The Alphaville Herald

Extinct Native American Tribe Finds Second Wind

by Alphaville Herald on 09/02/05 at 3:06 pm

by Neal Stewart

Duuya Herbst, taking the tribe to SL

“The tribes are taking over the world [...] Tribes are agendas. Aesthetics. Ethos. Traditions. Ways of getting things done. They’re competitive. They may not all be based on time-zones. There are knitting Tribes and vampire fan-fiction Tribes and Christian rock tribes, but they’ve always existed.”– Eastern Standard Tribe, Cory Doctorow

Tavarua 160,78, Deeni Land — Second Life resident Duuya Herbst is a real-life descendant of the Deeni people, a small tribe among about 15 others living in the northwestern United States, who were virtually wiped out by the U.S. government in the late 1800s. With no surviving pure-blood of the actual Deeni tribe alive today, he is trying to salvage the spirit of his ancestors in an online community and save a language spoken fluently by only 10 or so people on the planet.

Living in Oregon and northern California, the population of pre-contact Deeni and surrounding tribes was over 8,000 strong, Duuya tells me. In just under a century, there remained less than 1,000. In the 1850s, the arriving settlers and federal government that followed them was responsible for what was effectively the genocide of the Deeni people. The government funded the removal of native Americans protecting their homes — who gold miners considered an obstacle to prospecting. “Eventually a war broke out, ” says Duuya, “and the government sent troops. You can guess who won in the end. It’s a long, long story that will eventually be online, in Second Life and deeni.org.”

Duuya shows me the virtual replica of the dance hall that is host to his RL tribe’s “Nadosh” (“feather dance”), a summer/winter solstice ceremony celebrating “Creation and Earth Renewal”. Wearing shades, white sneakers and a red jumpsuit jacket with a white campfire logo, his avatar reminds me of a summer-camp counselor. The focus-piece of the hall is the huge photo that lines the back wall.

Deeni hall, Tavarua sim

“You’re looking at something that almost got lost from time”, Duuya tells me. Pictured are about 20 members of the Deeni tribe in ceremonial dress around a fireplace in front of the very same wall in the real-life hall. Duuya has built a crackling fireplace here that overlaps the 2-D picture of the real one, enmeshing the First Life event with the Second in a blazing orange animation. He stands in front of the photo and gestures towards two figures facing each other in a war-dance, “Me,” he says pointing, and pointing again, “My father.”

The image is oddly moving, but the way I’ve become a part of this virtual scene is almost surreal. This is the first time I have seen a Second Life avatar point to a photo of his real-life self. And it happens to be a photo of a very sacred and personal event. “It used to be an 11-day celebration. With each day passing they’d wear the better regalia. Now it’s down to three days,” Duuya tells me.

There has been something of a rift between Duuya — who now lives in Southern California — and the rest of his RL tribe. He accuses some of them of both literal and ideological corruption and believes that the tribe should spend less frivolously so that it can try to buy back the original land of his people.

I ask Duuya if he resents the government because of what happened to the Deeni tribes. “Not at all. Different time period, I wasn’t alive then. It is what it is. I don’t have an ill-will towards the government. In fact, I served in the U.S. Army mechanized infantry. My job was to take out heavy equipment, aka tanks.”

I first encountered Duuya — who has been in SL since early 2005 — in the Thinkers group. Among other things, we discussed the ironies of virtual government — a hotly debated topic in Second Life. Some SL residents advocate player-created governments in-game. Layered on top of this is of course the governing of Linden Lab, which has been described perhaps not so jokingly as a “benevolent dictatorship”. Linden Lab is subject to real-world local, state and federal government law in the U.S. As individual players, Duuya and I both live in different countries and are subject to our own different laws. Interestingly, Duuya is also bound by the RL law of tribal government, which he compares to a foreign embassy on U.S. soil.

Duuya’s goal is to keep the Deeni language alive (a language which was banned in early federal boarding and public schools) and to create a resilient community that can transcend IRC, SL or multiplayer games. “There is a big absence, a disconnection,” he says. “I find a tribal community is something missing from today’s world: a support structure.” His vision for the community is essentially open-ended, and he stresses that it is not necessary to learn the Deeni language in order to join: “I’d like to think the online version [of the Deeni] would be like a ‘family,’ in a sense. We spend enough time within these ‘worlds’ with each other.”

Part of the reason Duuya created this online community, he tells me, is because he’s been thinking about the finality of what humans do on earth and about what legacies we leave behind when we are gone. It occurs to me that Duuya is himself part of the legacy left behind by the original Deeni people.

I ask how he would deal with leadership or ideological challenges from within his own community. “That’s the way of politics. And the beauty of it. I don’t want to be some e-God. I don’t have time for that shit. LOL. I’d like to see the tribe be able to function without me. For people to feel like they are invested in something, you have to give them some control. A voice.”

Duuya leads me outside the hall and rezzes a slick, blue RA-3 Hammerhead aircraft (built by Rick Roentgen) from nowhere. With our discussion still in my mind, I suddenly picture Kicking Bird from Dances With Wolves reaching into his buckskin pouch to produce an Imperial TIE Figther. As the shining spacecraft ascends into the clouds and the forested reservation drops away behind us, the contrast hits me and I’m struck by another of those “Holy shit” moments which seem to be indigenous to Second Life.

Cruising with Duuya

After we’ve landed, Duuya shows me his virtual home. On each side of the fireplace is an artwork made from eagle feathers.”Those feathers are hanging on my wall as we speak” he tells me.”In RL?” I ask. “Yeah. If I wasn’t tribal it’d be a federal offense to have them.”

He shows me a map on his wall, of tribal lands of the Indian nation. “Let me show you where we are from,” he says, gesturing to an area of the land marked Siuslaw, near the coast of Orgeon.

We conclude our discussion in the open green fields of SL Deeni reservation land. “The whole Deeni project is really up to the people that are in it and make it what it is. Much like Second Life,” Duuya explains. Duuya — which means “bear” — has to get back to the monumental task of transcribing the Deeni language into HTML documents and Second Life notecards. “There is no word for Internet,” he laughs.

For more information, contact Duuya Herbst or Deeni Land in Tavarua.