A Note from Max Forte: On the future of the CAC and KACIKE

[Maximilian Forte]

Dear friends, if you will allow me a personal announcement, this might be of some minimal interest to a few readers of this blog.

By the end of this year I will have formally withdrawn from the Caribbean Amerindian Centrelink, which will either pass into new hands, some new hands, or none and remain archived online at a new location. The current location of the CAC is at http://www.centrelink.org/. The new location, where there has already been a start in remodeling the CAC is http://indigenouscaribbean.wordpress.com/. The CAC is being renamed the Indigenous Caribbean Center, and restructured using blog site architecture so that it should be much easier to manage and update by anyone else. It will also go back to being on a free site, which should also make an eventual transfer much easier. The domain, www.centrelink.org, will cease to exist by the start of 2009.

Also by the start of 2009, I will no longer be involved with KACIKE: The Journal of Caribbean Amerindian History and Anthropology at www.kacike.org. That site will also be moved over to wordpress.com, once again to make it easier to manage, update, and maintain without any personal financial expenditures.

I will also be withdrawing from this blog by the end of this year.

Finally, I will no longer be the webmaster for the Santa Rosa Carib Community.

It has been a fantastic journey that I have traveled in the company of great people who have made my life much better, richer, and more interesting for having known them. The time has come for me to move on to new areas. Once my current projects, both large and small, are finally wrapped up within the coming three years, I will no longer be engaged in any kind of work focusing on the indigenous Caribbean. You should, I imagine, still find me in the Indigenous Caribbean Network.

If I can insert my two cents' worth here (and I may be overvaluing my words, by at least two cents), for a number of years I have thought that the CAC should be fully indigenous-controlled. KACIKE was always an academic site, oriented to audiences with academic interests, so perhaps that case is not as straightforward.

I am making this announcement in case there are any individuals "out there", among those of you reading this message, who might be interested in getting involved to take the reins of these sites and to eventually reshape them to better suit your interests and needs. In that vein, please feel free to contact either myself, Jorge Estevez, Lynne Guitar, Pedro Ferbel, or Gerard Collomb, all of whom also belong to this network, the ICN.

Many thanks again to all of you, the past decade online, and longer offline, has truly been an experience worth treasuring. For those who have benefited from these online resources, you are very welcome.

Maximilian C. Forte

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[Miguel Sague Jr]

Im not sure what to think about this. It took a technological mental midget like myself this long to get my act together so that I was finally able to create a half-way decent site in this awesome network after years of watching jealously as others took advantage of the online opportunities you have created for us. And now that I'm finally here playing with the big boys you tell us that youre leaving!! That'snot fair! LOL but serously now, just how gone are you really going to be? It sounds like although you are not going to be on the administrative level of this thing you are not going to dissappear altogether. I hope not. Looking foward to many more years of exchanges and opinion sharing.