[Sci-tech-public] Wednesday Oct 31: "Sovereignty and Traditional Peacemaking in Navajo Nation"

[Debbie Meinbresse]

Apologies for any cross-postings you receive about this event.

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