Date: Tue, 8 Aug 1995 14:42:34 -0400
From: "Lisette Boilyl" <boilyl-AT-YorkU.CA>
Subject: listsev coup


Hello all (or rather, whoever is left outside the cow paddies :)  )

Rhonda Frederick is right, and so are the other folks who have recently
reminded us that WE make our own list interesting or....not.  So, if the
multitudes seem to be off mooing, and a few of us either cannot or do not
wish to participate, then the list is doing what it's been doing this last
several months.  That is, "recycling" its group of steady participants.  No
big.  For those of us committed "lurkers" (like me) who enjoy the variety of
posts, this quiet time may force us out of lurker-ville.

I also think it's a damn shame that, it seems to me, folks are perhaps now
afraid to ASK for research assistance via this list due to some of the posts
decrying such requests.  I've made several email buddies this way (when I've
responded personally to people requesting info) and feel the better for 
it.  But hey, it's only email.  If someone says something you don't like,
don't take it personally and withdraw.  Besides, this last batch of slightly
paternalistic "suggestions" is NOTHING compared to some of the very real
flaming that occured last spring, remember?  All that West is Best stuff,
that got REALLY personal??  Either those dudes have left the list or are now
committed lurkers, too.  A batch of daily posters seems to last about 2
months tops....so lets happily recycle!

Or....everyone is on vacation....



Okay.  Since I've been locked in my study doing the "dissertation thing," and
talking to no one except my one-year old son (who is very insightful by the
way :) ) I've been thinking a lot about  the recent Pocahontas resurrection
in American popular culture. The recent Disney film enters into the history
of colonization in America--and alters it--in very disturbing ways.   Disney,
Russell Means, and Mel Gibson.  It's almost too much to bear!  Hysterically
pathetic and typical.  AIM meets Mickey Mouse and Mad Max?  Without offering
a plot synopsis just yet, for anyone who hasn't either seen it, read the
kiddie's book, or abosorbed it from the mainstream media,  Let's have a go.
Gerald Vizenor has some very interesting--if not circumlocutory--things to
say about Russell Means (a major American Indian Movement founding member and
activist turned actor--who is the voice of Powhatan, Pocahontas's father, in
the film) in his _Manifest Manners: Postindian Warriors of Survivance_.
Vizenor would, and probably is, having a field day with the recent Pocahontas
"craze".  

Lisette Boily
Division of Humanities
York University, Toronto, Canada
boilyl-AT-yorku.ca


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