9 ms·

It clearly says, as you quoted, that it is being withheld due to the cultural sensitivity of the content, and out of respect for the descendants of those who we

by tinix 9y ago

It clearly says, as you quoted, that it is being withheld due to the cultural sensitivity of the content, and out of respect for the descendants of those who were recorded. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Genocide https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Genocide "When the restoration project is complete, the recordings will be sent to tribal descendants, who will determine which parts of the collection can be released to the public."

microcolonel 9y ago
I think Walter is saying something else entirely, specifically that the people being recorded must have known and consented to the recording (it would be painfully obvious, given the way the technology worked at that point), so the descendants have nothing to do with the point of consent for these recordings. If I make a rare recording with knowledge that just about anyone could listen to it, and it becomes an artifact, certainly don't think I'd care what ethnicity or cultural lineage the listeners belong to any more than I did when the recording was made. For example, if you publish a book, I don't need your descendants or the descendants of a parallel bloodline to approve me reading it. That said, I only skimmed the article, so maybe there's something particularly sensitive about the circumstances of the recording? Forgive me if I've overlooked something. Beyond all that, it is also ultimately the researchers' discretion as to who they want to check with before publishing the works more widely, so whatever. Far be it from me to say that I have a right to something that I did not put in the effort to create.
- protomyth 9y ago
  > that the people being recorded must have known and consented to the recording (it would be painfully obvious, given the way the technology worked at that point) Being sat in front of a recording device and told to speak doesn’t imply the speaker actually wanted to record his or her voice. Many folks were forced to take pictures also.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - microcolonel 9y ago
    That's interesting, is there some account of the circumstances of these recordings? Were they held captive or something?
    - protomyth 9y ago
      I didn't see an account, but it wasn't exactly a rare event to force the issue. The other possible cause for caution is the recent backlash against Universities' interaction with the tribes. The biggest culprit is using data about the tribes to write grants to provide services on the reservations without input from the tribes (or finding out if they are stomping on the tribes or tribal entities own requests). It has instilled a sense of caution in a lot of organizations.
- pjc50 9y ago
  The special context for this is the previous mistreatment of indigenous people and their artefacts; therefore researchers these days tend to go to great lengths to include indigenous people and seek their approval, as a courtesy. > if you publish a book, I don't need your descendants or the descendants of a parallel bloodline to approve me reading it. This is a fairly terrible example given the number of book and other intellectual properties whose publishing is being controlled by their estates.
  - microcolonel 9y ago
    > This is a fairly terrible example given the number of book and other intellectual properties whose publishing is being controlled by their estates. Even by Mickey Mouse standards of copyright, which don't even extend to works this old, these phonographs have been in the public domain for 15 or more years. Not that this is the point I intended to argue. > The special context for this is the previous mistreatment of indigenous people and their artefacts; therefore researchers these days tend to go to great lengths to include indigenous people and seek their approval, as a courtesy. As for the previous (and ongoing!) mistreatment of indigenous people and their artifacts; I don't think that has anything at all to do with the ethics or rights regarding the publication of these recordings. To my knowledge, these recordings were never intended to be private to the band in the first place. If people who lived near or with your great grandfather killed my great grandfather's people or ran them out of town, and my grandfather had on a separate occasion recorded a phonograph, knowing that it would be available to the recording party and all of their associates, in a language you're studying in present day, the crimes against my great grandfather's people would have absolutely nothing to do with whether or not you should publish a recording he made available in the same timeframe (or in this case, after the brunt of the damage had already been done).
    - eesmith 9y ago
      "To my knowledge, these recordings were never intended to be private to the band in the first place." To your knowledge, did the people being recorded give informed consent to having those recordings heard by more than a few hundred people doing anthropological research?
- SwellJoe 9y ago
  I think it's the kind of respect an anthropologist or similar should show when studying a community or a culture, not just ones that were almost completely wiped out (but especially then, as is the case here). To be clear, I would hope the descendants will share these things with the world, and I expect they will. Many tribes have been working on language preservation and recovery of old traditions and oral histories and such for the past few decades. This obviously enables that effort. But, I don't think tribes should be obligated to do so, nor do I think it'd be ethical to give away these recordings without some input from the tribes. They would have more than mere memories of their language and culture today were it not for an attempted and nearly successful genocide by European settlers, and many feel (rightly, IMHO) as though their communities have had nearly everything stolen from them. It's not an old scar for many; it is a fresh wound.
  - pbhjpbhj 9y ago
    At what point do you say "no one alive had anything to do with this, address things you can change"? Racism won't ever cease to be a problem if we continue to say "your ancestors did this, so you can't do that" rather than just treating people as people.
    - eesmith 9y ago
      If only we had a profession which studied different cultures so we could get some idea of what it means to "treat people as people", instead of treating others as reflection of one's own culture. Perhaps we could call it "anthropology", from "anthropo-" for "man, people, humanity" and "-logy" for "the study of". Then we could let anthropology researchers figure out the best way to handle these sorts of issues.
      - microcolonel 9y ago
        > Perhaps we could call it "anthropology", from "anthropo-" for "man, people, humanity" and "-logy" for "the study of". They might get a bit smug if we teach them a couple of Greek words. They might start to think that their faeces are aosmic (ά- without, -οσμο odor).
- eesmith 9y ago
  "Pardon him, Theodotus: he is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature." - George Bernard Shaw, "Ceasar and Cleopatra" I regard that as a caution that just because I think something is reasonable, it doesn't mean that others will think the same. My sense of reasonableness is based on many things, including being part of a culture where it's cheap to record, store, and redistribute sound, and which regards anything old as being part of the public domain and therefore unrestricted. Modern informed consent has a much higher standard than the consent of 100 years ago. For one, it's not just consent about the process of making a recording but informed consent about the larger consequences of doing so. The people who were recorded likely knew their speech was being recorded for future scientific research. However, consider the technology of the time. The recording was onto wax cylinder, so it could only be played a few hundred times before being worn out. This limited the total number of people who could use it, and mostly to anthropologists. It was also hard to duplicate a wax cylinder recording with any fidelity. There is no way that the people of 100 years ago could give informed consent of the possibility that their recording would be open to the world a century later. While you, if you published a book, would have grown up as part of a culture which has had centuries of book publishing experience, and would be able to provide informed consent. Of course, those people are dead, so why does it care? Anthropologists also want to get a more complete view of people's lives. To do that, they may need to make assurances about how any notes or recordings will be used. If the standard is "after 100 years everything will be public" then anthropologists are less likely to get the information they want.
  - UweSchmidt 9y ago
    Informed consent, glad someone cares about that. This concept also applies to putting old usenet archives back online and confronting people with EULAs written in legalese all caps.
    - microcolonel 9y ago
      ALL CAPS IS CONSIDERED ADEQUATELY CONSPICUOUS FOR DISCLAIMING WARRANTY BY THE COURTS, THAT IS WHY IT IS A COMMON WAY TO MAKE STATEMENTS CONSPICUOUS. UNFORTUNATELY, IF YOU DON'T EVEN SHOW PEOPLE THE EULA, IT WON'T MATTER HOW CONSPICUOUS THE DISCLAIMER IS.

by tinix 9y ago

microcolonel 9y ago

I think Walter is saying something else entirely, specifically that the people being recorded must have known and consented to the recording (it would be painfully obvious, given the way the technology worked at that point), so the descendants have nothing to do with the point of consent for these recordings. If I make a rare recording with knowledge that just about anyone could listen to it, and it becomes an artifact, certainly don't think I'd care what ethnicity or cultural lineage the listeners belong to any more than I did when the recording was made. For example, if you publish a book, I don't need your descendants or the descendants of a parallel bloodline to approve me reading it. That said, I only skimmed the article, so maybe there's something particularly sensitive about the circumstances of the recording? Forgive me if I've overlooked something. Beyond all that, it is also ultimately the researchers' discretion as to who they want to check with before publishing the works more widely, so whatever. Far be it from me to say that I have a right to something that I did not put in the effort to create.

protomyth 9y ago
> that the people being recorded must have known and consented to the recording (it would be painfully obvious, given the way the technology worked at that point) Being sat in front of a recording device and told to speak doesn’t imply the speaker actually wanted to record his or her voice. Many folks were forced to take pictures also.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- microcolonel 9y ago
  That's interesting, is there some account of the circumstances of these recordings? Were they held captive or something?
  - protomyth 9y ago
    I didn't see an account, but it wasn't exactly a rare event to force the issue. The other possible cause for caution is the recent backlash against Universities' interaction with the tribes. The biggest culprit is using data about the tribes to write grants to provide services on the reservations without input from the tribes (or finding out if they are stomping on the tribes or tribal entities own requests). It has instilled a sense of caution in a lot of organizations.
pjc50 9y ago
The special context for this is the previous mistreatment of indigenous people and their artefacts; therefore researchers these days tend to go to great lengths to include indigenous people and seek their approval, as a courtesy. > if you publish a book, I don't need your descendants or the descendants of a parallel bloodline to approve me reading it. This is a fairly terrible example given the number of book and other intellectual properties whose publishing is being controlled by their estates.
- microcolonel 9y ago
  > This is a fairly terrible example given the number of book and other intellectual properties whose publishing is being controlled by their estates. Even by Mickey Mouse standards of copyright, which don't even extend to works this old, these phonographs have been in the public domain for 15 or more years. Not that this is the point I intended to argue. > The special context for this is the previous mistreatment of indigenous people and their artefacts; therefore researchers these days tend to go to great lengths to include indigenous people and seek their approval, as a courtesy. As for the previous (and ongoing!) mistreatment of indigenous people and their artifacts; I don't think that has anything at all to do with the ethics or rights regarding the publication of these recordings. To my knowledge, these recordings were never intended to be private to the band in the first place. If people who lived near or with your great grandfather killed my great grandfather's people or ran them out of town, and my grandfather had on a separate occasion recorded a phonograph, knowing that it would be available to the recording party and all of their associates, in a language you're studying in present day, the crimes against my great grandfather's people would have absolutely nothing to do with whether or not you should publish a recording he made available in the same timeframe (or in this case, after the brunt of the damage had already been done).
  - eesmith 9y ago
    "To my knowledge, these recordings were never intended to be private to the band in the first place." To your knowledge, did the people being recorded give informed consent to having those recordings heard by more than a few hundred people doing anthropological research?
SwellJoe 9y ago
I think it's the kind of respect an anthropologist or similar should show when studying a community or a culture, not just ones that were almost completely wiped out (but especially then, as is the case here). To be clear, I would hope the descendants will share these things with the world, and I expect they will. Many tribes have been working on language preservation and recovery of old traditions and oral histories and such for the past few decades. This obviously enables that effort. But, I don't think tribes should be obligated to do so, nor do I think it'd be ethical to give away these recordings without some input from the tribes. They would have more than mere memories of their language and culture today were it not for an attempted and nearly successful genocide by European settlers, and many feel (rightly, IMHO) as though their communities have had nearly everything stolen from them. It's not an old scar for many; it is a fresh wound.
- pbhjpbhj 9y ago
  At what point do you say "no one alive had anything to do with this, address things you can change"? Racism won't ever cease to be a problem if we continue to say "your ancestors did this, so you can't do that" rather than just treating people as people.
  - eesmith 9y ago
    If only we had a profession which studied different cultures so we could get some idea of what it means to "treat people as people", instead of treating others as reflection of one's own culture. Perhaps we could call it "anthropology", from "anthropo-" for "man, people, humanity" and "-logy" for "the study of". Then we could let anthropology researchers figure out the best way to handle these sorts of issues.
    - microcolonel 9y ago
      > Perhaps we could call it "anthropology", from "anthropo-" for "man, people, humanity" and "-logy" for "the study of". They might get a bit smug if we teach them a couple of Greek words. They might start to think that their faeces are aosmic (ά- without, -οσμο odor).
eesmith 9y ago
"Pardon him, Theodotus: he is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature." - George Bernard Shaw, "Ceasar and Cleopatra" I regard that as a caution that just because I think something is reasonable, it doesn't mean that others will think the same. My sense of reasonableness is based on many things, including being part of a culture where it's cheap to record, store, and redistribute sound, and which regards anything old as being part of the public domain and therefore unrestricted. Modern informed consent has a much higher standard than the consent of 100 years ago. For one, it's not just consent about the process of making a recording but informed consent about the larger consequences of doing so. The people who were recorded likely knew their speech was being recorded for future scientific research. However, consider the technology of the time. The recording was onto wax cylinder, so it could only be played a few hundred times before being worn out. This limited the total number of people who could use it, and mostly to anthropologists. It was also hard to duplicate a wax cylinder recording with any fidelity. There is no way that the people of 100 years ago could give informed consent of the possibility that their recording would be open to the world a century later. While you, if you published a book, would have grown up as part of a culture which has had centuries of book publishing experience, and would be able to provide informed consent. Of course, those people are dead, so why does it care? Anthropologists also want to get a more complete view of people's lives. To do that, they may need to make assurances about how any notes or recordings will be used. If the standard is "after 100 years everything will be public" then anthropologists are less likely to get the information they want.
- UweSchmidt 9y ago
  Informed consent, glad someone cares about that. This concept also applies to putting old usenet archives back online and confronting people with EULAs written in legalese all caps.
  - microcolonel 9y ago
    ALL CAPS IS CONSIDERED ADEQUATELY CONSPICUOUS FOR DISCLAIMING WARRANTY BY THE COURTS, THAT IS WHY IT IS A COMMON WAY TO MAKE STATEMENTS CONSPICUOUS. UNFORTUNATELY, IF YOU DON'T EVEN SHOW PEOPLE THE EULA, IT WON'T MATTER HOW CONSPICUOUS THE DISCLAIMER IS.