An innovative project here in Northern BC is the generation of a computer database full of stories, culture, language, interviews, songs, photographs, and many other pieces of information. This project was initiated by the Tsay Keh Dene, Kwadacha and Takla First Nations, adjacent to the Lheidli T’enneh and the McLeod Lake First Nations. What began as an attempt to chronicle the geographical history of one Nation has become a larger undertaking.

These three nations formed a coalition, and contacted Prince George high-tech frim GeoSparks proprieter Will Cadell, who developed a program called Landsongs.

Check out the article in The Prince George Citizen
href=”http://www.princegeorgecitizen.com/article/20121116/PRINCEGEORGE0101/311169959/-1/princegeorge0101/software-helps-preserve-aboriginal-culture”

This weblog is the most aligned with my topic, and I was particluarly excited to begin reading through information on it. I wanted to start by looking at sacred sites within First Nation’s territory, as I thought this would be applicable.

Site 1: First Nations Sacred Sites in Canada’s Courts: Book Review

In this review a distinction is made between two different kinds of protection one “strategy relies on obtaining current recognition and protection for what an indigenous people once unequivocally held and the latter strategy relies on the idea of protecting what an indigenous people once unequivocally were”. This is an interesting point to add to my reflection on the direction of my paper. Is the viewpoint of whether land is a “holding” needing to be protected, or is integral to the identity of a culture important, if the outcome is the same (land getting protected)? There is a distinction between two different types of strategies based on historical legal proceedings, the first being related to the “Meare’s Island Case,” and the second to the “Taku River and Haida Case”.

http://www.bsos.umd.edu/gvpt/lpbr/subpages/reviews/ross0106.htm

From here I was, naturally, interested in finding out more about the cases. I found a website that clarified the decisions in the Taku River and Haida cases.

Site 2: The Haida Nation and Taku River Tlingit Decisions: Clarifying Roles and Responsibilities for Aboriginal Consultation and Accommodation

This case sets a precedent for consultation of Aboriginal groups. Basically, legally recognized claims are not required to “trigger” the consultation process. Impact upon asserted rights of groups is enough of a reason to enforce consultation. This decision is important as it values the rights of First Nations outside of the span of “legally recognized rights”.

http://www.lawsonlundell.com/media/news/236_Negotiatorarticle.pdf

This site got me thinking about whether there are similar stories of successful environmental management decisions or activism, so I began researching this.

Site 3: Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada: Environment and Natural Resources: Success Stories

This website offers links to specific projects that have been completed both through government agency help and media attention. One thing that I keep thinking as I look through the site though, is that all of these experiences are mediated through the government agencies of the “colonizers”. This may be the quickest and most effective way to create change in a community, but is it the best way? Are FN rights and values respected in this process or must they conform to particular enforced criteria that may undermine their own values?

http://www.aadnc-aandc.gc.ca/eng/1307103658811/1307103823931

Site 4: IEN: Canadian Indigenous Tar Sands Campaign

I had looked at this site before, but in a different format and scope. Now I found something incredibly applicable to where my assignment is going. This particular portion of the Indigenous Environmental Network is focussed on the tar sands in Northern Canada and their impact on Indigenous and non-Indigenous groups and the environment. There is a variety of information in various media formats, presented by elders, youth and all other community members. Various bands are connected together on this issue and multiple viewpoints are represented through this website. Additonally, the focus on the tar sands as an issue is addressed, as 10 0r so years ago very few people knew of the environmental toll being taken in these areas. Media has brought light to these concerns.

http://www.ienearth.org/tarsands.html

Site 5: Native Web Resources: Environment

This site is a collaborative effort whose goal is to “provide a cyberspace for Earth’s indigenous peoples”. They aim to do this through sharing informational resources between regional, national and international individuals and groups and by “foster[ing] communication.” Different groups may upload their websites on a specific issue and may then coordinate their efforts or find support. The site is run by both “Native and non-Native” individuals, and hosts content from all over the world (although the majority of information and sites are from the US or Canada). Some great links are provided for environmental initiatives, concerns and success stories. Additionally under different headings (there are 35 different categories), there are resources specific to each topic, including many resources for Indigenous chat rooms or networking sites.

http://www.nativeweb.org/resources/environment/

Conclusion:

So ends my cyber-travel for the purposes of this assignment. I have acquired resources on a breadth of topics and have honed my research down to what is most critical for me to address in depth in my final project.

Weblog 4.1

The material on residential schooling and its impacts has many parallels to Australian Aboriginal (and some Torres Strait islander) peoples’ experiences in Australia. In Australia from the late 1800s to the 1970s, children were removed from their families and either placed in institutions or adopted by non-indigenous families. This is called the Stolen Generation.

The Australian public were encouraged to believe that Aboriginal children were at risk in their communities and were disadvantaged, so this forced removal would provide them with better education, a more loving family and more civilised upbringing. The reality was that it was a governmental attempt to assimilate. Even the teaching opportunities were limited and the idea was to create a serving class. Many children with an Aboriginal mother and Anglo-saxon father were specifically targeted.

After Heather’s talk (not being a school teacher) I explored what the Australian teaching curriculum was about the Stolen Generation. This lead me to the:

• National Sorry Day Committee website and an overview of the new Australian curriculum

• new Australian national school curriculum from Foundation to year 10 has been released (2012) and one of the three cross curriculum priority areas was Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories and cultures. This priority area has been integrated through all levels of schooling in the areas of history, maths, science and english. It has been really interesting to explore the approach to integration and resources available.

• amazing resource Scootle that provides resources and teaching plans.

What I couldn’t find was any parallels of Heather’s resource for Indigenous children for teaching.

Module 3~! So, I was looking for anything that connected orality and literacy to this modules topics of indigenous identity contrast with the culture of the colonizer and tradition, technology, and youth. These are some of the interesting things I found.

http://www.academia.edu/1074970/Indigenous_literacies_Moving_from_social_construction_towards_social_justice

This is an interesting article for teachers to read. It focuses on the indigenous cultures of Australia rather than North America, but some of the ideas are good.

http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol13/iss1/art6/

The Ecology and Society website presents an article outlining a shared project involving government and a local indigenous group working together in forest management and conservation of habitat. One group brings science-based knowledge to the project, and the other brings their own cultural knowledge to the project. It is an interesting example of the possibilities.

http://www.socialworkers.org/diversity/ethnic/weaver.pdf

This article presents a study done with social workers to determine what values and needs were different for Native American peoples than for dominant Euro culture. The goal was to generate more culturally competent social workers.

http://www.unesco.org/education/tlsf/mods/theme_c/mod10.html

This site is actually a course site for another teacher education program. It pulls together some interesting materials and ideas all on one site, so it’s got a lot to offer. The particular course is titled “Culture and Religion for a Sustainable Future.” The nature of the content naturally follows suit with that title.

http://orgs.tigweb.org/arctic-indigenous-youth-alliance

This is an information page for the Arctic Indigenous Youth Alliance. It outlines goals, activities, opportunities for youth, and ways that anyone can get involved. Their main goal is to connect youth with the knowledge and wisdom of Elders and keep that connection alive.

Soooo~~~ This module focused on the colonial gaze, Nanook of the North, and cultural rights. I scraped together these links that I thought presented some quite interesting ideas. Again, my focus is on connections between orality and literacy, so the links show that~~

PDF available – Canadian Literature

An article on Thomas King’s Medicine River. It presents a lot of issues that come up in the novel that are relevant to the discourse we are engaging.

http://mit4036ero.blogspot.kr/2010/10/eye-of-power-and-sousveillance.html

This link leads to a short article discussing Foucault’s idea of the Gaze, how that Gaze has become something more extreme in the present, the Gaze as an element in power struggle, and how much we are aware of this and its effects in our lives. The article does not directly address issues of a colonizing culture’s gaze on an indigenous culture, but the power struggle may have a lot of similarity.

http://mycultureisnotatrend.tumblr.com/

A blog page on which some interesting points are made. I am mainly interested in the video posted near the top of the page though.

http://www.hrea.org/index.php?doc_id=423

The Human Rights Education Association page on rights to culture. It outlines some of the legalities involving right to culture. It introduces some of the international bodies that are responsible for cultural rights, and it presents some of their subgroups and the goals they are attempting to achieve. At the bottom, some related lessons for educators are offered.

http://www.krachtvancultuur.nl/en/theme/ethics.html

A collection of news stories and articles on culture and ethics that were published on the Power of Culture webpage between 2003 and 2010. The articles deal with culture issues worldwide, and many are interesting to read.

Hi all~! I have been thinking about my final paper and roaming the web a bit collecting useful links and materials. Now that I have a good chunk of stuff that I think might be interesting for the group I’ll post some of it. I am interested in transitions from oral to literate culture and how that transition affects culture, so most of my links are going to have some connection to that field, and I also tried to choose things that were appropriate to the topics in each module. Have a look~!^^

http://www.unesco.org/culture/ich/?pg=53

This is a link to a short article titled “Oral traditions and expressions including language as a vehicle of the intangible cultural heritage.” The article points out some ways in which language is a direct carrier of culture that may not be obvious to everyone. It also makes some interesting points about how language and its functional spaces need to be maintained in order to preserve culture. It points out some things that I hadn’t thought much about prior to reading.

Oral Culture: a useful concept relevant to information … – CiteSeer

This is an interesting presentation of some ideas regarding literacy, information-technology, and the responsibilities of the literate mainstream to anyone non-literate. I can’t recall ever reading anything about responsibilities of the literate society to anyone orally based, so this caught my attention.

The Complexity of Oral Tradition – Oral Tradition Journal

This article goes some distance in defining oral tradition and gives a synopsis of some major writing that has been done in that field. It is a useful introduction to the field, and it offers a lot of names and titles that can be pursued for further study.

http://www.yorku.ca/aviseu/eng_assessmclu_content.html

This article presents a very interesting argument that written, mechanical representation systems moved culture away from oral traditions, but that more recent digital representation systems are taking us back to a more orally based culture. It is not directly applied to indigenous situations, but the ideas are relevant. There is some interesting talk of the balance of senses that is promoted by oral traditions, and I feel some connection between this balance and some of the other balances that I have read that indigenous cultures revere.

http://oralhistoryeducation.com/

This links a video that talks about using oral history projects in classrooms. I think the accounts that the participants give are quite interesting, and I am going to try to find a way to work this into my own ELA classes.

http://jsse.revues.org/index792.html

This article presents a lot of very pertinent and interesting ideas about how orality and literacy are actually not successive stages, but are rather necessarily intertwined and coexisting modes. The author refers to several authors, including Thomas King and Harry Robinson, whose work is a part of this discourse.

http://www.albany.edu/faculty/rpy95/webtext/critique.htm

This page offers another criticism of the orality vs. literacy binary. It is short, and it makes some worth while points. It offers a lot of names and titles that could be pursued for more in-depth study.

Aboriginal Language and Culture Programs
Common Curriculum Framework for Aboriginal Language and Culture Programs
Kindergarten to Grade 12
Western Canadian Protocol for Collaboration in Basic Education

Storytelling as a Foundation to Literacy Development for Aboriginal Children:
Culturally and Developmentally Appropriate Practices

Metamorphosis of an Oral Tradition:
Dissonance in the Digital Stories of Aboriginal Peoples in Canada

When Aboriginal and Metis Teachers 
use Storytelling as an Instructional Practice

Storytelling in a Digital Age:
Digital Storytelling as an Emerging Narrative Method
For Preserving and Promoting Indigenous Oral Wisdom

Storytelling and Web 2.0 Services: 
A Synthesis of Old and New Ways of Learning

Educational Uses of Digital Storytelling
University of Houston

Digital Storytelling
Tools for Educators

Digital Storytelling
Tips and Resources

Web 2.0 Tools to Support Digital Storytelling
27th Annual Conference on Distance Teaching and Learning

Web 2.0 Storytelling:
Emergence of a New Genre

Web 2.0 Storytelling: Introduction
NITLE Workshops – Bryan Alexander

Web 2.0 Tools for Storytelling
Central York School District

Storytelling and Audio
Public History and Web 2.0 – Mapping the Past in the Future

Digital Storytelling in the Classroom
Microsoft in Education Teaching Guides

Looking into the connection between oral storytelling and the Alberta Language Arts curriculum, I have found my way back to the “Walking Together” First Nation, Metis, and Inuit resources – this PDF document provides details about the history of oral storytelling tradition in an excerpt from Aboriginal Perspectives.   The role of Elders in oral storytelling, teaching stories, and themes and values are expanded upon.

The Walking Together site delves far deeper than just the importance of oral tradition.  Also highlighted are:

– Traditional Environmental Knowledge
– Kinship
– Aboriginal and Treaty Rights
– Healing Historical Trauma
– Well-Being
– FNMI Worldviews
– Culture and Language
– Indigenous Pedagogy
– Connection to Land
– Symbolism and Traditions
– Elders

Library and Archives Canada provides the Our Voices, Our Stories site which celebrates Inuit, Metis, and First nations oral stories, which document history, language, traditions, and beliefs.    The site provides stories from the past and present of the First Nations, Metis, and Inuit, as well as educational resources and additional media.  Most significantly, in my opinion is the in-depth educational resources – storytelling background, hints, lessons, activities, and assessments.  Social Studies connections are provided for all provinces/territories and grades 4-8.