It will take me a while to meaningfully answer to this intense message. But in the meantime I would like to make sure that the text is available to read. I doubt that Eric has posting rights in the ALAC lists, so please see the text below. I do not have myself rights to the NA-RALO mailing list, but I believe it would be interesting reading over there. Maybe somebody will forward it. This thread has started as discussion on ALAC seats for the NA-RALO. I am not advocating any "voting rights" for the native american nations (how could I anyway?), but I would find appropriate if the NA-RALO could be inclusive enough to host the voice of a set of users that are different from others in the region. Maybe the formation of an ALS would be appropriate? This would be only up to Eric, should he think it would be worthed the time and effort. Maybe some feedback from the NA community could be useful. I have not forgotten the discussion we had about .naa. Some of the whereabouts are blurred (Was it at the IETF in Chicago, 1998? Or was it Minneapolis 1999, just before the Berlin ICANN meeting? Was the third man ;>) in the discussion Dave C.?), but the message is still loud and clear. I know we live in Internet times, but some changes, that are cultural rather than technological, take times of a different order of magnitude. But will eventually happen. Cheers, Roberto

-----Original Message----- From: Eric Brunner-Williams [mailto:brunner@abenaki.wabanaki.net] Sent: 19 May 2007 21:48 To: Roberto Gaetano Cc: 'John L'; 'Nick Ashton-Hart'; alac@atlarge-lists.icann.org; brunner@nic-naa.net; brunner@abenaki.wabanaki.net Subject: Re: [At-Large] Geographic diversity in the NARALO

Howdy Roberto,

The Canadian lawyer, if s/he has any opinion on Candian Aboriginal Law, knows that Dorothy van der Peet can't sell $50 worth of fish to a non-Indian, since the controlling law is that "Treaty Right" is limited to whatever Indians may have sold to Indians when the Hudson's Bay Company or the RCMP showed up to take notes. So Indians can't own banks, use the spectrum, or sell fish for money. Its the Smokehouse set of cases if you're interested.

The American lawyer, if s/he has any opinion on Federal Indian Law, knows that Congress can change any treaty, and that tribes have no jurisdiction over the non-Indians, and a sequence of wicked interesting cases slice the angels who dance on the head of the jurisdictional pin for corporations, and even Indians from a different tribe. But the bottom line is that Indians can't own banks, use the spectrum, or sell fish for money significantly more than Indians can who live under Ottowa's rules.

Other than that, the difference between a Canadian and an American Lawyer, is somewhat theoretical, and both are certain, because ICANN tells them so, that Tribal governments somehow have to fit under the .ca/.us ccTLD namespaces.

But your real question is are Indians, East Asians, South Asians, Hispanics, and Africans, sufficiently represented, for ICANN's purposes, by the current practice of finding some pair of lawyer, network dilatants or retained by big, big telecoms and/or IPR investor clients?

The answer is no.

Would the answer change if the scope was limited to just California, to just the Native California Tribes and the Indians relocated to California, either by the government or by the Great Depression, to just the Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Vietnamese, Lao, and Thai immigrants, to just the Indians from Mexico and Guatemala, to just the African-Americans of LA and Oakland?

Nope. No change.

Elections won't change that either. The demographics of early adoption do not favor any change in this -- my great grandfather was the first Cherokee to be awarded an MD by the U. of Arkansaws, the class size was a lot larger than 1. My mom was the first Indian to be employed by RAND in a technical position, and the first Indian of any nation to hold a staff programmer position in all of the Department of Defense. I've run into one other Indian in the IETF, and none in the largest math department in North America. And there are unmet needs that might have something to do with ICANN -- the "digital divide", indigenous IPR, namespace squatting, address allocation, ...

We're vastly outnumbered, particularly in the early-adopter and lawyer spaces.

I hope this helps you Roberto. Americans think that Belgians speak something called "Belgian", and the nuance of Flams vs Wallon vs Bruxelles/Brussel vs Eastern (German) is not even noticed in its absence.

By the way, I'm leaving Nevada tomorrow to go to Tahlequah, in the Cherokee Nation (NE Oklahoma) to work for the reform candidate for Principal Chief. I'm already running her online campaign.

Eric