Go to Archive Table of ContentsThe original of this archive was apparently created by a group calling itself Settlers in Support of Indigenous Sovereignty, SISIS, or SIS for short. They created an archive -- supposed to be an accessible file -- of some posts and comments pertinent to the Gustafsen's Lake confrontation that occurred last August - September. Unfortunately, for some odd reason, they chose such an unusual background color --#239AFD -- that once you get beyond the startup page with large type, you can't read content or even menus. In fact that background is one of the few colors that'll make default blue menu-type linktext unreadable. Several emails sent by me to this effect were ignored, while the unreadable updatings continued. Therefore, I downloaded and am fixing it. Documents I've added -- many of them currently links to other web publications -- are indicated by red glass tackheads, instead of black list-dots.
I found this an enormous job, because the SISIS archive pages appear to have been created by an HTML coding method which appears designed to prevent anyone from either editing them or from running them anywhere execept right there. All files, even little graphics, are called by full (indepedent) URL's that crank you right back to their site, not relative URL's and anchors on-page. I have fixed that. Seems an odd philosophy for a support group that is providing info to as many as are willing to read it.
These archives may now be downloaded as a group of files, placed all together in a server subdirectory, and be run anywhere. They may also be added to; it is suggsted that a second main contents table be created -- some notes on that below.
Any webperson may now download all these archive pages (no copyrighted pages may be downloadedfrom my site; no text, no art, used in any medium). Run them on a more capacious or popular server, as the Gustafsen Defenders' trials get under way. The only thing that'll have to be removed is the one page nav button at the foot of the main index/contents page that calls (relatively) my First Nations main menu. Substitute a call to your own appropriate local page; if you want to keep a pointer to my First Nations main menupage, substitute an absolute for the relative URL.
I made some editorial changes, though initially I hadn't intended to. As I read the archived docs, I found a lot of swearing -- quotes attributed to Native leaders, and to other Native people. Those now are all gone, I paraphrased what each person said. I don't believe any Native person (or anyone in their right mind) swears in press conferences, etc. It does happen in private especially in conditions of fear, tension, anger and grief (like if your relatives have been gunned down before your eyes). If you in fact are a supporter of Native causes, you will not diminish the dignity of the people or the real meaning of the cause by quoting in long-lasting, or any, publicly-disseminated materials such language if in fact it was really used in your hearing.
No help to Native causes is given by providing in a way that may stay permanently in circulation here and there on InterNet material which tends to promote factions, anger and dissension among allies, supporters, or those potentially so. I could not edit out all of those from the archive. In general they were/are in the form of "headlines" or little summaries at the start of some docs which described Native leaders, their actions or things they supposedly said in pejorative, factional ways. I was able to find and remove a few of these.
Whatever your ethnicity may be, unless employed by a government disinformation and manipulation agency, when preparing publicity or informational material to inform about or support anything whatever check your facts, from the source if possible, from reliable second sources if absolutely necessary. Do not put out stuff on the InterNet that will stay around and circulate for many years that is based on rumor and possibly on professional manipulations and disinformations. When you have inadvertantly published emergency info that is later shown in error, publish a correction. If archiving the material, correct the original one, don't keep the error because " it's history that it was said, even though wrong."
It is unnecessary and undesirable to archive repeated lists of emergency phone numbers to call to protest this or that, and long-disconnected contact phones of groups or individuals. These contribute nothing to historical or other future study and they make reading the stories told by text much harder by their interruptions. Plus they increase filesizes a lot, making everything slower to load, slower to use link accesses.I left in a couple, to give the emergency feel or flavor of the situation. It makes sense to post such lists with every news update, because those have many first-time or one-shot readers. But not to archivally store all that obsolete repetition.
It is highly desirable that a person or persons close to the continuing situation, in touch with the Native people, their lawyers, etc., continue and maintain a good-quality indexed archive of news and substantial, important documents that present the Native viewpoint. As someone thousands of miles away, who does not know the people and is not close to the events, I can't do this, even if I had the time.
The purpose of an archive is to provide well-indexed access, to make important materials -- especially those not covered in the mass media -- available for the foreseeable future. My purpose is to provide these materials here to Native students (and their teachers). In certain respects, other equally important potential users are: (1) The press, which may be willing to use such materials, if they are well-indexed (EZ access), credited to sources that can be checked or that furnish contact info. (2) Years after these events have vanished into the typical dominant society memory hole, historians, especially Native historians, could find this type of archive useful, if it has been well-constructed and is available somewhere.
So you should take care to archive docs in such a way that they will be useful. This means archiving simple ASCII text files, that do not use escape codes. Where some web display codes (HTML-marks) are necssary, keep these to a minimum. The idea here is to make the texts available to these potential future users, not all messed up with a lot of codes. Unfortunately, it would take months to decode the stuff whoever originally created this archive used, all the files are lousy with escape codes. The original archive will be useful only to read on-line; attempts to download it for analysis or inclusion in other publications will involve a lot or work to make it usable. Some supporter might undertake to do this, it would be a useful (if long-range) task. For future additions, you should avoid this problem by minimizing the HTML codes used, and by using no ESCape codes whatever. ASCII HTML-mmarks, especially if only at the beginnings and ends of text sections, are readily deleted via search-and-replace.
It appears to be no longer necessary to use the HTML mark for beginning and end quotes, the plain ASCII double-quote mark seems to show just fine on NetScape.
Whoever actually created this archive put a lot of individual docs (that had come over Internet in various ways -- primarily mailing lists or newsgroups -- onto one long doc, and had used absolute (instead of relative) URL's to reload for each anchor set on the doc. The grouping principle to a file was a few days, but toward the end, chronological order is abandoned. The general idea of chronlogical order is the best system to follow for future doc groups, because the capabilities of full databases (used in real documentary archival maintenance) are not readily available to webpeople, so subject or topic coding cannot readily be done. But putting them into long text files, with contents jumps, as was done by the original archivist, is not a good idea.
The archivist's anchors were in many cases erroneous, calling none-existent files and failing to call docs that were in the file. A better system is to use filename groups, and to keep each doc as a separate file, called by its table of contents. All files will reside in the same subdirectory. For maxim um usefulness, make all filenames obey the DOS limitations (8-character names, followed by either html as extension or htm).
I've followed the system used initially, because a changeover would take far more time than I can afford. In this system, the file names run sequentially from gus01 - gus13, with gus07 missing. That system can be followed with the modification of dating individual doc files but only with a name change to reduce characters in the filename. Thus someone starting the next (a successor) archive should name her first file g14_01.htm, and follow this with a logical group of g14 short, single-doc files (no more than 10 or so docs), whose numbers are sequeintial: g14_02, etc. Then create the next group which will have an overall table of contents listing: g15_01.htm and so on. There will not then be a page table of contents, because doc groups will be determined by the archive's table of contents, each doc will be a file itself. Use the simple un-numbered or numbered list form (not my somewhat fancier red tack table) and you'll be able to change the order of, and interpolate, additional contents listings easily, while the list itself is easy to read and comprehend. Don't use graphics, don't use fancy backgrounds.
Since all archival files should all reside in the same subdirectory, file calling is simple, use relative URL's, just giving the filename, not the path. That way your archive can be moved anywhere, with the only editing needed being for the next archivist to put their own relative web page call at the foot of contents pages. Any archivist should put thir own name/contact info somewhere on pages of archives prepared, as a kind of bonafide that you have done your best to preserve this information, without distortion.
If an archive is beginning to grow large and complex, it is a good idea to have in mind a system of subdirectories below the top or main one, in which the table of contents files will reside
Remember that if you are doing this to support Native people, making available Native facts and views material to the future, minimize the inclusions of any codes, consonant with the HTML-markings you have to do to make them visible and to provide transportation within the archive. Do make some editorial effort to remove actual government disinformation and disruptive discreditations, such as quotes that seem to show Native people swearing, and other quotes, headlines, etc., that have as their main apparent function recording or actually creating hard feelings that will make future difficulties among allies. Whether those came from actual government disinformation agents or just people so used to seeing that stuff that they follow the style without thinking about it, get rid of it.
Remember that an archive's purpose is not to be an index of breaking and ephemeral news. Rather than archiving hundreds of little newsbytes, choose careful wraps that make sense of it all, if you can find such, and historically important declarations, statements, correspondence, etc. of principal figures in the events. This archive would be in many respects more valuable if there were some examples of untrue news stories disseminated by the RCMP and picked up by the mass media, to contrast with observations and statements from on-the-spot participants, especially since the docs do include assertions that the government/RCMP are controlling the news and giving out a false picture, which I have absolutely no doubt was true, but it would be nice to have some examples.
I don't want to be this archive's maintaner, and in fact cannot be. But: