Essay 4, Alicia Thomas, Native Reactions to Globalization

When the time came a few years ago to find an Inuktitut term for the word ?Internet?, Nunavut?s former Official Languages Commissioner, Eva Aariak, chose ikiaqqivik, or ?travelling through layers?. The word comes from the concept describing what a shaman does when asked to find out about living or deceased relatives or where animals have disappeared to: travel across time and space to find answers (Soukup, 2006, pg 1).

In our class studies this week, we looked at responses to globalization and how they are adapted in different contexts. My research suggests the continued efforts of Native populations in creating hybridized and localized flows to counter Western globalization. Multi-directional flows are also influencing these trends.  Increasingly, indigenous communities are adapting modern technology to their traditional heritage(s), to construct their group identity and inhabit a new ?space.? ?Cultural anthropologists examining contemporary Native storytelling have described storytelling as an important narrative event that empowers and constructs group identity. Storytelling has modern forms that extend beyond the traditions of tribal history and culture? (Reaves, 1995, p. 60.)

            The storytelling, so to speak, of NVISION?s mission and implementation across ?Native? America, is mobilizing younger generations of Natives to carry the contemporary message of a people across the globe.  This is a logic that not only seeks to empower them, but to enhance the perspectives and outreach of the Indian community in a global sense/transnationally.

?The availability of transnational media may facilitate the creation of transnational collective identities. Electronic mail groups and global news networks provide the communication backbone for global and political activities. Constant flows of media materials between home countries and diasporic communities feed long-distance nationalisms? (Waisbord & Morris, 2001, p. 7).  Placed under the microscope of ?Native America?, this hybridization is creating multi-directional flows between different tribes and cultures. Each tribe is a distinct community or ?nation?, but cyberspace is redefining the sense of ?place? and ?boundaries?.  Also, as mentioned above, the organization NVISION and its project of reaching global media flows from a Native perspective are an example of this as well, but, also speak to the ?global cultural economy? ideology.  Appadurai argues that this is directly influenced by global disjunctures. ?Ideas of nationhood appear to be steadily increasing in scale and regularly crossing existing state boundaries (1990, p. 304). Not only is this media crossing boundaries within Native America, (different tribes/nations, urban vs. rural population dynamic) it is reaching Native communities across the Western hemisphere as well as connecting with the wider world.

Are these progressive forms of globalization processes affecting identity and how groups organize in a negative way? There are undoubtedly challenges to modernizing sovereign indigenous communities without sacrificing traditional constructs of their ethnicity. Massey tells us that there is not a ?seamless, coherent identity, a single sense of place which everyone shares? (1993, p. 65) and ?this in turn allows a sense of place which is extra-verted, which includes a consciousness of its links with the wider world, which integrates in a positive way the global and the local (1993, p. 66). This essay shows that Natives are making inroads and achieving this.

 It is imperative that ethnic communities find ways to coexist and thrive in the realm of globalization.  The challenge lies in marrying the global and the local without losing the ?communal? tradition that threads the Native community together.  I hope to expand my research next week in looking at movements of this and how they are affecting the Native community and its unique position within the wider world.

Massey, Doreen (1993). "Power-geometry and a Progressive Sense of Place." Ch. 4. in Bird, John, et al. (editors), Mapping the Futures: Local Cultures, Global Change. London: Routledge. Pp.59-69.

Reaves, Sheila. Native American journalists: Finding a pipeline into journalism. Newspaper Research Journal, Fall1995, Vol. 16 Issue 4, p57-73

Soukup, Katarina. Travelling in Layers: Inuit Artists Appropriate New Technologies.  Canadian Journal of Communications, Vol. 31, No. 1 (2006). pp 239-246.)

Waisbord, Silvio, and Morris, Nancy (2001). Introduction: Rethinking media globalization and state power. In Silvio Waisbord and Nancy Morris (editors), Media and Globalization: Why the State Matters. Lanham, MD; Boulder, CO; New York, NY; and Oxford, UK: Rowman and Littlefield. Pp. vii-xvi.

www.nvisionit.org  (Retrieved June 13, 2007).

Posted at 12:02PM Jun 15, 2007 by alicia kathryn thomas in General  |  Comments[2]