My academic portfolio includes a variety of research papers written throughout my recent six and half year journey through academia. I completed my Master of Arts in English Writing in May 2019. At 56 years old I went back to school and started from scratch… It’s never too late. 

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December 2014 – University of Massachusetts Amherst, University Without Walls, Reflections on Technology – by, Pamela Leavey

How Online Democratic Innovators and Influencers Shaped Election 2004 and the Future of Internet Politics

            In the winter/spring of 2003, liberal and progressive political innovators and early adopters[1] had taken to the internet to protest the Iraq War and discuss the pressing need to defeat George W. Bush in the 2004 election. Political blogs, online discussion groups and political forums were a relatively new form of communication born of the computer and the internet in the late 1990’s, which grew out of the first online communities similar to Usenet.[2] While both sides of the political aisle adopted this form of communication, democratic operatives and activists had a mission steeped in their early adoption, to use blogs and forums to take on the “Republican Noise Machine”[3] whose primary outlet was Fox News, but included much of the mainstream media of the time. These technological innovations in digital communication rose in prominence to shape the liberal/progressive online activism in the 2004 election cycle and the future of politics online.

Many of the innovators and early adopters participating in this new lectern of political activism embraced the open sourced technology that Vaidhyanathan refers to in Open Source as Culture/Culture as Open Source.[4]  Popular open source platforms that “enable and empower e-mail, the World Wide Web, IRC (Internet Relay Chat), and just about every activity on the Internet all emerged from community-based project teams, often ad hoc and amateur,”[5] became the platforms for online communities which proved vital to Election 2004. These open source platforms provided the vital technology for political blogs and forums, with programs like Google Blogger, Word Press, Moveable Type, and TypePad, as well as open source forum platforms. Candidates as well as independent bloggers utilized open source technology to encourage political discussion online.

Through this technology, political campaigns and other partisan groups and organizations, created online communities that facilitated a new opportunity for candidates to engage with supporters and undecided voters, as well allow supporters to discuss vital topical political issues. Individual bloggers swiftly became citizen journalists[6] and commentators, in the midst of the election cycle, reporting on political news, campaign events and speeches, and the culture of remixing political news into mashup videos, recordings, and graphic memes[7] became a popular mode of political expression as people indulged in new modes of cultural sharing.

Pew Research Center’s Internet Project called Election 2004 “a breakout year for the role of the internet in politics.”[8] Statistics show that “75 million Americans – 37% of the adult population and 61% of online Americans – used the internet”[9] during the election cycle to access information about the candidates and political news, as well as discuss and debate the candidates and issues online and via email. The internet also proved to be a popular mode of direct participation as candidates websites provided webpages for grassroots volunteers to sign-up and volunteer for campaigns both online and on the ground. Research shows that the internet offered “greater precision in campaign targeting at each stage of the get-out-the-vote (GOTV) process: locating likely supporters, establishing communication lines with them, delivering messages to them, affording them opportunities to help the campaign, and making sure that they registered and cast their ballots.”[10] Finally, the internet also facilitated an easy means for making political contributions to the candidates with pages on candidates websites, set up specifically for donations.

As an innovator and early adopter in online politics, I was actively engaged in Election 2004 and Election 2008. My career as a political blogger and social media activist began in the winter of 2003, as Election 2004 was just beginning to heat up with online debates focused on the various Democratic candidates. At this time, Howard Dean had emerged as the internet savvy favorite, while John Kerry, the eventual Democratic nominee, had little presence on the internet.

As technologies grew in scope and use in the political arena, it was the innovators, early adopters,[11] and opinion leaders,[12] who paved the way for the future of online politics with their “desire for civic engagement.”[13] On the heels of successfully self-marketing my online business for the past five—six years, I began to get involved in online social activism and political conversation about the upcoming 2004 election. Noticing that Howard Dean was getting a great deal of attention online, and my preferred candidate, John Kerry was not, I decided that if I had been successful in marketing my own business online, with $120,000 in gross sales in 2002, then I could successfully market my support for John Kerry online as well. I began to write about Kerry on online discussion boards and soon I was invited to write on the first unofficial John Kerry for President Blog.[14]

It would take a few months for the Kerry campaign to catch on to harnessing the power of the voices of the innovators and early adopters of the 2004 election, the bloggers and online activists who would influence many potential voters over the course of the election cycle. Nonetheless, the Kerry campaign did catch on, with the help of a few outspoken volunteers, including myself who had coalesced on various online Democratic forums and unofficial blogs in support of his candidacy. My role as an innovator in Election 2004 swiftly positioned me in the midst of the Kerry campaign, as the campaign blog’s “First Blogger,” as I began writing for the Kerry campaign blog in the late summer of 2003. My skills garnered from running an online business were quickly adapted to other responsibilities for the campaign. I organized early online volunteers, distributed campaign talking points to the volunteers, and I was a key moderator for the Kerry campaign blog and forum from fall 2003, through the primary season into the Democratic National Convention. In this capacity, I had a wide variety of participatory experience on the effects of the internet on the early stages of Election 2004, which afforded me a unique understanding of how the innovators and early adopters on the internet helped shape and define Election 2004.

Online campaign blogs that allowed comments and discussions on blog posts, as the John Kerry Campaign Blog did, gave “ordinary citizens a better chance at being heard than such control-heavy media as television”[15] and other traditional media. Suddenly, ordinary Americans had the opportunity to speak their minds directly to the candidates and their staff and express their opinions online on important campaign issues. Online activists could feel for the first time that their voices were heard in ways they had never experienced in past presidential elections. They were able to feel as though they were part of the campaign in a much more direct way than ever. Indeed, this was evidence that the Internet was “transforming the basic vehicles for voluntary political action on a broad scale.”[16]

As the Kerry campaign’s first volunteer blogger, I was also a political novice, small business owner and single mother. Regular visitors to the campaign blog, who read my posts and conversed with me in the comments section, came away with the sense that Kerry’s campaign was open to the opinions of the online activist. The media had noticed this attribute with Howard Dean’s early use of the blog as a website tool for his campaign. As the media primarily focused on the Dean campaign’s use of online activists, volunteer bloggers, and his fundraising prowess online, the Kerry campaign was steadily building their own team of online activists, under the wire, who would prove to be of great value in Kerry’s successful bid for the Democratic nomination.

In the early days of the Kerry campaign blog, fall 2003, with access to the back-end moderation panel, I worked with the blogmaster Dick Bell, to reach out to members who had signed up to comment on the campaign blog. With a discerning eye towards commenters who seemed to have genuine interest in the campaign, we courted members to work on various independent democratic blogs and forums. The goal was to utilize volunteers to share talking points distributed by the campaign. This was uncharted and risky territory for a presidential campaign, trusting the dissemination of talking points to a small contingent of grassroots volunteers.

As the contingent of grassroots volunteers worked behind the scenes as socially integrated online opinion leaders[17], it became clear to Kerry’s campaign staff that there was merit in utilizing the internet as a means of campaign communication. The majority of the group of “knowledgeable and well informed[18],” opinion leaders were well-informed news consumers who used their “personal influence to help[19]” others form positive opinions about John Kerry as well as encourage them to volunteer for the campaign. As the group of volunteers, I managed grew in numbers, we shifted from utilizing an email list to disseminate campaign information, to a private, independent open source forum for members of the team.

Within a short time, it became evident that the campaign would benefit from a similar online forum, separate from the campaign blog, and I reached out to Kerry’s campaign staff to propose an online campaign forum that a team of volunteers would run, under the campaign staff’s supervision. As soon as the campaign approved the proposal, the campaign installed the open source forum technology on the campaign website, and a private section of the forum was set up for the volunteers and campaign staff to continue their work behind the scenes. With this forum, the campaign had widened its scope in the use of technology to enable another facet of communication for internet users interested in the campaign.

Both the blog and the forum provided valuable information to the campaign on the pulse of opinion on the candidate and the issues that were important to supporters. Volunteers would report to staff on topics they felt were of importance to the staff and the candidate. There was a great feeling of democracy in action distilled among those who participated in this grassroots effort for the Kerry campaign. While dissent and debate were inevitable parts of the conversations on both the campaign blog and the forum, volunteers labored to change the hearts and minds of those dissenters not clearly identified as internet trolls.

The discernable shift in political campaigning that had primarily been an on the ground operation, shifted to a dual focus, on the ground and online. Common sense guidelines in communication online were necessary for the grassroots volunteers who were, for all intents and purpose, the face of the campaign and the candidate. Just as a verbal gaffe made by a candidate could prove troublesome, so too could the words of volunteer or unaffiliated commenter, be taken out of context and used as political ammunition.

Online campaign platforms like emails, blogs and forum quickly became source for fodder in the news and for political opponents in the primaries and then the general election. While the internet could be seen as a boon to political campaigns in the 2004 election, they were still uncharted territory and every candidate’s campaign staff was learning on the fly how to harness and utilize this new technology effectively. No one had written the book yet on campaigning online.

The concept of independent political blogs was relatively a new phenomenon that was just taking hold in the 2004 election cycle. The 24/7 news cycle was not quite in full swing during the 2004 election cycle, as it is today, however, it did not take long for independent bloggers to latch onto to an item found while browsing a campaign blog or forum and disperse it online. If newsworthy, the media would swiftly latch on to story as well, because members of the mainstream media were reading[20] and paying attention to what was said on campaign blogs and independent blogs as well. However independent blogs were making inroads, some bloggers quickly rose in influence as both media, and campaign staff paid heed to what bloggers were saying outside of the sphere of the candidate’s blogs. In fact, the influence of leading democratic leaning blogs had enough impact for the 2004 Democratic Convention to be the first national political convention to give press credentials to bloggers, as well as the media.[21]

There was a consensus among democratic and progressive bloggers that the Republican Noise Machine essentially controlled the media. The goal for many left leaning bloggers was to drown out that noise machine through the emergent form of independent media, blogs. For democratic news seekers on the internet, these blogs provided an independent news source beyond the republican controlled media, which often presented a conservative bias towards political issues. Not only were liberals building their own brand of democratic news outlets in the popular medium of blogs which blossomed rapidly during the 2004 election cycle, they were also building social communities online with the express purpose of bringing democrats together to discuss the ideals and issues that were important to them.

Research shows that in 2004 election cycle, “52% of internet users, or about 63 million people, said they went online to get news or information about the 2004 elections.”[22] Of that 52% of internet users, 11% or “more than 13 million people, went online to engage directly in campaign activities such as donating money, volunteering, or learning about political events to attend.”[23] While these statistics show a substantial increase in internet use between Election 2000 and Election 2004, it is worthy to note that the democrats held a social edge in the 2004 election. The Pew Research Internet Project report on the 2004 election shows “Kerry supporters in the internet population were more active in online politics than Bush supporters[24].” While this did not secure a win for the Democratic nominee, John Kerry in the general election, it did signify a social progressive movement that was coalescing online in response to the perceived conservative bias in the media of which Fox News was the leading concern in right wing bias in the media[25].

There was exponential growth in the everyday audience of online news seekers as the general election neared in the fall of 2004. Online newsgathering had jumped 15% since the middle of the year, showing the “growth of nearly 75% in the daily online news audience from the middle of 2000.”[26] More and more people were turning to the internet as their primary source of news in general. We saw the advent of campaign events being live broadcast online as well as on the mainstream TV news stations. We also saw a greater proliferation of attack politics as the internet became a viable outlet, in conjunction with the mainstream media, to serve lies to the general public who were obtaining their news online.

Most notable in the proliferation of lies spread via the internet was the Swift Boating of John Kerry, which every conservative blog jumped on in a fury to discredit the Democratic nominee. In this, we see the adverse effects of the internet on politics in campaign 2004, for “the smears on Kerry by the Republican attack apparatus and Bush-Cheney’s systematic lying throughout the campaign represent a low point in U.S. electoral politics.”[27] Here we see with politics, the “dangers of looking for a technological fix for all our ills,”[28] on the internet, for internet can also cause great harm to our democracy in that the proliferation of political information shared online is often highly biased and or false, as it can be in the mainstream media. However, the internet is capable of making a vast amount of information available to a larger amount of people, than any other technological tool used in communication in history.

It is precisely this advantage offered by the use of the internet, which promotes the “potential for a democratic revitalization of the public sphere[29],” despite the need to keep a discerning eye on all information accessed online. The ability to have “two-way communication and democratic participation in public dialogue,” online is an “activity that is essential to producing a vital democracy.”[30] Indeed, the computer and the internet have had a great impact on political participation since the onset of online politics. Campaign 2004 became the breakout election cycle for internet politics leading to record participation of the public online.

Greater access of broadband for more people in America led to a greater number of Americans seeking news online and participating in the election process through candidate’s websites. For the Democrats, there was a greater push to share news through independent sourced media, in the form of blogs. These blogs and other independent news sources on the internet became the battleground for push back against mainstream news bias, which favored the incumbent president George W. Bush, despite the many scandals of the Bush administration, which “corporate media failed to investigate in any depth.”[31] Although the Democratic nominee, John Kerry was not victorious in 2004, his campaign was pivotal in preparing the way for the future of online politics, with the help of many innovators, early adopters and influencers throughout the entire election cycle. While I have focused here on the impact of volunteer activists and independent bloggers, it should also be noted that many professional innovators and influencers also worked tirelessly throughout the election cycle to forge the emergent path of online politics.

As Election 2004 proved to be the Internet Election[32], the evolution of technology and politics swiftly shifted onto social media platforms such as Facebook and Myspace, by Election 2008.[33] As presidential campaigns continued to utilize the technological platforms like blogs, forums, email and online videos, which were utilized in Election 2004, they also began to embrace a greater use of social media as an adjunct campaign tool in Election 2008. Following the wake of John Kerry in 2004, the Obama campaign successfully utilized the internet to an even greater extent than Kerry had in Election 2004, effectively organizing communities online and offline, as well as employing the internet for prolific small donor fundraising. Since his election, the Obama administration has successfully harnessed many of these early online tools and platforms to provide the most technologically advanced White House website to date.

In conclusion, participatory democracy has made great strides online in the past decade, much in part due to the influence of liberal/progressive innovators and early adopters who took to the new political frontier with a passion to participate in social communities whose sole focus was fostering political discussion and involvement. This participatory democracy has benefits and drawbacks and ultimately one must carefully discern the source of news and information online, just as they must with the media. The evolution of internet politics took a huge leap during Election 2004 due to the hard work and dedication of the innovators, early adopters and influencers involved in the political process of that election cycle, and we are still adapting and adopting how we utilize the internet for politics today.

References

Appleman, E. M. (2006). Kerry Supporters On the Web: Early Activity . Retrieved from Democracy in Action: http://www.gwu.edu/~action/2008/kerry/kerrywebactivity.html

Brock, D. (2004). The Republican Noise Machine: Right-Wing Media and How It Corrupts Democracy. Crown.

Carvin, A. (2007, December 24). Timeline: The Life of the Blog. Retrieved from NPR Special Series: The Evolution of the Blog: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=17421022

Ceruzzi, P. (2003). The “Problem” of Computer-Computer Communication, 1995-2000: A Technological Fix? In P. Ceruzzi, A History of Modern Computing. Routledge.

Cornfield, M. (2004, Winter). Grassroots Toolbox: The Internet and Political Campaigns. Insights on Law & Society 4.2, 1 – 4. Retrieved from http://www.americanbar.org/content/dam/aba/publishing/insights_law_society/politics_Insightswinter04.authcheckdam.pdf

Farrell, H., & Drezner, D. W. (2008). The power and politics of blogs. Public Choice, 134, 15 – 30. Retrieved from http://link.springer.com.silk.library.umass.edu/article/10.1007%2Fs11127-007-9198-1#

Green, L. (2002). Chapter Two: Technology, Adoption and Diffusion. In L. Green, Communication, Technology and Society. SAGE Publications Ltd.

Kellner, D. (2005, August). The Media and Election 2004. Cultural Studies <=> Critical Methodologies , Vol. 5(No. 3), 298 – 308. Retrieved from http://csc.sagepub.com.silk.library.umass.edu/content/5/3/298.full.pdf+html

Lessig, L. (2012). REMIX. In M. Mandiberg, & Editor, The Social Media Reader. NYU Press.

News Audiences Increasingly Politicized. (2004, June 8). Retrieved from Pew Research Center for the People & the Press: http://www.people-press.org/2004/06/08/news-audiences-increasingly-politicized/

Rainie, L., & Smith, A. (2008, June 15). The Internet and the 2008 Election. Retrieved from Pew Research Internet Project: http://www.pewinternet.org/2008/06/15/the-internet-and-the-2008-election/

Rainie, L., Horrigan, J., & Cornfield, M. (2005, March 6). Part 1. The political and media landscape in 2004. Retrieved from Pew Research Internet Project: http://www.pewinternet.org/2005/03/06/part-1-the-political-and-media-landscape-in-2004/

Rainie, L., Horrigan, J., & Cornfield, M. (2005, March 6). The Internet and Campaign 2004. Retrieved from Pew Research Center’s Internet Project: http://www.pewinternet.org/2005/03/06/the-internet-and-campaign-2004/

Sosnik, D. B., & Dowd, M. J. (2006). Applebee’s America. Simon & Schuster.

Vaidhyanathan, S. (2012). Open Source as Culture. In M. Mandiberg, & Editor, The Social Media Reader. NYU Press .

Williams, A. P., & Tedesco, J. C. (Eds.). (2006). The Internet election : perspectives on the Web in campaign 2004. Rowman & Littlefield. Retrieved from http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=GYZjlgs0wOIC&oi=fnd&pg=PR7&dq=related:QPYEbOYQ26wJ:scholar.google.com/&ots=YsHs2p8Tsu&sig=L_1wXIUE1_8LOOdiiO1SFOkacVA#v=onepage&q&f=false

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[1] (Green, 2002, p. 31)

[2] (Ceruzzi, 2003, p. 211)

[3] (Brock, 2004)

[4] (Vaidhyanathan, 2012)

[5] (Vaidhyanathan, 2012, p. 27)

[6] (Sosnik & Dowd, 2006, pp. 172 – 176)

[7] (Lessig, 2012)

[8] (Rainie, Horrigan, & Cornfield, 2005)

[9] (Rainie, Horrigan, & Cornfield, 2005)

[10] (Rainie, Horrigan, & Cornfield, Part 1. The political and media landscape in 2004, 2005)

[11] (Green, 2002, pp. 31-33)

[12] (Green, 2002, pp. 36-38)

[13] (Sosnik & Dowd, 2006, p. 147)

[14] (Appleman, 2006)

[15] (Cornfield, 2004, p. 4)

[16] (Cornfield, 2004, p. 2)

[17] (Green, 2002, pp. 36-38)

[18] (Green, 2002, p. 35)

[19] (Green, 2002, p. 35)

[20] (Farrell & Drezner, 2008, p. 23)

[21] (Carvin, 2007)

[22] (Rainie, Horrigan, & Cornfield, 2005)

[23] (Rainie, Horrigan, & Cornfield, 2005)

[24] (Rainie, Horrigan, & Cornfield, 2005)

[25] (News Audiences Increasingly Politicized, 2004)

[26] (Rainie, Horrigan, & Cornfield, Part 1. The political and media landscape in 2004, 2005)

[27] (Kellner, 2005)

[28] (Ceruzzi, 2003, p. 215)

[29] (Kellner, 2005, p. 304)

[30] (Kellner, 2005, p. 304)

[31] (Kellner, 2005, p. 299)

[32] (Williams & Tedesco, 2006)

[33] (Rainie & Smith, The Internet and the 2008 Election, 2008)

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Strategies of Post Colonization Tribal Revitalization, by Pamela Leavey

Every tribal community has struggled and suffered from the effects of colonization, however, they each have experiences unique to their culture and history.  Some tribes have been more effective than others have, in dealing with and changing their conditions, which were imposed by the impact of colonization, and their interactions with the American government, religion and industrialization. As each tribe possesses a unique set of traditions and has a distinct culture, so too, each tribes’ method of effecting change is different as well.

Effective modes of transforming specific tribal communities include the work of the Northwest Coast tribes to sustain their culture through art, as well as the impact the Indigenous resistance movement of the 1970’s, more specifically, AIM and the Wounded Knee Incident, that inspired tribal members across the United States, and facilitated in an Indigenous resurgence in activism on the issues of tribal cultures, traditions and rights. Also of note, are the programs instituted by different tribes that focus on revitalizing tribal languages and finally the efforts of specific tribes in the areas of food sustainability and alternative energy.

The topic of art revitalization in the Northwest Coast draws on the inspirations of tribal mythologies that define the tribes connection to the land as well as “the realm of animals and spirits,”[1] pointing to the dependency of the tribes to all aspects of the Earth as Mother, including their reliance on all of their animal relations. Art and creative expression are integrated in everyday life in the Northwest cultures and is considered “work,” with some aspects seen as uniquely “women’s work,”[2] and other aspects construed as a man’s work, yet these everyday handiworks are viable as forms creative expression. There is a ritualistic aspect of the creation of art, including functional art forms, designed with spirit entities as a form of spiritual and creative expression used in both Northwest Coast traditional tribal art and contemporary tribal art. Examples of everyday and ritual art forms in one Northwest Coast art gallery include bowls, drums, masks, paddles, rattles, clothing and jewelry.[3]

The art of the Northwest Coast serves to link the past with the present, as it maintains the connection of traditions and culture in spite of the struggles the area’s tribes have endured. Also prevalent in the work of contemporary Northwest Coast art is the representation of resistance to acculturation and assimilation through the use of symbology that is evocative of their struggles against governmental, industrial, military and religious oppression. 

The Wounded Knee Incident of 1973 was fueled by a resurgence of tribal resistance by traditionalist members of the Oglala Lakota and American Indian Movement (AIM), who also inspired other tribes to activism across the United States in the 1970’s.  The Incident was a 71-day siege on the town of Wounded Knee, located on the Pine Ridge Reservation, which had been the location of the Wounded Knee massacre of Sioux peoples by the U.S. Army in 1890. The plan, devised by the traditionalist Oglala tribal members and members of AIM, to seize and occupy Wounded Knee was an attempt to draw attention to complaints of abuses against the Oglala peoples inflicted by their United States government appointed Tribal Council leader Dick Wilson.[4] The Incident garnered national and worldwide attention in the media, as it drew attention to tribal injustices on Pine Ridge Reservation.

Unfortunately, the Incident at Wounded Knee “did not bring about immediate reforms sought by the American Indian Movement activists,” however the worldwide media coverage of the siege “did succeed to bringing national attention to plight of American Indians and promoting Indian cultural identity.”[5] The Incident also “proved that despite centuries of encroachment, warfare, and neglect, Indians remained a vital force in the life of America.”[6] Although the Incident was a controversial confrontation with the American government, evoking mixed emotions and reactions from tribal peoples, and resulting in little change for the Oglala Lakota, the resistance movement it sprouted expanded the way for future resistance as well as transformation and revitalization efforts for other tribal communities.

As language is a central characteristic of culture and civilization, the efforts to revitalize tribal language among various tribes has been a vital factor in confronting the cultural losses incurred on tribes due to relocation, acculturation and assimilation. Key to the regeneration of tribal languages is the renewal of tribal identity and community individualism amongst tribes working to these ends. The Athabascan of Alaska suffered a significant loss of their language due to the role of both mission and government schools in the region as well as the consequences of disease “during the epidemics of the early 1990’s.”[7] Community involvement in language programs has proved to be critical for working past the previous suppression of the Athabascan language.

Likewise, in the realm of language revitalization, the Cherokee tribe has worked on an early childhood immersion program, which has increased Cherokee language use among families and communities across generations of the tribe’s peoples. The Cherokee people endured the effects of relocation, acculturation and assimilation, which directly affected the use of the Cherokee language. Despite this, the Cherokee language boasts more published literature than any other tribe does, nevertheless, the Cherokee people have struggled to keep their language alive against views of contempt for “the primitiveness of Indigenous languages.”[8] Families involved in the Cherokee early childhood immersion program noted valuable benefits from the program such as, increased self-esteem and pride. Key to the Cherokee efforts in language renewal is their objective to maintain and use their language as opposed to simply preserving it.

Language revitalization programs can furthermore be seen, as a direct result of the previously noted Native American activism of the 1970’s that motivated tribal resistance and instituted a resurgence claims of sovereignty issues, as well as shining a light on tribal human rights and pursuing cultural revitalization activities. In fact, the afore mentioned “Native American activism was successful in gaining legislation to protect and promote Native American sovereignty, including the right to teach and use Native languages, through the Indian Education Act of 1972, the Indian Self-Determination and Educational Assistance Act of 1975, and the Native American Languages Acts of 1990-92.”[9] These policies initiated a renewed interest in revitalizing tribal languages, and today, thanks to technology, we see further efforts by some tribes to teach, learn and preserve tribal languages.

The Passamaquoddy tribe of Maine has been involved in undertakings to utilize the computer and other tools of the digital age on their Pleasant Point and Indian Township reservations, in an ongoing endeavor to revitalize their language. Those efforts include publishing a Passamaquoddy dictionary in an affiliation with the University of Maine Press, Orono, Maine and the Goose lane Editions, Fredericton, New Brunswick,”[10] and publishing the dictionary on a website, the Passamaquoddy-Maliseet Language Portal.[11] The landing page of the Passamaquoddy-Maliseet Language Portal pictures a tribal art illustration of dancers along with the message, “Mec-ote npomokahtipon. Mec-ote nuskicinuwatuwahtipon” which means, “We are still dancing and speaking our language.”[12]

Indeed, the Passamaquoddy are quite actively involved in a revitalization program that goes beyond the scope of teaching students in their grade school in this tribal language and publication of their Passamaquoddy dictionary. The tribe is also involved with Language Keepers, a “project of the National Science Foundation and National Endowment for the Humanities Documenting Endangered Languages Program.”[13] The Language Keepers Project is “an innovative approach combining descriptive linguistics, documentary video, and community outreach to revive speaker groups to use heritage language in traditional and contemporary activities while recording it for language learning, dictionary development, research, cultural transmission, and revival.”[14] Through this project, “a groundbreaking web application developed in collaboration with Speaking Place of Rockland and Northeast Historic Film of Bucksport,” has been created that “links the 19,000-word Passamaquoddy on-line dictionary with over one hundred videos produced by documentarians Ben Levine and Julia Schulz of Speaking Place.”[15] This is a strong example of very recent efforts by a tribe to embrace technology in order to bring about renewed interest in their language. In conjunction with the videos produced by the documentarians, Donald Soctomah, the Passamaquoddy Tribal Historian, also announced the “accessibility of an audio archive, recorded and uploaded to the Portal by community members,”[16] via the use of the web application. This inspiring utilization of technology “adds the dynamic of social media to the mix, making it more likely that this endangered language will survive in a new generation of younger people who were not taught to speak but who want to learn.”[17] The potential for other tribes to embrace the use of technology to preserve and maintain their languages is encouraging, and it mirrors the use of technology in other arenas, being utilized by some tribes.

A final example of tribal efforts to transform their circumstances and communities in the wake of the long-standing effects of colonization is the work Winona LaDuke is doing with renewable energy and food sustainability on her White Earth Reservation in Minnesota. Through her non-profit organization, LaDuke has also embraced technology and installed solar panels on homes, which reduce heat bills by 20%. She has also erected a large wind turbine that not only helps to power her community, but also creates extra energy which is sold back to the off reservation power company that is the main source of energy for the reservation.[18] LaDuke’s non-profit organization also works in the matter of food sustainability, which is critical for the health and well-being of her people. In fact, LaDuke believes having a “re-localized, centralized, decentralized strategy for,” as well as energy systems, is “going to be essential for building a durable society.”[19]

Ultimately, the well-being of tribal peoples is directly related to their relationship with the Earth in all aspects of their lives including their cultures and traditions. There is a certain innate power, a tenacity, which has sustained the Indigenous people for centuries in the wake of great injustices and the systematic breakdowns of their traditions and cultures. The source of their “power” is, as John Trudell speculates, “something that emanates from us human beings,”[20]  and it connects with the “natural laws”[21] that human beings are bound to. These natural laws, this power, is embedded in the genetic memories[22] of the tribal peoples, as Trudell explains. This is what inspires persistence among the Indigenous people to keep moving forward while simultaneously striving to embrace their culture and traditions. In closing, I sense that John Trudell sums up the tenacity of the Tribal People in his poem, Look At Us… “Look at us we are embracing earth… Look at us, We are living in the generations… Look at us, We are healing… Look at us, We are children of the earth.”[23]

References

Dementi-Leonard, B., & Gilmore, P. (1999). Language Revitalization and Identity in Social Context: A Community-Based Athabascan Language Preservation Project in Western Interior Alaska. Anthropology & Education Quarterly.

Experience, P. T. (Director). (2009). We Shall Remain: Episode 5: Wounded Knee [Motion Picture]. Retrieved from http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/weshallremain/the_films/episode_5_trailer

Food, Energy and Sustainability (2010). [Motion Picture].

Language Keepers: Documenting Endangered Language for Education, Research, and Revival. (n.d.). Retrieved from Languagekeepers.org/: http://www.languagekeepers.org/

Pasamaquoddy Language. (n.d.). Retrieved from Wabanaki.com: http://www.wabanaki.com/language.htm

Passamaquoddy-Maliseet Language Portal. (n.d.). Retrieved from PMPortal.org/: http://pmportal.org/

Peter, L. (2007). “Our Beloved Cherokee”: A Naturalistic Study of Cherokee Preschool Language Immersion. Anthropology & Education Quarterly.

Rae, H. (Director). (2005). Trudell [Motion Picture].

Schulz, J. (2014, January 27). Passamaquoddy Language Portal Now Offers Access on Mobile Devices. Bangor Daily News. Retrieved from http://bangordailynews.com/community/passamaquoddy-language-portal-now-offers-access-on-mobile-devices/

The Learning Network. (2012, May 8). May 8, 1973 | Standoff at Wounded Knee Comes to an End. New York Times. Retrieved from http://learning.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/08/may-8-1973-standoff-at-wounded-knee-comes-to-an-end/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0

Townsend-Gault, C. (1994, Fall). Northwest Coast Art: The Culture of Land Claims. American Indian Quarterly, 445 – 467. Retrieved March 2014

Trudell, J. (2008). Dna: Descendant Now Ancestor. Retrieved March 2014

Trudell, J. (2008). Lines from a Mined Mind. Golden, CO: Fulcrum Publishing. Retrieved March 2014

Vizenor, G. (1983). Dennis of Wounded Knee. American Indian Quarterly, 51 – 65. Retrieved March 2014

Welcome to Northwest Tribal Art . (n.d.). Retrieved from Northwest Tribal Art: http://www.northwesttribalart.com/

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[1] (Townsend-Gault, 1994)

[2] (Townsend-Gault, 1994)

[3] (Welcome to Northwest Tribal Art , n.d.)

[4] (Vizenor, 1983)

[5] (The Learning Network, 2012)

[6] (Experience, 2009)

[7] (Dementi-Leonard & Gilmore, 1999)

[8] (Peter, 2007)

[9] (Peter, 2007)

[10] (Pasamaquoddy Language, n.d.)

[11] (Passamaquoddy-Maliseet Language Portal, n.d.)

[12] (Passamaquoddy-Maliseet Language Portal, n.d.)

[13] (Language Keepers: Documenting Endangered Language for Education, Research, and Revival, n.d.)

[14] (Language Keepers: Documenting Endangered Language for Education, Research, and Revival, n.d.)

[15] (Schulz, 2014)

[16] (Schulz, 2014)

[17] (Schulz, 2014)

[18] (Food, Energy and Sustainability, 2010)

[19] (Food, Energy and Sustainability, 2010)

[20] (Rae, 2005)

[21] (Rae, 2005)

[22] (Trudell, 2008)

[23] (Trudell, Lines from a Mined Mind, 2008)

This research paper was written as a final for Anthropology, Sec 270 – North American Indians, May 4, 2014.

Fair Use Disclaimer: Any use of this paper must be cited as Pamela Leavey – Author.

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Human culture stands apart from the culture of other primates whose ancestry we share in the chain of human evolution. It is true, we were once as primitive as our relations, the apes and monkeys were and still are, however somewhere along the path of evolution, we developed uniquely human traits that furthered us a species. It is here that humans diverged from other early hominins and became human. Through the four evolutionary forces of natural selection, mutation, gene flow and genetic drift[1] working in tandem with adaptation of human characteristics over time, Homo sapiens evolved as the most complex and cultured species on the planet as we refined our use of first tools, and then language and agriculture, and subsequently shaped our ability to use technology to our advantage.  

While tool use and agriculture certainly contributed to our unique human skills, when humankind developed symbology and language as a form of communication, these inventions set us on a divergent course beyond the capabilities of any other living species in the animal kingdom. All other technological advancement stems from the use of symbology and language, and is indeed dependent on it. Language, symbology, verbal and written communication are the keys to our diverse human cultures, which are the foundation of our humanity.

All culture has been built around these cognitive skills, which we had the biological capability to utilize, long before they were put to use. Even agriculture, which is crucial to our existence, in that it provides the sustenance we need to live, is dependent on communication skills and tools. Anthropological studies show us that human social development did not all happen at once but over a period of time in which biological and cultural evolution worked in tandem creating symbology, language, and the skills needed to share those abilities cognitively with others within the social structure of early humans.[2] We know that in fact, most facets of our cultural development are recent in terms of human development.

An early and important characteristic of hominins, bipedalism, developed some six million years ago, however, the increase of the size of the brain and early tool use in the Homo genus developed nearly four million years later, an estimated two and half, to two million years ago.[3] As larger brains evolved, various aspects of intelligence evolved as well, from complex skills in tool creation and their use, which involved cognitive skills such as using logic to solve problems, to enhanced memory, intuitive and visual spatial skills, and ultimately language. These uniquely human skills and abilities define us now through our culture.

Although much of how we came to be human can be seen through the history of evolution and the four forces of evolution mentioned above, it is theorized that exaptation might also have played a part in the development of cognitive skills, which led first to tool use and then to language. We still do not know exactly what drove us to finally use our brains in the myriad of ways that we do, and we know that there was a huge gap in time between the development of the use of tools and that of language and culture, however, one hypothesis, is the process of exaptation.[4] As we seemingly emerged from tool fashioning to language use, many millennia after the first use of tools, we had first to evolve biologically to have the physical attributes that make up our vocal anatomy, which give us the ability to make sounds and communicate. Fossil research shows that biologically, humans are unique from apes, in that our hyoid bone and our larynx descend in our throats after infancy, creating the necessary anatomical mechanisms for speech.[5]

This human adaptation of the vocal anatomy is far more complex than the difference in our hyoid bone and larynx, and it has been suggested that the evolutionary adaptations necessary for the vocal anatomy in modern humans began as we evolved to bipedalism and upright posture.[6] We did not fully develop the use of these adaptations for many millennia after the adaptations evolved biologically. The vocal capability long existed prior to the first use of language, which noted above, possibly developed through the exaptation of biological adaptations, which were created, through natural selection and the other evolutionary forces at play in our origin.

Without the biological tools that humans adapted through our early evolution, we know that language would not exist, and without language, we would have no culture. For language is the very foundation of human culture. We are the only species to show the ability to mentally process and use symbols and language. Ian Tattersall observes that humans have the ability to break down their surroundings and their lives into words, which they can rearrange in their own minds, and completely, change their perception of things and events through the use of words and symbols.[7] Our cognitive skills give us the ability to live in a world that we have created that is different from anyone else’s world, because they cannot feel what we feel.[8] In this, humans are extraordinary and quite remarkable from other species in the animal kingdom.

Once we achieved the initial cognitive skills needed for communication, those skills, manifested into a wide variety of languages, which became the platform to continue to expand and evolve from, as humans embraced technology as an extension of ourselves, which in truth, one can posit, it is. These remarkable human aspects, Tattersall contends happened in two phases, the first, approximately 200 Ka in Africa, as humans morphed from the primitive body of Homo, and the second 100 Ka ago, also in Africa, as novel symbolic expressions arose from the more highly anatomically developed H. sapiens, that had the existing structure necessary for this type of expression.[9]

Indeed, one can posit that our ability to understand how and when we evolved comes from the evolution of our language skills, which Tattersall contends is our greatest symbolic endeavor.[10] We can look back to other skills acquired long before symbology and language, and see that tool making, building shelters, fire, trade, clothing, all early skills of our Homo ancestors,[11] have all taken on new and more importance with advent of language, as has agriculture, the other prior noted prodigious achievement of humans. Through language and agriculture, humans developed the early social culture that was dependent on these two exceptional and essential biological and cultural adaptations.

Symbology and language emerged approximately 50,000 years ago. There is evidence of earlier symbolic engravings in Africa dating back 77,000 years, however, we see the greatest emergence of cultural expression through language and symbols 40,000 – 50,000 years ago as humans began to expand their territory beyond Africa, into Asia and Europe.[12] Conflicting evidence of when and where culture emerged leads to the view that the emergent culture did not happen in one location at one time, but it happened cumulatively over a period of time, in Africa first. Like symbols and language, agriculture also did not emerge at once in just one location.

In fact, research shows that agriculture developed separately in the Old World and the New World, some 12,000 years ago.[13] While agriculture has certainly changed the way we eat, biologically we remain hunter—gatherers,[14] which gives us pause for thought that were are still evolving, as we have not fully adapted biologically to agriculture. Research shows that language and agriculture brought about a swifter rate of change for humans, as populations grew with the benefit of agriculture and societies grew from small communities to cities and states,[15] whose societies flourished with the advent of language and technology borne of language. 

In this, we understand the complexity of human development over the last 200,000 years when modern humans first emerged. Although biological human evolution has been ongoing for some 2.5 million years, the cultural adaptations that arose from the four evolutionary forces at play in our biological evolution appear through research to have been most prevalent in the past 10,000 – 50,000 years.

These more recent developments of language, symbology, and finally, agriculture have had significant impacts on humans culturally and biologically, and they truly substantiate the notion that these biological and cultural adaptations are what make us human. For it is through the biological and cultural adaptations of the past, that humanity arises in all of its biological and cultural glory as a single example of unparalleled evolutionary development; as Ian Tattersall notes, “That we Homo sapiens are the lone hominid in the world today tells us a great deal about quite how unusual we are…”[16]

References

Hill, J. H. (1972, June). On the Evolutionary Foundations of Language. American Anthropologist, 74(3), pp. 308 – 317. Retrieved from http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com.silk.library.umass.edu/doi/10.1525/aa.1972.74.3.02a00030/pdf

Relethford, J. H. (2010). The Human Species. McGraw-Hill.

Tattersall, I. (2008). An Evolutionary Framework for the Acquisition of Symbolic Cognition by Homo sapiens. Comparative Cognition & Behavior Reviews, 3, pp. 99 – 114. Retrieved from http://comparative-cognition-and-behavior-reviews.org/2008/vol3_tattersall/

Tattersall, I. (2009, September 22). Human origins: Out of Africa. PNAS, 6(38). Retrieved from http://www.pnas.org/content/106/38/16018.full

Tattersall, I. (2010). Human evolution and cognition. Theory in Biosciences. Retrieved from http://link.springer.com.silk.library.umass.edu/article/10.1007/s12064-010-0093-9/fulltext.html

Tomasello, M. (1999, October). THE HUMAN ADAPTATION FOR CULTURE. Annual Review of Anthropology, Vol. 28, pp. 509-529 . Retrieved from http://www.annualreviews.org.silk.library.umass.edu/doi/full/10.1146/annurev.anthro.28.1.509

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[1] (Relethford, 2010, p. p. 69)

[2] (Tomasello, 1999)

[3] (Relethford, 2010, p. p. 283)

[4] (Tattersall, Human evolution and cognition, 2010)

[5] (Relethford, 2010, p. p. 312)

[6] (Hill, 1972, p. p. 311)

[7] (Tattersall, Human origins: Out of Africa, 2009)

[8] (Tattersall, Human origins: Out of Africa, 2009)

[9] (Tattersall, Human origins: Out of Africa, 2009)

[10] (Tattersall, Human origins: Out of Africa, 2009)

[11] (Tattersall, An Evolutionary Framework for the Acquisition of Symbolic Cognition by Homo sapiens, 2008, p. p. 108 Figure 8)

[12] (Relethford, 2010, pp. p. 339-340)

[13] (Relethford, 2010, p. p. 349)

[14] (Relethford, 2010, p. p. 349)

[15] (Relethford, 2010, p. p. 349)

[16] (Tattersall, An Evolutionary Framework for the Acquisition of Symbolic Cognition by Homo sapiens, 2008, p. p. 112)

* Written for Human Origins and Variation, Sec Anthro 103. December 4, 2014. 

Fair Use Disclaimer: Any use of this paper must be cited as Pamela Leavey – Author.

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