Digital Indigeneity: Digital Media\u27s Uses for Identity Formation, Education, and Activism by Indigenous People in the Northeastern United States

This dissertation seeks to examine the types of digital media being produced in the Northeastern United States, its content, the goals and motivations of its creators, the processes underlying Indigenous digital media creation, and the desired and projected audiences of Indigenous digital artists and content creators. Resulting findings from this study illuminate long histories of Indigenous use of digital media tied to digital media\u27s development in Indigenous lands. I argue that Native people have been producers and influencers in film and later, digital media, and have underwritten digital production due to its development on Indigenous lands. Through interviews and media analysis, I discuss how Indigenous content creators use digital media to express identity, educate others, make political gains, and insert Indigeneity into the future. Insights garnered through interviews and media analyses and comparisons with earlier forms of visual media, particularly Indigenous self-portrayals in film and on websites, all indicate that Indigenous people in the Northeast are largely resisting stereotypical self-representations. Indigenous framings of media landscapes and the sociohistorical processes informing them are emphasized, which furthers research on underrepresented presences, uses, and understandings of digital space

The acquisition of media as cultural practice: Remote Indigenous youth and new digital technologies

Globally, telecommunications, information technologies and traditional broadcast media have converged into a digital realm. In remote Indigenous Australia, with improved broadband and greater access to mobile telephony and digital technologies through media organisations, arts projects and libraries, young people are appropriating new digital technologies for their own socio-cultural processes and purposes. In the remote context, the affordances of digital technology are enabling individual and collective access and participation, the acquisition of expertise, and the enhanced capacity for computer-mediated communication and multimodal production outside institutional or instructional settings. The manner in which young people are taking up digital technology reveals much about the way in which their imaginative capacities are being moulded by them and how this technology is being used as a cultural tool. In this chapter, a 'practice' perspective is taken from anthropology to highlight how the digital media practices of Indigenous youth in some communities are drawn from the established practices of the older generation, who, from the 1970s, participated in remote Indigenous media organisations and used earlier pre-digital media forms as tools for language and culture maintenance

Connection to... Addressing Digital Inequities in Supporting the Well-Being of Young Indigenous Australians in the Wake of COVID-19

(1) Background: This article examines whether connection to digital technologies helps connect young Indigenous people in Australia to culture, community and country to support good mental health and well-being and protect against indirect and potentially long-term effects of COVID-19. (2) Method: We reviewed literature published between February and November 2020 and policy responses related to digital strategies. We searched PubMed, Google Scholar, government policy websites and key Indigenous literature sources, identifying 3460 articles. Of these, 30 articles and 26 policy documents were included and analysed to identify existing and expected mental health outcomes among Indigenous young people associated with COVID-19 and more broadly. (3) Results: There are inequities in affordable access to digital technologies. Only 63% of Indigenous people have access to internet at home. Digital technologies and social media contribute to strong cultural identity, enhance connections to community and country and improve mental health and social and emotional well-being outcomes. (4) Discussion: Access to digital technologies can facilitate healing and cultural continuity, self-determination and empowerment for young people to thrive, not just survive, in the future. (5) Conclusion: More targeted policies and funding is urgently needed to promote digital technologies to enhance Indigenous young people's access to mental health and well-being services, maintain cultural connections and evaluate the effectiveness of these initiatives using Indigenous well-being indicators

Getting in Touch: Language and Digital Inclusion in Australian Indigenous Communities

Indigenous people in remote Australia face many dilemmas in relation to the status and vitality of their languages and communication ecologies. Cultural leaders want to maintain endangered heritage languages, yet this concern is balanced against an awareness that English competency is a necessary life skill. Remote Indigenous groups must also negotiate the effect of globalized media on language and cultural practices. While public policy seeks to bridge the digital divide in remote Australia, little attention has been paid to the dominance of English in the new digital environment and the potential impact that increased English language activities may have on endangered Indigenous languages. In this paper we discuss the Getting in Touch project, a joint initiative between linguists, Australian Indigenous language speakers, and software developers. Using a participatory, collaborative process, the project aims to develop ideas for digital resources that privilege Indigenous languages and knowledge systems. We argue that taking Indigenous languages into account in app design may help enhance digital literacies in remote Indigenous communities and promote digital inclusion.National Foreign Language Resource Cente

The Pirate media economy and the emergence of Quichua language media spaces in Ecuador

This paper gives an account of the pirate media economy of Ecuador and its role in the emergence of indigenous Quichua-language media spaces, identifying the different parties involved in this economy, discussing their relationship to the parallel ‘‘legitimate’’ media economy, and considering the implications of this informal media market for Quichua linguistic and cultural reproduction. As digital recording and playback technology has become increasingly more affordable and widespread over recent years, black markets have grown up worldwide, based on cheap ‘‘illegal’’ reproduction of commercial media, today sold by informal entrepreneurs in rural markets, shops and street corners around Ecuador. Piggybacking on this pirate infrastructure, Quichua-speaking media producers and consumers have begun to circulate indigenous-language video at an unprecedented rate, helped by small-scale merchants who themselves profit by supplying market demands for positive images of indigenous people. In a context of a national media that has tended to silence indigenous voices rather than amplify them, informal media producers, consumers and vendors are developing relationships that open meaningful media spaces within the particular social, economic and linguistic contexts of Ecuador

Plugged in: Remote Australian Indigenous Youth and Digital Culture

For most Indigenous people in central and northern Australia the encounter with the western world has been relatively recent. Yet even in the most remote Indigenous communities, global influences pervade everyday life and new forms of media and communications are reshaping youth culture. This paper draws on ethnographic case study data from research with Indigenous youth who are participating in non-formal community-based media and music production and digital community archiving projects in remote regions. For these young adults the generational shift has been rapid, as many of their elders once lived a pre-contact nomadic existence. Now they are firmly part of global youth culture, taking on the role of mediating between old cultural knowledge and new digital technologies. Such generationally differentiated arenas of social practice are also changing the ways in which youth in remote Indigenous Australia are using oral and written language

Creating Religious Relationality in Digital Media Platform

Today's digital era has manifested a massive movement of people from an old society to a new society. This digital world has also changed the way people see and practise religion. Here, at least two questions are asked. First, consider how the use and accessibility of digital media affect religious knowledge and practise in order to raise religious awareness. The second question is how religion can be both a social practise and a discourse so that more people can participate in the discussion. This research aims to answer these two questions by adopting the indigenous religion paradigm which based on relationality. Indirectly, the main objective of this research is to figure out the interactions related to religious content in digital media as an up-to-date portrait of how religiosity is understood using the alternative of the religious paradigm as the embodiment of new topics in religious studies and the digital world: religious relationality paradigm. Through the three principles of the paradigm—responsibility, ethics, and reciprocity—digital media has helped to create distinctive religious awareness. [Era digital saat ini telah mewujudkan perpindahan masyarakat secara masif dari masyarakat lama ke masyarakat baru. Dunia digital ini juga telah mengubah perspektif dan praktik seseorang dalam kehidupan beragama. Karenannya, dalam artikel ini, setidaknya terdapat dua pertanyaan yang diajukan. Pertama, bagaimana penggunaan dan aksesibilitas media digital memengaruhi pengetahuan dan praktik keagamaan untuk meningkatkan kesadaran beragama. Pertanyaan kedua adalah bagaimana agama dapat menjadi praktik sosial sekaligus wacana sehingga lebih banyak orang dapat berpartisipasi dalam diskusi keagamaan. Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk menjawab kedua pertanyaan tersebut dengan mengadopsi paradigma agama lokal yang berbasis relasionalitas. Secara tidak langsung tujuan utama dari penelitian ini adalah untuk mengetahui interaksi terkait konten keagamaan dalam media digital sebagai potret terkini bagaimana religiusitas dipahami dengan menggunakan alternatif paradigma keagamaan sebagai pengejawantahan topik baru dalam kajian agama dan dunia digital: paradigma relasionalitas agama. Melalui tiga prinsip paradigma—tanggung jawab, etika, dan timbal balik—media digital telah membantu menciptakan kesadaran beragama yang khas.

The Journey of a Digital Story: A Healing Performance of Mino-Bimaadiziwin: The Good Life

Indigenous peoples have always shared collective truths and knowledge through oral storytelling. Just as we were born, stories are born too, through our sacred “living breath.” We live in a time where stories travel far, beyond our imaginable dreams, and can have an influence on anyone who hears them. In the present-day, we have an opportunity to combine personal stories with digital technology in order to share one of our greatest gifts with each other--our experience and wisdom. For eight years, Brenda K. Manuelito and I have been traveling across Indian Country helping our Indigenous relatives create nDigiStories for Native survivance, healing, hope, and liberation. Together with our nDigiStorytellers, we are Healing Our Communities One Story at a Time®. This dissertation is a phenomenological study about the “story-sharing” of nDigiStories. It tells the story about the journey of digital stories created from an Indigenized digital storytelling process called nDigiStorytelling with an Ojibwa (Anishinaabe) community in Michigan. I explored a bricolage of methodologies from an “Indigenist” perspective, community-based participatory research, performance ethnography, and relational autoethnography. This study shows how combining an Indigenous approach to technology and media-making with deeply-held beliefs and ceremony can revitalize Indigenous people and strengthen community relationships. The electronic version of this Dissertation is available in open access at AURA, http://aura.antioch.edu/etds/ and OhioLink ETD Center, http://www.ohiolink.edu/etd. This dissertation is accompanied by a PDF document that contains links to 45 media files on the nDigiStorySharing YouTube Channel that are referenced in this documen

Youth media as cultural practice: Remote Indigenous youth speaking out loud

The rapid development of new information and communications technologies, an increase in affordable, small mobile technologies and the penetration of the internet and mobile telephony over the past decade account for an explosion in new modes and channels for communication and multimedia production. Internationally, such developments have led to substantial ethnographic inquiry into youth and the emergence of new social practices surrounding new media. Some researchers posit that digital technologies are enabling new kinds of agency and engagement in learning and others suggest that new thinking about language and literacy has been catalysed. In Australia, accounts of remote Indigenous youth culture in public or policy discourse tend not to portray their agentive participation in new forms of learning, multimodal practice and production or online communication. Additionally, relatively little ethnographic information is available on how Indigenous youth are shaping the creative, cultural and communicative uses of new media, and how and why these practices are taking hold in remote contexts. This paper looks at the uptake of new media technologies in remote Indigenous contexts and the implications for youth learning and cultural practice by tracing the way in which social relations and communication styles have altered across the generations. Data gathered through ethnographic research indicate that where young people have access to new media technologies, expertise is acquired with ease, often leading to the rapid development of new communication practices and new forms of cultural production and public participation. Through participating in collaborative research young people are also reflecting on their changing cultural practice and giving voice to these reflections

Indigenous language sustainability during COVID-19

This paper gives insights into the ways an Indigenous group has continued to teach and learn their language(s) during the COVID-19 pandemic. As an insider researcher from this community, I draw upon observations and dialogue among my people globally, as part of an inquiry into our language sustainability. Although social distancing and border closures hindered communal gatherings, this cohort continued to teach and learn their language(s). Many used digital forums such as social media, Zoom and Facebook to facilitate their language transmission. This article shares how this group has been able to maintain and sustain their language(s) in a time of global crisis, may their story support the Indigenous language fight