L&C Community Responds to Tsunami Relief

Included on this page is a letter of appeal from Peter Cookson, dean of the graduate school, a message from Roger Paget, faculty emeritus and frequent visitor to Indonesia, as well as an account of Aaron Meyer's '95 involvement in Thailand's relief efforts.

Government officials are advising that contributions to aid in tsunami relief efforts be channeled through major, well-established relief agencies. Working with organizations that are well-known, who have longstanding experience in this type and scale of relief operation, will help ensure that your donations are used effectively, efficiently and as intended.

Click here to find out how you can help right away!

Graduate School Tsunami Response Initiative Forum
South Campus Conference Center
Monday, January 17, 2005
noon-2 p.m.

Please join the Graduate School community on Martin Luther King Day for a two-hour forum to discuss how we as a community can organize to assist individuals and families impacted by the December 26 Asian tsunami natural disaster. Find out how you can get involved through the Graduate Schools Tsunami Response Initative. Portland community organizations such as Street Roots will be on hand to facilitate this roundtable conversation.

For more information contact Allen Hall at ahall@lclark.edu or call Lewis & Clark’s Oregon Center Inquiry and Social Innovation at 503-768-6099.

A Message from Professor Emeritus Roger Paget

So far, I have been unable to make contact with any of my friends in Aceh, most of whom are academics at either the state university (Universitas Syah Kuala) or the Islamic university, both of which are located in Banda Aceh, the provincial capital. I picture myself seated in one or another of their homes, playing with their children, noshing greedily on super spicy tidbits flowing from the kitchen, and chatting about the latest “modernization” efforts and political shenanigans. And then it hits me that these homes all are easily within the tsunami’s three-mile inundation reach.

I have visited Aceh periodically over the past half-century but did not get to the area on my most recent stay in Indonesia a couple of months ago. Two years ago I gave some lectures at the Aceh universities and worked on a consultancy to evaluate American aid programs. Some of my remarks here reach back to that visit and to email communications from friends there since then.

Aceh, for those of you unfamiliar with the region, was the last morsel of the archipelago subdued by the Dutch—and the Acehnese insist that the Dutch never actually succeeded in quelling the fierce resistance. Indonesian Muslims often refer to Acehnese as the most authentically Islamic people in the country, so it may be of interest that the premier symbol of Acehnese resistance to the Dutch was a female guerrilla leader, Cut Nyak Dien. Indeed, Aceh is a splendid example of a culture which is at once profoundly religious in orientation yet at the same time pluralistic and independent.

Aceh was a crossroads of global trade and cultural interchange centuries before the Dutch took over in 1908 and before the word, Indonesia, was invented. It was, in fact, an independent nation, with diplomatic representation in Europe, rich educational exchange with other parts of the Islamic world, and with unequalled geopolitical clout because of its control of the Straits of Malacca.

Today, about 60% of world surface trade transits the Straits of Malacca. That, together with Aceh’s number one rank as exporter of liquid natural gas, underlines why Washington as well as Jakarta have paid close attention to Aceh’s political and economic status in the past several decades.

Indonesia’s five governments of the past fifteen years have sought to subdue Acehnese resistance, often through methods that have equaled the Dutch slaughter of a hundred years earlier. When the tsunami struck, it found a population living under prolonged and extreme deprivation and duress.

Click here to read the rest of Professor Paget's message.

Satya Byock '04 Assists Relief Efforts

Satya Byock '04 will be traveling to Sri Lanka to support relief efforts. Below is a statement about her interest and involvement in the region.

"I'm working on the steering committee of the Missoula Community Tsunami Response group, and will be arriving in Sri Lanka February 19th to begin working in Galle, Sri Lanka on long-term support projects. The Missoula community is interested in working on Cross-Cultural exchange as well as relief support, and hopes to have a presence in the area for a long time. I will be traveling there alone as the on-the-ground coordinator for the project.

I worked in Sri Lanka two years ago as an English teacher in a Buddhist temple kindergarten near Kandy, Sri Lanka. I spent three months in total immersion in the rural village, and fell in love with the people and culture there."

Learn more about the Missoula Community Tsunami Response group.