New Tools Help Preserve Old Ways (fwd)

[phil cash cash]

UBC Reports | Vol. 52 | No. 12 | Dec. 7, 2006

New Tools Help Preserve Old Ways
Remote, marginalized peoples use high-tech to record and share culture
and knowledge

By Bud Mortenson

[photo inset - Video recording and digital mapping tools are being used
by many indigenous communities around the world - photo by Jon Corbett]

In 1962, residents of remote Turner Island near the north end of
Vancouver Island were relocated, ostensibly to provide them with better
access to government services. The people of the Tlowitsis nation found
themselves in Nanaimo, Victoria, the Lower Mainland and as far afield
as Manitoba. Over time, relocation had a devastating impact on the
community’s knowledge of their traditional territory.

“They needed to do something to re-engage in the relationship between
themselves and the land,” says UBC Okanagan Geography Prof. Jon
Corbett. He received a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council
(SHRCC) grant to work with the Tlowitsis community, providing them with
cameras and training to video record elders as they revisited Turner
Island more than four decades after leaving.

“We wanted to look at how technologies like these can be used from a
cultural and participatory perspective -- how they can contribute to
nation-building,” he says. “It was amazing to see people in their 60s
and 70s going back to Turner Island for the first time since they left
in 1962. The elders were sharing wonderful stories with young people
who really had no connection with this place. It was helping them build
a sense of national identity.”

Community members developed a DVD of the nation’s culture and heritage
and presented it at the Tlowistis annual general meeting. “Many in the
audience had never been to Turner Island because it’s so hard to get
to,” he recalls. “They were overwhelmed.”

His research has taken him to many remote indigenous communities -- from
Indonesia, the Philippines, the Australian outback, and more recently on
Vancouver Island.

“One of the great joys of geography is the scope you have to explore
things,” says Corbett, who once spent two years living in a Borneo
longhouse as part of his research. “I engage in research with people in
the community, and they are co-researchers. It’s all done
collaboratively, the research process itself can become a form of
emancipation.”

Every community uses and responds to the technology differently. In one
Indonesian village, the women described where they drew their water and
how they carried it home. “In another community, illegal logging was
taking place on their land and using a camera they were able to record
video to use as evidence.

“We went back to one community 18 months later and found that they had
become so skilled with the video camera that other people came to them
and asked, ‘Do you think you could make us a video?’ In another
community we found them recording wedding ceremonies -- their video
camera had broken and they raised the $250 to fix it straight away. It
had become an economic resource for them.”

Gathering histories on tape and connecting maps with information about
people and culture is important, but it’s not the whole point, he
cautions.

“This is a lot more complex than just creating a digital repository of
information. The key is the process -- it’s about young people learning
new skills and learning from elders, and learning more about
themselves.”

A larger project through the SHRCC-funded Community-University Research
Alliance has Corbett working with several First Nations on Vancouver
Island to record their languages. An interactive DVD with clickable
maps allows viewers to choose from among Vancouver Island’s 14 long
houses. Selecting a site on the map presents a video of elders speaking
in their native language with English subtitles, and in English with the
native language subtitles.

His work has the attention of the European Union-funded and
French-administered Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural
Cooperation (CTA). Corbett is now on the steering committee for a major
international conference in Rome in September 2007 and is exploring
several near-term research projects with CTA.

“They’re looking at how social computing -- things like YouTube and
virtual communities -- can be used in a developing world context. I’m
hoping this is something we’ll build on with projects at UBC Okanagan
around the power of maps and the web, looking at how we manage
information and whether the medium of a map can be an effective way to
do that,” he says.

One of his next projects is to create a system using GoogleMaps
technology to help people organize their car-pooling requirements.
“It’s not necessarily the technology that will make car pooling work,
but it would make car pooling much easier to organize.”

A car-pooling helper could take your postal code and quickly look at all
the options, produce a map of the best routes and even reserve your spot
in a car. Simplifying the task could make community programs more
successful here at home and in developing countries.

“I really enjoy what I do,” Corbett says. “Ultimately, I’m fascinated
with how we can use technology to benefit marginalized people in
society -- and bring about positive change.”


Last reviewed 07-Dec-2006