The author of this webpage demonstrates a strong passion for the rights and privileges of the indigenous people while at the same time, highlighting the ills of globalization and the use of media creation to further strengthen their efforts at domination and infiltration.

The author’s consistent use of comparative analysis, present readers with the many variables that are present in media creation and globalization, from which they can draw their own conclusion. The use of thought provoking questions further prompt readers to examine the situation closer and in turn begin to ask questions of their own. There is a gradual introduction of terms such as ‘exploitation’ ‘domination’ “extensive power” “corporatism” all used in relation to the underpinnings of globalization and media creation. Spurts of enthusiasm and hope for indigenous media creation highlight the positives of media and the resilience of the indigenous people.

http://www.globalautonomy.ca/global1/summaryPrint.jsp?index=summaries/RS_Tabobondung_MediaCreation.xml

This weekend, I spent some time perusing the BC Ministry of Education Website – ABORIGINAL EDUCATION. All looks well on the website. Numbers of  pictures suitably containing FN students, attractive art work and a spattering of indigenous language. What ETEC 521 has done for (to) me is developed the need for me to question. Who constructed this web page? Who chose the information gathered?  There certainly is a plethora of data, Enhancement Agreements, Resources, Research,  . . .Is the data gathering system/tool culturally neutral? Who chose the research? I should not be so cynical. Maybe there are lots of FN people constructing the website and choosing carefully and responsibly the information contained on the website.

I am not sure if I got too much in the way of fodder for my paper – but I am now going to receive updates should the website change and I am now on the Abnet list serve.

http://pubs.iied.org/pdfs/G02843.pdf

It is the view of some Aboriginals that the younger generation have grown up in a wider society that fails to recognise the significance of their knowledge and maintaining their indigenous identity which has led to the apparent abandonment of Aboriginal culture in preference for a more dominant Western one.  Against this background, the Walkatjurra Cultural Centre, an Aboriginal organisation has taken on the mantle to explore how cost-effective web 2.0 initiatives can be used to revitalise indigenous culture and enhance community development.  In addition, this article highlights the outcomes of a community-based youth empowerment project involving university researchers and Aboriginal community members that was designed to help bridge the intergenerational knowledge divide.

http://capyi.vcn.bc.ca/post/1087736713/first-nations-and-the-digital-divide

The main purpose of this article is to outline initiatives that are employed to narrow the divide between remote First Nations communities and their access to new communication technologies. It also highlights several Community Access Program (CAP) sites such as the Tsawwassen First Nations Elders site, Tsawwassen First Nations Youth site, and the Kiwassa Neighborhood House that are integral in providing access to Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs), to those who face barriers to access.

The article offers examples of ways that aboriginal youth have adapted ICTs into their life which includes using digital media to  craft stories told by elders into films; children as young as ten years old have been learning how to use graphic design programs and build websites; younger members of communities are helping elders to record community history and access valuable information over the Internet, among others ways.

http://www.cdu.edu.au/centres/ik/pdf/DigTech_IndigPlaceAust.pdf

This article highlights discoveries made from a research project that was conducted to obtain information on ways that many Indigenous people in northern Australia use digital technologies in promoting the interests of their traditional groupings, their clan lands, histories, connections and places. In addition, the article examined the ways that Indigenous peoples use possibilities the technologies offered in producing seeming definitive representations to achieve political ends when dealing with representatives of mainstream Australia.

http://www.kta.on.ca/pdf/AboriginalCultureinaDigitalAge.pdf

This paper gives readers a general view on the implications that information and communication technologies has on aboriginals’ ways of living, thinking and knowing.  To inform the research, three major topics that directly affect Aboriginal peoples were examined.  These include the importance of culture and identity, the widespread reality of ICT and the transformative impact it is having on our everyday economic, social and cultural life and the preservation and protection of Aboriginal languages, ecology and heritage.

http://www.irma-international.org/viewtitle/23550/

This article provides a discussion on the uses of ICT in key areas fundamental to the continuing presence of the Badimaya culture.  ICT initiatives explored includes:

Geographical Information Systems- the Portal Framework

A vector-based map in a geographic information system (GIS) that was used to show where different generations of the Badimaya lived and what languages are spoken today by their descendants.

Multimedia Clips- Content Management

This was used to preserve the Badimaya language that many feared would be eventually lost with time.

Digital Document Archives- Knowledge Management

This technology was used to preserve many aspects of the the Badimaya culture. For example, surviving documents could be digitally scanned and made available for access.

The University of Newcastle, Australia maintains an online database of artifacts and documents relating to Aboriginal culture from the Newcastle-Lake Macquarie region.  The database categorizes the materials under the headings of culture, history, images, people, and places.  Unfortunately, much of the database’s contents were researched, written, and codified by non-Indigenous researchers and originate from the late 19^th and 20^th-centuries when research was practiced along the lines criticized by Smith.  The reproductions of paints, for instance, depicts Aborigines scantily clothed in sometimes primitive stances (feet apart, arms in the air) surrounded by a peaceful and placid—a romantic—view of nature.

References

The University of Newcastle.  A database of historical materials relating to the Aborigines of the Newcastle-Lake Macquarie Region.  Retrieved from http://www.newcastle.edu.au/group/amrhd/awaba/gallery/index.html

This is a manifesto of the Umulliko Research Team which seeks to conduct research on Indigenous cultures in ways that places and keeps Indigenous voices at the center of the research in the process of advancing decolonization.  The writers echo Smith (1999) when they point out that research is a Western construct and practice that retells the story of colonization and hegemony.  This particular research team seeks to find ways to centralize the voices of those who have been silenced these many centuries.

Although this is a short manifesto, it is useful to research on place-based learning because it outlines some of the issues regarding research that has been done to date.   Much of this research has been used to implement policy including educational ones, which have succeeded in further alienating Indigenous cultures.

References
Smith, L. (1999).  Introduction.  In Decolonizing methodologies:  Research and Indigenous peoples.  London:  Zed Books, Ltd, 1-18.

The University of Newcastle, Australia.  Indigenous research methodology.  Retrieved from http://www.newcastle.edu.au/centre/umulliko/indigenousresearchmethodology/index.html

In this article Cornel Pewewardy a member of the Comanche-Kiowa, Oklahoma, points out the many stereotypes promulgated in the movie Pocahontas.  The Hollywood movie portrays Pocahontas whose real name was Matowa (1595-1617), as a demure princess, deeply committed to the white man.  The legendary woman, however, is viewed by Native Americans as a sell-out, a traitor, who supported the invading settlers.  The reality, Pewewardy points out, is that Matowa was a politically important person who often served as an interpreter for both the Native Americans and the settlers.  She was kidnapped by the British, forced to convert to Christianity and later married John Rolfe, a British Colonist.  She traveled with her husband to England where she met King James I, but later died and was buried in England, far from her native home.

Pewewardy points out that when schools do not affirm identity of Indigenous students, these students adopt the negative identities of the dominant culture:  drinking, carousing, using drugs.  They do this because they do not want to be viewed as trying to be white, or middle class.  But, by engaging in these activities, their tribes view them as abandoning their heritage and the struggles of their people, and joining the enemy.  Although the movie portrays a sanitized view of Indians, it does show a defiant side of them, which was highly unrealistic for the period in which the movie is set.  Matowa is depicted disobeying her father’s orders and setting out to visit Captain John Smith in secret.  The movie makes little reference to the racism, deceit, and greed that characterizes the relationship between Native Americans and European settlers.

The movie features a song called, “Savages, Savages” which Hollywood had hoped would neutralize the effects of overt racism of previous centuries.  Unfortunately it has had the opposite effect because Native Indians take offense at the song, and it causes Indigenous children a great deal of distress when their school mates poke fun at them by singing the song.

References

Peweward, C. (1996/97).  The Pocahontas Paradox:  A cautionary tale for educators.  Retrieved from http://www.hanksville.org/storytellers/pewe/writing/Pocahontas.html