Supporting Indigenous Culture Through local Creation of Multimedia CD-ROM Curriculum

Abstract

The local availability of technology creates the opportunity for locally controlled production of multimedia materials. For Indigenous people this represents an opportunity to tell our own story, in our own words. In at least three main ways this project is groundbreaking: 1) local Indigenous production; 2) collaboration between Indigenous and White communities; 3) game-like interface. We are representing Ojibwe people as complex and contemporary. In the production process, we are collaborating with the local non-native community. The process and the product are meant to strengthen the relationship between the Native and White communities in Northeastern Minnesota. We hope the interface will encourage individual exploration as well as in class activities. This interface, like the oral tradition this project is embedded in, requires the learner to take the initiative, to ask the questions to be explored.