I finally found what I was looking for, evidence of Mexican Indigenous youth using the Web 2.0 for Intra cultural dialogue. There are so many speakers of Indigenous languages in Mexico, but so little digital evidence.

Nizkaloa Nahuatl

Web Site: http://miztonpixan.blogspot.com/

This site is a blog by Miztonpixan, which the user regularly updates. I cannot tell you about the content as it is all in Nahuatl, but going by the images it is  a blog by a modern youth. Unfortunately, no one has left any comments, so it is a lone crusade. However it is an example of what mexican Indigenous youth could be doing to create communities of practice. This is the only blog in a Mexican Indigenous language I have found so far.

I also just had to include this site:

Twelve canoes

Web Site: http://www.12canoes.com.au/

This is an Aboriginal  site that tells the story of some Indigenous communities in their own language using images, videos and sound. There is also the possibility of listening in English. I cannot find out much about who made it, but it is so beautiful I just had to put it up. It is eye catching and multimodal. Really This is the kind of site Oaxacan communities need to share their IK.

Instituto Lingüistico de Verano en Mexico

Web Site address http://www.sil.org/mexico/ilv/eInfoILVMexico.htm

I thought twice about putting this site into the weblog, but the discourse in Indigenous languages is so lacking, that I can’t be picky nor let my prejudices get in the way.
The Summer Institute of Linguistics in Mexico is an organization that studies Indigenous Languages. It produces, dictionaries, grammars, didactic aids, translates traditional stories and last, but by no means least, translates the protestant Bible.
It works with Indigenous students, teaching them to write their Indigenous languages and helps them to produce Bible translations.
There is a branch in Oaxaca and I have met the director. They have excellent, highly qualified American linguists and their output is very impressive. Unfortunately, I am uncomfortable with the Indigenous evangelization aspect.
The site houses many, many excellent documents on the linguistics of Indigenous languages, but I am more interested in the hundreds of traditional stories written in Indigenous languages. It is a gold mine!

An example of a story in Zapotec: http://www.sil.org/mexico/zapoteca/yaganiza/L124c-GallinaBlanca_Leer-zad.pdf

An example of a story in Triqui: http://www.sil.org/mexico/mixteca/sotlaxiaco/L139c-ChivoHuerfano_Leer-meh.pdf

Trikis en Movimiento

Web site address http://trikisenmovimiento.org/triquis-en-movimiento/

This site is in Spanish and is run by a Triqui Movement, in Oaxaca, Mexico. It is maintained by just one person Fidel Hernandez, a young Triqui.
The aim of the movement is to contribute to the development of the Triqui culture, towns and people. The web page is a Blog with sections on music, images, essays, poems and videos. There isn’t much written in Nanj nïin’in, the Indigenous language of the Triquis, except a small vocabulary section. The site contains several links; the most interesting are:

http://triquis.org/
Another Triqui web page for the Triqui towns of Baja –Copala Media_ Itunyoso and Alta- Chicahuaxtla. This site has only 14 registered users and certain sections are restricted only to them. However, anyone can register. There is information about Triqui history, music, culture and Indigenous justice.

http://www.triquicopala.com/index.htm
Another Triqui web page that contains a lot of information about the Triqui and has information on Triqui history, Triqui stories, the Triqui language, Triqui radio, a good collection of Triqui videos. It also has connections to Triqui migrant groups in the US. Again the site is in Spanish.

http://indigenasdf.org.mx/ami/index.php
A web page run by the Asamblea de Migrantes Indigenas de la Cuidad de Mexico (The Indigenous Migrant Assembly of the city of Mexico)

http://www.redindigena.info/
The Web page of the Red Indigena (The Indigenous Network)

http://www.reduii.org/
The Website of the Universidad Indigena Intercultural (Intercultural Indigenous University)in Bolivia

The Toledo Family Web site

Web Site address http://www.biyubi.com/did_canciones.html#naila

This website is run by a Binnizá (Zapotec) family living in the state of México, but originally from the Isthmus of the state of Oaxaca. The family are in the computer hardware business and much of the page is about computers, but there are also many songs, sayings and poetry in Isthmus Zapotec, as well as a Zapotec Spanish dictionary with 15,800 definitions and a Zapotec/ Spanish translator, both created by the family.

The page can be viewed in Zapotec, Spanish or English.
There are 357 134 speakers of the Zapotec family of languages (INEGI. II Conteo de Población y Vivienda 2005) and Isthmus Zapotec is very much a living language. However, once again, there is very little digital discourse by Indigenous Zapotecs in Zapotec on the Internet.

There are no Zapotec related links from this page.

ÄYUUJK WËNMÄÄ´NY

Web Site address http://www.pensamientoayuujk.blogspot.com/

This is the only site in Mixe, an Indigenous language from Oaxaca, México that I have been able to find.
This Blog is bilingual, with poetry in Mixe accompanied by a translation in Spanish. It has only been running for half a year and all the posts seem to be by the same person. On the right hand side, there is a section for new Mixe words, where the author has added the Mixe words for Snail, Stairs, and Venus. My search during this fourth Weblog is for evidence of Indigenous discourse in Indigenous languages from my state, Oaxaca, which has a very large Indigenous population. According to the National Statistical Department, Oaxaca has the highest percentage of speakers of an Indigenous language in the Republic. 35% of the inhabitants over 5 years of age speak an Indigenous language and 5% are monolingual in that language (INEGI. II Conteo de Población y Vivienda 2005). There are 103,089 speakers of Mixe in the state (INEGI. II Conteo de Población y Vivienda 2005), but the digital discourse is virtually nonexistent.

There are no links from this site.

The Native Village web site is professional and well maintained. It is copyrighted by an individual, but  is too good to be run as a hobby. However, no mention is made of how it is maintained financially.

Web site: http://www.nativevillage.org/index.htm

This vibrant site publishes twice a month and is designed for educators and youth. It is not particularly scholarly but is a great example of a functioning format of a Web resource for an Indigenous community.

The first publication is “Native Village Youth and Education News” which is a news magazine of interesting stories on Indigenous topics.

Link to Volume 1: http://www.nativevillage.org/NOV%20News/V1%20November%202009%20headlines.htm

The second publication is “Native Village Opportunities and Websites”, which is divided into two sections:

“Opportunities” lists all the activities (and there are plenty) going on related to Indigenous Knowledge and Community.

Link: http://www.nativevillage.org/Opportunities/10-15-09%20OPPS.htm

“Websites” offers a selection of interesting Websites every fortnight.

Link: http://www.nativevillage.org/Libraries/NativeVillageLibrariesHOME.htm

There is also the “Native American Language Library”, which received recognition by the American Indian Review Magazine as the “Best Language Website on the Internet”. The page offers a lot of good links to websites on Indigenous languages and is a great resource for teachers wanting to bring Indigenous content into the curriculum.

Link: http://www.nativevillage.org/Libraries/Language%20Libraries.htm

Archives of ILAT@LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU

Indigenous Languages and Technology

Web site: http://www.u.arizona.edu/~cashcash/ILAT.html

The ILAT site is an open forum Listserv, something that I had read about, but never seen. The site is run by the University of Arizona, and is visually simple with no frills, unlike other webpages. It is similar to the forums we use on Blackboard.

It is a list of messages archived by month on topics related to Indigenous Languages and Technology. It is up to date as there are 23 threads for November 2009 alone. It is a useful site because it allows you to search the archive by keyword. This means you can find out what people in the field have said about any topic. I did a search on the Listserv for the word Wiki and got 27 matches, the most recent being from January 2009. This post took to me to a site (http://drupal.org/project/i18n) where you can download Drupal, a free online program that allows for the creation of an online dictionary that can include audio, and video. The post suggests that the dictionary can be set up in a Wiki style so that users could add words.

I did another search on the word “Zapotec” and found that a researcher brought students down to Oaxaca each year to work on a Zapotec dictionary in a village not far from my house.

A real mine of information

Memory Place

Memory Place is a project that proposes to house IK digitally for Indigenous communities and researchers. They have started a database for Groote Elandt but the database software is open source and is freely available from Sourceforge for use in other communities. The software is for storing and accessing all types of Indigenous media. It was developed (and funded) by the Anindilyakwz Lando Council as a way to pass on to Aboriginal youth the cultural and linguistic knowledge. It is designed to offer a safe deposit for IK allowing it be accessed in a culturally sensitive way. The project involved the community at every step and took into account Indigenous Knowledge systems and Indigenous Computing in the design.

Web site: http://memoryplace.sourceforge.net/index.html

A version of the software is available at http://sourceforge.net/project/platformdownload.php?group_id=161316&sel_platform=1607

I have downloaded the software but am having some technical issues with the installation. However, I am hopeful to resolve them soon as I have been in contact with the designers. The project is very professional and I think it could be an excellent option for use in Oaxaca.

Indigenous Knowledge and Resource Management in Northern Australia

Making Collective Memory with Computers

Web Site: http://www.cdu.edu.au/centres/ik/ikhome.html

The IKRMNA was a project that ran from 2003 to 2006 and aimed to support and develop databases that focused on the preservation of Indigenous languages and culture in Northern Australia. It was coordinated by the School of Australian Indigenous Knowledge Systems at Charles Darwin University and received funds from the Australian Research Council. The project developed solutions for institutions, Indigenous communities, published papers and developed software. Among other activities, the project developed a prototype digital systems that allows Indigenous communities to develop a collective memory. TAMI (Text, Audio, Movies and Images) is a database and file management system for IK developed specifically to take into consideration the needs of Australian Aboriginal communities. Interestingly they propose the use of Maps and navigation interfaces since IK is place based.

Links from this site:

There is a link to an animation of TAMI

http://www.cdu.edu.au/centres/ik/db_TAMI.html#

There are many interesting papers such as:

Digital Technologies and Aboriginal Knowledge Practices http://www.cdu.edu.au/centres/ik/pdf/DigTech_IndigPlaceAust.pdf

& Software for Educating Aboriginal Children about Place

http://www.cdu.edu.au/centres/ik/pdf/HRV_for_Kritt_WinegarFINAL4-06.pdf

There are several links to other sites.

Of interest is the link to the Aboriginal Mapping Network that helps Indigenous communities to protect and develop land based resources by using mapping tools. http://www.nativemaps.org/

The Indigenous Knowledge Project

This project is run by the Information Technology & Electrical Engineering of The University of Queensland Australia. The site is not current having been last updated in July, 2008 and the most recent publications are from 2006. However, it is an interesting site on IK management software. The stated objective of the site is to see how IT can be used to allow Indigenous communities to conserve their IK and culture in a sensitive way. The project aims to work with the custodians of IK to develop suitable software that preserves IK while respecting Indigenous protocols with respect to access. It also emphasizes the importance of maintaining ownership and control of  IK within the community.

Web site: http://www.itee.uq.edu.au/~eresearch/projects/ikm/index.html

Web Site Links

The site offers some interesting papers such as “Software Tools for Indigenous Knowledge Management” http://www.itee.uq.edu.au/~eresearch/papers/2003/IKM_software.pdf but of  most interest is the software that the project has developed for IK management.

There is the XML Metadata Editor/Generator Application (XMEG), which allows the user to record metadata onto an IK media file, not only to describe the content, but also to restrict access.

My particular interest is the demo they have created of an Indigenous Knowledge Web site: Indigenous Knowledge Web Demo http://maenad.itee.uq.edu.au/kweb/

The Digital Drum WebSite

Web Site URL: http://www.digitaldrum.ca/en/

The Digital Drum is a project set up in 2007 by Canadian Culture Online, which is run by the Department of Canada Heritage.

It is a site similar to YouTube, and is designed to engage youth in Aboriginal Cultural Expression. One of the aims is to connect youth with Elders in the hope that this will help youth to identify with their native culture. The site offers a variety of media clips on many topics related to the interests of Indigenous youth. It is easy to watch stream, vote, post comments and upload material. The site is designed to be attractive to modern adolescents. It is a great way to develop a multimedia discourse by connecting Indigenous youth to a Pan Indigenous Discourse. It is obviously open to abuse, as I discovered in the Blogs, but it is a very interesting idea and seems to be working.

The Alaska Native Knowledge Network

Web site URL:  http://www.ankn.uaf.edu/index.html

This site is run from the University of Alaska Fairbanks , is a resource fro educators interested in Indigenous Alaskan knowledge and ways of knowing. This is a serious, up to date, culturally sensitive and culturally relevant resource for educators in Alaska working with Indigenous communities. The ASKN site offers a long list of its own publications, both digital and print. These include articles, books, guidelines, DVDs, CD ROMS and posters. The ASKN also publishes a digital newsletter, and a catalogue is available online dating back to 1996. The site offers culturally based curriculum resources organized through a Curriculum Spiral Chart. These resources have been chosen to show how Indigenous knowledge and ways of knowing and Western knowledge systems can be combined in a culturally relevant curriculum.

As an example, Some Curriculum resources are located at: http://www.ankn.uaf.edu/curriculum/resources.html

Some Lesson plans are located at: http://ankn.uaf.edu/curriculum/units/index.html

There is also an up to date calendar of events, and finally a moderated listserv for announcements.

This professional and well-maintained site is a good example of what a teaching university can offer as a resource for educators working in rural communities.

The Inupiaq Dictionary Project

Web Site URL: http://wiki.bssd.org/index.php/Category:Inupiaq_dictionary

This is a school based project inspired by Audie Chikoyuk of Marshall, Alaska in the Bering Strait School District that uses Wiki technology to encourage indigenous students to build a language dictionary.

The Wiki contains links to each Inupiaq word entered into the system. Each word has it’s own page with a word, definition, MP3 audio file, image and any other additional relevant information. Since it is a Wiki, anyone can add or make changes to the content, which may or may not be a good thing in the long run. It is a very simple site, and still quite small, but has grown to include a dictionary in Yupik as well. This is an important site as it demonstrates indigenous youth creating and sharing a product that promotes an internal discourse with very little investment. The fact that it is an oral dictionary is important in my quest for digital products that can be used in Mexican Indigenous communities, because these languages often do not have a globally accepted written form. Since Indigenous languages tend to vary from community to community, the Wiki technology gives students from different communities the opportunity to add variations to the same entry, encouraging a peer-peer discourse.

The Four Directions Teachings website

Web Site URL: http://www.fourdirectionsteachings.com/

The Four Directions Teachings site is a very professional project. This Canadian site receives money from the Department of Cultural Heritage. It is a beautifully produced resource for incorporating native knowledge in the classroom. It aims to protect and promote indigenous knowledge. The site mixes audio teachings by elders and beautiful flash videos. The site is an example of how with careful research and consulting a high quality product is possible. Careful consideration has even been given to the interface that aims to “replicate the fundamental flow of movement and interconnectivity of the indigenous experience.”

The site also provides downloadable lesson plans that aim to take maximum advantage of the oral teachings included in the site. The lesson plans are designed to incorporate the holistic nature of indigenous teaching methodologies, incorporating the idea of multi disciplinary learning and the medicine wheel. The four sections of the wheel incorporate the idea of Native Learning styles the spiritual, emotional, mental and physical aspects of the learning process, and each lesson plan aims to use and balance all four parts.

The teacher’s resources include learning activities (lesson plans) for each of the tribes represented for incorporating the audio material provided by the elders into the classroom at different educational levels.

I really recommend that anyone who has the time looks at the site and reads the teacher’s resource document at http://www.fourdirectionsteachings.com/Teacher_Resource_Kit.pdf

The Four Directions Project

Web site URL: http://www.4directions.org/

The LTC (Learning Technology Center at the University of Texas at Austin ran the Four Directions project from 1995 to 2001 as an Indigenous Model of Education. The 4Directions website is administered by the Pueblo of Laguna Department of Education. It received funding from the Technology Innovation Challenge Program of the U.S. Department of Education.

The site appears to be no longer maintained, as there are broken links and the site is small. However, the site proposes and demonstrates several uses of technology for indigenous students to record and share objects of cultural relevance. It demonstrates a way for indigenous groups that are physically separated from each other to form a database of culturally relevant media.

The site contains an example of a student based virtual project, the 4Directions Virtual Museum (http://www.4directions.org/resources/features/qtvr_tutorial/4DVMuse.htm).

The project is very small but uses QTVR (Quick Time Virtual Reality) to record artifacts of significance to the American Indian students and place them in a virtual museum along with additional material that explains their significance produced by the students.

There is also a virtual tour of the National Museum of the American Indian, created by American Indian students. They have chosen objects of interest to them and when the visitor clicks on one of these “hot spot” objects, apart from viewing an image, a commentary written by the student appears about the artifact

Finally there is a database of lesson plans and other didactic material.

The Archive of the Indigenous Languages of Latin America (AILLA)

The site is run by the University of Texas at Austin and is bilingual in English and Spanish.

This sites hosts a digital archive of recordings and texts in Indigenous languages. The site collects natural discourse and materials about the languages, and some of these materials are designed for use in indigenous language revitalization programs. The links from this site include other organizations that produce materials for language revitalization. The mission of the site is three fold.

 1. They seek to preserve recordings of indigenous languages. 

2. They seek to make them available to indigenous peoples (as well as scholars).

3. They seek to provide support to native communities to use this media as a way to build up a discourse.

This seems to be a good model for the way technology can be used to help communities develop  an online database of material.

Site URL: http://www.ailla.utexas.org/site/welcome.html

The site also hosts links to other sites. Some of the categories are listed below. Unfortunately not all the sites are currently active.  

1. Archives
2. Sites about the indigenous languages and cultures of Latin America
3. Sites about the indigenous languages and cultures of North America
4. Sites about bilingual education, multilingualism, and multiculturalism
5. Software for linguists

The Hans Rausing Endangered Languages Project is run by SOAS at the University of London. It has a staff of about 14 people, many of them with PhDs and is extremely thorough and professional. My original idea was the use of technology to allow communities in rural Mexico to build up a cultural discourse, through the exchange of shared experience, knowledge and linguistic resources among children in  isolated communities, perhaps using Wikis. Just looking at the extent and depth of the material on this site I now realize that the project is much more complicated than I had envisaged. I really need to read many of the articles from this site before I go any further.The site houses OREL: Online Resources for Endangered Languages, that is up to date and contains about 350 links to resources for every aspect of revitalizing indigenous languages.

Site Address: http://www.hrelp.org/

Though there are many articles and links for documenting languages by experts (which does not interest me), there are also tasty numbers like:

The Birth and Death of Languages

David W. Lightfoot

Developing Linguistic Corpora: A Guide to Good Practice

ed. Martin Wynne, AHDS

What Native Communities Want from Web-Based Data

Doug Whalen

Who Owns Native Culture?

Michael F. Brown

First Nations Pedagogy

This site has been active since 2006 and is a personal site for June Kaminski of mixed race (First Nation and European blood) who is currently working on a PhD in Curriculum Studies and Technology Education. The objective of the site is to promote First Nations Pedagogy worldwide. It focuses on the ways of knowing, learning and teaching in first nation education and the sites works to help educators design educational initiatives for first world communities. June works as a consultant and offers her services through the site, however there are also links to interesting and scholarly papers.

Site Address: http://firstnationspedagogy.com/portfolio.html

June’s specialty field is health, but the site offers links to several interesting papers on pedagogy such as:

Aboriginal literacy and education: A wholistic perspective that embraces intergenerational knowledge.

Indigenous knowledge and pedagogy in First Nations education

Enabling the Autumn Seed: Toward a decolonized approach to aboriginal knowledge, language, and education.

Distance education in remote Aboriginal communities: Barriers, Learning Styles and Best Practices. –

Pedagogical Considerations of Using Moodle in Course Development

This site offers a good place to get idea of best practices in indigenous education. As I am particularly interested in using technology to help Indigenous communities develop a discourse, the articles on distance education and the use of Moodle are particularly interesting.

American Indian Education

The site was set up in 2009 and is hosted by Northern Arizona University.

It is a comprehensive web site that aims to provide information and on many topics related to American Indian Education (AIE). It offers many, many links to other interesting sites. Some of the areas of focus of this site are the history of AIE and the way American Indians are being taught now. It has interesting pages on learning styles, identity, literacy and languages among many others. More than specializing on any one theme, it is a very up to date link to hundreds of relevant resources on the Web, be they sites, articles or journals on everything to do with North American Indigenous Education. It is scholarly and a really good place to start any investigation on American Indians.

Site Address: http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/~jar/AIE/index.html

There are far too many links to sites to post all of them here, but here are just a few from the most general page :


Carlisle Indian School Barbara Landis’ site

If I can read, I can do anything Aims to assist Indian communities with increasing literacy skills 


Indian Education Links Montana Office of Public Instruction


Indigenous Studies Portal: Education University of Saskatchewan


Journal of American Indian Education Over 100 full text articles from 1961-2002


Native American EducationWill Karkavelas, Osaka University


Northwest Indian College Virtual Library


Selected Resources on American Indian Education Annotated bibliography of printed sources by Jon Reyhner


Teaching & Learning with Native Americans Handbook for non-Native American adult educators.

FirstVoices is run by the First Peoples’ Cultural Foundation established in Canada. FirstVoices is a site that offers tools and services to help indigenous communities record and teach their languages and so to promote cultural revitalization. It is supported by a trust, the Government of British Columbia and the Federal Government. The site allows indigenous communities to add their languages bit by bit to build up a comprehensive record of the written and spoken language and share it for future generations. The interesting thing about the site is the way that indigenous communities are allowed to choose whether to give access to their linguistic resources to the general public or not. This site is a ready-made tool that allows indigenous communities to easily teach their written and spoken language and share images of cultural practices, songs and stories. There are also games that work with the database of words that a community has added. There are currently over 60 communities storing their linguistic history on the site, but this should increase. At the moment Membership is only available to indigenous communities in Canada, America and Australia, but I see no reason why it would not be possible to write to the production team and get the Indigenous communities of Mexico included.

Site address: http://www.firstvoices.com/

The site does not include links to other sites, but it is a very interesting use of media technology to help the revitalization of indigenous culture by indigenous cultures.