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Apologies for any cross-postings you receive about this event.<br><br>
<blockquote type=cite class=cite cite="">Date: Wed, 24 Oct 2007 17:32:35
-0400<br>
From: PHRJ <phrj@MIT.EDU><br>
Organization: MIT Program on Human Rights and Justice<br>
To: dusp@MIT.EDU, cis-all@MIT.EDU, phrj-list@MIT.EDU<br><br>
Sovereignty and Traditional Peacemaking in Navajo Nation<br>
**Larry Susskind, Marisa Arpels and Noah Susskind**<br>
Wednesday, October 31<br>
12:30-2:00 pm<br>
Room 3-401<br>
*/Lunch provided. <b>RSVP phrj@mit.edu</b>/*<br><br>
poster for Navajo Nation talk<br>
The MIT-Harvard Public Disputes Program is supporting the efforts of
<br>
Diné Peacemakers, Inc. to revive and strengthen indigenous methods of
<br>
peacemaking in Navajo (Diné) Nation. Diné Nation, which is the size of
<br>
West Virginia and home to the poorest population in America, is an <br>
ostensibly sovereign territory within our borders. Yet, we spend more
<br>
time declaiming our obligations to address poverty elsewhere in the <br>
world — where the extent of our responsibility is debatable — than we do
<br>
responding to the plight of a nation in our midst that is suffering <br>
entirely as a result of our actions. One theory is that our <br>
twentieth-century efforts to westernize the Diné justice system eroded
<br>
the coherence and functionality of a culture that predated America’s by
<br>
at least 500 years. A team of students who spent part of the summer in
<br>
Diné Nation will report on their experiences. Prospects for an ongoing
<br>
partnership between MIT and Diné Inc. will be discussed.<br><br>
<br>
Larry Susskind is Ford Professor of Urban and Environmental Planning at
<br>
MIT; Director of the Public Disputes Program at Harvard Law School; and
<br>
founder of the Consensus Building Institute. His most recent book (with
<br>
Jeffrey Cruikshank) is Breaking Robert’s Rules (Oxford University Press,
<br>
2006). Every other year he teaches a graduate seminar at MIT entitled
<br>
“Addressing The Land Claims of Indigenous Peoples.”<br><br>
Marisa Arpels is a second year master’s degree candidate in <br>
Environmental Policy and Planning at MIT. She was one of five students
<br>
invited to visit Navajo Nation this past summer.<br><br>
Noah Susskind graduated from Williams College in June 2007. He was a
<br>
member of the student team that visited Navajo Nation and is helping to
<br>
draft an article about the visit for the MIT-Harvard Public Disputes
<br>
Program.<br>
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