Hoi,
I can't do much of that getting into a lot of research.
The reason I'm asking it is that I want to add online help for those in the process of making a new localization. I'm aware of the problems of my own tribe and of those tribes that have a similar condition, but I cannot know everything. So please, be bold and suggest all the individual trouble point in the Wikimedia localization process.
The rest is slowly drifting to mostly not WMF issues. I'm extremely interested in this exchange, but if people are bored with us, pls say so, and I'll move the following posts (if any) to private email.
"Genocide" ned not imply the physical killing of the target culture.
There are two levels in a word: one is "proper definition" and the other is "diffused attached strings". "Genocide" is an overloaded word, since lately it's been used to justify the start of wars in the eyes of the opublic opinion (cfr. Iraq). I'm not saying that we should make any discount to those who had aggressive behaviors towards our cultures; I'm suggesting that not many people would interpret the word according to its "proper definition". IMHO, outward communication is very important. When you fail to build yourself a public image you are bound to accept the public image you are given. We'll never have full control on our public image, but if we don't try our control will be absolute zero, so we have nothing to loose.
My impression is that nobody in Europe likes the gypsies.
It's only locally true. It really depends on a number of factors: 1) how nomadic they still are 2) how much "fresher meat for racism" comes from recent migrations 3) local traditions
In Italy the basic amount of hatred goes to Albanians (which is inconfessable, because Italy is a NATO country and we "freed them") and Romenians (also not clearly expressable -> UE country). Media usually mimetize this stuff by labeling "everything east" as "slavic", which allows recycling the rethorics from the last yugo-war. The only hatred that is loudly and clearly expressed goes to moslims, as this much is "politically correct". I'm not saying that all immigrants are saints, yet Italian immigrants weren't either, and I cannot see any Italian media spending time on the issue.
Gypsies are rarely in the news, as it's not many of them left, and nowadays the label got to mean "people living in a van" (let alone tourists, obviously). There are relics in the languages, and comparing someone to a Gypsy usually has a derogative value (but in Turin even calling someone a "Catholic" is far from being a friendly approach and there are tons of derogative terms for all nationalities and even single villages).
Racism is a layered behavior, it used to be against other people coming to town from the country, then it moved first to venetians and later southern italians, depending on the migratory flux. Nowadays it's mainly concentrated on the recent layers. I usually say that we need Aliens from Mars to unite Mankind :) Once we can hate them, we won't waste time in hating each other.
I frequently see the Gypsy issue high on Hungarian and Polish news, it doesn't look serious in the Ukraine (where the usual subject for ethnic make-wars are jews and all other slavic people). I haven't noticed any focus on Gypsies in Russia, either. I know ukrainian Gypsies who are succesful businessmen and actually boast their origins. My impression is that Gypsies never were perceived as a problem in the former Tsarist Empire, so there was no background for conflict here, but I admit a very superficially knowledge of the Gypsy issue.
I can advice those who are interested in Gypsies to contact http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Desiphral who was really helpful for us when we reconstructed the history of the Piemontese Sinto, who are one of the 5 Native Nationalities protected by the Piemontese "Statut" (Act? Chart? Regional Constitution?), along with the Piemontese, the Occitans, the Franch-Provensal and the Walser. Sinto have long become stantial, and are renowed in the Piemontese Community as those who retain the purest forms of the Piemontese Language (which they use as a foreign language to communicate with us, their native language is RAKARASSA ROMANES http://www.vurdon.it/RR_antep.htm ).
Desiphral told us they are belonging in the most ancient layer of Sinti migrations, based on the language they use. Anyway, they are a stable ethnic component for Piedmont since the Middle Age, and got to be perceived as "absolutely native" long time ago. As such they can be object to "class separation" based on money or on the suspect that their shiny cars come from robbery, but aren't an object for xenophoby. It must be said that most of them cannot stand other gypsies, whom they perceive as "not native". It's quite a complex interaction system. Majorities aren't nice, yet minorities can byte, too. I guess it's simply part of the human nature.
My son is left-handed, and has not run into these problems.
LOL that's because you weren't ruled by Catholics, with their idea about the "hand of the Devil" :) Anyway, Catholics have been explained that they can educate their OWN children as they please, but must leave other people's descendants alone. AFAIK, currently kids are allowed to write left-handed, in Italian schools.
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.
Thank God that's true, otherwise they would choose even the way you breathe. Everything requires an effort, and everything is trouble. I'm aware of the number of problems associated with the start of schooling in a native language. As soon as money comes people divide in "associations" who fight to control the funds, invent tons of conflicting graphies, excommunicate each other as "traitors of the Sacred Original Culture" etc etc... Native are humans, just as non-Natives. Yet if we want cultures to have the strenght to stand up and live they must take their own responsibilities and learn the price of existence. There's no such thing as a free lunch.
Whenever you have such activities you need two kind of people: those who are able to claim, obtain and difend the Rights, and those who are able to use them and diffuse them. They rarely are the same people. I don't know why it's like that, but that's what I see.
Spend more time on the contents, and less on the packaging.
You are wrong on this. Both sides need to be addressed. Chances are that most people will deal with content, yet someone must care for accessibility (proper catalogation, indexing etc). It doesn't need to take many people's time, solutions can be reused by all. Yet it's necessary to give "parity" to all linguistic entities. You don't want to be "less", do you? So don't accept a catalogation you get given, control the process and make sure you understand it.
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.
Then why are you here in the first place? None of us is a Native American. If it's okay for you that my son will know Native Americans as "those redskins who get shot by the cowboys"... it's your right to do so. I'd rather have my son reading who Native Americans are from Native Americans themselves.
Toursim is voyeristic, true. Yet it keeps entire countries alive (just think of Venice). It really depends on how you are ready to live "today" and accept the fact that people may be interested in your past. It's just a matter of self-peception. If you judge your own past as "valuable", then you can show it with pride, if not, you'll feel like a monkey in a zoo cage. And you WILL be a monkey in a zoo cage.
Tourism and all sort of "foreign superficial interest" are valuable financial resources, and most of all are a vehicle to propagate your culture and "make it trendy". Yes foreigners will get their own distorted idea of what you really are, so what? As long if you are capable not to distort your OWN self-perception their distortion is none of your problems. In time a few of them will get the message right, and it's worth working even for those "few", let alone that fact that you can finance community activities based on those revenues.
I think that the weakness...
I'll answer privately, since it has nothing to do with WMF.
This is not to say that when they go to Moscow they become fanatic supporters of Russian culture.
Sadly they do. My Veps friend is over-reacting to the the slightest incorrect pronounciation in Russian (even with us foreigners). I'm told it's a common behavior and that "being Veps doesn't mean being stupid"... I guess this is one of the clearest "social markers" I've ever met. And it did not take to go to Moscow, to get that fanatic. No way to talk about it, it's an instinctive emotional reaction for this person. Other people who were in contact with other Veps reported similar stories, although I cannot check their reports in any way. It's an extremely diffused behavior in Italy, too. I call it the "I'm not a foreigner in my Country" syndrome.
I admit ignorance of what UNESCO is offering.
The point is that they are not "offering" anything apart from a well known trademark, which in turn helps in gathering funding and international cooperation. They work to save the so called "Human Heritage" and Human Cultures are a part of this heritage. So it's not up to them to tell you what to do, it's up to you to get in contact with them, present the heritage you have and propose ways to difend it. It's a human organization, so their activity is subject for discussion as anybody else's activity, yet they are the only existing BIG world-wide organization that takes care of such issues.
See www.unesco.org/human_rights
but mostly see: http://portal.unesco.org/ci/en/ev.php-URL_ID=19434&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&U... ON=201.html
you need to take the initiative because nobody else can do it.
YES! "Be bold" is the one and only secret :)
Berto 'd Sera Personagi dl'ann 2006 per l'arvista american-a Time (tanme tuti vojaotri) http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1569514,00.html
-----Original Message----- From: wikipedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:wikipedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Ray Saintonge Sent: Thursday, July 19, 2007 5:32 AM To: wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] About creating a new language on Wikipedia
Berto 'd Sera wrote:
Ray,
Pls explain what language is missing the concept of "change" (edit),
"move",
"discuss", nickname, etc.
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-p
a
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
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