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.

http://www.cbc.ca/aboriginal/about.html

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

“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.

Link http://www.dmtip.gov.tw/Eng/index.htm

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

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/

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.

http://iportal.usask.ca/

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.

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.