Saratoga Native American Festival Education Guide

I had the opportunity to serve as the organizer for the Saratoga Native American Festival for its first two years in operation (2006 and 2007) while working as the Education Director for the Ndakinna Education Center. Since 2017, I have served as an Ndakinna board member. One of my responsibilities […]

 •   •   •   •   •   •   •   • 

Digital Native American and Indigenous Studies Project

The Digital Native American and Indigenous Studies (dNAIS) Project will offer three three-day workshops to educate participants on issues of digital humanities research and methodology in the context of Native American Studies. Native American Studies, an interdisciplinary field of study exploring the history, culture, politics, issues, and contemporary experience of […]

 •   •   •   •   •   •   • 

Digital Native American & Indigenous Studies Project

The Digital Native American and Indigenous Studies (dNAIS) Project will offer three three-day workshops to educate participants on issues of digital humanities research and methodology in the context of Native American Studies. Native American Studies, an interdisciplinary field of study exploring the history, culture, politics, issues, and contemporary experience of […]

 •   •   •   • 

Language app: Nez Perce

A mobile application providing words and phrases in the Nez Perce Language. Containing over 1000 words, there are several categories including Basics, Phrases, People, and Animals. Note: The swastika design featured in the app logo is the Nez Perce “whirling log” design which signifies good luck.

 •   •   •   •   • 

Language app: Saulteaux

File Hills Qu’Appelle Tribal Council of Fort Qu’Appelle Saskatchewan, Canada is delighted to present to you a Saulteaux Language app now available on iTunes App store. This app offers learning, practice, games and quizzes in many everyday categories such as greetings, phrases, vowels, expressions and much more! Learn your language […]

 •   •   •   •   •   • 

Language app: Cree

File Hills Qu’Appelle Tribal Council of Fort Qu’Appelle Saskatchewan, Canada is delighted to present to you a Cree Language app now available on iTunes App store. This app offers learning, practice, games and quizzes in many everyday categories such as greetings, phrases, vowels, expressions and much more! Learn your language […]

 •   •   •   •   •   • 

Language app: Dakota

File Hills Qu’Appelle Tribal Council of Fort Qu’Appelle Saskatchewan, Canada is delighted to present to you a Dakota Language app now available on iTunes App store. This app offers learning, practice, games and quizzes in many everyday categories such as greetings, phrases, vowels, expressions and much more! Learn your language […]

 •   •   •   •   •   • 

Language app: Nakota

File Hills Qu’Appelle Tribal Council of Fort Qu’Appelle Saskatchewan, Canada is delighted to present to you a Nakota Language app now available on iTunes App store. This app offers learning, practice, games and quizzes in many everyday categories such as greetings, phrases, vowels, expressions and much more! Learn your language […]

 •   •   •   •   •   • 

Language app: Lakota

File Hills Qu’Appelle Tribal Council of Fort Qu’Appelle Saskatchewan, Canada is delighted to present to you a Lakota Language app now available on iTunes App store. This app offers learning, practice, games and quizzes in many everyday categories such as greetings, phrases, vowels, expressions and much more! Learn your language […]

 •   •   •   •   •   • 

How the West was Played: Offering Indigenous Voice to Video Game Studies

While many scholars have addressed the presence of stereotypical representations of Native Americans in the traditional media of film and literature, there has not as of yet been much dialogue around the newer medium of video games. This is in part due to their newness, as well as a perceptual […]

 •   •   •   •   •   • 

Indigenous New Media Symposium 2014

The Indigenous New Media Symposium aims to bring together Native American and First Nation media makers and creative activists to discuss how new media platforms are being used in the indigenous community to educate, organize, entertain, and advocate.  In the past few years blogs, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and other tools […]

 •   •   •   • 

AlterNative: An International Journal of Indigenous Peoples

AlterNative: An International Journal of Indigenous Peoples is a peer-reviewed interdisciplinary journal. It aims to present indigenous worldviews from native indigenous perspectives. AlterNative is dedicated to the analysis and dissemination of native indigenous knowledge that uniquely belongs to cultural, traditional, tribal and aboriginal peoples as well as first-nations, from around […]

 •   •   •   •   •   •   •   •   • 

Saratoga Native American Festival Program Guide

Note from Mark: I had the opportunity to serve as the organizer for the Saratoga Native American Festival for its first two years in operation (2006 and 2007) while working as the Education Director for the Ndakinna Education Center. The Saratoga Native American Festival is a collaborative effort of the […]

 •   •   •   • 

Saratoga Native American Festival Curriculum Guide

This Curriculum Guide was published in conjunction with the 2007 Saratoga Native American Festival in Saratoga Springs, New York. Teachers at all levels will find that the lessons and activities introduced can be used broadly to support their own classroom curricula. This program guide was developed by Amy Totino, a […]

 •   •   •   • 

From Oral Tradition to Digital Collectives: Information Access and Technology in Contemporary Native American Culture

For people who may live both physically and culturally distant from the majority culture in their immediate environment, information technology can provide a boost toward accessing and documenting their own heritage. As early adopters of the Web, Native Americans began using the Internet for e-commerce and cultural outreach in the […]

 •   •   •   • 

The Impact of Cultural Assumptions about Technology on Choctaw Heritage Preservation and Sharing

Abstract Neither the effects of information and communication technology (ICT) on culture nor the cultural roles of ICT are widely understood, particularly among marginalized ethno-cultures and indigenous people. One theoretical lens that has received attention outside of Native American studies is the theory of Information Technology Cultures, or “IT Culture,” […]

 •   •   •   •   • 

The Digital Divide Dilemma: Preserving Native American Culture While Increasing Access

Introduction “[I]nformation is power. The development of a Navajo Nation information infrastructure is a historic event that holds many possibilities.” A comparison of the access to technology on Native American reservations with urban American settings reveals a great divide. For example, only 39% of Native Americans living in rural areas […]

 •   •   •   •   •   • 

Indigenous, ethnic and cultural articulations of new media

This article extends a lineage of research that reveals possibilities by which indigenous and ethnic communities have appropriated media technologies to serve their own cultural, political and social visions. This article focuses on networked and database-driven ‘new’ media and information systems, and the possibilities and potentialities these hold within cultural […]

 •   •   •   •   •   •   •   • 

Native American and Indigenous Studies Association (NAISA)

The Native American and Indigenous Studies Association is a professional organization dedicated to supporting scholars and others who work in the academic field of Native American and Indigenous studies. Founded in 2008, NAISA hosts the premier scholarly meeting in Native studies. The association has more than 700 members from over […]

 •   •   •   • 

The Storytelling Station: an interactive museum kiosk

This museum kiosk, designed as a prototype for the Ndakinna Education Center, provides an interactive introduction to storytelling and the Native American oral traditions of the Northeast. Participants learn about storytelling by: experiencing video interviews and recorded performances with storytellers from the Abenaki, Mohawk, and other northeastern Nations, reading and […]

 •   •   •   •   •   • 

Natives on the Electric Frontier: Technology and Cultural Change on the Cheyenne River Sioux Reservation

Abstract This dissertation examines the relationship between technology and cultural change on the Cheyenne River Sioux Reservation in South Dakota, home to 7000 Lakota Indians. Recently, a number of popular authors have suggested that technology, especially electronic or ’emerging’ media technologies such as television and the Internet, is a primary […]

 •   •   •   •   •   •   • 

Of local interest: The 2011 Saratoga Native American Festival

I rarely if ever wax personal on this blog, but I would like to share news about an upcoming local festival here in Upstate New York called the Saratoga Native American Festival. It has nothing to do with usual Ethnos Project fare like technology and culture or ICT4D – I […]

 •   •   •   • 

Problematizing Indigenous Aesthetics

In 1966, Sol Worth (professor of Communication from the Annenberg School for Communications at the University of Pennsylvania) and John Adair (professor of Anthropology at San Francisco State University) set out to find “what kind of visual and temporal style and aesthetics might [the] Navajo use if they were trained […]

 •   •   •   •   • 

Expanding the Knowledge Base: Managing Extended Knowledge at the National Museum of the American Indian

Abstract A Native American basketmaker was hired to teach a college class in Indian crafts. Each day she began and ended her class by having her students sing songs she had taught them, until some of the students began to complain that they would never learn basket making at that […]

 •   •   •   •