Aboriginal Internet

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Aboriginal Internet

• Jana Uyeda Nhi Tran
• August 17th, 2006
• Comamunication 300

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• If you do not open your eyes, there is no sky.
  If you do not listen, there is no ancestor. If
  you do not walk, there is no earth. If you do
  not speak, there is no world.
• Navajo proverb

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Aborigines existing in a place from the
beginning or from earliest days.

• Indigenous Peoples
• First Peoples
• Native Peoples
• Autochthonous
• Fourth World
• First Nations

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Economic Profile of Native Americans
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Telephone
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Americanization

• UNESCO recognizes 6000 spoken languages across
  the world.
• America is the dominant culture and English is
  the dominant language.

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Web Pages by Languages
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Language Distribution of 2.3 Billion Web Pages in
July 2003. (all-the-web.com)

• English 1,690,901,291 57.37
• German 256,997,6408. 8.72
• French 120,860,5234. 4.10
• Russian 98,422,5293. 3.34
• Japanese 95,372,8223. 3.24
• Chinese 93,228,7833. 3.16
• Spanish 89,429,894 3.03
• Italian 78,104,597 2.65
• and many more

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Language Usability

• Language must be spoken, heard and read to
  maintain itself, and the greatest conduit for
  language is the media.
• Only 16 of the worlds population is connected.

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• With almost 6,000 languages in the world, half of
  those are spoken by people fewer than 10,000.
• Prediction 90 of current languages will
  disappear if nothing is done to guarantee their
  continued existence.
• Akira Yamamoto, chair of the UNESCO Ad Hoc
  Expert Group

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Rosetta Stone

• A software company dedicated to teaching 30
  different languages across 150 countries
• Released its first endangered language software
  in mid-2006.

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Microsofts 2004 Local Language Program (LLP)

• Fosters the development and proliferation of
  regional language groups
• to ensure language is not a barrier to technology
  
• to help bridge the language and digital divide
  between developed and emerging economies
• to use technology to help preserve language and
  culture.

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Information Technology

• Publish historical, tourist and commercial
  information, online databases of native culture.
• Online domains to receive feedback or distribute
  free language software.
• Sharing resources, cultural preservation.
• The internet could connect physically dispersed
  individuals with a common heritage. (D. Cunliffe
  and R. Harries)

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The Bill Melinda Gates Foundation

• Several programs to introduce communications
  technologies both in America and internationally.
• NAATP worked with these representatives to design
  a program specific to their needs, including two
  Navajo language programs for the Navajo Nations.

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Rankin Inlet in the Canadian Arctic

• 80 Inuit
• Unemployment rate almost 40
• Suicide rate three times the Canadian national
  average.

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Community Access Centre

• Installed 20 Macintosh computers
• More than 25 of the Rankin Inlet Inuit have
  email accounts
• Created the first website of any school in the
  Canadian Arctic with plans to open hundreds of
  technology centers.

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Cape Town, South Africa

• 80 of its citizens were without access to
  computers and still fewer had the luxury of
  internet access.
• Smart Cape Project 36 computers in 6 libraries
  in disadvantaged neighborhoods.
• Three official languages of the Western Cape
  Province English, Afrikaans and Xhosa.

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Implications

• Cultural values threatened
• Intellectual property rights and cultural
  property ownership
• Accuracy and reliability
• http//209.233.186.60/videotree.html
• Commercialization of cultural information.

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Cunliffe and Herring Report

• Thus it is no longer sufficient to think in terms
  of design for a community or design with a
  community rather design by the community should
  be the model.
• To protect cultural ideologies and practices,
  laws must be established to reflect indigenous
  peoples traditional concepts and value systems.

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• Information technology is not a magic formula
  that is going to solve all our problems. But it
  is a powerful force that can and must be
  harnessed to our global mission of peace and
  development.
• The United Nations Secretary General, Kofi
  Annan

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Click Click!

• http//students.washington.edu/kneetran/nhiandjana
  swonderfulwebsiteforcommunication300.shtml

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The End!