Software Tools for Indigenous Communities
On July 4th the Learning Research Group at CDU, the Anindilyakwa Land Council and the Northern Territory Library and Information Services hosted a half-day meeting of people working on developing software tools for Indigenous Communities. The workshop brought together researchers from this project, with programmers and knowledge workers from Batchelor Institute of Indigenous Tertiary Education, Darwin, Wadeye and Groote Eylandt.
Helen, Michael and Bryce spoke on “Multiple Software Products for Supporting Flows of Digital Objects into, out of, and around Indigenous Communities” and demonstrated the electronic proof of concept for TAMI. (To view this, click here)
To view the abstract of the talk, click here
To listen to an audio recording of the talk, download audio
Ongoing discussions between ourselves, the Northern Territory Government and other agencies involve developing research proposals which look specifically at the flow of digital information within and between Aboriginal communities, and the potentials of these flows for the enhancement of sustainable remote community livelihoods and the work of Knowledge Centres in keeping ancestral knowledge traditions alive in remote Aboriginal contexts.
For more information on Knowledge Centres in the NT, please visit:
http://www.dcdsca.nt.gov.au/dcdsca/intranet.nsf/pages/ntl_lkc
For information on the Groote Eylandt Knowledge Centre’s database project, please visit: http://memoryplace.sourceforge.net/ikhome.html
Software Tools: Abstract
Multiple Software Products for Supporting Flows of Digital Objects into, out of, and around Indigenous Communities
Michael Christie (Michael.Christie@cdu.edu.au) Helen Verran (hrv@unimelb.edu.au), Bryce Anbin-King (bryce.anbins-king@cdu.edu.au)
We introduced a diagram of flows of digital objects recognising three vaguely distinguishable 'levels' of working with digital objects that are salient to enriching and strengthening the everyday life and sustainability of Indigenous communities through the use of digital technologies: (1) On-country digital object organising which is where we see ourselves as working; (2) Local knowledge centres where we see the NTLIS working; (3) a remote, global level, where those concerned with repatriating digital objects work, and where some digital objects generated at the on-country and local levels are sought after. We are primarily interested in the ways in which digital objects and the softwares which enable them, become a part of ongoing ancestral work making Aboriginal knowledge practices new in each new generation. However these digital objects have an emerging role in more global knowledge economies which attend to quite different epistemologies. Therefore in thinking about the three levels, we are interested in directions of flows, the purposes behind the flows of digital objects, and in identifying which sorts of objects are flowing. We are additionally interested in the relation between these flows and the production of knowledge and power.
IKRMNA and INC (www.cdu.edu.au/centres/inc) projects focus on work with small groups, families and individuals on-country, using laptop computers, cameras, sound recorders and other digital technologies for both traditional family/clan/community knowledge work, and for the development of sustainable livelihoods in Aboriginal communities. We devise solutions to puzzles that arise around organising flows and collections of digital objects that Aboriginal users identify as promoting their many and varied interests within the local polity and beyond. Being researchers we also 'tell stories' about these puzzles and solutions analysing social and philosophical implications involved.
At the on-country level our Aboriginal co-researchers work with various proprietary software products, and after looking at such software, and at the uses of digital resources in Aboriginal knowledge work, we have designed a file management system, that we call TAMI for the moment, and which we see as particularly suited to on-country knowledge work by Aboriginal people (for the electronic proof of concept we presented, see http://www.cdu.edu.au/centres/ik/db_TAMI.html).
Using various digital technologies, Aboriginal people on-country generate images, and videos, texts and audio files and collect various types of digital objects from Knowledge Centres and other local repositories like language centres and schools, and from the internet. They use these in making displays involved in various sorts of knowledge and other work: education, and play, political interventions involving their compatriots, protecting their interests in negotiations with state institutions or commercial organisations (such as mining companies), and in engaging in 'country witness' which evidences the ecological services values of the lands they care for.
At the local level Knowledge Centres run by the NTLIS manage collections of publicly accessible digital objects. These collections originate in remote museums and private collections, and also at on-country sites intimately associated with the Knowledge Centre. The databases that store these objects are usually flexibly organised, in ways that variously 'translate' the knowledge categories salient to on-country indigenous users of digital technologies.
We can imagine the Knowledge Centre level as repositories of digital objects, as well as managing the flow of digital objects 'down' from remote locations: internet sites; repatriating museums, and private collections. But we also see possibilities for Knowledge Centres to manage the flow of digital objects 'upwards' from the on-country and local levels. For example repatriating institutions often seek copies of digital products generated by Aboriginal users, and digital products generated in 'Country witness' might be collated and on-sold to institutions (for global ecological purposes) like State of the Environment Australia and the UN Millennium Assessment.
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