Wampum

Here's a copy of my letter to the LAT editor. I also wrote a lengthy email to Buruma.

Ian Buruma's column on the future of Tibetan culture may contain many good points about the dangers it faces from Chinese modernization, but his opening sentences that describe American Indians as "doomed" and "reduced to peddling cheap mementos" call into question his ability to make such an assessment. Indeed, American Indians are going through a cultural renaissance wherein more of our youth are learning their languages, practicing their traditions, and attaining more educational success than ever before; one need look no further than Harvard University's "Honoring Nations" awards for proof. This is not to say that Native peoples face many challenges, but to declare that we are little more than "tourist attractions" is as false as it is insulting. Is his take on Tibet based on similar romantic notions of a culture that isn't his own?

That's excellent, Adam. I've been working on my letters to both the LATimes and Buruma all afternoon, but I'm still so angry, it's hard not to sound irrational. I'm so glad to read someone else's calm, collected prose on the matter. Thank you for posting it here.

Can I just say that you make an excellent point, and a disgrace that a) someone can feel that such a comment is fine to express in an editorial; and b) that generally it slides by without condemnation.

I think Buruma is objecting to the Disneyfication of Tibetan culture, with a poorly phrased analogy to the Disneyfication of Native American culture, a process which can hardly be disputed (many aspects of US culture are Disneyfied, not just Native American. So is Main Street. So is Times Square). Journalistic haste and failure to qualify his point is all he's guilty of. Unless you want to claim that there are not now, nor have there ever been, native american tourist attractions peddling cheap mementos, all you can say is that he should have explicitly stated that that is not *all* there is. Drawing a connection to L. Frank Baum's curious advocacy of genocide is unfair and unwarranted. Clearly Buruma is objecting to what you might call cultural genocide, not advocating it.

I've given this some thought too. I was an invited by the Chinese Ministry of Information Industry and the Chinese Academy of Sciences to work with the Registry operator for China's Internet, on the specific problem area of planning for the use of Chinese characters in domain names, and while I was there I inquired into the minority languages, and their scripts and character set, of China, and Tibet. I'm still working with, though in a different formal context, the registry operator for China, and the 11 formal scripts of Indian governmental, and non-governmental usages, and the scripts of Chinese governmental, and non-governmental usages, remains a part of what I work on, every quarter of the year.

I mention this to distinguish between talking about Tibet, and working on making Tibetan (which I don't read or speak a word of) as useful to Tibetans (whom I don't know a soul of) as Chinese to Chinese, and ASCII to English speakers and diactrically simplified Western Europeans. I know someone is "Henry R. Luce Professor of Human Rights and Journalism" at some school, and I know what I do isn't what that person does, and I don't know how it relates to every Tibetan, whether literate in Tibetan, or with limited, or pre-literacy skills in Tibetan.

I also mention this to distinguish between damning China with personal impunity, and working with a legal entity in a legal context, in China, for change.

The long view of Indian cultural survival is found in phrases like "our language is our culture" or the quiet separation of some parts of our lives from the dominant culture, see for instance John Mathews' novel Sundown, or John Mohawk's essay, and our continued struggle with self-government, and in this we share a sense of published Tibetan monks who write or say that as long as they can think about philosophy that they remain "free", while occupied by China.

If that were the point Professor Buruma was attempting, then all well and good. However, his point was that Tibetan culture was at risk of becoming similar to our culture, reduced to selling dyed turkey feathers (and the main drag in Cherokee North Carolina is just one of many similar places where real enrolled citizens of nations other than the United States dress up in standard drag and sell consumer kitch). For the purposes of his 1k word exercise in the duties, or more importantly, the privileges of the "Henry R. Luce Professor of Human Rights and Journalism" at some school, published by the LA Times, our culture is that consumer kitch, with "little more" as an escape hatch from an analogy run amok.

Does Ian Buruma get a "pass"? Your milage may vary, but I don't want him or those who sail with him anywhere near the technical work and policy discussions that may affect computers, literacy and culture in Asia. And I'm not bothered at all if he thinks turkeys have naturally pink feathers, or that he's Dog's gift to the literatti.

My children periodically force me to attend services at Disney{Land,World}, so I think I know what "Disneyfication" might mean, with or without the help from the last editor of a wiki entry, but I think it is important to decide if Africans in the US have the ability to discern what harms, and if Asians in the US have the ability to discern what harms, and if Indians "in the US" have the ability to discern what harms, or if this ability, this knowledge of intent and effect, is only available through Europeans in the US. The question was asked and answered in the 1960s.

Thank you Gus for contributing to the discussion, and for using "example.com" as an email address too.