NATIVE AMERICAN INDIAN Editorial about Tribal Voice

Editorial

To Summarize: Tribal voice is not only a fake -- having nothing t0o do with Indian people but 4exploitation, but it is also sacreligious, with offensive material for just about every major Nsative tribe. I've placed some links to it here so you can verify what I'm angry about.

This is a somewhat usual commentary on an award of sorts. Please read this information and pass it on wherever you think it might possibly do some good. If you run or make educational use of a Native website, you might want to shar with them the absolute incongruity of linking to the Tribal Voice website.

Point Communications --picked this site among the "top 5%" of educational web pages. Point's selections -- top presentation, top content, top experience, and just plain tops -- are reviewed, with short descriptions. Their database of picks is well-organized and searchable by keywords. I was happy about this honor (because I put in thousands of hours working on these pages).

That was before I discovered Point has picked as a top Native culture site Tribal Voice, which is a commercial venture owned by a 100% white corporation, that desecrates several major Indian religions in the guise of a "Warrior game". It includes a twisted Heyoka who picks disgusting scatological and porno sites as examples of Indian humor. (Lakotas think Heyokas are sacred, not twisted perverts.)

Our Sacred Pipe, sweat lodge, cedar, tobacco, all of our most important symbols, ceremonies, objects, places are not just exploited but desecrated, trashed, by this Tribal Voice corporation, which spent hundreds of thousands of dollars preparing its commercial site, but has advertised itself all over the web as "Native Culture."

Here is some email between myself and John McAfee, founder of McAfee Associates, Inc., which does big business in network and security software. McAfee founded Tribal Voice with a self-funded educational charitable trust -- a tax dodge.

Here is a photo of the allegedly Native staff, dressed up ho-ho-ho as militaristic miltia freak-geeks. McAfee's picture isn't among them, but with a variety of normal InterNet Fingering, I was able to ID the rest as Tribal Voice -- and several also as apparently current McAfee Associates -- employees, on the respective corporate networks of each corporation. Elksewhere, you will find a black and white photo of what is purported to be a Navajo who is supposedly their guru. TGhere is no contact with him, but for a time in 1995, a part-time worker by that name was on the Tribal Voice staff in Colorado springs. This photo has been IDed by relatives as a Lakota man who died several years ago.

  • Here is the start of what you'll get if you click on "About Tribal Voice" on their main menu. It leads to what might be called the religious descration game. A bit complicated, to appeal to game computer potatoes, so...

  • The Power and Magic After some dead ends, you come to where those of us who feel sacred Pipes are in fact sacred, and sweats are purifications can start to really feel bad. Make all the right twists and turns, maybe you can win a Warrior T-shirt with a sacred Pipe on it.

  • The Tribal Voice Yuppie Catalog has something to offend just about every major Native religion.

  • Heyokas are sacred "backwards clowns" for Lakota religious people. They are not sinister, twisted perversions like this. But the function of the Tribal Voice "Heyoka" is much worse. "Our Heyoka" supposedly picks Bizarre sites for your -- and your kids' -- surfing pleasure.

  • A list of past Tribal Voice Heyoka picks Some have moved -- and improved. For example, Bianca's Daily Dump site in its new location now also features Bianca's Masturbation Handbook and Bianca's Bathroom Graffiti, in addition to the original Bianca's Toilet. Then there's: Rat Feces Publishing; Objects Taken from Men's Rectums; Museum Maximum Vomitus; The Bare Bottom Boys; it's just what you'd like your kids to be touted onto, no? And it desecrates a Native religious figure, and suggests to the general public that this is Native humor, too. Presumably non-Indian parents don't mind that, though, eh? Bcause this thing -- Tribal Voice -- is linked-to all over th place (on education sites, on genuine 100% solid skin Native sites) -- as Native American culture, as Multicultural Education resource, etc.

    Can't do anything about those tout services like PointCom that think Tribal Voice is great. But if you're Indian and you have a web site, I think it's quite disgraceful for you to link Tribal Voice, just because it pretends to be Indian and has flash pages. If you're a teacher or parent who does find it on educational, mult-cult pages, as Native American educational resources, and you don't think what you saw when you checked out the Tribal Voice links I provided above is all that nice for kids, let 'em know, even if you don't care that they're exploiting Indian people and trashing most of our religions and histories. Some people might possibly even think that trashing Native religions, culture, history, etc., isn't all that kewell, and is the wrong kind of cultural education. The tout services and big web indexes represent tens of millions of users -- they don't care about the small number of Native Americans online, what we might feel or say to them. They are going to continue to enshrine Tribal Voice as a top-quality example of Native American culture. It's a multi- million dollar outfit, Tribal Voice, Inc., backed by an even bigger one, McAfee Associates, Inc. (network security software -- sells a lot to the U.S. government).

    But maybe we could at least do something about all the education pages that carry links to Tribal Voice as a Native American cultural education resource. Whenever you see it, write the webmaster an email.. Tell 'em to check it out. This URL: http://www.kstrom.net/isk/index.html#editorial will jump right over the contents menu here and into this editorial where they can check it out themselves. using the links I placed to some of the offensive parts.

    Nothing anonymous about these remarks. I put those Tribal Voice links there so you can check it out, what I said, only after thinking it over more than a year -- but I'm not going to leave them once the 1996 school year begins.

    Paula Giese, WebMistress
    515 West 25th Street
    Minneapolis, Minnesota, US 55405
    612/872-2352

This set of pages is by Paula Giese, all text and graphics copyright 1995, 1996, 1997 all media rights, exept for items whose credits are individually given. This editorial may be freely copied and distributed, or used on other websites.


Last updated: 1/23/97