Economy has roots in domestic slave trade

If you want to tell the story of how the United States got its economic engine running, focus on the 19th century practice of buying and selling domestic slaves, says a UC Davis historian in a new book.

In Carry Me Back: The Domestic Slave Trade in America Life, Steven Deyle suggests that the American domestic slave trade was central to the growth of the nation. The business began in earnest after 1808 when the African slave trade was officially abolished by the United States.

"Slave property became a capital investment second only to land valuation in the American economy," he says.

The slave business brought incredible wealth to traders and Southern plantation owners. At the same time, it created great moral dilemmas and regional conflicts, and eventually resulted in the Civil War.

"The white South needed the slave trade, but increasingly they couldn't justify it morally," Deyle says. "It created glaring problems and human consequences."

It also spurred the major social and ethical concerns that have become part of the fabric of the American republic.

"It tore husbands from wives and children from parents," Deyle says. "The human cost of this tragedy was something the nation is still dealing with today."

Deyle's new book, one of the few to focus on the domestic slave trade as a national institution, covers the market revolution in the South, how the buying and selling of human property was a regular part of everyday life, the abolitionist attacks on slavery and the African American resistance to the slave trade.

"Wealth from the slave trade has woven its way into American society so thoroughly that few have any knowledge of its origins," Deyle concludes.

Research fellowships offered at Livermore

The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is making available graduate research fellowships for students who will carry out research in subjects related to the goals and missions of the laboratory.

This research must be part of the student's graduate degree program and will need to occur at LLNL. Fellowships will be awarded on a competitive basis. The fellowships may be awarded to students of physics, astrophysics, laser science, chemistry, engineering, computer science, biology, genetics and biotechnology, materials science, and related disciplines.

The application deadline is June 30. For details and to apply, visit http://segrf.llnl.gov.

Scholars to discuss Latin American women issues

A panel of Latin American women from the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues will discuss organizing from community to international levels at the UC Davis Gorman Museum at 2 p.m. Tuesday, May 31.

The title of the event is "Latin American Indigenous Women's Perspective on Community and International Organizing." This will be a moderated discussion, in which the speakers have questions ahead of time, followed by a question-and-answer time.

The guests (and their respective tribes) are:

• Tarcila Rivera (Quechua) from the organization Chirapaq in Peru;
• Maria Eugenia Choque Quispe (Aymara), who has worked in many Indigenous organizations in Bolivia and is now working in a government position at the national level;
• Gloria Ushigua (Zapara), who is the leader, along with her brother, of their Amazon community in Ecuador; and
• Margarita Gutierrez (Hñañhu), who has worked in the past for ANIPA and the Human Rights Commission in Chiapas and has been working for an elected representative in the Chiapas congress.

All four visitors regularly attend international forums such as International Indigenous Women's meetings (Tarcila organizes one in Peru), the Working Group on Indigenous Issues or the World Summit on the Information Society, as well as the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues at the United Nations, which they will be attending directly before flying to California for this panel.

Organizer Kerin Gould, a graduate student in the UC Davis Department of Native American Studies, expects the panel to be quite lively.

"Because the Latin American Indigenous women are very demanding in these forums, they really take the issues on strongly and eloquently," she says.

The event is sponsored by the UC Davis Hemispheric Institute on the Americas and the Department of Native American Studies.

For more information, contact Gould at kering@earthlink.net, or the institute at (530) 754-9453.

Tech leader to lecture on global economy

Stratton Sclavos, chairman and chief executive officer of Veri-Sign, will deliver a lecture June 1 as part of the College of Engineering's Distinguished Speakers Series.

Sclavos' address, titled "Building the Foundation for Global Transformation," will begin at 4:10 p.m. in 1065 Kemper Hall. A reception will follow in 1003 Kemper Hall.

Since joining Veri-Sign in July 1995 as one of its first employees, Sclavos has helped establish the company as a global corporation focused on businesses and consumers as they communicate and make transactions online. Veri-Sign is a provider of infrastructure services for the Internet and telecommunications networks.

For more information on this event and others in the College of Engineering, visit their site at http://engineering.ucdavis.edu/pages/news/announcements.html.