GIS and the A'i of Colombia

This paper presents the work of the WCS with the A'i Indigenous people in Colombia as part of a USAID-funded project between 2009 and 2011. The project had several dimensions that make it unusual. Unlike conventional “counter-mapping” attempts to represent Indigenous land claims as a counter to government representations, the project sought to create maps and analyses that represent prior land assignments to the A'i by the Colombian government itself. These land assignments were not supported by geo-referenced maps and, in the case of Indigenous “reserves” the original boundary markers were only known to the oldest of the A'i people. Analysis of forest cover in lands controlled by the A'i reveal that they are highly protective of forests; indeed their collective identity is strongly related to forest cover. The process described also illustrates the difficult position many Indigenous Amazonians face in an era of drug wars, uncontrolled colonization, and in the case of Colombia, the lack of follow-up to the political and social measures envisioned in the 1991 Constitution.

Language Policy Execution

South Africa is a multilingual country with 11 official languages. The Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, 1996, provides that every learner may use the official language of his or her choice in any public institution of the country. The Language Policy for Higher Education (Ministry of Education, 2002) requires all South African universities to develop and execute language policies. This chapter focuses on language policy execution by South African universities. The emphasis is on the execution of language policy in relation to the promotion and development of the nine official indigenous languages, namely isiNdebele, isiXhosa, isiZulu, Sepedi, Sesotho, Setswana, siSwati, Tshivenda and Xitsonga.

Challenges and Perspectives of Language Education Technology in Brazil

Our chapter aims to explore the challenges, advances, and perspectives of language-education technology in Brazil. Language-education is an extremely important topic for Brazil because many indigenous languages are nearing extinction due to the legacies of colonization and the fact that Portuguese, the national language of Brazil, is the only official language and thus the single most utilitarian method of communication. This issue is further complicated by Brazil's increasingly globalized economy, which, for many individuals, demands the acquisition of a foreign language in order to compete. The English language has been introduced into the curriculum of the vast majority Brazilian public schools over the course of the past few decades. Additionally, several private, for-profit English learning enterprises now have widespread services throughout the country. But rates of English (and even Portuguese) fluency still vary greatly among the population. This raises a number of critical questions that will be discussed in this work. Why is learning a new language such a challenge? Which methodologies can be utilized to increase language acquisition and build fluency? What are the new technologies that are used in teaching a second language in Brazilian schools, and how is their impact being measured? Are Brazilian teachers prepared to integrate new technologies and innovative methods of teaching and learning? Our methodology involves bibliographical research including a literature review, a case-study, and participatory research through semi-structured interviews. Our results have shown that several technologies are being implemented in Brazil, and that as a theoretical framework, educational communication has been recognized as a powerful tool to incorporate such technologies in language education. Overall, the use of learning technologies is common and growing among students, while it is increasing at a more institutional pace among teachers.

A Pedagogical Corpus to Support a Language Teaching Curriculum to Revitalize an Endangered Language

An obstacle to revitalizing an endangered language is the shortage of authentic speech samples for learners to use as models. Digital recordings of community elders performing traditional chores and special rituals or narrating legends and myths are often made to overcome this obstacle. These recordings, however, contain speech that lacks the crucial features of conversational speech that make them appropriate instructional models. Effective model utterances should be short, have a stand-alone format, and have similar structures to utterances used in everyday transactions, which must be labeled and tagged and organized into a searchable corpus. To date, however, no such corpus exists for indigenous languages, and compiling one is an enormous task. To provide native speech models for adult Labrador Inuit learning their endangered language, Inuttitut, the authors explored the feasibility of building a specialized corpus potentially useful for aiding classroom instruction, using an internationally recognized open-source search and retrieval system called Topic Maps to create its database.

The Role of Indigenous Knowledge System in African Development

This paper examines the relevance of Indigenous Knowledge System (IKS) for African development, using qualitative data. The findings revealed that wholesale adoption of foreign ideas has rendered Africans subservient in the world, despite their rich cultural heritage. This situation promotes substitution of IKS, the foundation of African progress, thereby creating more problems for Africans. Yet, IKS still provides succour for the majority of Africans. The emerging culture of individuality and nuclear family is not realistic in Africa where social structures largely reflect kinship solidarity and communalism sustained by social capital, which has become widely recognised. It is therefore suggested that Africans should revise their local circumstances to prevent further plunder of Africa. Also, there is urgent need for adaptation of African IKS to modern reality because the conditions that sustained it have been modified. Rather than focus on wholesale adoption of western remedies, Africans need to explore their IKS to promote common understanding in the context of contemporary globalisation. Africans at home and those in the Diaspora should utilise their abundant natural resources and human capital to repair the dented image of Africa. An upgraded version of African IKS can drive and sustain this mission.

Conceptualizing the Knowledge of Traditional and Indigenous Communities Using Informetrics Approaches

Interest in indigenous knowledge is growing because of its potential to promote and sustain development activities. Inspite of the recognition of the significance of indigenous knowledge there is limited agreement on its definition and conceptualization. There are competing ways of defining it and various ways of labeling it. In view of the varying appropriation of meanings to the concept of the knowledge of traditional and indigenous communities, this chapter starts by dealing with definitions attached to the knowledge of traditional and indigenous communities before turning to establishing what might be the suitable label for that knowledge using informetrics techniques. An investigation of 17 labels used to refer to the knowledge of traditional and indigenous communities that were conveniently chosen from the extant literature revealed that indigenous knowledge is the label that is gaining more currency than any other in the arts, humanities, and social sciences subject categories.

Use of Information and Communication Technologies Tools to Capture, Store, and Disseminate Indigenous Knowledge

This chapter explores the role played by Information and Communication Technology tools in the management of indigenous Knowledge in general. Of importance to note, therefore, is the fact that the emergence of Information and Communication Technology tools has opened new avenues in Indigenous Knowledge Management (IKM) which have the potential of playing important roles in the society by making the valuable knowledge available to everyone who recognizes and uses it. Given the nature of indigenous knowledge which is commonly exchanged through personal communication and demonstration exemplified as deriving from the master to the apprentice, from the parents to the children, from the one neighbour to the other and so on. Information and Communication Technology tools appear to be providing as a solution in forestalling the possible extinction of IK.

Mitigating Ethno-Cultural Differences

Community engagement is necessary for the success and sustainability of Information and Communication Technologies for Development (ICT4D) projects. To ensure active participation of community, researchers need to understand and adhere to the local cultural norms and adapt in the lifestyle of people. These cultural norms are mainly unwritten and implicit in nature. Hence the researchers spend maximum time of their field visits in observing and developing understanding of the community's life. In our long-term partnership with the indigenous Penan community of Long Lamai in Malaysian Borneo, we co-developed written guidelines for researchers and visitors. The researchers demonstrated their interest in aligning research process to the community's cultural values, however norm internalisation and development of associated behaviour is still a challenging. The written guidelines are yet only one of the attempts to the practices of community researchers' engagement and we are refining our methodology to enhance the researchers' learning process.

Embedding Indigenous Knowledge in Library and Information Science Education in Anglophone Eastern and Southern Africa

There is need to re-examine the inclusion or exclusion of indigenous knowledge (IK) in the university curriculum in sub Saharan Africa (SSA). Western scientific knowledge on which the university curriculum in SSA is mainly based has proved to be inadequate in addressing developmental challenges. Using the curriculum of library and information science (LIS) departments in Anglophone east and southern Africa (AESA) as a case study, this chapter focuses on factors that influence the inclusion of IK in higher education in SSA. IK is recognised for its potential contribution to development by organisations such as the World Bank and African Union. Its inclusive ethos and accommodation of multiple realities also accounts for its popularity. In spite of that, IK has not established a stronghold in LIS curriculum in AESA. This study investigates the factors that influence its integration into the curriculum and makes recommendations based on the findings.

Culturally Responsive Relationships Focused Pedagogies

This chapter examines the importance of culturally responsive relationships-focused pedagogical approaches in engaging Aboriginal students in their learning and the significance of this to improving their educational outcomes. Significantly, the themes and issues raised in this chapter reflect much of the international literature on Indigenous, minority and marginalised students. The following enablers are necessary when implementing culturally responsive relationships focused pedagogies: Engaging with Aboriginal families and community members; Harnessing Aboriginal students' backgrounds, lived experiences and interests as classroom resources; Implementing innovative place-based curriculum approaches, and Exploring holistic teacher professional learning opportunities. The combination of these factors creates quality learning environments as places of belonging and socio-cultural support underpinned by mobilising Aboriginal family and community social and cultural capital in the educational process. Once schools and teachers realise the potential of this approach, conditions are created to improve the academic, social and cultural outcomes of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students.