezed in, a busker off the street for entertainment.

We once let two other itinerants sleep on our floor -an Irishman whose name I can't recall, and an Italian by the name of Damiano who came from a town on the Adriatic where the easiest money was in smuggling. The first morning we all wake, dress, splash water in turn, move carefully about that tiny space without stepping on any toes until after four minutes or so of no conversation, we all simultaneously broke out laughing.

Good times, although a young persons game, and best to be single to avoid the less proud moments that just cropped up on a regular basis. Rude jokes galore, at anyone's expense. But a respect born of shared troubles: dodgy lodgings, crap jobs, big dreams, anguish artistic longings, unrequited love, a primal lust for life so thick you could lick it.

On occasions I'd walk to work, the kitchen of a private hospital on Harley Street. I was usually the only non-African KP (kitchen porter), most of the others came from Ghana or Nigeria. Black as in blue-black, and proud which so rankled some of the white (English, Irish) chefs they would hiss racist commnents about my workmates amongst the steam and pots and knives. Hiss, mind, never had the guts to say it out loud, to one of those big black faces that had a way of staring down with a certain pity.

I, of course loved, it.

I was eventually sacked, for taking home a plate of untouched roast beef, sliced thin with a bit of garnish, and a packet of digestive biscuits. When my boss, a white woman called Joanne, confronted me about it (I was caught by a security guard) she said how disappointed she was, how she expected better from me.

I snapped at her. 'What does that mean?!', both us knowing full well she meant that as the only white man in the basement (not many poms picked me as Maori), I was the most reliable, the one she depended on, I would've been the next for promotion. She looked down, ashamed at even this tangential challenge.

I think I listened to AC/DC that night, taking the tube home (from Marble Arch? The memory's not what it was, and I threw out my 13 or 14 volumes of daily dairy recordings). Momentarily thought of tossing myself on the tracks, then pulled back. 'Oooh, shit that would hurt.'


One day in the kitchen a fella came up to me, blue-black, chubby, small thin moustache. He said, 'Are you Maori?' (They all knew I was from NZ). 'Why, yes,' says I, amazed (those who know me know i'm cafe au lait!) so I asked, 'How'd you know?'.

'Oh,' says the African, 'you just look like you are.'

He lent me two books by Malcolm X, one a collection of speeches. They were inspiring, of course, but i was surrounded by inspiration in those days, the energy source being the diversity of a colonial metropole.

One thing i'm sure. TVNZ is not less diverse for the departure of one Paul Henry. As we know, they are a dime a dozen, pudgy people, soft, fearful, smarmy but perhaps slightly less so from this day on. I see scared hope in their stupid, maniacal, grins.

As another poet once said,

"He went like one that has been stunned,
and is of sense forlorn.
A sadder and a wiser man he woke the morrow morn."




PE in the south, January 7th, 2011.
Bench Music, The Groove Guide, Juice TV, 95bFM and RDU Present:
PUBLIC ENEMY ‘FEAR OF A BLACK’ PLANET TOUR

ISAAC THEATRE ROYAL
With support from Scalper // Ghost
Tickets from http://www.blogger.com/www.ticketek.co.nz and Real Groovy

Make some noise Christchurch

Updates on the Geographic Controversy over the Bowman Expeditions / México Indígena

These are some links collated by Zoltan Grossman on the issues surrounding the México Indígena project at the University of Kansas and its connections to the Foreign Military Studies Office (FMSO) at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. In Zoltan's wordsa: "It is important to understand the larger context of military targeting of Indigenous dissent in the hemisphere, a background which has generated the concerns about the project. The México Indígena project was jointly funded by the FMSO and the American Geographical Society (AGS). It was coordinated by Kansas geography professors Peter Herlihy and Jerome Dobson, workingwith the FMSO's Geoffrey Demarest and Autonomous University of San Luis Potosi (UASLP) Professor Miguel Aguilar Robledo."


Soldiers struggle to put a Bosnian protester outside of a gate at Eagle Base in Tuzla. Local farmers were upset at road construction across their land.

Concerns were sparked in July 2005 when the U.S. Army initiated a $20 million counterinsurgency program called the Human Terrain System (HTS). The program consists of five-person "human terrain teams" featuring anthropologists and other social scientists embedded with combat brigades. One team was deployed to Afghanistan in February 2007 and five more to Iraq in summer 2007. Some of the social scientists wear combat fatigues and carry weapons. If this all sounds a bit like a social scientists 'Boys Own' make believe, think again. Do we assume that the study of social science somehow innoculates us against complicity in moral dubious fieldwork?! I recall a PhD candidate at the University of Canterbury who desparately wanted to go to Yugoslavia during its violent disintergration, to study the associated geopolitics (he put in his budget for a camoflage flak jacket and helmet...). There's something appealing about war, to boys.

I digress. Roberto Gonzales reports accounts that have emerged about "difficulties plaguing HTS, including missed recruitment goals, ineffective training, and paralyzing organizational issues. Former human terrain team member Zenia Helbig has publicly criticized the program, claiming that during four months of training there were no ethical discussions about the potential harm that might befall Iraqis or Afghans or the importance of voluntary informed consent. Furthermore, Helbig claims that, "HTS's greatest problem is its own desperation. The program is desperate to hire anyone or anything that remotely falls into the category of ‘academic,' ‘social science,' ‘regional expert,' or ‘PhD'," which has led to incompetence." (Of three anthropology PhDs assigned to the teams, none has appropriate regional expertise and none speak Arabic.)."

All in all an interesting debate for geographers who, afterall, have mortgages to cover, children to feed, spouses to clothe... On a lighter note, Zoltan's own webpages provide some nice insights and tangents. It's not all about 'hopping the bags' (this is a new Aussie term I've learnt, from WW1 and yet another metaphor for going over the top).

Dispute on Collaborative Ethics for Research With Indigenous Peoples within Indigenous Peoples Specialty Group

The concerns raised regarding the Bowman Expedition project(s) have led to a wider debate on ethics in research. One IPSG poster comments "What disturbs me the most is the fact that so many members of the academic community are ready to believe very serious allegations made against their colleagues without a second thought. Don’t we routinely teach our students to be critical of information found on the web, especially when it comes from an unknown source?

They further comment: "On the subject of ethics, I would like to point out that the AAG 'Statement on Professional Ethics' states that members should refuse to 'spread unfounded accusations and rumors about colleagues' (2005, p. 1). The wide circulation of the accusations through AAG outlets without any effort to corroborate them or contact the people involved has given them some degree of credibility. The reputations of fellow geographers have been badly and to some degree irreversibly damaged, something that will likely affect their careers (and potentially those of their graduate students) for many years. The institutions involved have been tarnished. The discipline as a whole may even suffer. If good research can be so easily discredited, academic freedom is also in the balance. If we assume that all indigenous leaders are inherently noble and do not have the ability to construct discourses that manipulate the truth to advance their ambitions, then we are all vulnerable. This is another form of essentialism."

And further: "Receiving funding from military sources for research in geography, political science, psychology or any other branch of the social sciences is clearly controversial and merits debate. But we should keep in mind that the field of cultural geography has benefited significantly from the Office of Naval Research program that funded the field research of Carl Sauer and many other prominent geographers from the late 1940s to the late 1960s (see Herlihy et al., 2008 in the Geographical Review, volume 98, issue 3). As far as I know their research did not contribute to military operations or cause the loss of life. A careful analysis might indeed show that it had the opposite effect. Through the México Indígena project I learned first-hand that there are decent people employed in the military, people who are distressed by mistakes of the past and who want to make a positive difference from within by giving us “university types” a chance to show them what we can do and how we do it. But if funding from military offices is deemed immoral, perhaps we should consider the United States government as a whole. Many of the conflicts that have occurred around the world were initiated by people in elected offices, not by people in the military. Does that mean we should refuse funding from the Fullbright program, which is sponsored by the State Department? I don’t think so, but maybe others do."

I agree with this last comment: "These issues need to be debated, but should be debated respectfully without vilifying people who have views that differ from our own views." Interestingly, the debate also includes concerns regarding the editorial and review policy of geography journals. From my position, I am still bemused by geography's inherent dysfunction and can't help but think it is a function of the fields sheer diversity. I also can't help but think this is a good thing...

For those who know me, you will be aware that I have held personal concerns over what i considered substandard ethical practices on two collaborative projects involving Maori horticulturalists (at the Bioprotection Research Centre, Lincoln University) and kai tiaki of customary fisheries (at the Te Tiaki Mahinga Kai project at the Centre for Study of Food, Agriculture and the Environment, Otago University). In both cases, regardless of the validity of otherwise of the concerns I and others held, I was sacked from the first and sidelined from the second, so I know firsthand how these things can unfold, i.e., badly for the whistleblower! Oh, I would be the first to admit that my little one-man protest action at the BRC's international symposium probably prompted the actions of my so-called 'supervision' team...



...Luckily I have an excellent research job now, but the risks to a young researcher trying to develop a career in a hostile environment is one that is often discussed amongst postgraduates. Unfortunately, there seems to be little prospect of change, especially given the ever greater demands on 'results', publications, and proposals.

Agent Orange documents released...

Our Minister of Defense has released historical documents relating to the (mooted) production and export of Agent Organe to Vietnam for use in the jungle-stripping campaign. Undoubtedly they clear the government of all wrong-doing (or why release them?!) No links are provided through the NZ Herald article so I'm in the process of trying to access them through government sources. Will keep it posted of course...

is you is or is you ain't my pesticide-soaked frontlawn...

Seems that Regional Councils are not, as the cheaper legal advice had thought, required to notify of possible chemical hazards on property documents (Land Information Memoranda or LIMs reports).
(see Scoop article here http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/AK0412/S00178.htm) .

When I was back in the Bay the locale was Lyndhurst, somewhere near Havelock North me thinks (home to the most cited Maori writer, Alan Duff)...there'll be others of course (or though perhaps none to rival the -glow-in-the-dark Mapua site). Of course the presence or absense of certain 'things' - marauding Danes, mosquitoes, African-Americans, heavy traffic, brothels, very old dead people, organochloro-compounds - severely devalues property or at the very least requires hardcore bureaucratic combat. Although afflicted property-owners take the obvious action - suppress information that would devalue their investment - is the resultant risk to future owners (and it must be a risk or why the concern?) an infringement of their rights? While acknowledging that anxiety and a simmering anger seems evident in a lot of participants in environmental social movements
(...check this dismisal http://www.techcentralstation.com/121604C.html...) the mere risk to an investment is surely market information that must be freely available to all economic players?!