Posts from — October 2010

Database of best practices on indigenous knowledge

http://www.unesco.org/most/bpikreg.htm

The site is part of the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). It is a database of articles that highlight indigenous knowledge.

The majority of the articles is from Africa. There are only two from North America, both from Canada. One of these discusses environmental issues surrounding Hudson’s Bay. From the article:

Indigenous knowledge is at the core of the practice and its value is immense. It was both the premise for and basis of the study: an historic, empowering and rewarding experience for many of the IK contributors. It was historic in that the IK contributors were cognisant of putting their orally communicated traditional ecological knowledge into writing for the first time in history. It was empowering in that they shared this mission with peers from many communities sharing the same environmental outlook, and they believed it would make a difference in the way decisions affecting the environment and communities of the Hudson Bay bioregion would be made.

It would be nice to see more articles from North America. Perhaps the lack of American participation is a reflection of the attitudes of government.

http://www.unep.org/IK/default.asp?id=Home
United Nations Environment Programme

The site is similar to the World Bank site discussed in Module three in that it explores using indigenous knowledge as a source to deal with problems being faced in the world today. The UN, partnered with the University of Swaziland, and Climate Prediction and Applications Centre have teamed up to create the site.

The purpose of the site is stated as:

“The website aims to ensure that
* This IK and its various applications are documented before it is lost forever.
* This information is made accessible to as many people as possible.
* Awareness of the importance of this knowledge is created amongst governments and policy makers so that they may begin to incorporate it in policy creation and various development programs.
* Custodians of this knowledge may have a forum through which they can share it with others. “

This site has links to a number of different knowledge areas, including nature conservation, natural disaster management, traditional medical practices, and poverty alleviation. While it focuses on Africa, this could be a model for applying indigenous knowledge around the world. The site also offers 118 page pdf file that contains a wealth of information. (http://www.unep.org/IK/PDF/IndigenousBooklet.pdf)

Perhaps the most useful aspect of the site is a searchable database of knowledge.

I think the First Nations Program at UBC is one of the best, if not the most cutting edge in terms of its use of educational pedagogies and especially technology. Each year, the First Nations Studies Program is involved in a number of special projects and initiatives in addition to the student projects that occur within our course work.

For example, Political Science 406, Aboriginal Politics in Canada, was one of the first programs to use this an interactive video technology called IVT. The UBC First Nations Studies IVT Viewer gives you a whole new way to view and work with the videos and transcripts of the 2005 Internet Speakers Series.

This innovative prototype program has been developed by FNSP to allow you to see both the videos and transcripts of the sessions simultaneously and move in them easily. It also allows you to search the transcripts for words or phrases and go directly to the video segment of the passages you have found, allowing you to search through hours of video in minutes to find relevant information, as well as providing you with text for reference and citation. The IVT Viewer is a useful multimedia tool for assisting educators, academics, students, and the public alike in research and accessing information.

Website about IVT uses in the Landclaims project series:  http://fnsp.arts.ubc.ca/landclaims/

* A compilation of a variety of links to adult education materials/ other resources…divided by general categories and research categories

* Not much to say about the look of the site, except that it is clear and organized.

* EXCELLENT START to research on adult education topics

http://etc.usf.edu/adult_ed/index.htm

* a blog with a specific focus on Adult Education and Technology 

* Marion Thatcher is “Keeping an eye on technology for the adult education classroom and beyond”.

* contains links to many useful educational tools to use in a classroom.

      – such as Storybird, asite that uses donated art to for students to use to tell a visual/media story

      – could be used to help students gain deeper knowledge of a concept taught in class if they have an assignment that has them regurgitate the info from class into a visual format to share with other students.

* This blog site will help any teacher looking for tech ideas for teaching tools to help engage the techno savy students these days.

http://marianthacher.blogspot.com/

*  United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development

* Aim is to promote and improve the integration of Education for Sustainable Development into the educational strategies and action plans at all levels and sectors of education in all countries.

* Multimedia teacher education programme = 100 hours

*  Can be accessed and used in a great many ways by teachers, student teachers, teacher educators, curriculum developers, education policy makers and authors of educational materials: FOR FREE

* This website is valuable for people wanting to research ways to improve their skills in a specific area – perhaps it can be twisted to focus on aboriginal adult education somehow…am looking into it further.

http://www.unesco.org/education/tlsf/index.htm

* Is a not-for-profit organisation dedicated to providing reliable and authoritative information about science and technology for the developing world.

* Free-access website, written mainly by Southern-based contributors

* Regularly add dossiers, spotlights, ‘quick guides’ and ‘news focuses’ on specific subjects, in addition to a growing amount of regular news coverage.

* Raising awareness of indigenous knowledge in science and technology education by Zane Ma Rhea

* Helpful if researching for cross curricular materials to teach at a highschool level

External Link listed = UNESCO Teaching and Learning for a Sustainable Future

http://www.unesco.org/education/tlsf/index.htm

http://www.scidev.net/en/policy-briefs/raising-awareness-of-indigenous-knowledge-in-scien.html

The website for i-tec is an infomation site that explains how they help indigenous churches. Their focus is on enabling indigenous churches to overcome the technological and educational hurdles that stand in the way of their independence. “Technology” used by i-tec are not necessarily computers or distance learning but actually equipment and training to help remote indigenous groups with little or no access to transportation, dentistry, medical care or even the know-how to maintain equipment on their own. The links involved are internal and only go to other information pages, a contact list, a store and a donation page. This site would be of use to anyone researching the types of technology being used in remote indigenous locations.

http://itecusa.org/

http://indigenouspeoplesissues.com/

Indigenous Peoples Issues & Resources is a online web resource that concentrates information, news, articles, videos, and resources for those concerned about, and for, indigenous peoples around the world.  As the website reveals, as globalization affects indigenous peoples in all parts of the world with such consequences as water diversion and hydroelectric energy projects, militarization, global and national events, consolidation of natural resource access, the website attempts to rectify with a call for social justice through information technologies, using Google Maps and RSS feeds to update and alert us about indigenous news and resources.

Through cross-cultural communication, cooperation, and understanding – as well as easily accessible information and resources – the website maintains that it can be one of the keys to helping indigenous peoples maintain their language, culture, and identity.

As a History Buff, what I enjoy about this website is its “On This Day in Indigenous History”

On This Day on October 7, 1763 – the Royal Proclamation of 1763 was issued by King George III following Great Britain’s acquisition of French territory in North America after the end of the French and Indian War/Seven Years’ War. The purpose of the proclamation was to organize Great Britain’s new North American empire and to stabilize relations with Native North Americans through regulation of trade, settlement, and land purchases on the western frontier. The proclamation created a boundary line (often called the proclamation line) between the British colonies on the Atlantic coast and American Indian lands (called the Indian Reserve) west of the Appalachian Mountains. The proclamation line was not intended to be a permanent boundary between white and American Indian lands, but rather a temporary boundary which could be extended further west in an orderly, lawful manner. The Royal Proclamation continues to be of legal importance to First Nations in Canada.

http://www.pygmies.org/

A website dedicated to the hunter-gatherer peoples living in Central African rainforests, commonly called Pygmies, this is an excellent resource about an often mysterious and little understood indigenous peoples of Africa.

Presenting hundreds of photos and other material collected during his fieldwork among the Baka of Cameroon and Gabon and among other pygmy groups in Central Africa, this website reveals life and traditional activities of these peoples, the Central African rainforest biodiversity, and the increasingly rapid disappearance of this world.

I think this is an important general resource for indigenous peoples research, especially in a time when migration to Africa has endangered its indigenous peoples, very similar in nature to indigenous peoples all over the world.  This website presents ethnographic descriptions serving as introduction to pygmy cultures and commentary on the photos.   Impressively, the technology translates into an excellent multimedia-rich experience that each internal page also includes sound or music recordings relative to the soundscape of the rainforest and pygmy camps.

The purpose of this web resource is to “ultimately provide an introduction to the cultures of pygmy peoples and to promote their protection, documenting their richness and showing some of the factors that increasingly threaten their survival.” In a way, the methodologies presented by this website almost reverses the colonial paradigms of “research” so prominent in the 19th and 20th centuries. Luis Devin, an ethnomusicologist, lives among the Pygmy in Central Africa, conducting anthropological and ethnomusicological fieldwork in Central Africa, studying in particular the music and rituals of the Baka and other pygmy groups.

What strikes me the most is that during an expedition in the rainforest of Cameroon, he took part into the male initiation rite that marks the transition to adulthood of the young Baka boys, a secret rite conducted by the Spirit of the Forest and by elderly members of the group. After a week of rituals he was accepted in a Baka patrilinear clan.   Since Baka male initiation is an almost completely secret rite (occurring in secret places of the African rainforest), Devin respected the Pygmy peoples, and only published only those images and sounds concerning the “public” ceremonies.  In fact, as he puts it, it is

“essential to respect the Baka traditions and cultural secrets. After all, they let me be part of a rite which has always been forbidden to foreigners. Even the other African peoples can seldom assist to these ceremonies. Besides, they did not want anything in exchange.”