[LINK] "The Newest Indians"

Language Hat obligingly links to the article of the same name by Jack Hitt in the most recent New York Times Magazine, exploring the reidentification of many people of partly Native ancestry with Native culture. Hitt's article concerns the situation facing Native Americans, but similar trends are partly responsible for the rapid recent population growth among Canada's First Nations as well.

[T]he demographic spike in population is a symptom of what sociologists call ''ethnic shifting'' or ''ethnic shopping.'' This phenomenon reflects the way more and more Americans have come to feel comfortable changing out of the identities they were born into and donning new ethnicities in which they feel more at home. There is almost no group in this hemisphere immune to the dramas accompanying so much ethnic innovation. Last year in Montreal, for example, the selection of Tara Hecksher as Irish-Canadian parade queen seemed to many to be inspired. While the young woman's father is Irish, her mother is Nigerian. To look at her face and hair, most people would instinctively categorize her as ''black.'' Certainly the thug that interrupted the parade by tossing a white liquid at her seemed to think that way.

Native peoples have long had traditions of exogamy, but there remains the question of just what it is to be native. The decision to engage with and even revivify tradition seems to be key in the 21st century.

Just where in that spectrum, between land-based tribes in the West and playful hobbyists, you might locate a bright dividing line of authenticity is an open question. It is territory that is currently being remapped. It is why the population of Indians is surging and why there is such fervent debate among Indians as to just who should be able to make the claim. It becomes a kind of nature-versus-nurture argument. Do genetics make you Indian or does culture? Or can either one?

It is in the context of such continued questions that the renewed interest in language takes on more urgent meaning. According to Laura Redish, the director of a resource clearinghouse for language revival called Native Languages of the Americas, there are roughly 150 native languages that are currently spoken in North America or that have disappeared recently enough that they could still be revived. She estimates that in the last 10 years, some 80 to 90 percent of the tribes associated with these languages have put together some kind of program of revival.

"Language has a different kind of importance now than it did only 20 or 30 years ago,'' says Ofelia Zepeda, the director of the American Indian Language Development Institute in Arizona, whose program in revitalizing languages works with about 20 tribes each year. ''Language is one of those things that you take for granted, but now it has a different dimension. It is a conscious act.''

This brings us back to Renan's Qu'est-ce qu'un nation? (English-language excerpt here): "L'existence d'une nation est (pardonnez-moi cette métaphore) un plébiscite de tous les jours, comme l'existence de l'individu est une affirmation perpétuelle de vie."

[LINK] landsmand on mercenaries of the future

Right here.

Here's an innovative thought: Military science fiction should be written by people who actually have military, or related, experience.

[LINK] Fred Kaplan on the Iraqi Constitution

Over at Slate, Fred Kaplan examines the Iraqi constitution and finds it not only lacking, but incoherent.

Article 2 guarantees the Islamic identity of the Iraqi people as well as all other religious rights. Article 39 preserves the right to observe religious rituals—but it also notes that the issue "will be organized by statute." So, is freedom of religion—any religion—a constitutionally protected civil right or is it a matter to be deferred to legislatures? Things look more ominous still, in light of Articles 13 and 118, which forbid regional or provincial statutes from contravening the laws or constitution of the national government. And what's the national constitution's take again? "Islam is the official religion of state and a fundamental source for legislation."

This sort of thing goes on. As Kaplan concludes, "[a]s one indication of the situation's bleakness, it's a toss-up which course would be worse—that the constitution be turned down or that it be rammed through. Either way, it is not at all clear—with or without this constitution—what kind of government, what kind of nation, this war and this process have wrought."

UPDATE (3:20 PM) : mollpeartree links to the full text (PDF format). It's fortunately not as bad as Kaplan feared, but Article 2 is still worrisome. How are the "undisputed rules of Islam" defined? What exactly is the "Islamic identity of Iraq"?

[C22] France in the late 2130s

So far, Century 22 PBEM has proceeded without exceptional bloodletting. There has been a recent civil war in Indonesia, fought by the incoming secular-minded junta against the chaotic falling theocracy with some acts of nuclear terror. There has not been a Fourth World War, fortunately, while the sentient velociraptors with a worryingly high infant mortality rate remain safely at bay, and humanity's spread to nearby planetary systems (82 Eridani on top of the list, followed closely by Alpha Centauri, then by Procyon, 36 Ophiuchi, Tau Ceti, 40 Eridani and the rest). The world economy is growing strongly, the hyperpowers--now, it seems, including Mexico--aren't threatening apocalypse, and things are well.

On the grand scale, things are going nicely for France. Almost a hundred thousand people living in French colonies outside of the Solar System, and the French stations in Earth orbit easily rank among the most productive. The incumbent government decided to concentrate on space, to the exclusion of the needs of the 95% of the French population still living on Earth. This, it turns out, has consequences. In his 1983 book The Europeans, Luigi Barzini argued that the French are conscious both of their small size relative to the superpowers and needing to keep up regardless. France has the colonies, but now the French want a standard of living that's rising. Unfortunately, perhaps, this means that France will have to accept the principles of globalization as they are articulated in the mid-22nd century: cut taxes, decrease bureaucracy, become more permeable to trade. This will bite.

[LINK] The Kalmyks

Prompted by reports of Chechen-Kalmyk clashes, J. Otto Pohl has made some interestings post on the history of the Kalmyks (1, 2, 3, 4). The Kalmyk homeland, the autonomous Russian Republic of Kalmykia, is notable for being the only Buddhist territory in Europe.

[NON BLOG] Ah, home

My beloved, tolerant, competent Island homeland.

[BRIEF NOTE] Écrasons l'infâme

I'd a pleasant evening editing my friend's manuscript over at the Starbucks at Church and Wellesley. One pleasant accent to the evening was the gentleman a decade older than me, with graying well-tended hair and a slim body partly revealed by the one button of his navy-blue shirt he left unbuttoned, who was working on his laptop and flirting with me. It was all in the eyes, you see.

This reminded me, since the two-year anniversary of my emigration from the Island is upon us now, of how lucky I was to be in a place (geographical, personal) where I was able to do this, and how very close I came indeed to a point where all of that would have been forever beyond my ken. The Island is surrounded by water, and the currents can be strong. Fortunately, not particularly strong: The Island, like most of the rest of Canada, is blessed by not having much United States-style aggressively homophobic evangelical Christianity.

The top Google hit for the keywords "gay" and "suicide" was this article by Peter LaBarbera, hosted at Leader University's website, which denies the existence of gay youth suicide as a distinct phenomenon, partly on valid statistical grounds (certain perhaps overstated claims) but mainly because this would lend legitimacy to the "homosexual lifestyle."

It's a pity that these fuckwits are unwilling to recognize that their theologies, do, in fact, have real-world consequences. One of the whole points of a theology, after all, is to give a believers a way to deal with their world, to influence it. But then, if they did acknowledge this, they might have to start wondering whether these consequences were worth it. God forbid that they become autonomous moral actors.

[MEME] Anniversaries Meme

Via erins_pub.

Chances are people you don't even know are being introduced to your journal every day, either randomly or through someone else. In addition to recent entries, people can get to know you better by what you posted in the past. With that in mind post a link to your entries on this day exactly six months ago, nine months ago, and a year ago. If there was no entry on that day, link the closest date.

Six months ago: Three posts on the 25th of February, one an arrogant dismissal of Montenegrin independence, one on why people of good faith might call Israel an apartheid state, one on Venezia Bakery.

Nine months ago: On Christmas 2004, I wished everyone happy holidays and wrote about Huygens' upcoming landing on Titan.

A year ago: I posted nothing that Wednesday, posting the day before about the partition of the Raj and pompe's new livejournal, and writing the day after about interesting links and personal sundries.

Two years ago: After posting part 6 of my series on space colonization and completing some annoying quizzes the previous day, I had packed up my computer in preparation for my move off-Island. I was excited since anything, I hoped, would be better than the blind alley I'd managed to find myself in.