Helping the past talk to the future
Indigenous communities around the world are using software designed by Queensland Smithsonian Fellow Dr Jane Hunter to bring artefacts to life to help empower their people.
The race is on to preserve the world’s Indigenous cultures and languages while elders are still alive to impart their knowledge. An innovative Indigenous Knowledge Management software program developed at the Distributed Systems Technology Cooperative Research Centre (DSTC) at the University of Queensland is helping in that race.
Distinguished Research Fellow at DSTC Dr Jane Hunter said the system provided a set of low cost, robust and simple-to-use software tools designed to enable the description, annotation and rights management of collections of mixed-media digital and physical objects belonging to Indigenous communities.
“The program allows Indigenous groups to more easily record and preserve significant aspects of their cultures including languages, ceremonies, dances, songs, stories, symbols, design, artwork, tools, costumes, historical photographs, film, videos and audio tapes,” she said.
Already representatives from Native American and Maori communities as well as Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island people are using the software.
Dar Bales, IT Director at the Winnebago Tribe of Nebraska’s Little Priest Tribal College, recently visited Brisbane for training in the system.
“All Native American tribes are in a race against time to preserve their culture, especially their language,” he said.
“As the elders die off, so does the culture.
“There are a thousand words behind every photo and every artefact and this system allows us to capture those words to help our future generations respect their past and learn from it.”
Because of the enormous diversity of Indigenous cultures, the system has been designed so it can easily be customised to support the unique cultural sensitivities of different communities.
Using a microphone and an MP3-type recording system, traditional owners can describe, contextualise and annotate resources in their own words and languages and from their own perspectives.
The Indigenous Knowledge Management project is an ongoing collaboration with the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of the American Indian in Washington resulting from Dr Hunter’s 2001 Queensland-Smithsonian Fellowship.
The Fellowship Program is a joint initiative of the Queensland Government and the Smithsonian Institution.
www.premiers.qld.gov.au/Business_and_industry/grants/smithsonian/
Last reviewed 19 January 2006