The First Nations in BC Portal is an incredible resource that I stumbled upon while looking at the BC Ministry of Education, Aboriginal Education website (posted by Mark). The portal was developed by the First Nations Technology Council (which Doug has posted). It is a collaborative site involving many of the 200+ First Nations communities in BC. The intent is to create a “community of practice” where all of the unique First Nations communities across BC can share information, resources, information, forms, documents, etc. It is a very well organized site with an incredible wealth of information. I found the interactive language maps, and information on their educational initiatives, particularly the Head Start program, interesting regarding the experiential component it offers learners.

http://silverbuffalo.org/NativeAmericanAcademy.html

The Native American Academy is a network of American native and non-native scholars and traditional knowledge holders. According to the site, the Academy has conducted research and campaigns for making the Native world view and Native science more visible.  

Given our module 1 discussion about technology’s impact on indigenous societies, it is noteworthy that The Native American Academy has researched the integration of new technology on indigenous culture and the features of “indigenous technology”, as linked to the site. The Academy’s recent project paper, entitled “Is it possible to have Information Technology that reflects Indigenous Consciousness?”,  provides very interesting discussions about “indigenous technologies”. The paper notes that indigenous technology aims “to enhance the ability to maintain and renew balance and harmony within a multi-dimensional, complex and interconnected environment” (p.6).

The Academy’s site does not seem to include sufficient resources which the Academy may have accumulated and explored. Despite the disappoinment with the Academy’s under-developed web-site resources, I found the Academy’s projects overall intriguing, especially since those studies aim to explore “new” possibility of “traditional” indigenous forms of technology and dialogues between indigenous and Western technologies.

Ky Yoon
 

http://www.pawmedia.com.au/

This is the site for PAW (Pintibu Amatiere Warlpiri) Media and Communications, an aboriginal organization located in Australia. This organization is a Remote Media Organization (RIMO) in charge of providing coordination services to community radio stations known as Remote Indigenous Broadcasting Services (RIBS) in Australia. They have contributed on the production of community radio and video in language. This web site provides access to video, music, radio and document archives of the communities that are involved with PAW Media and Communication.

Common, C. (2008). Linguistics Rights in the World: The Current Situation. Geneva: Universal Esperanto Association. Retrieved May 15, 2011, from:  http://www.esperanto-geneve-regions.info/linguisticrightsreport_en.pdf

This is report is about a symposium held in Geneva. It refers to the situation of linguistics rights in the world by 2008. For the ones who want to know about Chilean aboriginal groups, there is a chapter devoted to the history of Mapuche people, which summarizes clearly what happened to this group throughout history. However, the chapter dismisses some historical facts that are relevant to understand the Chilean and Mapuche history, such as the process occurred during 1860s known as “Occupation of Araucanía”, which ended in a huge destruction of Mapuce culture. After the publication of this document the Chilean Congress approved a reform to the Anti-terrorism law, which (in some cases) reduced penalties for those who commit certain acts against the law that before were qualified as terrorism.