This is a podcast that I have listened to a couple of times. It is a CBC podcast that is hosted by Falen Johnson, and provides space for indigenous “storytellers, culture makers and community shakers” from coast to coast to coast across Canada (Johnson, 2021).
The last time that I really focused on what was being discussed in the podcast was while I was driving to work. On my travels the topic of a Māori group came up, and how they have developed their own digital platform to preserve their language and culture (this came up in my post in our first discussion). In fact, they explain how language is an important carrier of culture, and how they have created their own digital platform to protect their language, and, therefore, culture from colonization by big tech companies. By avoiding larger, more universally accessible platforms such as YouTube they are not giving rights to YouTube to do anything they want with the data of the language and oral histories. This approach gives the group digital sovereignty.
This specific episode, and the short clip that I allude to in my first discussion post in the course Canvas, really makes me wonder how indigenous people can preserve their cultures and traditions in a safe online digital space so that members of their communities can access this important information, but in a way that is out of the reaches of money hungry tech companies.
References
Johnson, F. (Host). (2021, May 16). How Indigenous people are promoting and learning their languages. [Audio podcast episode]. In Unreserved with Falen Johnson. CBC. https://www.cbc.ca/listen/live-radio/1-105-unreserved/clip/15843149-how-indigenous-people-promoting-learning-languages.