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Information Technology and Indigenous Communities Dedicated to Tony Boxall (1957–2012) Information Technology and Indigenous Communities

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Information Technology and Indigenous Communities Dedicated to Tony Boxall (1957–2012) Information Technology and Indigenous Communities Information Technology and Indigenous Communities Dedicated to Tony Boxall (1957–2012) Information Technology and Indigenous Communities Edited by Lyndon Ormond-Parker, Aaron Corn, Cressida Fforde, Kazuko Obata and Sandy O’Sullivan Developed from papers presented at the 2009 AIATSIS National Indigenous Studies Conference and the 2010 symposium Information Technologies and Indigenous Communities First published in 2013 by AIATSIS Research Publications © Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies, 2013 © in individual chapters is held by the authors, 2013 All rights reserved. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act 1968 (the Act), no part of this article may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Act also allows a maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied or distributed digitally by any educational institution for its educational purposes, provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) under the Act. Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS) GPO Box 553, Canberra ACT 2601 Phone: (61 2) 6246 1111 Fax: (61 2) 6261 4285 Email: [email protected] Web: www.aiatsis.gov.au National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry: Title: Information technology and indigenous communities / Lyndon Ormond-Parker, Aaron Corn, Kazuko Obata and Sandy O’Sullivan (eds). ISBN: 9781922102164 (paperback) 9781922102171 (ebook) Subjects: Information technology—Australia. Indigenous peoples—Australia—Computer network resources. Indigenous peoples—Social conditions—21st century. Aboriginal Australians—Computer network resources. Aboriginal Australians—Social conditions—21st century. Torres Strait Islanders—Computer network resources. Torres Strait Islanders—Social conditions—21st century. Other Authors/Contributors: Ormond-Parker, Lyndon, editor. Corn, Aaron David Samuel, editor. Obata, Kazuko, 1967– editor. O’Sullivan, Sandy, editor. Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies. Native Title Research Unit, issuing body Dewey Number: 004.6780899915 Cover design by Inprint Pty Ltd Typeset in 9.5/13 pt Plantin by Midland Typesetters, Australia Foreword Marcia Langton When Lyndon Ormond-Parker, Aaron Corn and Cressida Fforde envisaged convening the first-ever Australian symposium on Indigenous use of information technology and communications, they imagined a small gathering of people like themselves — scholars and practitioners of Indigenous cultural heritage management and expression enabled by digital technology to communicate locally and globally. When they received responses to their invitations, the numbers were overwhelming and they came from across Australia, from people working in fields as diverse as art, media, teaching, language, mapping, archival research, dance and performance, ethnomusicology and museums (see AIATSIS 2009; also AIATSIS 2010a, 2010b). The contributors to this book, Information Technology and Indigenous Communities, are working at the cutting edge of their cultural, geographic and disciplinary fields. The sheer innovation, as well as the global reach of Australia’s Indigenous communities working with these new technologies, becomes clear in each of these chapters. That information technology and communication is now a major industry in Indigenous communities across Australia is evident and demands a comprehensive response from governments and service providers. In Paris in 2001 I said at the international symposium ‘Indigenous Identities, Cultural Diversity and Indigenous Peoples: Oral, written expressions and new technologies’: The Internet differs from other media in that individuals have a high degree of control over the material they can access. Carriage and content are separate, and those who manage the wires are not the same as those who decide what goes down them. This democratic aspect of the Internet encourages the development of networks of individuals who have particular interests. Of course, in community [knowledge centres], access to computers is low, reflecting the proportionally high costs for individuals on relatively low incomes. However, once a threshold has been reached, through schools and community libraries having computer access, Published by AIATSIS Research Publications v Information technology and Indigenous communities 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. vi Published by AIATSIS Research Publications Foreword The unique innovations in Indigenous Australia include the development of the Ara Irititja software and project, developed by Martin Hughes and John Dallwitz, initially as a project owned by the Anangu people of the Pitjantjatjara communities. This software has been adopted in many parts of Australia, and other software configurations have followed, as demonstrated in Chapter 7 by Michael Christie, Yiŋiya Guyula, Dhäŋgal Gurruwiwi and John Greatorex, digital educators and innovators working in the Yolŋu cultural bloc. These developments have been described by Lyndon Ormond-Parker in a number of publications, and in Chapter 15 in this volume, written with Robyn Sloggett, he explains that, despite the rapid uptake of information technology (IT) and creative application of these technologies, there are special vulnerabilities and challenges in this field. Ensuring the sustainability of IT hardware and infrastructure in the Indigenous world is essential to providing a range of educational, heritage protection and cultural services such as the Ara Irititja and similar software enables. As Anangu Sally Scales explained in her keynote address to the ITIC conference: Ara Irititja means our history or stories from a long time ago and in the mid nineties our senior leaders told Pitjantjatjara Council to start a project to retrieve images and materials that missionaries, school teachers, anthropologists, scientists, doctors and government had collected over time and were keeping in cultural institutions like AIATSIS, several museums and their own private albums. Our old people said that they wanted this
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