williamaveryhudson

This 2007 resolution makes some strong points. A lot of work will be needed to make it happen. But brave, fun work - and what a payoff!

Just a few extracts, focusing on intellectual property, technology transfer, and cultural production (emphasis added):

Indigenous peoples are organizing themselves for political, economic, social and cultural enhancement and in order to bring to an end all forms of discrimination and oppression wherever they occur, …

Respect for indigenous knowledge, cultures and traditional practices contributes to sustainable and equitable development and proper management of the environment, …

Indigenous peoples have the right to practise and revitalize their cultural traditions and customs. This includes the right to maintain, protect and develop the past, present and future manifestations of their cultures, such as archaeological and historical sites, artefacts, designs, ceremonies, technologies and visual and performing arts and literature. …

Indigenous peoples have the right to revitalize, use, develop and transmit to future generations their histories, languages, oral traditions, philosophies, writing systems and literatures, and to designate and retain their own names for communities, places and persons. …

Indigenous peoples have the right to establish their own media in their own languages and to have access to all forms of non-indigenous media without discrimination….

Indigenous peoples have the right to their traditional medicines and to maintain their health practices, including the conservation of their vital medicinal plants, animals and minerals. Indigenous individuals also have the right to access, without any discrimination, to all social and health services….

Indigenous peoples have the right to the conservation and protection of the environment and the productive capacity of their lands or territories and resources. States shall establish and implement assistance programmes for indigenous peoples for such conservation and protection, without discrimination….

Indigenous peoples have the right to maintain, control, protect and develop their cultural heritage, traditional knowledge and traditional cultural expressions, as well as the manifestations of their sciences, technologies and cultures, including human and genetic resources, seeds, medicines, knowledge of the properties of fauna and flora, oral traditions, literatures, designs, sports and traditional games and visual and performing arts. They also have the right to maintain, control, protect and develop their intellectual property over such cultural
heritage, traditional knowledge, and traditional cultural expressions.

Download the entire document at the website of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues.

technorati tags: united nations UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues indigenous people intellectual property

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*Marnie Stern – Put All Your Eggs in One Basket (In Advance of the Broken Arm) [pitchfork]
M.I.A. – Bamboo Banga (Kala) [pitchfork]
The Noisettes – The Count of Monte Christo (What’s the Time Mr. Wolf?) [pitchfork]
Patti Smith – Everybody Wants to Rule the World (Twelve) [pitchfork]
Queens of the Stone Age – I’m Designer (Era Vulgaris) [pitchfork]
Rob Crow – Up (Living Well) [pitchfork]
Faces Down Quartet/Sondre Lerche – She’s Fantastic (Phantom Punch) [pitchfork]
The White Stripes – Conquest (Icky Thump) [pitchfork]
Malouma – Nebine (Nour)
Feist – The Water (The Reminder) [pitchfork]
LCD Soundsystem – New York I Love You But You’re Bringing Me Down (Sound of Silver) [pitchfork]

*Bloc Party - The Prayer (A Weekend in the City) [pitchfork]
Arcade Fire - Windowsill (Neon Bible) [pitchfork]
Björk - Earth Intruders (Volta) [pitchfork]
Elliott Smith - Pretty Mary K (New Moon) [pitchfork]
The Fiery Furnaces - Pricked in the Heart (Widow City) [pitchfork]
*Kevin Drew - Fucked Up Kid, Safety Bricks, Big Love (Spirit If…) [pitchfork]
Metric - Raw Sugar (Grow Up and Blow Away) [pitchfork]
Jim White; Nina Nastasia - I’ve Been Out Walking (You Follow Me) [pitchfork]
The Pipettes - Judy (We Are the Pipettes) [pitchfork]
PJ Harvey - When Under Ether (White Chalk) [pitchfork]
*Scout Niblett - Dinosaur Egg (The Fool Can Die Now) [pitchfork]

*essential

I’m sure I missed so many. Send them to me.

technorati tags: pop music

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Friday 14 December
What to say, a perfect night of dance. Molissa Fenley understands music like Martha Graham did. She taught me how to hear Rite of Spring tonight, and not only. I wish I could show you a clip.

Calculus and Politics (Premiere)
Choreography: Molissa Fenley
Music: Harry Partch, Castor and Pollux (1952)
Dancers: Ashley Brunning, Eric Jackson Bradley, Katie McGreevy, Cassie Mey, Luke Miller, Paul Singh, Dusan Tynek

Lava Field (2004)
Choreography: Molissa Fenley
Music: John Bischoff, Piano 7hz (2004)
Performed live by John Bischoff
Dancers: Ashley Brunning, Molissa Fenley, Cassie Mey, Paz Tanjuaquio
Inspired by the immense lava fields of Hawaii and the nightmarchers who protect them.

Ashley Brunning is an intelligent, strong & beautiful dancer. Paired with Molissa Fenley, she is, well - 23 is not 53, and thank God for both. So much dance is monogenerational, when you see a multigenerational performance it looks startlingly rich with new meaning. And you wonder, why isn’t it done more?

State of Darkness (1988)
Choreography: Molissa Fenley
Music: Igor Stravinsky, Le Sacre du Printemps (1913)
Dancer: Jonathan Porretta, Pacific Northwest Ballet

The first performance to make me wonder what it was like to see Nijinsky.

The New York Times review.

Do not miss Sunday, December 16, when Rachel Foster is dancing State of Darkness.

###

technorati tags: dance

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It starts.

The 2008 Berlinale Forum will open on February 8, 2008 with films by Guy Maddin and Isabella Rossellini.
The Berlin festival includes international premiers of Guy Maddin’s new film My Winnipeg and Isabella Rossellini’s short film Green Porno.

From the press release (links added): Guy Maddin is one of the most idiosyncratic and best-known filmmakers in Canada. Isabella Rossellini and Maddin regularly work on joint projects, the two are also already familiar to the Berlinale audience as a creative team. Their joint film My Dad Is 100 Years Old could be seen as a Berlinale Special in 2006. It was an homage to Roberto Rossellini, the actress’ father. Recently, in the Berlinale Forum 2007, the two presented a highlight of the festival with the spectacular staging of Maddin’s “Brand Upon the Brain!” at the Deutsche Oper.

Visit the websites of the Berlinale and International Forum.

film festivals berlinale berlin

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Selective highlights from a comprehensive seminar presented by Landmark West (www.landmarkwest.org) on 10 December. Presenters at this day-long meeting included:

• Françoise Bollack, AIS, Françoise Bollack Architects (www.francoisebollackarchitects.com)
• Craig Graber, AIA LEED, Viridian Energy & Environmental, LLC (www.viridianee.com)
• Andrew Padian, Steven Winter Associates (www.swinter.com)
• Jean Parker Phifer, FAIA, LEED, Thomas Phifer & Partners (www.tphifer.com)
• Walter Sedovic, AIA, LEED, Walter Sedovic Architects (www.modernruins.com)

Each presenter had his or her own view on everything from terminology to best practices, so this is by no means a consensus document. Just my highly idiosyncratic take on some of the less obvious tips (we’ve all replaced those incandescent bulbs, right?). You can visit their websites for a better sense of individual practices and philosophies.

Landmark West, a preservation committee on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, sponsors seminars regularly for coop board members, real estate brokers and other interested people. Many are accredited for New York State Real Estate License Continuing Education Credits. For more information, visit the group’s events page.

Easy Steps - Practical Advice for Householders

• Stop TiVo’ing - get a life. Connect your cable box, DVD player, television, entertainment center to a surge suppressor and switch it off when you’re away or asleep.
• Count watts. Each watt 24/7/365 is $1.75; the cost of a hundred-watt bulb left on 24/7 is $175 for a year.
• Earmark your ConEd payment for renewable energy. New Yorkers can direct their energy payments to renewable sources through ConEdison Solutions (www.conedsolutions.com). More information about renewable sources of energy in the region can be found at the Northeast Sustainable Energy Association website (www.nesea.org).
• Stop showering in the sink. A easy and cheap solution (pennies, literally) with a big effect. Change the faucet aerator in your bathroom sink from 2 gallons/min (sweet for showers) to 0.5 gallons/min (fine for hands).
• Paint healthy, paint cheap. Benjamin Moore EcoSpec, for example, costs less than Benjamin Moore Regal.
• Buy a dual-flush toilet (with a “pee-poo” switch). Read the technical paper.
• Bamboo isn’t necessarily a green building material. Much is transported from the other side of the planet, and much is impregnated with formaldehyde.

A Few Advantages of Green Roofs

• They don’t contribute to summer heat entering the building. Plants transpire, with a cooling effect.
• They reduce storm water runoff. (Fewer subway crises! Cleaner beaches!)
• They gather and cleanse rain water and “gray water,” which can then be stored and used for toilets, radiators, etc. We’re crazy to flush our toilets with potable (drinking) water.
• They moderate the “heat island” effect caused by paving, air-conditioning and other urban/suburban artifacts.

Tips: Call a structural engineer first, to determine how much weight your roof will support. Use native plants for easy maintenance.
Need a cheaper alternatives to a green roof? Use light-colored materials to cover your roof (reflects instead of absorbs summer sunlight). Drain runoff water from roof into a holding tank.

Window Awnings
From the glory days of Riverside Drive. Bring them out of storage. Awnings are elegant and they shade the exterior from direct summer sunlight, keeping the heat from ever hitting the building.

Keep Those Historic Windows
Don’t waste that rare old-growth wood. The replacement window industry has greatly overstated the energy cost savings of ditching historic wooden window frames for replacements made of aluminum, vinyl, etc. Historic wooden frames, usually made of old-growth, densely ringed, durable lumber, can be restored for superior energy efficiency, cost effectiveness, good looks, and sustainability. Download the peer-reviewed article.

Funding Sources
Sources of funding for green buildings in New York State include the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (www.nyserda.org) and nationally at the Environmental Protection Agency website (www.epa.gov)

See also The U.S. Green Building Council website for more resources (www.usgbc.org). And, of course, PlaNYC.

green buildings green roofs energy efficiency sustainability architecture

Comments and Links Appreciated!

Analysis fails. She is essential. Brilliant exposition on Teotihuacán and Moche cultures, and generally on our New World heritage.

I hope her publishers will tolerate some extensive quotes (purchase information below) -

Thinking with Things

If early, tribal, and archaic people had not possessed rational minds, the ability to reason, to analyze cause and effect, to be able to distinguish material from mythic, we would not be here. There would have been no tools, no crafts, no plant and animal domestication, and no agricultural revolution. No amount of magic weaves a basket. Despite their myths and trances, most people are remarkably practical….

I doubt that in rationality and adherence to myth or group cultural values, there is much difference between a nineteenth-century Apache and today’s Columbia undergraduates.

Iconoclasm/Aestheticism

Writing creates the existence of immaterial history. It is thinking with signs rather than with things. Thinking with things is thinking, at least partly, with the body….

The Portrait and the Mask: Invention and Translation

My argument is that naturalism is always potentially available for the artist – that is, it does not take generations to master it – but only at certain times has it been chosen as a preferred visual language.

Aesthetics and Pre-Columbian Art

It has often been said in archaic societies, art is the handmaiden of religion. Concomitant with that is the fact that in such societies there is no word for “art.”… although its subjects are often religious, art is, more correctly, the handmaiden of society.

Figure 16.7 “Drawing of beans and bean warriors from a Moche vessel” alone is worth the price.

Read her book Thinking with Things: Toward a New Vision of Art.

Teotihuacán pre-columbian art aesthetics

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Mignone J, Bartlett J, O’Neil J, Orchard T. Best practices in intercultural health: five case studies in Latin America.
J Ethnobiol Ethnomed. 2007 Sep 5;3:31. PMID: 17803820

Health researchers from the University of Manitoba and Simon Fraser University in British Columbia surveyed five integrative medicine programs in Latin America. In this comprehensive article, they analyze the programs from the perspective of intercultural health, which they define as “practices in health care that bridge indigenous medicine and western medicine, where both are considered as complementary.”

From the abstract:

The practice of integrating western and traditional indigenous medicine is fast becoming an accepted and more widely used approach in health care systems throughout the world. However, debates about intercultural health approaches have raised significant concerns. This paper reports findings of five case studies on intercultural health in Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Guatemala, and Suriname. It presents summary information on each case study, comparatively analyzes the initiatives following four main analytical themes, and examines the case studies against a series of the best practice criteria.

The authors report on five collaborations between western allopathic practitioners and traditional shamans, comadronas (midwives), herbalists, and other indigenous healers in both urban and rural locations:

• Suriname: Medical Mission & Amazon Conservation Team clinics in Trio villages (Kwamalasamutu & Pëlele Tëpu)
• Guatemala: Comadronas (Midwives) Association in Comalapa, Kaslen Foundation, health center (Comalapa & surrounding areas)
• Chile: Makewe Pelale Hospital, Boroa Health Centre, Mapuche Pharmacy (Temuco & surrounding areas)
• Ecuador: Jambi Huasi Clinic/Midwife Association/Yachac Association (Otavalo & surrounding areas)
• Colombia: Consejo Regional Indígena del Cauca/Asociación Indígena del Cauca/Instituciones Prestadores de Servicios de Salud (Popayan & other areas in Cauca region)

Among the constraints and risks was, interestingly, resistance from some churches (for example, opposition to shamanic healing). Others included resistance from some allopathic practitioners; uncertain legal/regulatory status of indigenous practitioners; lack of secure funding; iatrogenic risks; and lack of adequate systems for data collection.

The authors note several positive effects of these intercultural collaborations, including an apparent increase in access to both types of health care; low cost of indigenous health care compared to western medicine; and benefits to “indigenous community development” (reappraisal of indigenous knowledge and cultural continuation, and other positive effects in key health determinants such as nutrition and employment).

Several of the authors work at the Centre for Aboriginal Health Research in Manitoba. The center’s website maintains, among other resources, a comprehensive database of global indigenous health research resources and links.

For new posts about free-access, peer-reviewed articles reviewing complementary medicine theory, practice and policy, visit my new blog CAMWATCH.

complementary medicine complementary and alternative medicine integrative medicine ethnomedicine intercultural health

Comments and Links Appreciated!