Melding language and image: Kaytetye Indigemoji as a language learning project (original) (raw)
Related papers
A Relational Approach to Designing Social Technologies that Foster Use of the Kuku Yalanji Language
Proceedings of the 31st Australian Conference on Human-Computer-Interaction
Australia has a rich array of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander languages, but they face decline along with many valued aspects of culture unless they are passed down to, and used by, younger generations. Prior work on designing technologies for language learning has often taken particular language skills, learning theories, and technologies as their starting point. Our empirical work with a remote Aboriginal community illustrates four ways in which this community's language practices intersect with family relations and are deeply enmeshed with family histories and stories, Indigenous Knowledges, and activities on and about country. Thus, we argue for a relational approach that instead takes family communication and social activities as the basis for designing technologies that foster everyday language use. We outline the guiding principles of this design orientation, and illustrate how they have been taken up in the co-design of a talking soft toy called the 'Crocodile Language Friend.' Finally, we identify opportunities and open issues in taking a relational approach to designing technologies for language communities with similar needs and aspirations.
The acquisition of media as cultural practice: Remote Indigenous youth and new digital technologies
2013
Information technology and Indigenous communities vi Published by AIATSIS Research Publications the transformation and use of the new technologies are the next stage, and this is increasingly evident in Indigenous communities. It was also evident, I said, that 'Information technologies have an ideal potential to create global democracies based on an increased understanding and acceptance of cultural differences. The potential social benefits are extensive. One of the most important is that it allows Indigenous peoples to position themselves outside colonial nation-states, in the new cyberspace' (Langton 2004). 1 The situation has changed dramatically since I made these points, as each contributor to this volume shows. This world will continue to change quickly, and policy and infrastructure need to be responsive and well informed. This volume will enable all those involved to understand these issues readily. Each chapter gives us a window onto a cultural project, an innovation, a challenge and a vision. Indigenous citizens of the new cyberspace are inventors and creators, preservers and innovators, and they are also enriching their own societies and global society by enabling access to the Indigenous world through computer or mobile phone screens. They are sharing these technologies with their fellow citizens of the Indigenous world, some of whom switched from sand signs to digital data only two generations ago. Some of the authors of the chapters that follow are old hands at turning digital technology to the task of communicating complex cultural expressions and concepts. Barbara Glowczewski of L'École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris, and author of Chapter 6, has worked for more than two decades with Warlpiri people and has produced Dream Trackers (Glowczewski 2000), the first-ever DVD documentation of art and Dreamings, integrating sacred design and meaning through a digital database. When the project began, with UNESCO support, the idea of using digital technology to present large and complex cultural repertoire was in its infancy. Now, museums and collecting institutions around the world use digital technology, computer screens and digital imagery to enhance the presentation of their material to tech-savvy audiences. So too have Indigenous institutions, from tiny community centres to national institutions, adopted digital technology during the past two decades to strengthen their capacity to preserve Indigenous cultural collections and information, especially because of their vulnerability, high value and the risks posed to their future. The increased ability to share information, including images, photographs, films and much more, serves the purpose of ensuring the transmission of culture to future generations in the community of origin. During the closing plenary session at the ITIC conference, this fundamental principle of cultural practice was expressed in the ancient concept of Ngapaji Ngapaji, or 'You give, I give', encompassing the Aboriginal tradition of reciprocity, and, in this instance, the obligation of elders to teach younger generations their traditional knowledge and the reciprocal obligation of the young to teach their elders how to use the technology to keep their traditions.
Perspectives on Indigenous writing and literacies, 2019
This chapter problematizes the educational affordances of accessing indigenous storytelling practices in online environments. Focus lies on the use of storytelling for language revitalization in indigenous contexts of Sápmi (the traditional Sámi settlement area) and Australia. By examining contemporary examples of digital storytelling projects, we investigate creation and production processes, including not only the role of institutions as a source of production, but also the role of various agents in order to make possible for community members to create and share their own productions. The production of digital stories that present indigenous languages and culture online can be seen as a voice for marginalized communities, but also as initiatives and efforts towards self-representation and revitalization, i.e. a "deliberate, organized, conscious effort by members of a society to construct a more satisfying culture" (Wallace, 1956, 265). As emphasized in previous research, successful revitalization requires changing community attitudes (Grenoble and Whaley, 2006.13). Consequently, any attempt to consider possibilities and challenges in revitalization should start in considering initiatives taken by the community itself in order to strengthen and promote their language. This study discusses some of the challenges and possibilities for education and language acquisition from selected examples. Further, we discuss some of the potentials and uses for digital literature and storytelling in relation to cultural revitalization and cultural practices in an indigenous context. This discussion is focused on several recent examples of digital media used to produce content that aims to revitalize indigenous languages and culture through education. Rather than overly give attention on such features as language acquisition and transmission, we are interested in the role of language in relation to traditions and identities. These relationships are especially powerful when expressed in relation to land, heritage and traditional cultural practices. Our examples include Sámi initiatives from Sweden and Norway, as well as digital works and a publishing initiative from Indigenous Australian communities. We choose to focus on education from the perspective of the Indigenous communities, which are often resisting the intrusion of power in the form of economic and political elites. This raises questions related to what is a meaningful education from an indigenous perspective and many of these struggles are played out via media.
Multimodal literacy practices in the indigenous Sámi classroom
This article explores multimodal literacy practices in a transforming multilingual context of an indigenous and endangered Sámi language classroom. Looking at literacy practices as embedded in a complex and shifting terrain of language ideologies, language norms, and individual experiences and attitudes, we examined how multilingual Sámi children navigate and appropriate meaning-making resources available for them while designing their own picture books. We adopted a discourse ethnographic approach to analyse these multimodal picture books and found three different but interrelated orientations to the making of the books, each organising and valuing multimodal resources in his or her own way. We conclude with a discussion of the value of repetition and creativity in multimodal literacy practices in a changing multilingual minority language context.
2016
Information and communications technologies (ICT) are seen as crucial in improving educational opportunities and outcomes for children in remote communities. Yet these technologies are often viewed with suspicion by Indigenous communities in allowing access to material seen as potentially damaging to local culture such as gambling and pornography. This paper will discuss a project that attempted to forge strong links between community and school by engaging Indigenous children in literacy learning activities aimed at preserving local Indigenous culture through the use of mobile technologies. The results indicated that to achieve these aims the key school personnel were the Aboriginal Education Workers as they form the link between the school and the local community.
Framing Indigenous Knowledge in Digital Context
International Journal of End-User Computing and Development, 2018
For more than three decades, designers have been increasingly involved in various design activities through a large number of participatory design projects in indigenous communities. To understand the indigenous information taxonomies, the designers need active participation and engagement of the local community in the design process. Designers are in the continuous quest for methods and tools that can work as “all-in-one solutions.” However, every project is unique, and it is necessary to decide which design approach, method and tool to use in a specific context. This article covers the experiences of the community-driven design process in the development of indigenous knowledge management systems in a rural site of Borneo. The authors' endeavors lead them to question the validity of techniques and interpretations of interactions originating from a Western scientific paradigm and pursue the creation of an indigenous HCI paradigm to frame design methods. It hoped that the experi...
Introducing technology into learning designs for indigenous contexts
IxD&A, 2019
Technology is more pervasive, and it has reached indigenous communities. This paper presents a qualitative study and reflects on three learning designs that integrate information and communication technologies (ICT) in the context of an indigenous school in Peru. This paper demonstrates that indigenous people, rather than being mere users of technology, could create and design technology to their own benefit by integrating their own worldviews, ancestral knowledge, and ways of learning. It is shown that new approaches are necessary to implement learning designs that are open, flexible, and have partnership with community elders, where technology plays several key roles as a tool, as a process, as a type of knowledge and as a set of values.