Indigenous Relationality is the Heartbeat of Indigenous Existence during COVID-19

In response to the global COVID-19 pandemic, this essay offers Indigenous knowledge systems that highlight strategies for survival. Indigenous peoples understand that human lives are interdependent with and contingent on living in ethical relations with other people, with our ancestors, with plants and animals, and with the natural world overall. Indigenous systems of relationality are the heartbeat of Indigenous existence. They help to illuminate approaches to physical, intellectual, emotional, and spiritual health. Using the Medicine Wheel framework as an analytical tool, we indicate how Indigenous people can survive and thrive during these times. To create a just democracy and ensure our ecological and sociological future, we must consider the multidimensional needs of all beings. While relational responsibilities are at the heart of many Indigenous worldviews, they extend to all of us. Responsible relations with the natural world sustain human livelihood everywhere, connecting us all in a vast web of life

Designing to Restory the Past: Storytelling for Empowerment through a Digital Archive

Storytelling is a frequently used approach to design. Stories and storytelling also have a role in mediating information and contributing to people\u27s understanding of the world around them. Previous research suggests that storytelling can be empowering to marginalized and diverse communities, such as Indigenous peoples, by offering a platform to voice their (hi)stories. In this paper, we present a research through design project in which we explore the design of the living archive. This is a web-based digital archive that encourages a user-based approach to restorying the past by focusing on storytelling for empowerment and involving members of Indigenous People, the Sami. We demonstrate how a digital archive can contribute to (re)storying the past in a manner that preserves Indigenous ways of knowing and ethical archiving of social memory. Through this archive, we provide the digital tools for the communities to take on the role to tell their truth and, in doing so, become central in the design and communication of their own stories. In short, design for storytelling to empower those who need a voice

Mobile apps for the illiterate: Knowledge production and self-learning among the Yoruba peoples in the Republic of Benin

Mobile phones and web digital tools contribute to the personal development of the individual and his or her capacity to develop initiatives e. g. for economic growth. Yet, many people cannotbenefit from new technologies as digital services in sub-Saharan Africa are mostly configured in foreign languages. Illiteracy and language barriers remain a major challenge for digitalization inAfrica. However, the case of Yoruba illiterates in the central Republic of Benin shows that indigenous people are innovative and create new procedural knowledge. They have developed alternative strategies to benefit from information and communications technology (ICT). Based on approximately 50 interviews with traders, peasants, art craft (wo)men, and members of convents, my ethnographic research explores how the Yoruba people of Benin utilize mobile phones in their mother tongue.Mobile phones and web digital tools contribute to the personal development of the individual and his or her capacity to develop initiatives e. g. for economic growth. Yet, many people cannotbenefit from new technologies as digital services in sub-Saharan Africa are mostly configured in foreign languages. Illiteracy and language barriers remain a major challenge for digitalization inAfrica. However, the case of Yoruba illiterates in the central Republic of Benin shows that indigenous people are innovative and create new procedural knowledge. They have developed alternative strategies to benefit from information and communications technology (ICT). Based on approximately 50 interviews with traders, peasants, art craft (wo)men, and members of convents, my ethnographic research explores how the Yoruba people of Benin utilize mobile phones in their mother tongue

Olhares, pensamentos e ações de jovens indígenas Guarani e Kaiowá da Reserva Indígena de Dourados, Estado de Mato Grosso do Sul, Brasil

O presente texto propõe uma reflexão sobre o processo de participação política dos jovens indígenas Guarani e Kaiowá da Reserva Indígena de Dourados, Estado de Mato Grosso do Sul, Brasil. Um dos objetivos é descrever a partir da análise das iniciativas de ações deste “novo sujeito político”, autodenominado de “adolescentes e jovens indígenas”, sobre o processo de articulação e mobilização, diante de uma situação de extrema violência a que foram submetidos. Estes sujeitos estão dialogando, sobretudo, com o espaço virtual, ilustrado pelas redes sociais na rede mundial de computadores. Utilizam estas novas tecnologias em favor da luta de seu povo na busca pela efetivação de seus direitos fundamentais. Desta forma, as ações destes jovens e adolescentes indígenas, destacam-se em movimentos de resistência e passam a estabelecer seu protagonismo. // The present text proposes a reflection on the process of political participation of young indigenous Guarani Kaiowá from the Indigenous Reserve of Dourados, Mato Grosso do Sul, Brazil. One of the objectives is to describe, reflect from the analysis of actionsand initiatives of this “new political subject” calling itself the “indigenous adolescents and young people,” on the process of coordination and mobilization, in a situation of extreme violence they have undergone. These subjects are in dialogue, especially with the virtual space, illustrated by social networks on the World Wide Web. They use mainly these new technologies in favor of the fight of their people in the quest for fulfillment of their fundamental rights. Thus, the actions of these young people and indigenous adolescents stand in resistance movements and begin to establish their role

A Case-based Reasoning Approach to Validate Grammatical Gender and Number Agreement in Spanish language

Across Latin America 420 indigenous languages are spoken. Spanish is considered a second language in indigenous communities and is progressively introduced in education. However, most of the tools to support teaching processes of a second language have been developed for the most common languages such as English, French, German, Italian, etc. As a result, only a small amount of learning objects and authoring tools have been developed for indigenous people considering the specific needs of their population. This paper introduces Multilingual–Tiny as a web authoring tool to support the virtual experience of indigenous students and teachers when they are creating learning objects in indigenous languages or in Spanish language, in particular, when they have to deal with the grammatical structures of Spanish. Multilingual–Tiny has a module based on the Case-based Reasoning technique to provide recommendations in real time when teachers and students write texts in Spanish. An experiment was performed in order to compare some local similarity functions to retrieve cases from the case library taking into account the grammatical structures. As a result we found the similarity function with the best performance

Shouldering the Burden of Renewable Energy: Lithium Mining in Chile’s Indigenous Communities

Technology has improved society, from bridging digital divides to increasing efficiency. To power technology, energy sources were traditionally derived from diminishing and exhaustible resources like fossil fuels. The renewable energy revolution emerged to balance the global demand for technology with its impact on natural resources. Lithium is a critical, non-renewable mineral that clean technology relies on. Essentially, lithium makes renewable energy possible. As the pillar for a fossil fuel-free yet technology-driven society, it is imperative to examine the sustainability and impacts of lithium mining. This Note discusses the legal and socio-political frameworks shaping foreign direct investments in Chile’s lithium mining sector. Out of these frameworks arose a complex web of mining and investment doctrine affecting the rights of Chile’s indigenous people. As a global supplier of lithium, Chile’s indigenous communities—in the heart of the Atacama Desert—are shouldering the burden of renewable energy. This Note explores incorporating environmental, social, and governance (“ESG”) policies into Chile’s foreign direct investment regime and how ESG-driven policies can mitigate the social and environmental repercussions of lithium mining on Chile’s indigenous communities

Indigenous Health – Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States - Laying Claim to a Future that Embraces Health for Us All.

Improving the health of all peoples has been a call across the globe for many decades and unfortunately remains relevant today, particularly given the large disparities in health status of peoples found around the world. Rather than differences in health, or health inequalities, we use a different term, health inequities. This is so as mere differences in health (or inequalities ) can be common in societies and do not necessarily reflect unfair social policies or practices. For example, natural ageing implies older people are more prone to illness. Yet, when differences are systematic, socially produced and unfair, these are considered health inequities. Certainly making judgments on what is systematic, socially produced and unfair, reflects value judgments and merit open debate. We are making explicit in this paper what our judgments are, and the basis for these judgment