Local Contexts: Traditional Knowledge Labels

Local Contexts is an initiative to support Native, First Nations, Aboriginal, and Indigenous communities in the management of their intellectual property and cultural heritage specifically within the digital environment. Local Contexts provides legal, extra-legal, and educational strategies for navigating copyright law and the public domain status of this valuable cultural […]

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Documenting Endangered Languages – NSF Grants

Funding Opportunity Expected Number of Awards: 30 Posted Date: Jun 28, 2016 Closing Date for Applications: Sep 15, 2016 Estimated Total Program Funding: $4,000,000 Description This funding partnership between the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) supports projects to develop and advance knowledge concerning […]

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Decolonizing geographies of power: indigenous digital counter-mapping practices on turtle Island

This paper addresses the decolonizing potential of Indigenous counter-mapping in the context of (what is now called) Canada.After historicizing cartography as a technique of colonial power, and situating Indigenous counter-mapping as an assertion of political and intellectual sovereignty, we examine the digital map of Amiskwaciwâskahikan (Plains Cree for Edmonton, Alberta) […]

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Design Interactions in ʔeləw̓ k ̓ʷ — Belongings

Our pictorial visually describes ʔeləw̓ k ̓ʷ — Belongings, an interactive tangible tabletop installed in the Museum of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia. The tabletop was designed to communicate the continuity of Musqueam culture, convey the complexity of belongings that were excavated from Musqueam’s ancient village site, and […]

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Digitizing Indigenous History: Trends and Challenges

This is an exciting time for digitizing indigenous history. Leading digital humanists are engaging tribal communities in the creation of powerful online archives. The groundbreaking Mukurtu content management system (CMS), for example, is built on the very premise of indigenous curation or co-curation; it lets indigenous people control exactly what […]

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Wampum, Sequoyan, and Story: Decolonizing the Digital Archive

For some years, the Cherokee Nation has hosted a digital archive that includes stories in the Cherokee language, available to anyone who registers for the Nation’s free online language classes or requests them to be sent in DVD format. On the ᏣᎳᎩ ᏗᎧᏃᎮᏍᏓ & ᏗᎧᏃᎩᏓ /tsalagi dikanohesda & dikanogida/ Cherokee […]

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Gone Digital: Aboriginal Remix and the Cultural Commons

Abstract: Recently the commons has become a predominant metaphor for the types of social relationships between people, ideas, and new digital technologies. In IP debates, the commons signifies openness, the exclusion of intermediaries, and remix culture that is creative, innovative, and politically disobedient. This article examines the material and social […]

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Does Information Really Want to be Free? Indigenous Knowledge Systems and the Question of Openness

The “information wants to be free” meme was born some 20 years ago from the free and open source software development community. In the ensuing decades, information freedom has merged with debates over open access, digital rights management, and intellectual property rights. More recently, as digital heritage has become a […]

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Postcolonial Computing: A Tactical Survey

The authors suggest that postcolonial science studies can do more than expand answers to questions already posed; it can generate different questions and different ways of looking at the world. To illustrate, the authors draw on existing histories and anthropologies and critical theories of colonial and postcolonial technoscience. To move […]

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Community-based materials development: using digital storytelling for teaching and learning Indigenous languages

This study examined the potential of using digital storytelling as a mechanism for materials development and Indigenous language learning. Study participants (N = 4) were interviewed after a series of three digital storytelling workshops offered in a First Nations community. The findings of the study support the use of digital […]

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En Route for the Sustainability of Digital Local Content for Mobile Learning to Preserve Malay Local Cultural Heritage

This study voices serious concern about the sustainable development of Malay digital local cultural content. Digital local content is crucial in learning local cultural subjects in Asia countries, such as Malay culture. However, there is a serious lack of digital local content for mobile learning purposes in Malaysia. One of […]

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Social media and digital technology use among Indigenous young people in Australia: a literature review

The use of social media and digital technologies has grown rapidly in Australia and around the world, including among Indigenous young people who face social disadvantage. Given the potential to use social media for communication, providing information and as part of creating and responding to social change, this paper explores […]

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