
Hello.  

We've been through the discussion of how to represent the native
american sovereign nations in the domain name system, and there is no
really satisfactory answer as yet.

The IANA is not in the business of deciding what is and what is not a
country, nor what code letters are appropriate for a particular
country.

The codes we use are those from the ISO 3166 standard.

A country must be recognised as such by the ISO (or by the UPU); the code
used must be the ISO-3166 code (or if there is no code in the
Standard, then the code used should be that which is reserved in the
ISO-3166 Reserved Code Elements list as a UPU code).

So a two letter country code is out, unless something is set up by the
ISO 3166 committee.  A three letter code might be interesting to
comtemplate, and one way that might be achieved is to participate in
setting up a new registry and be allocated a new top level domain under
the plan moving (slowly) forward (see the "Announcements" on the IANA
web page).  Otherwise, it is unlikely that a top level domain will be
created for a "people", since this could easily become a political
battleground given the tensions between varions ethnic groups and
governments around the world.

So, based on a long discussion of the various possibilities, my
conclusion is that the best of the limited options is to go ahead with
the Native Sovereign Nations branch within the US Domain.

			NSN.US

The US Domain administrator has established the subdomain NSN, and
will process applications for the delegation of domain names under
this branch of the domain name tree from entities on the Recognized
Tribal Entities list [1].

Examples might be:

	Cherokee-Nation-of-Oklahoma.NSN.US

	Eastern-Band-of-Cherokee-Indians-of-North-Carolina.NSN.US

	Nisqually.NSN.US

	Oglala-Sioux.NSN.US

	Omaha.NSN.US

	United-Keetoowah-Band-of-Cherokee-Indians.NSN.US

Note: I've used some very long names in the examples.  These are from
the list i've received (titled "RECOGNIZED TRIBAL ENTITIES" and dated
June 1994.  I am very naive in these matters, and not at all clear on
how to create short names that properly make the appropriate
distinctions.  For example, there seem to be several bands of the
Cahuilla, perhaps they could be named as follows:

	  Agua-Caliente.Cahuilla.NSN.US
	      Augustine.Cahuilla.NSN.US
	        Cabazon.Cahuilla.NSN.US
	       Cahuilla.Cahuilla.NSN.US
	    Los-Coyotes.Cahuilla.NSN.US
	        Morongo.Cahuilla.NSN.US
	         Ramona.Cahuilla.NSN.US
	     Santa-Rosa.Cahuilla.NSN.US
	Torres-Martinez.Cahuilla.NSN.US

Or maybe they have nothing to do with each other (as i am told is the
case with the Oneida in New York and the Oneida in Wisconsin).

--jon.

References:

1. "RECOGNIZED TRIBAL ENTITIES", June 1994.

    This information is a compilation of the BIA list and supplemental
    information from NIPC.

    For comments and requests regarding this list write or call: Orna
    Weinroth, Information Specialist, National Indian Policy Center,
    Voice: 202-994-6421 / 994-1446, Fax: 202-994-4404, 
    EMail: orna@gwis.circ.gwu.edu.

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