by Leanne C. Boyd
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"Long ago, and not so far away, I fell in love with
you. . . " The song lyrics by Anne Murray, from the early 1970s, provided a perfect mirror for the search into issues of the imminent and pervasive technologies at our dispersal today, and the neat, tightly-fitted joints that electronics provides for the modern woman artist, and women in general. The ground roots of the current issues for women, and for Feminists, were fertilized and nurtured in those intense years of the 1960s and '70s. Given the opportunity, via this research and writing, to wander back to those roots and attempt to delve into when the seed for "left-brained-ness" was first implanted into my solidly right-brained artist's spirit, I can honestly say that I can name practically the month of the year (June of 1970, just after high school graduation) and the "deliverer" of the seed (my first husband, a Master's candidate in Comparative Literature). I still have the yellowed copy of the softback he gave me, of The Ship Who Sang, by Anne McCaffrey. Traipsing back through the pages, I remember when I was first inspired by the concept of melding the imperfections of the human body with the seeming god-like attributes of things mechanical. In researching topics concerning the CYBORG concept of modern times, I was catapulted back to my origins of interest, when I picked up this favored icon of my youth. I again fell in love with cybernetics:

"The brain was perfect, the tiny, crippled body useless. So technology rescued the brain and put it in an environment that conditioned it to live in a different kind of body -- a spaceship. Here the human mind, more subtle, infinitely more complex than any computer ever devised, could be linked to the massive and delicate strengths, the total recall, and the incredible speeds of computer abilities. Such a ship was obviously capable of far more than any ordinary machine. But what happened to the personality behind the brain developed in such an environment (McCaffrey 1969, Frontispiece)?"

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If one were able to become part-human and part- machine, indeed, what would the ramifications be? Having broken my spine in 1971, in a diving accident in my first year of college, topics of the possible curative powers found in creating some kind of union of broken body with efficient machine, became of utmost importance for many years. As time progressed -- and herein lie the major topics of this paper -- I had great interest in subjects such as art, robotics and other pre-computer-world science-fantasy themes, natural medicines and "earth-mother" topics -- and feminism. The research for this writing began with a study into Native American women artists, what they are doing, and how they are doing it. Long Internet searches revealed something that came as a real surprise, even to this techno-submerged artist. Oddly, the indigenous female entities not only had much to be researched in the electronic libraries, but these "keepers of the culture," these women who are committed to preserving their societal and earth-mother ways, had an incredibly HUGE presence online. Somehow, American Indian tribes, especially matrilineal lines, close-to-mother- earth subjects, and computer technology, seem almost diametrically opposed! A slow dawning of recognition began to happen. The Internet was not only an "extension of myself" for ME, a white, middle-classed American female . . . but also for hundreds of Native American women, and other indigenous women of the world.

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