Date: 2003-12-17T14:29:45 Editor: 209.181.233.150 <> Wiki: Apache Geronimo Wiki Page: WhyApacheGeronimo URL: http://wiki.apache.org/geronimo/WhyApacheGeronimo
no comment Change Log: ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ @@ -81,7 +81,22 @@ ---- What about the Washington Redskins? Or the Florida State Seminoles? I wander if people in Jakarta are offended? Let's not take ourselves too seriously with this name issue. Personally, I think Geronimo is great. += HONOR Discussion Notes = +N. Alex Rupp: + +Several months ago acoliver did us all the great favor of contacting an indian advocacy group called HONOR (Honor Our Neighbor's Origins and Rights), an American and Alaskan Native advocacy group based in Wisconsin with offices here in the Twin Cities. Acoliver told them about our use of the Geronimo name. Since acoliver has been so helpful to our project and was contributing his time in calling attention to this grave matter and because I'm about a tenth Ojibwe, I thought I'd help him out and lessen his burden somewhat. HONOR is based here in Minneapolis, so I made several phone calls and eventually reached a lady named Beth Brownfield, who is something of a regional coordinator for HONOR. + +I told HONOR more about our international software project, its goals and its name. She didn't express any concerns at all about the name, but offered to send me a free brochure with more information about her organization. I pressed the matter a little further, discussing how local tribal schools could write Lakota language extensions for the management console or even translate documentation in Lakota, use the technology for free in their schools as a web platform or to teach high-tech programming courses to their kids. I was just brainstorming to give her an impression of the possibilities for how the technology could benefit her community and also to make the point clear that this wasn't a corporate endeavor. + +After I laid out all of these suggestions about how the technology might benefit indian communities in the US she sent me a short letter explaining that she has no time to devote to this matter, because all her time is tied up representing the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe as they struggle to maintain their status as a sovereign nation. In other words, they've more important things to worry about than the name of our project. I imagine this subject, like so many others, functions on metonymy. More info on this can be found [http://www.worldwidewamm.org/newsletters/2003/1003/treaty.html here] + +For the record, I suggested that language packs could be written by and for different language groups to teach high tech courses in the native languages. I didn't suggest that I or any other project members would write these extensions, merely that I could make the web management console extensible in this way and possibly help them find the resource files for the translation. There was no "agreement" except to stop polluting Beth Brownfield's inbox and voicemail with the byproducts of our collective paranoia. + +(Oh, by the way, I told the Pope you guys would port the docs to Latin. Yeah. In return, he's going to call off the dogs in the Spanish Inquisition for using a spanish name in our project. Chop-chop, Hannibal's at the gate.) + = Related Links = * Some interesting reading about [http://www.indians.org/welker/geronimo.htm Geronimo]. * Geronimo's [http://odur.let.rug.nl/~usa/B/geronimo/geronixx.htm biography]. + * [http://www.aniwaya.org/write/writings/write021-geronimo-campaign.html A Chiricahua Apache's Account] of Geronimo's 1886 Campaign + * Did George Bush's Grandfather really [http://www.pa56.org/skullandbones.htm steal Geronimo's skull?] while at Yale?
