CBC Aboriginal portal
In 2007, one of the focal points in CBC Television’s diversity plan was a web platform that tried to showcase stories and programs on Aboriginal life, issues, and artistic expression that have been produced by, or in association with CBC Television and Radio. As one of the CBC’s diversity strategies, the portal provides “better access to the volume of programming produced by the CBC which relates to Aboriginal life in Canada, creating a resource tool for schools, the larger community as a whole and Aboriginal communities in particular.”
What I found empowering about this website for Aboriginal peoples is the CBC’s intention to develop internships related to the site that will provide budding web developers with an opportunity to get to know the CBC, and its content. The website acts as connective fibre for other CBC initiatives that look to improve our capacity to connect with, and reflect Canada’s Aboriginal people. The portal was launched on June 21, 2007 and simply called “CBC Aboriginal.” The official website launch coincided with National Aboriginal Day on June 21st, 2007 and brought together CBC’s coverage of aboriginal issues on Television, Newsworld, Radio and CBCNews.ca.
October 19, 2010 No Comments
Aboriginal Studies Web Portal
Created by professor, Matthew Ciolek of the Australian National University, the site is maintained with the Center For World Indigenous Studies’ (CWIS) Indigenous Studies WWW Virtual Library, This is an extremely useful website in that it contains links to General Indigenous Studies Resources, as well as resources Africa, Asia and the Middle East, Central; South America, Europe, and the Pacific.
The Aboriginal General Online Resources’ The Internet Guide to Aboriginal Studies guide is a useful one in that it offers resources about different aspects about Australian aboriginal Encyclopedia of Australia’s Aboriginal People. Aimed at younger students, this is an 8-volume original encyclopedia is an alphabetical reference to assist young Australians to appreciate the historic and contemporary diversity of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures and lifestyles.
http://www.ciolek.com/WWWVL-Aboriginal.html
October 4, 2010 No Comments
Aboriginal Taiwanese Digital Resources
“Aboriginals” is the term commonly applied in reference to the indigenous peoples of Taiwan. Although Taiwanese indigenous groups hold a variety of creation stories, recent research suggests their ancestors may have been living on the islands for approximately 8,000 years before major Han Chinese immigration began in the 17th century. What I find interesting is that Aboriginals are only now being recognized as an important part of history on Taiwan.
Much of 20th century history in the “modern world” has been focused on Taiwan-controlled by the Chinese and Japanese governments; yet, indigenous peoples have been subjugated for the most part. It is only now that Taiwanese aboriginal peoples’ are starting to recover their collective past and histories. The Digital Museum of Taiwanese Indigenous Peoples is an important digital online resource for not only Taiwanese, but all cultures throughout the world wanting to learn more about aboriginal peoples and indigenous histories.
This digital portal reveals the many different ethnic groups within the indigenous population in Taiwan, dispelling the cultural stereotypes that aboriginal peoples are a homogenous group.
October 2, 2010 No Comments
Indigenous Science Preserved
Module 2’s focus on indigenous knowledge made me think about how indigenous knowledge and science differs from the conventional western approach that I had grown up learning here in North America. This website offers an interesting mix of resources, as it is a library collection of online text, video, audio, and image files of Indigenous science. In “Indigenous science,” it includes both knowledge about the “natural world and ways of teaching and learning about it.” The Digital Library of Indigenous Science Resources is produced by Indigenous persons or organizations, and approved for inclusion in the library collection by an elder or other Indigenous person with the expertise to assess the resource. That’s why I believe that this collection is an extremely important one as it helps dispel the cultural untruths about the “primitive” approach to science that is often reported in cultural stereotypes about Aboriginal peoples.
http://www.dlisr.org/search.html
October 2, 2010 No Comments
American Indians of the Pacific Northwest from the Library of Congress
This is a fascinating digital collection that integrates more than 2,300 photographs and 7,700 pages of text relating to the American Indians in two cultural areas of the Pacific Northwest, the Northwest Coast and Plateau. As a librarian who manages a digital collection in his line of work, I find that these resources as an outstanding way that illustrates many aspects of life and work, including housing, clothing, crafts, transportation, education, and employment — an interesting and useful way to dispel the many cultural misinterpretation and stereotypes of Aboriginal peoples’ histories, particularly between North American Aboriginal peoples on both sides of the borders. The materials are drawn from the extensive collections of the University of Washington Libraries, the Northwest Museum of Arts & Culture (formerly the Cheney Cowles Museum/Eastern Washington State Historical Society), and the Museum of History and Industry in Seattle.
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/pacific/
October 2, 2010 No Comments
First Nations Technology Council
The mandate of the First Nations Technology Council is a web-based portal created by the New Relationship Trust and the First Nations Technology Council as a ‘single window’ about First Nations in BC.created by a First Nations Summit Resolution to develop a First Nations Technology Plan to ensure that all 203 BC First Nations have: (1) connection with high speed broadband; (2) Have access to affordable, qualified technical support; and (3) Have the skills needed to access technologies that can improve their lives.
What’s really intriguing is its support of innovative projects in First Nations’ stories using fascinating technologies. For example, it has a community applications section which features the ‘A Journey into Time Immemorial’, (http://www.sfu.museum/time/) which is based on First Nations traditional knowledge and content developed in collaboration with the Sto:lo web site development committee and staff of the Xa:ytem Interpretive Center. It is an artistic and cultural interpretation and is not meant to convey precisely accurate archaeological information. Contemporary archaeologists view First Nations as partners and value oral traditions as a source of information about the past that augments the scientific approach. Compare this site with ‘A Journey to a New Land’, a complementary web site done from a scientific perspective.
I think this is an excellent example of how the internet and the web technologies it allows can shift the agenda of indigenous cultures from one of exclusiveness to one of inclusiveness where not only can technologies support cultural misunderstanding, but ultimately allow for a broadened approach to education.
September 27, 2010 No Comments
American Journeys: Eyewitness Accounts of Early American Exploration and Settlement
American Journeys is both a fascinating and valuable resource for educators and researchers of indigenous studies, particularly first contact between indigenous peoples in America and European explorers. This online digital library is a collaborative project of the Wisconsin Historical Society and National History Day.
The digital library contains more than 18,000 pages of eyewitness accounts of North American exploration, from the sagas of Vikings in Canada in AD1000 to the diaries of mountain men in the Rockies 800 years later.
What is most intriguing is that these texts reveal the exact insights of explorers, Indians, missionaries, traders and settlers as they lived through the founding moments of American history. I found the digital objects to be an astounding digitization effort as I can just view, search, print, or download more than 150 rare books, original manuscripts, and classic travel narratives, directly from the library and archives of the Wisconsin Historical Society.
What I enjoyed most about this website is the fact that it shows the story of European-Indigenous/Native/Aboriginal contact from different viewpoints — that of settler and receiver.
Some of the more interesting digital documents in their original form are:
Voyage Made by M. John Hawkins Esquire, 1565
Catlin’s North American Indian Portfolio
Wabanip’s Speech to Assembled Iroquois Chiefs, April 30, 1798
Joseph Brant’s Speech to British Government Concerning Indian Land Claims, Niagara, October 22, 1796
Moravian Journals Relating to Central New York, 1745-66
September 15, 2010 No Comments
Indigenous Studies Portal the “iPortal”
Developed at the University of Saskatchewan, the the Indigenous Studies Portal (iPortal) is a fascinating project that connects faculty, students, researchers and members of the community with electronic resources: books, articles, theses, documents, photographs, archival resources, maps, among the many digital objects from the library.
The vision of the Indigenous Studies Portal is to provide one place to look to find resources for Indigenous studies. As of March, 2010, the iPortal has more than 21,000 records, including the Our Legacy archival records recently harvested. This includes photos, anthropological field notes, diaries, correspondence and other textual documents. In linking to the Indigenous programs and events at the University of Saskatchewan, the iPortal offers specialized tools for teaching and scholarship.
What’s most important in this posting is that it shows that technology can influence through participation. Part of the reason is that the iPortal’s designers are interested in collaborating and/or partnering with academic and community based organizations and agencies across Canada. For instance, its recent digitization projects collaborated with:
1. archival organizations in Saskatoon and in Northern Saskatchewan,
2. Brandon University and the digitization of nine volumes (from 1997-2005) of the Canadian Journal of Native Studies, and
3. an out-of-print book by Purich Publishing in Saskatoon, “Continuing Poundmaker and Riel’s Quest”.
I think that this reveals that culture can be created and sustained through active promotion of collaboration between organizations. People can and do change the way culture is represented, and technology should be seen as the medium that does this. As Marshall McLuhan once said, the medium is the message.
September 15, 2010 No Comments
What I Learned In Class Today
http://www.whatilearnedinclasstoday.com/
Aboriginal issues have become an important issue at UBC, and part of it is the work done by “What I Learned in Class Today: Aboriginal Issues in the Classroom,” which is a research project that explores difficult discussions of Aboriginal issues that take place in classrooms at UBC. It can be said that through this project by two UBC students, Karrmen Crey and Amy Perreault, that UBC has focussed much more on the challenges of aboriginal students in university. In 2009, it released its Aboriginal Strategic Plan to better understand and support students of aboriginal ancestry on campus and also studies about this very important topic. Developed in the First Nations Studies Program at UBC, this project examines the experiences of students, instructors, and administrators at the university to make these problems visible, better understand how difficulties arise, and to find ways to have more professional and productive classroom discussions.
Students frequently report troubling and sometimes traumatic discussions of cultural issues in class. These situations often affect their ability to function in their coursework, and even their ability to return to class. Using technology as its main platform, the project looks at how the challenges around talking about race work as an educational barrier at the classroom level. Not sufficiently addressed in educational institutions, and yet, desperately needing attention & to be discussed, video interviews of students, instructors, and reactions from viewers to the videos are carefully displayed on the website as a digital tool for study and research. In doing so, the project works to improve the conversations around politically and culturally sensitive issues in a classroom by asking: how does cultural communication happen in a classroom, and how can it be improved? This goes to show that technology isn’t just neutral — it can be used to create change. For the better.
This project has generated quite a bit of public attention, including articles online at CBC and Rabble.ca. I’m glad it has, for the better!
http://www.cbc.ca/aboriginal/2008/06/what_i_learned_in_class_today/
September 15, 2010 No Comments
Chinese Canadians and First Nations: 150 Years of Shared Experience
This is a project is created by the Chinese Canadian Historical Society, called “Chinese Canadians and First Nations: 150 Years of Shared Experiences.” Using video technology, especially social media, it focuses on an important and unrecognized component of BC’s history: the relationships between Chinese Canadians and First Nations people of the province. While much research projects looking at the Chinese in early British Columbia have focussed on history in relationship to the gold rush, the building of the railroad, in the fishing and agricultural industries and the development of Chinatowns in Victoria and Vancouver, nothing has been done on the Chinese community that was often in close contact with First Nations peoples, as both groups shared experiences of exclusion, racism, perseverance and love.
Chinese and the First Nations people have in fact had an interesting and complex history together in British Columbia, however, this history has gone largely unknown and unrecorded. I was first introduced to the history of this relationship when I had read SKY Lee’s Disappearing Moon Cafe. In this story, Wong Gwei Chang, as he was left for dead after being mugged while working on the railways in the Interior of BC, was rescued by a First Nations man, and was taken into the family and later fell in love with the daughter.
September 14, 2010 1 Comment