Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-lj6df Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-05T10:35:47.441Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Aboriginal Knowledge Traditions in Digital Environments

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 July 2015

Michael Christie
Michael Christie*
Affiliation:
School of Education, Charles Darwin University, Darwin, Northern Territory, 0810, Australia
Get access

Abstract

According to Manovich (2001), the database and the narrative are natural enemies, each competing for the same territory of human culture. Aboriginal knowledge traditions depend upon narrative through storytelling and other shared performances. The database objectifies and commodifies distillations of such performances and absorbs them into data structures according to a priori assumptions of metadata; that is the data which describes the data to aid a search. In a conventional library for example, the metadata which helps you find a book may be title, author or topic. It is misleading and dangerous to say that these databases contain knowledge, because we lose sight of the embedded, situated, collaborative and performative nature of knowledge. For the assemblages of digital artefacts we find in an archive or database to be useful in the intergenerational transmission of living knowledge traditions, we need to rethink knowledge as performance and data as artefacts of prior knowledge production episodes. Through the metaphors of environment and journey we can explore ways to refigure the archive as a digital environment available as a resource to support the work of active, creative and collaborative knowledge production.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Australian Journal of Indigenous Education , Volume 34 , 2005 , pp. 61 - 66
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2005

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Allendoerfer, C. (1962). The narrow mathematician. American Mathematics Monthly, 69, 461–469.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bowker, G. & Star, S. (1999). Sorting things out: Classification and its consequences. Cambridge, MA: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press.Google Scholar
Bowker, G.C. (2000). Biodiversity, datadiversity. Social Studies of Science, 30(5), 643–683.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bowker, G.C. (2005). Memory practices in the sciences. Boston: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press.Google Scholar
Christie, M. (2000). The application of Aboriginal philosophy to school learning. New Horizons in Education, 103, 3–19.Google Scholar
Christie, M. (2005). Words, ontologies and Aboriginal databases. Multimedia International Australia, 116, 52–63.Google Scholar
Cowlishaw, G. (1992). Studying Aborigines: Changing canons in anthropology and history. In Attwood, B. & Arnold, J. (Eds.), Power, knowledge and Aborigines (pp.20–31. Melbourne: LaTrobe University Press. Google Scholar
Derrida, J. (1996). Archive fever: A Freudian impression. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Graham, M. (1999). Some thoughts about the philosophical underpinnings of Aboriginal worldviews. Worldviews: Environment, Culture, Religion, 3(2), 105–118.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Manovich, L. (2001). The language of new media. Boston: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press.Google Scholar
Marika-Mununggiritj, R. (1990). Workshops as teaching learning environments. Ngoondjook, 4 43–54.Google Scholar
Marika-Mununggiritj, R., Maymuru, B., Mununggurr, M., Munyarryun, B., Ngurruwutthun, G., & Yunupingun, Y. (1990). The history of the Yirrkala Community School: Yolngu thinking about education in the Laynha and Yirrkala Area. NgoondjookJ, 32–52.Google Scholar
McConaghy, C. (2000). Rethinking Indigenous education: Culturalism, colonialism and the politics of knowing. Flaxton, QLD: Post Pressed.Google Scholar
Muecke, S. (1992). Lonely representations: Aboriginality and cultural studies In Attwood, B. & Arnold, J. (Eds), Rethinking Indigenous education: Culturalism, colonialism and the politics of knowing. (pp. 32–44). Melbourne: La Trobe University Press.Google Scholar
Scott, G. (2004). Audit of Indigenous knowledge databases in Northern Australia. Retrieved 1 December, 2005, from http://www.cdu.edu.au/centres/ik/pdf/IEK_Audit_Report24_06_04.pdf.Google Scholar
Srinivasan, R. & Huang, J. (2004). Fluid ontologies for digital museums. Retrieved 25 February, 2006, from http:/polaris.gseis.ucla.edu.srinivasan/research/Srinivasan HuangJDL2005.pdf.Google Scholar
Verran, H. (2002). A postcolonial moment in science studies: Alternative firing regimes of environmental scientists and Aboriginal landowners. Social Studies of Science, 32(5 –6), 729–762.Google Scholar