Digital archiving tool to give voice to indigenous peoples (fwd link)

[Phillip E Cash Cash]

Digital archiving tool to give voice to indigenous peoples

Tuesday, Apr. 20, 2010
By Gail Siegel, College of Liberal Arts
USA

PULLMAN - Kimberly Christen, assistant professor of comparative ethnic
studies, has been working to give indigenous communities access to cultural
heritage materials and a voice in how they are handled. A recent grant will
further those efforts.

Christen has been awarded a Digital Humanities Start-Up Grant by the
National Endowment for the Humanities to create a prototype open-source
software package to reconnect indigenous communities with cultural heritage
materials housed in museums, archives and libraries.

The $49,606 grant supports the development of “Mukurtu: An Indigenous
Archive and Publishing Tool,” a digital, standards-based, adaptable
archiving tool that emphasizes cultural protocols and provides a means for
indigenous knowledge to inform public and private collections.

>From the annotation of institutional metadata to the reconstruction and
revitalization of lost or endangered languages, the software will give
indigenous communities the opportunity to curate their own cultural heritage
materials without a hierarchy of expertise.

Access full article below:
http://wsutoday.wsu.edu/pages/publications.asp?Action=Detail&PublicationID=19698&TypeID=1
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