[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.