Tag Archives: new media

Native Appropriations Blog

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Native Appropriations is a blog with sharp (sometimes witty) social commentary on the ways in which Indigenous peoples of North America are portrayed in the imagery and imagination of popular media. Written Adrienne Keene, a citizen of the Cherokee Nation and a doctoral candidate at Harvard University Graduate School of Education, the blog is updated on a regular basis and because it is a fairly well-read blog, the debate that occurs in the post comments is often rich and sometimes fiery.

Keene was recently featured on Al Jazeera English’s social media program The Stream, in an episode titled “Don’t Trend On My Culture,” discussing cultural misappropriation:

http://youtu.be/rPyPLmmtcig

 

 

 

ImagineNATIVE

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http://www.imaginenative.org/

ImagineNATIVE Film and Media Arts Festival is an international festival that celebrates the latest works by indigenous peoples on the forefront of innovation in film, video, radio, and new media. Each year in the fall, the festival presents some of the most compelling and distinctive Indigenous works from around the world. The festival attracts and connects film makers, media artisists, and other industry professionals. The works accept reflect the diversity of the worlds Indigenous nations.

ImagineNATIVE is committed to dispelling stereotypical notions of Indigenous peoples through diverse media presentations from within our communities, thereby contributing to a greater understanding by audiences of Indigenous artistic expression. A youth workshop is offered for Aboriginal youth to learn the basics of machine cinema. There are many other activities that youth can be involved in such as the ImagineNATIVE Youth Video Contest.

This website is interesting for those who would like to learn more about Indigenous film and art. There is an extensive archive that contains many videos and images from past events and festivals.

We Shall Remain

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We Shall Remain is a five-part television series (7.5 hours total) which portrays Native American perspectives in the teaching of American history.

The series includes details not commonly found in traditional American socio/history teachings, including violent resistance towards geographical expulsion and opposition to cultural oppression. You can stream the full series online. The website also outlines the program’s new media engagement strategy, involving web-exclusive videos on topics such as language revitalization, tribal sovereignty, and native enterprise. A teacher’s guide is also included to help bridge new media through to classroom learning.

Cheryl’s Urban Aboriginal Life

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Cheryl Matthew is from the Simpcw First Nation in BC but lives in Ottawa where she is a PhD student at Carleton.  On her blog (Cheryl’s Urban Aboriginal Life), she writes on a variety of indigenous topics but the focus is on urban identity issues. One of the themes of her research is the indigenous “diasporic experience” and how, in the absence of a direct connection to a land base, urban aboriginals learn to construct identity and meaning through other cultural means, including new media. She demonstrates this by her use of technology but also writes extensively about it.

Many of her posts are quite academic, not surprisingly as they are part of her research, but others are quite casual as she discusses her experience as an educated aboriginal living in a large city.

This site is a great resource for anyone researching urban aboriginal issues.

Web Design “Well suited to a First Nations philosophy”

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Although it was created over five years ago (that’s a lot of Internet time!)  I found navigating around “Tshinanu / All of Us” to be an interesting “sandbox” exercise.  With no instructions on how to use the website, it’s background or meaning; I began exploring the 26 modules at random and found a surprisingly engaging and user-friendly experience.

All Of Us website

Digging deeper, I discovered the website is based on a television series developed to depict the “social, economic and cultural realities of Quebec Aboriginal communities.”  The project brings together community members of all ages and many viewpoints to discuss meaningful issues, covering a range of topics from the politics to cooking to gender issues to coming of age. Each interactive module allows the watch an overview, meet people involved with the “theme,” participate in an interactive activity, share an opinion on the topic discover related resources, and more.

The design concept behind this website was based “on principles of interactivity, discovery and exchange well suited to First Nations philosophy.” Having stumbled upon the website at random, I have never seen the TV series that the clips/themes are taken from, nor was I expecting such a surprisingly pleasurable web-browsing experience!

New Tribe Magazine

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New Tribe Magazine

This is a crazy cool magazine geared towards urban Aboriginal youth that is published in Calgary and distributed in Alberta.  It is available for free and online in a highly interactive web presentation.  The magazine is sponsored by the Urban Society for Aboriginal Youth that is also based in Calgary.

According to the editor, the mission of New Tribe Magazine is “to promote a positive outlook on Aboriginal living in an urban setting by promoting and sharing information within the community.”

Youth are encouraged to contribute to each edition and judging from past editions there are range of writers who have committed themselves to making the magazine a success.   The publication is filled with artwork, poetry, news stories from the province and abroad, fictional short stories, advice regarding employment, healthy eating, and wellness (to name just a few). Information is provided about local events and opportunities for Aboriginal youth to connect.  In each edition, a young person who is making a difference in the community is profiled (for instance, graphic novelist Mitchell Poundmaker is featured in the May magazine).

Elodie Caron writes a column about Community. Last month, her segment focused on ebooks and readers such as Kindle, Kobo, and ibooks – great stuff !   There are video game reviews, book reviews, and music reviews.  All in all, it is a very comprehensive magazine.

Up to 5,000 copies of New Tribe are printed monthly.  According to the website, New Tribe has become a main source of information and entertainment for the entire Aboriginal community in Calgary and is not just restricted to youth.

This magazine is very well put together.  The online interface is slick and care is put into each edition.  The only concern I noticed was that the magazine has a strong entertainment element and sometimes that gives it a very commercialized and westernized vibe.  Some of the books and music reviewed have nothing to do with Indigneous culture (review of J-Lo’s latest album).  Perhaps, that is not such a bad thing.  After all, current Aboriginal culture does not operate within a vacume.  I am just concerned that the desire to entertain may make the publication less authentic than it aims to be.