Re: [alac] ICANN, oppressor of downtrodden minorities
Actually, a bit of history... .NAT (for Native), .SOV (for sovereign), and .IND (for indigenous) were proposed to Jon Postel and others back in 1995 or 96 by myself and members of the Oneida Indian Nation of NY representing the United Southern and Eastern Tribes. About this time the Oneida got their own leased line but then came the question of getting their own domain name. They weren't strictly a .com, although the Nation does have various commercial enterprises. They weren't strictly a .edu, or a .org, and although they are considered a sovereign government by the US, .gov was reserved for U.S. or state governmental entities. What was left was the "country code" hierarchy, such as oneida.nation.ny.us or something like that. Keller George, President of USET and an Oneida, agreed to champion this issue and it drew the attention of Josh Quittner at TIME Magazine, who wrote about it. Unfortunately .sov was abandoned as it became clear there was much more to this than they thought, and meanwhile their domain was being held up. So they started with one-web.org and are currently at http://www.oneida-nation.net/ A number of years ago I wrote an article about the Oneida, who were arguably the first US tribal nation to claim territory on the net http://www.culturalsurvival.org/publications/csq/csq_article.cfm?id=15B77874-2A64-45B1-AD6C-1ACC7097BEF4®ion_id=4&subregion_id=181&issue_id=19 At the time we were talking to Jon someone else wondered if .gangs could have a TLD, for the Bloods and the Crips, etc. JP
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