Indigenous People’s Collective Memories in Cyberspace – First set of Sources

Site # 1

http://www.law.ualberta.ca/research/aboriginalculturalheritage/

The website for the “Protection and Repatriation of First Nation Cultural Heritage” research project has valuable information concerning how First Nations use the Web to disseminate information about their culture, as well as advance a political agenda. It has four main objectives:

1)     To disseminate information concerning the legal regime

2)     To serve as a platform for respecting and understanding First Nations concept of law and property

3)     To help First Nations partners to collect and develop archival educational materials

4)     Analyze provincial and federal legislation and provide First Nations with reform recommendations

Although the actual research was completed in 2006, the site offers an overview of the research with links to the two volumes. This site is important as it raises awareness about law reform, but also provides a voice for First Nations.  This web site also offers many other important resources, such as news and events and other carefully selected links to North American Native and/or Aboriginal sites. I found some of the links had been modified, but using the titles I easily found the sites through Google.

Seeing how much information was available on this website, I will come back to explore other links, but I decided to first explore Aboriginal sources.

Site # 2

http://www.aboriginalcanada.gc.ca/

The Aboriginal Canadian Portal is a site run by the Canadian Federal Government in collaboration with the Assembly of First Nations, Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, the Congress of Aboriginal Peoples, the Métis National Council, the Native Women’s Association of Canada, and the Council for the Advancement of Native Development Officers. The topics covered are quite varied, but because of the nature of my research I was particularly interested in the language, culture and heritage segment, which proved to have a wealth of information on various Aboriginal organizations, as well as various articles that harbor collective memories.

Site # 3

https://www.itk.ca/publication/5000-years-inuit-history-and-heritage

This essay provides an overview of the last 5000 years of Inuit history.  The essay covers the culture and language, the early history of the Inuit ancestors from first contact with the Europeans to modern day Inuit.  The essay also incorporates the history and culture of the four regions of Inuit Nunangat. I was not able to determine who exactly wrote this document, but found that the information herein was well written and is suitable for a general readership. The document often refers to “We . . .”, thus was written from an Aboriginal perspective for an Aboriginal audience, proudly outlining their history and accomplishments over the years. This type of essay contains information that could be used in schools during history classes to diffuse information about Inuit.

Site # 4

https://www.itk.ca/

This Website represents the Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, which is the national Inuit organization in Canada. It represents the four Inuit regions,  Nunatsiavut (Labrador), Nunavik (northern Quebec), Nunavut, and the Inuvialuit Settlement Region in the Northwest Territories. On the site historical events from 903 until the present are documented.  The president’s blog appears to be a new addition to the site and is run by Inuit leader Terry Audla. This blog offers viewers a platform to voice their opinion. This website also offers podcasts on various issues and events concerning Aboriginal life. This web site is rich with text-based information, but particularly audio feeds.  I was particularly interested in the audio from a 2011 conference called “From Eskimo to Inuit in 40 Years”, which marks the work Inuit Tapirisat of Canada has done over the last 40 years. The site offers audio files of the seven panel discussion sessions held during the conference. The site also offers links to publications on Inuit issues.

Site # 5

http://www.inuitknowledge.ca/

This website offers the newly established Inuit Qaujisarvingat (kow-yee-sar-ving-at). I found it most interesting to discover that the goal of the Inuit Knowledge Centre, is to bridge the gap between Inuit knowledge and western science. I find their vision of building capacity among Inuit to respond to global interests in Arctic issues daring and avant-garde. This website offers Inuit a platform to impact and advance sustainable Arctic science and policy making within a Canadian and global context. I was impressed with the way the information was diffused, with a good balance of text-based, visual and audio. It even offers a game called Niquiit (under construction) destined for Inuit youth to teach them about the dangers of contaminants in the Arctic. The Website is well laid-out and menus simplified to help users navigate and get the information they seek. Overall it appeared to be a great community resource run by Inuit for Inuit.