In my first weblog module, I will be dividing the posts into four different areas related to online resources of aboriginal communities worldwide (focusing mainly in Canada, Australia and the United States). Doing so will help me organize my online resources and reflections as I learn more about indigenous cultures around the world. First of all, I will be posting online communication channels (including networks and directories) of the indigenous communities around the world. In the following posts, I will be posting resources relating to indigenous counseling and consulting, arts and literatures, rituals and events, news and media and finally some personal reflections, respectively.
“Aboriginal Connections is an online gateway providing authoritative and in-depth information for and about the world’s Indigenous Peoples. Its’ services include a searchable web directory, discussion forums, advertising, and e-Commerce. Aboriginal Connections is a solely operated web site created and maintained by Rob Wesley.” This webpage currently provides more than 800 external web sites linking to its home page of Aboriginal Connections. Web sites linking to Aboriginal Connections include Canadian, American, Australian, and New Zealand official government web sites, Native Newspapers, Major Canadian Banking Institutions, International Organizations, Universities and Colleges worldwide, Community Libraries, International Museums, Most Major Search Engines and Native and non-Native organizations, businesses, and personal web sites.
Besides a comprehensive list of directory for indigenous communities resources around the world, the Aboriginal Connections webpage also includes a discussion forum, which allows aboriginal communities to connect and communicate with each other. I found that this website could be a good start for my weblog because it would allow me to hear first hand voices and discussions from aboriginal people. However, I found that most public posts and comments are out of date. (the most recent post was made in 2014)
However, when I turned to the “Who’s online homepage”, I found that each post has tens of thousands of views and there are active and many recent accesses to the forum; I wonder if there are more frequent private users than public users in this forum; I think that the private forum is a great feature to this website as aboriginal groups are allowed to share personal stories or sensitive opinions more openly and freely to community members without risking the jeopardy of exposure of their personal information and privacy.