Honorable Experience

Three years ago this week, I began as a correspondent to Fourth World Eye, a blog of the Center for World Indigenous Studies. This was a natural outcome of my archival work for Public Good Project and my posting on its blog Continuity that I'd started working on a year earlier.

I first met Joe DelaCruz and Rudolph Ryser in 1996 at a conference the Center for World Indigenous Studies hosted for research activists fighting Wise Use. In December 2005, CWIS invited me to join as an associate scholar, and in February 2006 my essay The Power of Moral Sanction was featured in their Forum for Global Exchange. In September 2006 my paper Institutional Memory as Community Safeguard was published in their peer-reviewed Fourth World Journal. In January 2007 they asked me to serve as moderator for their private online forum.

Since 2007, I've found our paths cross regularly in furthering democracy, human rights, and the world indigenous peoples movement. Looking forward to extending our informal joint efforts in research and education, through venues like online distance learning, I can say that the choice to actively pursue mutual endeavors has been a rewarding and honorable experience--one I hope we continue long into the future.