Author Archives: awhetter

Module 2:5 – Terralingua

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http://www.terralingua.org

Terralingua is a group of academics and activists who study biocultural diversity – diversity of plants, animals, and nature as well as cultures and languages – and work towards building awareness of the importance of maintaining it. The Downloads section under the Publications tab has interesting articles such as “Biocultural Diversity & Sustainability”, and “Indigenous and Traditional Peoples of the World & Ecoregion Conservation Booklet.” There is also a link to a book co-published by the WWF, UNESCO, and Terralingua called Sharing a World of Difference: The Earth’s Linguistic, Cultural and Biological Diversity (2003). Their work is focused on educational initiatives, policy development, and documenting biocultural diversity.

Module 2:4 – Murder that is a threat to survival

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http://www.theguardian.com/education/2001/mar/22/tefl3

In looking for something to post about ethnobotany or linguistic genocide, I came across this short and simple Guardian newspaper article by Tove Skuttnab-Kangas. To quote from the article:

 “threatened languages store the knowledge about how to maintain and use sustainably some of the most vulnerable and most biologically diverse environments in the world. It has taken centuries for people to learn about their environments and to name the complex ecological relationships that are decisive for maintenance of biodiversity. When indigenous peoples lose their languages, much of this knowledge also disappears: the dominant languages do not have the ethno-biological and ethno-medical vocabulary, and the stories will not be translated.”

Skuttnab-Kangas says that just as the loss of biodiversity is a threat to our survival, so is the loss of linguistic diversity—monocultures are vulnerable. The author claims that the biggest weapon we have against linguistic genocide is to enshrine rights to education in the mother tongue much more strongly throughout the world than is currently practiced, and also to raise awareness about the great risks of language loss.

Module 2:3 – Library Services to Indigenous Populations: Case Studies

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http://www.ifla.org/files/assets/indigenous-matters/publications/indigenous-librarianship-2013.pdf

This publication from the International Federation of Library Associations (IFLA) was developed with two goals in mind: to guide practice, and to strengthen international networks of indigenous librarians. Case studies of library services for indigenous people are included from all over the world: North and South America, Africa, Asia, Australia and New Zealand. The PDF of this 117-page book is freely available on the IFLA website. Each case study is presented in a consistent form-like fashion, more a directory-type entry than what I would normally expect from a case study (I was expecting longer narratives). But a resource for contacts, and as a quick overview of things that are happening worldwide, it is useful.

Module 2:2 – Culturally Responsive Guidelines for Alaska Public Libraries

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http://akla.org/publications/culturally-responsive-guidelines-for-alaska-public-libraries/

These guidelines published on a one-page website are recommendations for improving public libraries services and collections to make them more relevant and responsive to indigenous Alaskans. It groups the recommendations into four categories: library environment, services and programs, collections, and library staff.

 

Many recommendations talk about moving the library beyond its walls by engaging with community events, external facilities, and representatives of the community, and even by collecting library materials that fall outside the realm of mainstream publishing. It is a useful summary that reminds us of things that should seem obvious (collect materials in the languages spoken by your community) and inspires us to achieve more in depth and meaningful connections with the different cultures we serve.

Module 2:1 – Research Guide to Indigenous Librarianship

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http://guides.library.ubc.ca/content.php?pid=482521

Indigenous librarianship is a specialized field within library and information studies. Its focus is the culturally sensitive management and development of collections about or for indigenous people, and the appropriate provision of library services to indigenous communities or groups. The Research Guide to Indigenous Librarianship by the Xwi7xwa Library @ UBC is a useful portal to other sources, including a short list of recommended books, associations, etc. The section on indigenous policy development in public institutions is most interesting to me, with links to guides to on how to be a culturally responsive library and protocols for handling indigenous materials. It includes links to indigenous classification schemes (alternatives to Dewey Decimal or Library of Congress classifications) and to lists of standardized indigenous names and terms, needed by librarians for their daily work of indexing and cataloguing.

Cultural appropriation, indigenous knowledge and libraries

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As a librarian, I have at times been responsible for collecting print and electronic resources about indigenous issues, and also for collecting resources that support aboriginal students in a range of college programs. In addition, libraries sometimes have collections of artifacts, acting as small museums or archives. In light of this, I would like to learn more about issues of cultural appropriation and indigenous knowledge as they relate to libraries in Canada.

What issues do librarians need to be aware of as they wield their power to select, classify, and store materials? The parallels between the organizing/standardizing imperative of Western colonial domination and the organizing, classifying, and standardization of knowledge in libraries is interesting. What are the limitations of print and published materials in representing indigenous knowledge? It would also be interesting to look at anxiety induced by physical library spaces (fear of acting inappropriately, of not knowing where to begin), and how this anxiety may be more intense for aboriginal students.

Sources will include academic literature on cultural appropriation of indigenous knowledge, and library literature about services and collections for aboriginal people. I recognize that I will need to be careful not to make generalizations about aboriginal culture and assume that one solution fits all circumstances.

A first reference:

Haig-Brown, C. (2010). Indigenous thought, appropriation, and non-aboriginal people. Canadian Journal of Education, 33(4), 925-950. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com.ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/docview/848717095?accountid=14656

Module 1:5 – INTERculture

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INTERculture is a journal published from 1968 to 2011 by the Intercultural Institute of Montreal (IIM). I was led to it by the Wikipedia entry of Frederique Apffel-Marglin, who herself is mentioned in our class reading “Coyote and Raven Put the Digital in Technology.” Apffel-Marglin, an anthropologist, was one of the editors of the journal.

The journal defines intercultural as a way of “approaching reality and human living in light of the diverse cultural traditions of today, and not solely in the terms of modern culture.” Articles cover intercultural issues in many aspects of societies, economies and environments.

Many of the articles are available as fulltext PDFs  on the INTERculture site (hosted by the IIM). Specifically, there is a list of eighteen articles about Interculturalism and Native Peoples, including titles such as “The Shaman and the Ecologist” and “Dissolving Inuit Society through Education and Money.”

Module 1:4 – Native American “Sacred Texts”

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Native American Stories on Sacred-Texts.com

As oral societies, the aboriginal peoples of Canada and the U.S. do not have “sacred texts” – an equivalent to the Bible or the Koran, whose word order has been fixed for centuries. Their stories and myths continually change, slightly or greatly, with the teller and the circumstances and the place, as oral stories do. However, the website Sacred-texts.com has compiled a large collection of stories and myths, frozen at a certain time and place, mainly transcribed by non-native ethnographers or historians in the 19th and 20th centuries.

The website seems to be a one man project with good intentions, and I am inclined to trust it. All excerpts are documented and often accompanied with some useful context, e.g. “The study of Native Americans by anthropologists has had its share of bad science and ethical problems.” There is a section for Inuit stories, and a collection of Haida songs is included in the Northwestern Indian section (the English translations of the cradle and mourning songs are lovely). As a historical source for myths, stories and songs, it does a good job.

 

Module 1:3 – Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development

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The Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development

While looking at some information online the about B.C. Treaty negotiations, I came across a reference to The Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development. Active since 1987, the project looks at American Indian communities across the U.S. , comparing them to reach evidence-based conclusions about what works in terms of social and economic well-being.

They have distilled the key research findings into the following catch phrases:

  • Sovereignty matters
  • Institutions matter
  • Culture matters
  • Leadership matters

More than twenty years of study by Harvard University professors, and I think the key finding is the one at the top of the list (and the one that is most boldly featured on the HPAID home page), “Sovereignty Matters“:

When Native nations make their own decisions about what development approaches to take, they consistently out-perform external decision makers on matters as diverse as governmental form, natural resource management, economic development, health care, and social service provision.

The project has found that although sovereignty in itself in not sufficient to ensure that native communities thrive culturally, socially, and economically, it is a necessary element. It must be present for everything else to happen.

Although I’m sure this lesson has been learned many times before, it provides strong support for those who insist on aboriginal control of education in aboriginal communities in Canada.

Module 1:2 – Going Places

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Going Places: Preparing Inuit high school students for their future in a changing, wider world

This video describes the hopes and challenges of bicultural, bilingual high school education in two Nunavut communities, Clyde River and Pangnirtung. Interviews with students, school administrators, parents and other community members encourage students to stay in school, to have hope for the future. Inuit leadership in the education system recognize the importance of deep connections and relationships with culture and community, yet they also express a desire that their children’s education be “on par with the rest of the world” – an education that will set them up to live anywhere, to succeed wherever they choose, and even to be Prime Minister one day. The challenge for students to maintain a positive outlook in the face of so many suicides of friend and family is discussed.

Naively, I was struck by the use of the word “bicultural” to describe how students are learning about their Inuit culture and the culture of the Canadian South. Upon reflection, I think that I have subsumed Inuit and Aboriginal cultures (in my mind) as part of the wider Canadian culture, when really they are distinct and stand alone.