Tag Archives: land

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.

The Girl Who Silenced the World

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Somewhere in my readings over the past weeks I came across the mention of an impassioned speech given by a young girl, David Suzuki’s daughter, Severn to the U.N. At the age of just 13, Severn articulated all that is wrong with the way that we exploit, commodify, and destroy our ecological resources. Even if you’ve seen it before I think it is worth seeing again, as it offers such a great reminder of all that we have, all that others don’t, and the need to share our knowledge to restore the world in which we live and the land which we rely on. It is an excellent additional to this module’s readings on ecological traditions and ways of knowing. In the words of Severn Suzuki: “If you don’t know how to fix it, please stop breaking it!”

Defenders of the Land

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Defenders of the Land is a network of Indigenous communities and activists that stretches across Canada.  It includes Elders and youth, women and men, was founded in Winnipeg in 2008.

According to the group’s website, Defenders is the ‘only’ organization of its kind.  The group is:
  • Indigenous-led
  • Free of government or corporate funding
  • Dedicated to building a fundamental movement for Indigenous rights.
From their website:
“We reject the extinguishment of Aboriginal title through treaty, and any interpretations of historical treaties which falsely claim, against the united voices of our elders and ancestors, that we have extinguished title to our traditional territories.”
On June 24, 2010, the day before G20 summit in Toronto, Defenders of the Land and other Indigenous groups, marched in protest against the hosting of the summit on stolen native (Mississauga) soil and made the following demands:
1. Canada must adopt and fully implement the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples
2. Canada must change its Comprehensive Land Claims policy
3. Canada must stop criminalizing Indigenous Peoples for defending their rights
4. Canada and the provinces must take coordinated action to investigate the ongoing murders and disappearances of Aboriginal women
5. Canada must comply with our right to say no to all activities on Indigenous territories that commodify the sacred: air, land, water, animals, plant and genetic materials, and our traditional ecological knowledge.
The march drew some media attention, but ended up being overshadowed by the G20 riots. The use of media by Defenders (a website, You Tube postings) has been met with limited public engagement.  Despite the group’s ambitious agenda, Defenders of the Land is not widely recognized in Canada.  Some in the left wing media, impressed by the activist agenda of this group, have tried to increase the profile of Defenders; however, this type of publicity and promotion has not been very successful.  The group is a good illustration of how unconventional Aboriginal groups can end up being marginalized by the mainstream media.

Module 1: Aboriginal Mapping Network

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http://www.nativemaps.org/

Here is a website attempting to marry up the disparity between the affordances of the web with the indigenous connection to the land.  Using traditional knowledge and the Geographical Information System, hunting areas, fishing areas, ceremonial grounds etc. are being plotted and connected to the history and current practices they represent.  The site also provides scholarly information on the cultural importance of the land for the various First Nations cultures.  One contributor to the site sees the project as connecting people with the land and connecting the past with the present.