[NA-Discuss] Indigenous Peoples Fellowship Program

[Gordon Chillcott]

Eric:

Thank you for your note and my apologies for not responding sooner -
I've been under the weather with a bad cold for a week and I'm just
crawling out from under now.   And trying to catch up.

My meeting with my contact was VERY brief - and the result was simply
that we'll get together at the next meeting to talk further.

I will keep your contact information handy, Eric, with my thanks.   I
also plan, with your permission, to bring along a copy of your e-mail,
just in case it proves useful.


Gordon

On Sat, 2013-05-25 at 10:09 -0700, Eric Brunner-Williams wrote:
> Gordon,
> 
> Ever since John Afele and I undertook outreach to Indigenous
> Populations -- and my focus was the Americas and Oceania -- during the
> June 2000 Membership Implementation Task Force -- the progenitor of an
> "At Large", it has been wicked difficult to offer utility in
> participating in ICANN sufficient to motivate FN/NA/Metis/Indios to
> engage, and amongst those who do, to remain engaged.
> 
> A long-winded way of saying that if you know of any FN, Metis, or
> Allied individuals considering engaging in any part of ICANN, please
> do pass along my contact information to him/her/them.
> 
> The criteria used by ICANN for its Fellowship Program is:
> 
> "Applicants must be citizens of economically eligible countries. We
> use a combination of the World Bank classification of low,
> lower-middle, and upper-middle economies, along with two (2) UN
> groupings of developing and least developed nations:
> http://www.unohrlls.org/en/sids/44/,
> http://www.unohrlls.org/en/ldc/25/ which are based on distinctly
> different criteria which stretch beyond the World Bank's economically
> deterministic view. "
> 
> Here is a brief outline of how I currently view how ICANN can, should
> it decide to, approach the question of extending its existing
> Fellowship Program to distinct, under-served populations lacking the
> objective third-party generated identifiers used, e.g., to provide a
> delegation from the IANA root zome to an applicant for a Memorandum,
> rather than a Contract, form of operational agreement (the UN
> Statistical Agency's designation of Palestine as a distinct
> identifier, leading to the allocation of "PS" in ISO 3166-1), or the
> criteria published by the UN-OHRLLS*.
> 
> The current interpretation of the tax authority of the United States
> is that bonding authority of Federally Recognized Indian Tribes is not
> capable of issuing tax exempt bonds except for "Government Purposes",
> unlike the bonding authority of States and their subordinate political
> jurisdictions -- cities and so forth, which may issue tax exempt bonds
> for arbitrary purposes, e.g., construction of sports arenas, etc.
> 
> This IRS enforced relative deficiency (originating from a lone member
> of the Republican House Caucus elected from a district in Florida and
> highly critical of Indian Gaming), and the Volume Cap for Tribal
> Economic Development Bonds**, are object, third-party determinations
> that "significantly less access to finance capital" exists in "Indian
> Country" within the country with the highest ranking GDP.
> 
> I developed all this (a bunch of supporting data and papers on Tribes
> and their bonding authority and experience) when I thought that the
> JAS effort might benefit a new gTLD applicant organic to, or at least
> committed to serving, some Indigenous Peoples, which of course did not
> occur. I briefly considered the equivalent issue of tax exempt bonds
> as a means of access to finance capital and the bonding authority of
> Treaty Bands in Canada. I don't consider my knowledge in this area
> equivalent to my knowledge of the situation for Federally Recognized
> Indian Tribes in the United States.
> 
> What was intended for the new gTLD program can be repurposed to
> address a long-standing deficiency in the Fellowship Program.
> 
> If you'd like we can work on this off the na-discuss list. There are
> Indian Telecoms and Datacoms lists, and some of the content relates to
> ICANN and network access policy.
> 
> Again, please pass along my contact info, should you think it useful.
> 
> Eric
> 
> * UN Office of the High Representative for the Least Developed
> Countries, Landlocked Developing Countries and Small Island Developing
> States, at http://www.unohrlls.org
> 
> LDC defined at: http://www.unohrlls.org/en/ldc/164/
> LLDC defined at: http://www.unohrlls.org/en/lldc/31/
> SDC defined at: http://www.unohrlls.org/en/sids/43/
> 
> **
> http://www.irs.gov/Tax-Exempt-Bonds/Published-Volume-Cap-Limit-for-Tribal-Economic-Development-Bonds