The purpose of the website is to contribute to the objective of closing the health gap between Indigenous and other Australians.

The website has a range of topics: Health facts, Chronic conditions, Infectious conditions, Population groups and Health systems to mention a few.  It  informs practice and policy in Indingenous health by making research and health information readily available it has a bibliographic data base to search for a full range of health publications on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health.

This website is comprehensive.  It has over 3800 pages of information.

Interesting point, it uses the Gecko as its logo because it can be found throughout Australia so it was deemed an appropriate symbol/logo for this site.

I selected the Gwich’in Social and Cultural Institute as my first entry because of its significance to my research on the Gwich’in people. Their language is listed as one of eighty-eight dying languages in Canada. My research paper takes a look at the history of the language and what has been done to try to preserve and maintain the language during the past sixty years.

Also of interest are:
• Gwich’in Language Wikipedia taken from Answers.com
• The Gwich’in Settlement Area taken from the GDC website
• Information of the Gwich’in Land Claim taken from the GNWT’s Aboriginal Affairs and Intergovernmental Relations website.

Wellness is an issue for everyone and the Gwich’in people are no different in this respect. There have been a number of attempts made to address the needs of the Gwich’in people. The most recent one was in April, 2008 when the Gwich’in Tribal Council made an announcement about the opening of a Gwich’in wellness camp outside of Inuvik, NWT.

Other sites of interest are:
• Tl’oondih Healing Society located near Fort McPherson, NWT.
• Tetlit Gwich’in Council in Fort McPherson

Keeping with the theme of languages in danger of extinction, I thought it might be nice to send you to the FirstVoices website.

• “FirstVoices is a group of web-based tools and services designed to support Aboriginal people engaged in language archiving, language teaching & culture revitalization. More… or Try our Quick Start Guide “ (taken from the FirstVoices Website)

I came across this weblog (Shaw.ca) while I was researching information for my assignment on the Gwich’in Language. It’s being touted as a cooperative Canadian weblog on things legal. Of special interest to me was the article by Simon Fodden (The Friday Fillip) on dying languages of which there are 88 in our country alone.

Also of interest is:
• UNESCO’s Interactive Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger

Censored News is another weblog site that may be of interest to you. I discovered it while researching my paper on the Gwich’in people. This blog site has been active since 2007. It reports primarily on indigenous issues and human rights issues. This is a searchable weblog.

Articles are listed by year and month. Scroll downwards and look to the left of the window.

Other links of interest to me were:
• Indigenous Uranium Forum audio available
o EarthCycles.net
• Listen Uranium Forum Defending Mother Earth
o blogtalkradio

I thought it might be fun to see a Wordle of our blog postings thus far.

Cheers,
David