[Save] 11/18 (Tues): Why Won't Native Americans Just Go Away?

[hemisphere-announce@MIT.EDU]

             PLEASE CIRCULATE THIS ANNOUNCEMENT


The MIT Western Hemisphere Project invites you to attend
our annual Thanksgiving remembrance.  This year:
  
  
  "This Land is _Your_ Land"?
   Working with Native American communities in Arizona
   to preserve and promote a sustainable way of life

   Anna Bershteyn (MIT) & Kaia Dekker (MIT)

   Jennifer Harbury, lawyer and activist for indigeous
                     people across the Hemisphere, will
                     introduce our speakers.

   7 pm,  Tuesday, November 18,  MIT Room 66-110

   Admission is free, but please arrive early.


DETAILS:

Traditional Navajo and Hopi communities in northern Arizona
occupy only a small fraction of the land they once did.  Yet
even the land they now occupy is extremely valuable to others.
Cheap coal and even cheaper water attract would-be developers
and users.  Because of political pressure, what would otherwise
be a sustainable way of life is in danger of quickly becoming
unsustainable.

Two MIT students -- Anna Bershteyn and Kaia Dekker -- spent
much of last summer living & working among the Dine (Navajo)
in Northern Arizona.  They had two goals: to understand what
life is like among the traditional Dine; and to see what
knowledge and resources they could contribute.  They took
computers and other equipment with them; they helped raise
sheep and bring Churro wool to market; they assisted in a
systematic survey of roads and terrain; and they heard
stories, and more stories, and even more stories.

Please come to find out what they learned from their Navajo
host-families; and see what the rest of us can learn from them.

NB: The summer Anna and Kaia spent in Arizona is part of our
continuing outreach and public-service effort (information: http://web.mit.edu/hemisphere/events/our-planet-series.shtml).
It was funded by the MIT Eloranta Fellowship program and the
MIT Public Service Center.  Computers and software were
donated by the MIT Libraries.  And host-family arrangements
were made by Black Mesa Weavers for Life and Land.  We don't
know how to thank these organizations for their help and
support -- without which we could have done nothing.


MORE INFORMATION, CONTACT & DIRECTIONS

More: http://web.mit.edu/hemisphere/events/
E-mail: mailto:hemisphere-admin at mit.edu
Web: http://web.mit.edu/hemisphere/
Directions: http://web.mit.edu/hemisphere/directions/