Category — Module 1

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.

Bowers (2001) makes the assertion that technology is fundamentally biased toward a European way of thinking. Even if this is the case, computers are not going to go away any time soon. An elder of the Kainai people named Pete Standing Alone stated on September 14, 2010 that technology should be used to help preserve the ways of the people. At Red Crow Community College, the Kainai studies department has set up a database of Blackfoot words. The pronunciation of the words can be heard by clicking on them. While it is not a substitute for face-to-face interaction, it is a tool that has the potential to preserve the Blackfoot language.

Blackfoot Phraseology: http://kainaistudies.com/modules/phraseology/

Bowers, C., Vasquez, M., & Roaf, M. (2000) Native people and the challenge of computers: Reservation schools, individualism, and consumerism.” American Indian. 24(2), 182-199.

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.