Anthwerrke (Emily Gap) Interactive Tour app

Central Land Council Press Release: Traditional owners of Anthwerrke (Emily Gap) have invested their rent income from the Yeperenye/Emily and Jessie Gaps Nature Park in an interactive visitor experience at the sacred site near Alice Springs. They will launch the interactive tour with CLC chair Francis Kelly, the Member for […]

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Video games and Indigenous education: Let’s bridge the ‘epistemology gap’

There are clear challenges posed by rural and remote education in Australia. These challenges are caused both by physical and material factors, but more importantly epistemological divisions that have created a separation between Indigenous and non-Indigenous worlds. Video games have the potential to bridge this epistemological gap by explicating the […]

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IRCA & the National Remote Indigenous Media Festival

The 2015 Festival was hosted by IRCA in partnership with PAW Media and Communications and the Lajamanu community with key partner Indigenous Community Television. For 5 days remote media workers and industry guests visited Gurindji and Warlpiri Country for an exciting industry program with skills workshops, roundtables, video screenings, live radio and TV […]

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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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Language app: FirstVoices Keyboard App

The latest ground-breaking FirstVoices innovation from the First Peoples’ Cultural Council is an Indigenous language keyboard app for Apple and Android mobile devices. The FirstVoices Keyboard App contains keyboard software for over 100 languages, and includes every First Nations language in Canada, Australia and New Zealand, plus many languages in […]

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It’s like going to a cemetery and lighting a candle: Aboriginal Australians, Sorry Business and social media

Death and funeral practices are a constant presence in many Aboriginal Australians’ lives—research in some communities found they are eight times more likely to have attended a funeral in the previous 2 years than non- Aboriginal people. This can be explained by two major factors: inordinately high rates of Aboriginal […]

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Digital storytelling & Co-creative Media: …community arts & media in propagating & coordinating population-wide creative practice

Introduction How is creative expression and communication extended among whole populations? What is the social and cultural value of this activity? What roles do formal agencies, community based organisations and content producer networks play? Specifically, how do participatory media and arts projects and networks contribute to building this capacity in […]

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Understanding Indigenous Peoples’ Information Practices and Internet Use: a Ngarrindjeri Perspective

Little is known about indigenous people’s interactions with the Internet as well as their attitudes, values, and skills in using the Internet and information and communication technologies to retain their knowledge. We present the preliminary results of the research undertaken with Ngarrindjeri people living from the Lower Murray River Lakes […]

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Talking book gives new voice to Indigenous languages

Kawarla: How to Make a Coolamon is the result of extensive language documentation work conducted in the Gurindji community in the Northern Territory. Dr Felicity Meakins, from UQ’s School of Languages and Cultures, worked with Gurindji elders Biddy Wavehill and Violet Wadrill to create the book. “The audio is linked […]

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The Virtual and the Vegetal: Creating a ‘Living’ Biocultural Heritage Archive through Digital Storytelling Approaches

FloraCultures is an online archive currently being developed in consultation with Kings Park and Botanic Garden in Perth, Western Australia. The archive will showcase the ‘botanical heritage’ of indigenous plant species found in the extant bushland areas of Kings Park near the heart of the city. A selection of multimedia […]

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Using Digital Storytelling to Capture Responses to the Apology

Abstract This article discusses a pilot project that adapted the methods of digital storytelling and oral history to capture a range of personal responses to the official Apology to Australia’s Indigenous Peoples delivered by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd on 13 February 2008. The project was an initiative of State Library […]

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Indigenous Australians and ICTs (blog post)

Blurb: “I think I have witnessed both the empowering and disempowering aspects of ICTs enough to have developed a significant amount of skepticism toward the technology and especially the unnerving tendency of people to use it to amplify our pre-existing conditions rather than solve any problems. I guess I am […]

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SharingStories Foundation: innovation through technology & cultural understanding via oral traditions

About SharingStories Foundation From the organization’s website: SharingStories Foundation (SSF) works with multiple art forms, in dynamic relationship with stories, creating multi-media outcomes. The Foundation supports Indigenous communities to hold, share and transmit languages, stories and culture for present and future generations. We also work with communities to promote a […]

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Living Archive of Aboriginal Languages

The Living Archive of Aboriginal Languages is an open access, online repository comprising digital versions of language materials produced in Literature Production Centres, language centres and other sources in Indigenous languages of the Northern Territory. The archive is continually expanding, and people are encouraged to engage with these materials. There […]

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Telling our Stories: Aboriginal young people in Victoria and Digital Storytelling

This project worked with Aboriginal youth under the age of 25 – an age group that forms the majority of the Aboriginal population in Victoria and is among the highest users of mobile phones, actively engaging in social media and other online platforms. With the advent of Web 2.0 technologies, Aboriginal […]

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People, Place and Community Memory: Creating Digital Heritage Databases in Remote Aboriginal Communities

In this paper I describe the Northern Territory Library’s, Libraries and Knowledge Centres program and examine some of the ways that digital technologies are being used to improve local access to archival materials in remote Australian Aboriginal communities. The development of community heritage databases gives some communities the opportunity toconstruct […]

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Indigenous Remote Communications Association (IRCA)

Indigenous Remote Communications Association (IRCA) is the peak body for remote Indigenous media and communications and was founded in 2001. IRCA is committed to building the capacity of the sector while also providing tools, networks and resources that help remote media workers build their skills, profile and performance. IRCA currently […]

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Linguists call for TV to save Aboriginal languages

Click image to see a larger version of the article. More articles by Geoff Maslen at The Age.

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Wathaurung use technology to take control of their cultural heritage

For over 25,000 years, the land around Ballarat, Geelong and the Bellarine Peninsula has been inhabited by the Wathaurung people. Traditionally, important cultural knowledge was passed down the generations through word of mouth. Today, a simple yet groundbreaking piece of mapping software is allowing the Wathaurung to pinpoint and record […]

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Making the Connection: Essays on Indigenous Digital Excellence

We all understand the power of being connected in the digital world, being on-line, with everything at our finger-tips. But what will it take to make the most of this opportunity when it comes to Indigenous Australia? This unique set of essays commissioned by the Telstra Foundation, shows how Aboriginal […]

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Remediating sacred imagery on screens: Yolngu experiments with new media technology

When I first arrived in the Yolngu township of Galiwin’ku to undertake fieldwork for my doctoral thesis at the University of Melbourne and the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, almost a decade ago to the day, a particular research question had been on my mind for some time. Over […]

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Exploring Culture in a Digital World

This is a technical paper describing the pedagogical and technological requirements for the Wondervision Project. It examines how digital technologies can be used to connect cultures in a way that is respectful and results in deeper understanding of culture. The Indigenous culture of Australia is the learning context, with the […]

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Australian Aboriginal Virtual Heritage

Cultural knowledge is a central tenant of identity for Aboriginal people and it is vitally important that the preservation of heritage values happens. Digital Songlines is a project that seeks to achieve this and was initiated as a way to develop the tools for recording cultural heritage knowledge in a […]

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A great debate: to show or not to show the Ngintaka songline exhibit – and who should decide?

Three articles that capture the current cultural debate around an Aborignal Australian songlines exhibit… Songlines project sparks indigenous culture war March 22, 2014, from a post written by Nicolaus Rothwell It seemed like a dream arts project for the remote western desert’s Aboriginal communities — a research and exhibition series […]

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Information Technology and Indigenous Communities: symposium publication

This document sets out key issues identified in the final plenary session at the AIATSIS research symposium on information technologies and Indigenous communities. Over 70 papers were presented at ITIC on the use of information technologies by Indigenous peoples. Illustrating the strength and vibrancy of the sector, presentations were delivered […]

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