CULTURE: Group to Develop Internet Tools With Indigenous Worldview (fwd)

[Phil CashCash]

CULTURE: Group to Develop Internet Tools With Indigenous Worldview
Marty Logan
http://ipsnews.net/interna.asp?idnews=21404

MONTREAL, Dec 4 (IPS) - Type ”sacred circle” into the Internet's
'Google' search engine and you will uncover hundreds of thousands of
references. Now, one group wants the World Wide Web itself to function
much more like the circle, whose concept of balance is integral to many
of the world's indigenous peoples.

Led by Frits Pannekoek, director of information resources at the
University of Calgary, the team is developing tools that would search
the Web and organise its information using an ”indigenous way of
knowing”.

''The real question is,” says Pannekoek in a telephone interview, ”can
the Internet or the World Wide Web be culturally neutral, or at least
sufficiently neutral that an alternate world perspective can use it to
move in the directions that those world knowledge systems want to
move?”

”Because if it isn't and it can't become so, then I think we've got
ourselves a bit of a problem.”

While Pannekoek argues that simply working to connect indigenous peoples
to the Internet is a shortsighted approach that could harm their
cultures, aboriginal peoples are split on how to approach the
technology.

In the run-up to next week's World Summit on the Information Society
(WSIS) in Geneva, Switzerland, it has become clear that some indigenous
groups want to have a greater online presence; others stress that they
must have the power to control their information, and then they will
decide themselves the best way to communicate their knowledge.

Pannekoek, whose team includes representatives of Cree and Blood
indigenous groups in the western Canadian Province of Alberta, compares
the Internet to radio, television and other major new technologies.

”They all had transformative impact,” he says. ”Transformation isn't
always positive.”

”In particular the hope is that the (new) software will appeal to youth
and will reconnect or strengthen their connections to the worldview of
their communities,” he wrote in an August research proposal.

”If such software is not developed, the lament of the Blood elders will
be realised in the next generation. The young people will truly be 'new
people' without real roots.”

Next week hundreds of indigenous people and their supporters from around
the world will gather for the four-day Global Forum of Indigenous
Peoples and the Information Society, being held alongside the WSIS.

The meeting's agenda includes an ”independent expert paper” by Marcos
Matias Alonso, a member of the U.N. Permanent Forum on Indigenous
Issues.

He writes that indigenous peoples, ”do not yet equitably participate in
building the future information society. Consequently, indigenous
visions and philosophies do not contribute to its developing concept
and structure”.

Matias Alonso calls for recognising that, ”indigenous traditional
knowledge does not automatically belong to the so-called public
domain”.

”Regulations on the use of indigenous knowledge by third parties have to
be developed, in cooperation with indigenous peoples, fully recognising
indigenous customary laws and protocols for sharing, disseminating and
communicating indigenous knowledge and its applications,” he adds.

One Maori researcher says the focus in New Zealand should be putting the
Maori language on the Internet, rather than trying to ”force” the
technology in a certain direction.

”If we have sites in our own language, everything else will follow.
Culture follows language,” said Te Taka Keegan from the University of
Waikato in Hamilton, in a telephone interview.

He said he is beginning to see many websites, both indigenous and
non-indigenous, employing Maori symbols and other images. ”That's
something that's happened without anybody saying, 'look, we're Maori,
we should be doing it like this'. It's just something that's kind of
happened naturally,” said Keegan.

”It means that there are some inherent influences in our culture that
are coming through on the Web . it's quite good to see that it's not
all total suppression; it's not total obliteration.”

The increasingly multimedia nature of the technology might also shape
the Internet into a better fit with indigenous cultures, he suggests.
”An important thing in the Maori culture is the face to face contact
('kanohi ki te kanohi') and the Internet definitely takes that away
from you, but . in the future when we're using video links maybe it
will return”.

”Maybe the technology will catch up to our culture.”

Another group suggests that putting culture first could even lead to
indigenous peoples rejecting the technology as it is now organised.

”To think that indigenous peoples' problems with communication will be
solved by just connecting them to the Internet and the digital era is
another form of colonialism,” said Nilo Cayuqueo, a Mapuche activist
and writer from Argentina and co-director of the Abya Yala Nexus, a
native development network.

”What we are proposing is to have the rights to information and produce
our own indigenous community media. Free software could help us in
designing and customising our message according to our values and
aspirations as peoples,” he added in an e-mail interview.

Pannekoek says if his group receives funding, it could develop a
prototype of the Internet tools by 2007. Their major features would
include a new way of ”tagging” or digitally labelling information on
the Web that would reflect Indigenous ways of seeing the world.

Those ways, he adds -- quoting other researchers -- include: (1)
knowledge of and belief in unseen powers in the ecosystem: and (2)
knowledge that all things in the ecosystem are dependent on each other,
and that sacred traditions and persons who know these traditions are
responsible for teaching ''morals'' and ''ethics'' to practitioners,
who are then given responsibility for this specialised knowledge and
its dissemination.

An innovative search tool or engine would display its ''finds'' in a
form -- such as circles -- that would be innate to indigenous cultures,
unlike the text-based tools that now dominate the Web.

For example, not only would the outcome of a search be displayed
differently, the parameters of the search would also be unique.

”One of the attributes of indigenous knowledge is a responsibility of
the individual in the community to transmit, hold, nurture and release
knowledge, so one (would have) to establish a tiered system of
authorities that are controlled by communities,” according to
Pannekoek.

That could mean limiting control of indigenous knowledge to certain
individuals, he adds, much like the way copyright is used to protect
some information now.

He says the indigenous people he is working with are ready to share
their knowledge, if they can control how it is presented on the
Internet.

”There's also a legend around in North America that says, 'the time will
eventually come when the white man will need our knowledge. And he'll
need it to understand his relationship to the environment, to the
greater universe and to each other',” Pannekoek says.

”That still persists, and I've heard more than one (indigenous) person
say 'maybe this is a way that our knowledge will assist mankind as a
whole'.” (END/2003)