The way we think and the way we comprehend stems from trained cognitive senses from which we learn from pre-school, kindergarten, and secondary schools. To think the way we are thought, to do the way we are shown.
Or is it?
Cognitively we learn by shear recognition, we remember by touch and sense of feel. Heuristically we feel what feels natural or “second nature” because of a comfort zone in our patterns to welcome in what we are sensing. It goes deeper by what we sense. Your sensory thoughts are seeing what is interpreted.
For example, you use a mouse, common task - yes? with a computer to command a - “One and a Zero” from an “X and Y” coordinate. To the pre-history Indian, this would seem magic. To the common man it would seem like rocket science, to the computer programmer of today - it is a simple task, understood, carried out, and simply taken for granted as a day to day task.
To the Native American Indians, our people have been using tools of Indigenous Technology. Herbology, medicinal plants, solar energy, wireless communications for thousands of years. In the Indigenous sense there is something about Indigenous Technology that draws us all. To the Shaman, it is understood, carried out but different, it was respected as a day to day task. Not taken for granted.
What is Indigenous Technology? Indigenous is knowing where you came from. Where you belong in a sense. In Chairman Brian Wallace’s quote: “History is more about place than it is about time”. I say it is so, it continues to be so as being present in the moment. Indigenous Technology is knowing and respecting the tools, instruments, process of where modern technology comes from.
Wireless telecommunication has been with Native American Indians for thousands of years. Smoke Signals of messages traveling mountain top to mountain top. How is this reflected to us? It is common in our comics or cartoons but taken for granted in the sense of “smoke”.
Smoke signals which were given at distances were created by men of responsibility (communication is key to any organization, including tribes of the time). This smoke signals were messages of:
“enemy coming”,
“a marriage or union of people - in Native Terms”
“herd or hunt here”
There are two facets, one is that it is seemingly unobtrusive. To the common man it is just smoke. To todays telecommunications engineer it is a variety of signals. In Alaskan Native culture Ice has 60 different names. To with wireless engineer of today there are different signals. For which we take for granted. Cell Phones, Radio Signals, Television Signals, wireless wifi signals. 802.11 and 802.20.
We must take a hint from what Native American Indians did. they did not have every tribal member sending signals. If they did it could most likely look like Los Angeles SMOG. If you could see the wavelength and frequency polution today it would astound you. I am not saying to take away signals, frequency or limit wavelengths, just observe what is happening today. With Indigenous Technology, observe what has happened culturally and historically. Remember the place and time. Albert Einstien and Chairman Brian Wallace had a number of things in common, time is relative.
Solar Energy Generation
The sun is a powerful source. Giver of life and livelihood. As it is praised or cursed by man. The world we live in has learned to harness the Sun’s energy, not in the atomic sense, or the solar wind sense, but the basic sense of the shared livlilihood of the hunter and the gatherer.
A hunter fells a deer after he prays for its brother among the flora and fauna. After it is skined the sun drys and with plants it cures on a rack post to dry. Different angles of the post are positioned to get the most viable use of the stretched skin.
The sun has important values of the local community. Solar salt mining. Salt is in the waters but also, spots of concave areas inbedded in rocks which the Washoe Indians of California gathered the salts in these indentations as the sun evaporated the water from thier rock vessels. Solar Generation is just as important on a grand scale.
Tribes like the Washoe Tribe of Nevada & California has implemented its own Solar Array. With the combined efforts of the Washoe Environmental Protection Department and Sierra Pacific, the tribe now generates electricity which time powered thier Environmental Building, the Washoe Utilities & Maintenance Authority, the Planning Department, as well as thier own servers, communications, and wireless prototype antenaes.
Todays modern tribe sees the Indigenous Technology and observes its cultural importance and modern respect of its own place. In the socio-economic sense, to be both wireless and “off the grid” is proving true tribal soveriegty and self determination.
Solar technology is a shared tool as well as a shared responsibility learned from Native Americans. Leave the land as you arrive. Share what you have, for it is not yours. In Dine (white men commonly know as Navajo) , there is no word for I, or Me. Only we or us.
On this shared sense of the planet the Shingle Springs Tribe. The band of Miwoks hold two distinct facets of culture. Hawaiian and American Indian. In development is the use of a 100% Renewable energy plan for its hosting servers and collocated facilities. The tribe does not have much land base, so collocation is key to the tribe. Co-location because it can not house at this time the Solar Array nor the wind generation needed to power its facilities. The servers use 99% power of Solar generated renewable energy and 1% of Wind generated power. The partners which have been sought out are ThinkHost.com. A socially responsible and like minded company who is very “Tribe Friendly”.
Our Indigenous Technology track takes us on a path of shared resources, off-shore production, and truly a global partnership with Native American Indians and East Indians. (Dots-not-feathers). The founder of ThinkHost.com happens to Indian himself. So Ironically we will take this step to be outsourcing to off-reservation entities while on-reservation we will design and develop the Environmental website and its tribal members who will maintain the content.
Archiving.
This realm of computers, of technology, of ones and zeros is at a point that we must remember that it is a tool. As the tribal youth of today are tomorrows storytellers and leaders, they are also the communicators. Technology of today, the Final Cut Pro, the DVD Studio Pro, the Adobe Illustrators, and Macromedia Dreamweavers, are todays modern storytellers.
These modern storytellers are now part of the collection of DVDs, of MP3s, they share. Share not only as the value of a story or song they share with one another at the tribe. But it also means a great deal to those off-reservation. Those urban indians who are away from the reservation, those away to school.
The process which they are retooled with is two main points which can not be learned or not not commonly taught in todays schools. Something I teach our children as the first thing on a Tribal Retreat or Conference:
How to Listen & How to Hear.. (next)
