Author Archives: Jason McAllister

About Jason McAllister

My name is Jason McAllister and I’m a teacher currently living in the interior of British Columbia. I am currently working on my Master’s of Educational Technology. I’m married and have a 4 month old son. I’m a huge sports fan and have coached middle/high school sports for the last 4 years. This blog was originally created as part of my work in the MET program but I hope to continue updating it throughout my work in this program.

National Centre for First Nations Governance

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Interestingly enough I only stumbled upon this website this module but perhaps it better fits with earlier modules.  The National Centre for First Nations Governance is focussed on engaging Aboriginals across Canada to become more involved and make a difference in their communities and increase self governance opportunities.  They offer various leadership training for all age groups and various publications dedicated to describing the most successful practiced in Aboriginal governing.  This site does describe the important role that the land plays in this vision.  Various publications and news stories are also available through this site.  You can further restrict the information to one of five Canadian regions.  This site is largely information based and offers little opportunity for external links or interactivity of its users.

Creative Spirits

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Creative Spirits is a website built by and for the Aboriginal people of Australia.  This website introduces all things Aboriginal in Australia including art and culture to health and history.  Related to this unit I found the section on land to be an especially good introduction and noted how closely linked the struggle of Aboriginals in Australia is to Aboriginals in North America.  The section titled the “Meaning of Land to Aboriginal People” discussed the role the land played to Aboriginal people in the past and their vision for land going forward.  The site is largely self contained and I found few external links of note.

An Approach to Aboriginal Cultural Landscape

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A section of the Parks Canada website is designated to outlining Aboriginal cultures and their relationship to the land and understanding of the cultural landscape.  This section of the website reads like a university paper (including academic sources) and contains a description of various aspects of the Aboriginal relationship to the land (i.e. differences between Aboriginal and Western worldview and Aboriginal views on environmental protection etc.).  There are no external links but the site does provide an email for comments about anything written in this section.  This actually provides a good introduction and overview that would be beneficial to anyone looking for a basic introduction regarding Aboriginal relationship to the environment.

Stolen Children: Truth and Reconciliation

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In research for my final paper I came across a section of the CBC website called Stolen Children: Truth and Reconciliation.  Essentially this site is exactly what it sounds like, a site that documents basic information about Residential schools, ongoing news related to Residential schools and efforts for reconciliation between Aboriginal groups and Aboriginal peoples.  There are not a lot of external links but most of the links within the site direct the viewer to various news articles and video clips.  This site is a good but brief intro to the history of Residential schools in Canada and ongoing efforts for reconcile.

In the Same Boat

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In the Same Boat is an article that describes a large canoe journey of over 250 paddlers.  These paddlers include law enforcement, Aboriginal youth and Aboriginal elders.  The week long journey is made in an attempt to break down the divide between Aboriginal youth and law enforcement.  Most of the article focusses on the difficulty of the journey and indicates that those involved have felt tensions leave during the journey.  Probably the most interesting part of this article is the reaction in the comment section.  Have a read and judge for yourself.  Many of the comments are highly critical of this initiative with the most interesting comment pointing out that these students need to be in school and be clean and sober and that these may not be the youth law enforcement needs to win over.

Nicola Valley Institute of Technology

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The Nicola Valley Institute of Technology bills itself as “BC’s Aboriginal Public Post-Secondary Institute.”  With campuses in Merritt and Vancouver NVIT targets Aboriginal youth and adults alike.  The goal of NVIT is to become the school of choice for Aboriginal students because they believe they are best suited to educate Aboriginal students.  They hope to create Aboriginal leaders who can make a difference in their communities.  NVIT states that it involves elders in the direction of the university and keeps it Aboriginal focus.

Aboriginal Youth Ambassadors

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The Aboriginal Youth Ambassadors site is the home site for a program targeting Aboriginal youth.  This website describes the training opportunities available through this program.  According this website the primary goal is to create young adults who will be the Aboriginal leaders of tomorrow who are capable of bridging native and non-native worlds.  The key themes of this program is for participants to discover their story (that is Aboriginal culture and history as it relates to themselves), build their story, and share their story.

First Nations Technology Council

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The First Nations Technology Council is a section of the First Nations British Columbia website specifically focussing on the potential of technology in First Nation communities.  Although much of the site is dedicated to expanding technology, much of the time this is connectivity in the form of high speed internet, there are other technology related undertakings that are of interest.  The Youth Cafe area provides links to aboriginal youth and contains some interesting discussion related to ongoing projects.  This discussion includes youth working with elders to record Aboriginal culture and history as well as teach elders the use of technology.

There is much more info on this site relating to policy regarding implementation, community plans for technology implementation, technical support and application forms.  Overall this is a valuable site for Aboriginal communities who already have technology in place and even more valuable for those looking to implement technology into their communities.

SAY Magazine

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SAY Magazine is a magazine targeting Aboriginal youth (there are Canadian and American versions available).  Their has a variety of resources including the latest content from the magazine, news, and links among other things.  There are also biographies of the SAY Ambassadors.  These are Aboriginal youth and adults who have seen success in various areas (i.e. musicians, actors, filmmakers etc.).  This website is created to empower Aboriginal youth and make them aware of opportunities for their future.  I noticed there seemed to be a large emphasis on postsecondary opportunities.  The links section was probably the most comprehensive I’ve seen in any Aboriginal site I have explored in this assignment.  These were broken into smaller categories (i.e. career, health, arts, sports, education, etc.) and included aboriginal and non-aboriginal links for Aboriginal youth.

Centre for World Indigenous Studies

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The Centre for World Indigenous Studies (CWIS) is a non-profit organization dedicated to expanding the knowledge and understanding of the worlds indigenous populations and bringing awareness to the social and economic situations of these same peoples.  This organization’s board of directors is made up of indigenous people from all over the world.  They have ongoing research projects in various regions.  They link to websites bringing awareness of traditional indigenous medicines.  They link to periodicals they publish and books for sale regarding indigenous knowledge.  They even offer a Master’s program in with an American online university.  They are dedicated to expanding the understanding of the Fourth World and the social and economic issues they face.  The Fourth World refers to the nations around the world that are not represented by a sovereign state (i.e Aboriginal nations in Canada).  Although this website offers little in the way of external links it is a resource for an extremely interesting but overwhelming cause.  There is so much knowledge that has been lost or is limited it is nice to see an organization dedicated to the expansion of this knowledge.