The Native American Public Telecommunication (NAPTA) is a resource for sharing Native stories globally through the use of the Web in an effort to support the creation, promotion and distribution of Native media. This creates a trusted venue for Native voices to be conglomerated and resources to be collected and shared with the public. NAPTA helps build relationships between Native producers, public television and radio. NAPTA also gets assistance from Native producers to create, produce and share educational telecommunication programs for various types of media such as public television and radio. NAPTA encourages individuals from Native backgrounds by training them to create public broadcasting programs of quality some of which are geared at advocating for the use of technologies. NAPTA’s goal is to build relationships with Native communities and organizations and creating media that can be used as a means of sharing Native perspectives globally. The programs are created with the vision of making Natives visible and trying to achieve equity through the use of media. Furthermore, these types of media are a good source of highlighting and honouring components of Native culture such as heritage, wisdom and storytelling.

http://www.nativetelecom.org/

Below are some URL links about language revitalization and language endangerment. These videos are examples of media that NAPTA tries to showcase.

First Nations Language Revitalization

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxJr7yw1j2A

Saving First Nations Languages

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KzfgvqkoTVM&feature=related

This paper by Mark Fettes is interesting because it has a different take on analyzing language and renewal of language. The author talks about language renewal and how this requires a combination of knowledge and skill from the dominant language as well as knowledge, skills and relationship associated with native languages. The author believes that renewal of language can help restore society while balancing it with nature. He conveys that language is linked to all aspects of life in indigenous cultures. Thus, language associations result in what beliefs and practices a person has and impact how they will live life and be a part of the world.

http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/~jar/TIL_25.html

The Center for World Indigenous Studies (CWIS) is an independent, non-profit organization that is based on research and education. The intent of this organization is to help people develop a broader understanding and appreciation for aspects of indigenous society such as social, economic and political views. This institution strives to educate the public by publishing and distributing ideas, views and voices of individuals from sub-populations who struggle with social exclusion in society. An important goal of CWIS is to establish cooperation between nations; and, to democratize international relations between nations and between nations and states. Dr. Rudolph C. Rÿser, Ph.D. and Chief George Manuel of the Shuswap Tribal Nation founded this independent organization. The organization originated as a means of archiving tribal documents and then transitioned to an organization based on research, education and policy analysis for Aboriginal groups.

http://cwis.org/WhoWeAre/

Dare to Lead is a commonwealth funded national project that is focussed on improving educational outcomes for Aboriginal students. This organization began in 2000. It is funded by the Government of Australia, the Ministry of Education and Employee and Workplace Relations.  It is an initiative of Principals Australia (formerly known as Australian Principals Association Professional Development Council). Fifty-three percent of Australian schools are officially associated with this agency. Statistics have shown that students from Aboriginal backgrounds inAustraliaare scoring lower, academically. Hence, this network’s goal is to improve Indigenous students’ outcomes by assisting schools to successfully support pre-existing programs and to implement new initiatives to assist these students with their academic success. This process also allows for all students to be exposed to aboriginal culture; thus, fostering a better societal understanding. The Dare project also collects data and makes reports about project activity as well as Indigenous student outcomes.

http://www.daretolead.edu.au/DTL2009_Home

The Indigenous Peoples’ Restoration Network’s (IPRN) was established as an effort to support native and tribal communities with environmental restoration and cultural rehabilitation through the use of technology. The purpose of this agency is to assist leaders and practitioners from these societies to use their traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) and their own views and practices in conjunction with technology to achieve their ecological goals. Aboriginal cultures can accomplish this by employing the use of ecological restoration tools to ensure the survival of their culture and people. This would require the combination of traditional ecological knowledge from indigenous communities with newer models of sustainable agro-ecosystem management.

http://www.ser.org/iprn/default.asp

The following URL (http://www.ser.org/iprn/tek.asp) is for a section on this website that explains what traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) is, its purpose and how it is a huge part of Aboriginal society.

CTV Winnipeg: Officials Hope Education Program Will Help Preserve Aboriginal Language

I thought this was a great link because it shows that action is being taken to bring back aboriginal languages in Winnipeg. This link is for an article and a new clip talking about some schools in Winnipeg that have begun to offer students of all backgrounds the opportunity to learn the Ojibwe language. This a great means of reintroducing tradition culture from that region and a way of decolonizing.

http://winnipeg.ctv.ca/servlet/an/local/CTVNews/20101214/wpg_language_101214/20101214/?hub=WinnipegHomees

Dozens of Aboriginal Languages Near Death: UNESCO

The second link is for a video and article based on data from the United Nations cultural agency UNESCO. A linguistic professor who teaches Aboriginal languages talks about the data that has been collected around Aboriginal language loss. Many languages have already been lost and about 88 languages are endangering of extinction. There is a fear that these languages will be lost altogether or they will only remain in written format as no one will be able to speak the languages anymore.

http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/Canada/20091106/dying_languages_091108/

The Indigenous Studies Portal (iPortal) is a webpage that has been created as a venue for all types of electronic resources associated with Indigenous studies. This initiative has been taken on by the University of Saskatchewan. The website also consists of other artefacts such as pictures, etc. It has details about events at the University that are associated with indigenous people. There is also teaching tools available on this site.

http://iportal.usask.ca/index.php?sid=354430150&cat=804&start=50&t=sub_pages&rtype_limit=2

This article from the Canadian Journal of Native Education is based on a six month school ethnographic study that was conducted at an Intercultural Bilingual Education (IBE) program in Chile. The objective of this program was to show that schools could be a good venue for cultural, linguistic and ethnic identity reconstruction. This article shows that many indigenous groups are beginning to take a stand and develop programs to help address the problems they are facing and to reconnect with their cultures. This IBE program in Mapuche, Chile centered in on how the Kimun Indigenous knowledge and the Mapudungun language could be embraced to create culturally relevant pedagogy which would help in the process of decolonization. In this program, an ancestral educator was used as an agent for cultural and linguistic transmission through the process of using indigenous knowledge as his curricular objective.

http://bit.ly/rAhddD

This article from the Canadian Journal of Native Education talks about the importance of aboriginal languages and how language is a means of preserving knowledge. The article also highlights and challenges the practices and occurrences that have happened in the past which resulted in language and knowledge to be discredited and left behind. Aboriginal educational concerns are discussed and the importance of the presence of curriculum that is aligned to aboriginal culture is encouraged as a means of protecting and respecting these cultures.

http://www.cbu.ca/mrc/autumn-seed

This website is a conglomeration of different resources that have been put together as a means of reference for strategies for learning and education to aid in the development of individuals in Saskatchewan. The initiative of AERC is to work with schools, faculties, scholars, students, the government, etc., to build an inclusive relationship amongst all individuals who are associated with Aboriginal education. The aboriginal education research centre tries to address educational decolonization through their research project in an effort to develop tools that will help to increase Aboriginal students’ success.

http://aerc.usask.ca/index.html