[japhyr]

I live in southeast Alaska, and it's a pretty interesting place to live culturally.

Alaska Native people were hurt deeply by contact with outsiders. For those unfamiliar with the history, it was a series of events. First, contact brought diseases that native people had limited immunity to. Smallpox, influenza, and tuberculosis killed on the order of 70% of the population of many villages in a single generation. Then missionaries told the survivors that their people died because they worshipped the wrong gods. Then missionaries and government agents told native people they were unfit to raise their own children, and forcibly placed their children in boarding schools. Then those children were physically and mentally punished if they spoke their own language or participated in any of their traditional ceremonies or practices.

Native ways of living were not perfect before contact, but contact brought significant trauma that has lasting effects.

There is a concept of ownership of stories, songs, ceremonies, and artifacts. It is quite appropriate to respect this.

[omegaworks]

There's a very concrete, contemporary rationale, as well. Our culture values and facilitates the commodification of other cultures above their preservation. Simply examine the way that Disney has presented (and profited from) depictions of various peoples of the world. In its latest iteration, even going as far as trying to trademark "The Day of The Dead"[1]

1. https://www.cnn.com/2013/05/10/us/disney-trademark-day-dead/...

[pvaldes]

Is a romantic point of view but also a biased one. Yes, I agree that Native People were victims of diseases and suffered a lot of abuses.

But would would be unfair not to mention that they received also some in exchange. They benefit of a new universe of human knowledge, around four thousand years of philosophy, technology and science and incredible advances on medicine and surgery that the native people couldn't even dream.

The grandsons of the Natives from American continent own also now three languages, English, Spanish and Portuguese that are a blessing and a world of new opportunities.

This is not being mentally punished, is being mentally boosted and rewarded with the keys of the planet.

[mmjaa]

This is the violent language of the usurper and invader: be grateful for what we bring you, for what you had before was inferior.

Honestly, very disrespectful. I think you've proven the reasoning behind keeping these recordings restricted; the respect is still not there, a hundred years later, for so-called 'cultures of lesser means'.

[Aloha]

We (the defendants of the white people who conquered this land) are the net losers, we lost several millennia of oral history and tribal knowledge.

In my opinion, we also lost something else, the idea that land is not something just to be owned and used, but rather something to be shepparded over, and held in trust for the next generations. It took us 200 years or so to rediscover that cultural precept.

[weeksie]

Funny. I grew up in Cordova and though I'm not Native, my step brother and my half sister are. I wonder how different things are up there these days because I never got the impression that Natives were protective of their stories and traditions in the way that you mention.

Then again, I moved away 20 years ago and the last time I visited was five years back. Things might have shifted in the intervening two decades, or perhaps I just wasn't as attuned to that as a 21 year old kid ;)

[acdha]

I’m sure there’s variation across groups, not to mention generational differences in assertiveness, but also consider the range of recordings which might exist. I was at the Museums and the Web conference a few years ago and there was a really interesting talk by a Canadian talking about the software they had to build to meet their agreements. Even with a single tribe you might have some recordings which were public but others which were considered tribal secrets (i.e. they restricted logins to verified members), some which were only for men or women, some which were only for elders or shamans, etc.

[sgt101]

I suppose that the idea of Native is a homogenisation of many separate cultures and identities. Perhaps some of the peoples feel that their traditions are to be shared, and others do not?

[japhyr]

It's not quite as simple as that. Around here, clans have ownership of stories and artifacts. But not all stories are held privately. Some are very public, and are published in books and are regularly rewritten, retold, and reillustrated. But some are quite private. It's up to each clan how closely to hold its stories.

Many of us have this structure in our own families. When I was younger I heard some stories about certain family members that I was free to tell anyone. I can tell you that I was born in Guam because my father was in the Navy and he and my mom were stationed there when I was born. But there are other stories in our family that it would be quite disrespectful for me to share in public.

With Native groups from southeast Alaska, these ownership issues have been much more formalized, over a much longer time period, than what I saw in my family.