Tag Archives: digital storytelling

Module 4 Weblog – Posting #5 – Community Storytelling

My final weblog post provides an example of an Indigenous community representing themselves through the use of digital storytelling.

The Georgina Island Storytelling Project is a project of the Chippewas of Georgina Island in Ontario. The site hosts a collection of existing stories and invites the contribution of new stories. The stories cover the history of the community beginning in the 1800s up to the present day. Viewers may search for stories based on a variety of topics such as commerce, island life, health, and governance and administration. The site itself also includes links to information regarding services in the community.

The combination of all of these stories provides a very vivid idea of each contributor’s personal story, and also of their sense of themselves in the larger community. As a living project, the site also provides guidance and options for those who wish to share their own stories and add to the expressions of the heritage and identity of their people.

Module 4 Weblog – Post #4 – Healing Through Storytelling

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Through my research, I have come to understand that a key strength of digital storytelling is not simply the media file that presents the story; more specifically it is the process that led to the creation of that media.

Kookum (Grandmothers) and Youth Circles is a workbook developed to support an Equay-wuk (Women’s Group) workshop held in the winter of 2012. This group supports the needs and interests of women in the 31 First Nation communities in remote Northwestern Ontario. The workshop and the workbook both provided opportunities for both elders and youth to consider the stories that they had to tell, including their experiences of the Residential Schools – either first hand or through inter-generational impacts.

Reviewing the workbook provides tremendous insights into the types of reflection and strategies that can help contribute to people sharing their own stories as a means of healing themselves and, in some cases, those around them.

Module 4 Weblog – Post #3 – Digital Harvest

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One of the most interesting aspects of researching digital storytelling and its use in Indigenous communities, has been the variety of initiatives supported by the strategy of digital storytelling. Digital Harvest is one such initiative. Organized in 2012 by the Vancouver Island and Coastal Communities Indigenous Food Network, the project provided an initial event/opportunity for collaboration and learning between First Nations youth and elders, which later resulted in the compilation of multimedia presentations. Once posted, these presentations, in turn, provided materials for learning in other communities.

Some of the results of the Digital Harvest project can be found on YouTube. As part of the workshop associated with the project, the group observed the difference in the effects of traditional vs. colonial food (e.g. bacon, Kool aid, hot dogs, etc.) on their bodies, energy, etc. Not surprisingly, the traditional foods left the group energized and enthusiastic, while the colonial foods left them exhausted.

In describing the project, the project coordinator explains the strengths of the initiative in terms of …”the correlation between the traditional aspects of the oral First Nations cultural practice of storytelling and the contemporary technologies associated with digital storytelling and video production.”(http://www.indigenousfoodsvi.ca/updates/digital-harvest-2012/)

Module 4 Weblog – Post #1 – Traditional Languages – New Media

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The Our World website shares the results of a series of film making workshops that have been carried out in numerous First Nations communities in BC and Yukon. The project was originally a National Film Board initiative, but more recently has been supported by an organization known as Bite Size Media.

The stories found on this site are all examples of First Nations collaborating with elders to learn more about their language and culture. Most of the videos are narrated in a traditional language, and in some cases, share traditional stories, songs and dances. However, many of the pieces also share very poignant perspectives on the loss of culture and the film makers’ struggles to define their own identities. The site is organized according to the places in which the film making workshops have taken place. As such it provides a sense of the unique nature of each people and its youth as well as how these media pieces were received by the communities in which they were created.

One of the most notable things that I found about this site was the range of approaches and techniques chosen by the young people who created these digital stories. The videos are visually very diverse and have clear and distinct voices. Nonetheless, I found, they all result in a very similar and significant impact on the viewer.

Module 2 – Post #5 – Through the Eyes of Youth

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In her video interview for ETEC521 Module 2, Amy Parent mentions the deep insights that she felt were captured through the film projects undertaken by youth, at the Centre where she was working, in collaboration with an exceptional organization called Reel Youth.

After some searching, I tracked down three film projects (Residential Truth: Unified Future, Bandaid, and Decolonization) that had been produced with Reel Youth, expressing the thoughts and feelings of First Nations youth regarding residential schools and the concept of decolonization. The longest of these three films conveys how raw the feelings are and how much of the hurt from the residential school system endures in the current generation. This project includes footage of video interviews with young people and their parents, sharing their thoughts and emotions in a frank and very moving way. The two shorter films are both claymation projects, which employ simple and beautiful imagery that evokes just as powerful a reaction as the video interviews.

This site and these film projects served as good reminders to me of the range of ways, (music, image, voice) in which messages can be conveyed when there is an important and compelling story to be told.

Module 2 – Post #4 – Second Chances

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The digital storytelling project for First Nations women, which I described in my previous post, led me to the corresponding project posted by the Oral History Centre, which is known as ININIWAG DIBAAJIMOWAG: FIRST NATIONS MEN AND THE INTER-GENERATIONAL EXPERIENCES OF RESIDENTIAL SCHOOLS. The men’s digital stories associated with this project are equally poignant to those of the women mentioned in my previous post. However, the one that I found most impactful was the story called Second Chance, by Dan Highway. He is a residential school survivor, who shares in simple and clear terms how the theft of the opportunity to be with his own parents impacted his abilities as a father and how his process of healing has resulted in a second chance to be a parent to his children and grandchildren.

Numerous other stories emerging from this project can be found on the Oral History Centre’s YouTube Playlist.

Statement Connecting Blog to Research

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In my early research for this course, I was very inspired by an Australian blog posting about Victorian Indigenous Communities and Digital Storytelling. Based on my response to this post, as well as the themes of our initial readings, I would like to focus my research on the use of digital storytelling as a strategy for indigenous education. This topic is of particular relevance for me, because in our work with Digital Education Strategies at Ryerson University, my colleagues and I promote digital storytelling as a useful strategy for teaching and learning. As such, I would like to deepen my understanding of this technique and its pedagogical value.

Some of the topics and questions that I would like to explore include:

The role of storytelling in Indigenous culture.
To what extent can Indigenous storytelling, which is anchored in strong oral tradition, be conveyed through digital tools?
The process of creating digital stories and the intrinsic value of this process.

In addition to our course readings and the sites which I have already shared through my Module 1 weblog, here is a preliminary list of references:

Hopkins, C. (2006) Making Things Our Own: The Indigenous Aesthetic in Digital Storytelling. Leonardo , Vol. 39, No. 4, Pacific Rim New Media Summit Companion, pp. 341-344

Wilcox A.C., Harper S.L., Edge V.L. (2013) Storytelling in a digital age: digital storytelling as an emerging narrative method for preserving and promoting indigenous oral wisdom. Qualitative Research, 2013; 13(2):127–147.

Module 1 – Post #4 – The Value of Cooperation

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Collaboration and cooperation are key elements of Indigenous culture that have come up in our Module 1 readings. As I have continued my research into storytelling through rich media, I encountered a great posting from Australia about Victorian Indigenous Communities and Digital Storytelling .

The post is an entry on a site called “Screening the Past”, a site which is devoted to:

the history of photography, film, television and multimedia;
the representation of history on/in these media;
the role of these media in social history;
the history and development of critical and theoretical analysis in these areas

(Retrieved on 22nd September 2013 from http://www.screeningthepast.com/about-us/)

The post includes a great story about how a reluctant “Aunt” (term for female elders in Victorian Indigenous Communities) was supported and encouraged to participate in a digital storytelling workshop by two “Uncles” (term for male elders in Victorian Indigenous Communities), who offered up photos and stories of their own. As one of the writers of the post states, “…behind every one of these individual stories is another story about how the film was made, and that’s a story about being in the community.”