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29.2 (Summer 2005) Indigenous Peoples Bridging the Digital Divide

Turtle Lung Woman's Granddaughter

Turtle Lung Woman grew up hearing stories about Crazy Horse, Red Cloud, and Sitting Bull; she was 28 when the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota was established. She was a highly respected medicine woman who lived according to the “old ways” and transmitted her knowledge to her granddaughter. In Turtle Lung Woman’s Granddaughter, Delphine Red Shirt relates her mother Lone Woman’s memories of Red Shirt’s great grandmother Turtle Lung Woman and of growing up on the plains of northern Nebraska and southern South Dakota.

Warã Archive Tour Brings Cultures Together

The Warã Archive Project is teaching Brazilians about Xavante culture and fostering cultural exchange among its youth.

The archive, a project of Cultural Survival, has become one of the largest sources of Xavante information in the world. An exhibit of photographs and artifacts from the archive has toured several Brazilian museums, including Jataí and Goiânia. While the exhibits were on display, the museums hosted interactive demonstrations by Xavante children, who taught their peers from Brazilian cities how to play traditional Xavante games.

Video for Life

The clicking computer keys can be heard on the dusty steep slope of Sixth Avenue in Sololá, in the mountainous southwest of Guatemala, overlooking the scenic Lago Atiitlan. The sounds originate from a popular internet café operated by an indigenous women's association.

Nutzij ("my word" in Mayan Kaqchikel), also known as the Centro de Mujeres Comunicadoras Mayas, trains indigenous women in computer literacy and video production and offers community-level communication services.

The Money Problem

Funding is the primary obstacle for indigenous peoples doing film work.

Throughout the past two decades, indigenous communities in Latin America have engaged in video production. Indigneous videomakers often link with supportive projects and institutions in countries throughout the Americas and beyond to generate funding and support training, production, and wider distribution. In many cases, indigenous media production has been reactive.

The Many Meanings of Technology

Indigenous peoples are pragmatic. When an innovation makes life easier, or more comfortable, or provides other desired benefits, indigenous peoples are as likely as anyone else to incorporate it into their lives. And, when such changes are of their own choosing, they comfortably adapt their cultures to them. That was true in the 1600s when indigenous North Americans absorbed guns, horses, and copper kettles into their cultures, and in the latter part of the 20th century when the Saami replaced their dog sleds with snowmobiles.

Indigenous communities have never been islands.

Surviving the Chilean Economic Miracle

Chile’s treatment of indigenous peoples and forests is a warning that all is not well with the free market.

When pressed for evidence that free market globalization can work to create a better world, most advocates point to Chile as the Latin American model of neoliberalism and its economic prescriptions—privatization, free markets, export-led growth and deregulation.

Since the days of the military dictator Augusto Pinochet, Chile has been implementing these policies, applying the strategies of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank, and more recently the

Owning the Future: An Interview with Melissa George

As a traditional owner of her Aboriginal country, Melissa George has some suggestions for those in Australia concerned about the environment.

Melissa George is Wulgurukaba, her clan is Nwalgibain, and her language group is Wulguru. She works to secure the recognition of indigenous rights and interests in environmental and natural resource management—locally, nationally, and internationally.

Onondaga Nation Files Land Rights Action Covering Swath of New York State

The Onondaga Nation refuses to be ignored when environmental policy concerning their ancestral territory is being determined by outside actors.

On March 11, the Onondaga filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court of Northern New York against eight defendants, including Governor George Pataki, the City of Syracuse, and the State of New York.

The Onondaga want a judge to declare that they never relinquished aboriginal title to their ancestral lands. The Onondaga Nation asserts that the State of New York violated not only the U.S.

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