Weblog of Philipp Budka
from The Huffington Post:
The White House designated two new national monuments on Wednesday, one in Utah and the other in Nevada, that will protect important Native American cultural sites and continue the president’s legacy of environmental stewardship far beyond the end of his term. …
“Our connection with this land is deeply tied to our identities, traditional knowledge, histories, and cultures, …”
Again, I have the pleasure to teach the Seminar “Indigenous Media” for the MA Program in Visual and Media Anthropology at the Free University Berlin. Find below a brief description of the course.
In the seminar “Indigenous Media” students get an introduction to indigenous media technologies. In ten seminar units selected questions, issues, and problems are discussed: How do indigenous people produce, distribute, and utilize audiovisual media? How has ethnographic and anthropological film making changed? What role do politics, power, globalization, and (post-)colonialism play in the production and use of indigenous media? How do indigenous people utilize media to construct and negotiate their individual and collective identities? How are indigenous cultures and languages represented through media? And how do indigenous people appropriate and (co-)develop digital technologies in times of increasing globalization?
We start with the contextualization of indigenous media within the framework of an anthropology of media. In the second unit students are introduced to selected debates about the meaning and relevance of (mass) media for indigenous people and their culture. We then discuss ethnographic film making and visual anthropology in the context of indigenous people’s changing role from “objects” for ethnographic films to partners in media projects. The fourth unit deals with the phenomena of (post-)colonialism and decolonization and their implications for indigenous media. This discussion leads us to the self-controlled production of indigenous media and its relevance for issues such as (self-)representation, appropriation, control, and empowerment. Globalization, modernity, and related questions of collective indigenous identity construction – “indigeneity” – are the topics of the next unit. The following three sessions are closely connected and discuss aspects of identity, community, networking, ownership, activism, empowerment, aesthetics, poetics, and popular culture in relation to indigenous media. In the final unit students learn about the importance of digital technologies and infrastructures for indigenous people, their activist projects, and networking initiatives.
Through several case studies students are introduced to the similarities and differences of indigenous media projects throughout the world. These case studies take us to different regions, countries, and continents: from Nunavut, Canada, and the US to the Caribbean, Guatemala, Mexico, and Brazil, to Nigeria, Myanmar, Australia and Finland. The seminar’s assignments include the reading of selected articles, the watching of films and videos, and the discussion of these in small essays. The online conference tool Adobe Connect is used to present and discuss aspects of texts, films, and essays.
Budka, P. 2015. Open Access / Science & Kultur- und Sozialanthropologie. Präsentation am Institut für Kultur- und Sozialanthropologie, 14.04.2015.
von Philipp Budka in “Die Presse”, Print-Ausgabe, 30.01.2011
Online: die Presse.com
„Social Media“ wie Facebook gelten als neuer Zunder der Revolution. Interaktive und vernetzte Medien sind aber schon lang wichtige Werkzeuge sozialpolitischer Bewegungen.
Die Bedeutung von neuen Informations- und Kommunikationstechnologien für die sozialpolitischen Umbrüche in Tunesien sowie die Proteste in Ägypten wurden und werden sowohl in der österreichischen als auch in der internationalen Medienlandschaft intensiv diskutiert. Kaum ein Beitrag, der „sozialen“ Medien wie Facebook oder Twitter nicht wesentlichen Anteil an der „Revolution“ in Tunesien oder den Protesten in Ägypten einräumt.
Bei allem Respekt vor Journalistinnen und Journalisten, die mittels Handy und Twitter direkt aus Krisenregionen und an staatlich kontrollierten Massenmedien vorbei berichten, vor einem Künstler, der sich musikalisch via YouTube gegen ein autokratisches System stellt, und vor einem Piloten, der sich weigert, Mitglieder des unterdrückenden Regimes außer Landes zu fliegen und dafür zu Recht auf Facebook gefeiert wird: Nicht vergessen sollten wir etwa bei der tunesischen „Revolution“, dass dieser politische Umbruch auf der Straße herbeigeführt und entschieden wurde.
Digitale, interaktive und vernetzte Alternativmedien waren schon lange vor den sogenannten „Social Media“ wichtige Werkzeuge von sozialpolitischen Bewegungen. Prominentes Beispiel ist der Aufstand der Zapatistas in Mexiko, der 1994 mittels Newsgroups, Mailing-Listen und Webseiten eine internationale Gegenöffentlichkeit erzeugte. Diese wiederum war bemüht, Druck auf die mexikanische Regierung auszuüben, um der indigenen Bevölkerung endlich Menschen- und Landrechte zuzugestehen. Rückblickend war es aber vor allem die geschlossen auftretende mexikanische Zivilbevölkerung, die durch landesweite Märsche, Demonstrationen und Petitionen maßgeblich zur Unterstützung der unterdrückten Indigenen Mexikos beitrug.
Neue soziale Online-Medien wurden dann beispielsweise 2009 im Zug der Wahlen im Iran verwendet, um auf staatliche Unterdrückung und gewalttätige Übergriffe auf Regierungskritiker international aufmerksam zu machen. Aber auch hier war es der sozialpolitische Druck der Straße, der dem iranischen Regime ernsthafte Probleme bereitete. Internettechnologien wie Twitter, YouTube oder Facebook konnten solange als alternative Kommunikations- und Informationsmittel eingesetzt werden, bis der Staat, vor allem dank europäischer Softwaresysteme, in der Lage war, auch diese Kommunikation zu kontrollieren, zu zensieren und zu unterdrücken. Ähnliches spielt sich nun auch in Ägypten ab.
Digitale Medientechnologien sind wunderbar geeignet, um Bilder, Texte und Augenzeugenberichte eines politischen Umbruchs schnell an eine online vernetzte „Weltöffentlichkeit“ zu vermitteln. Wie die aktuellen Beispiele Tunesien und Ägypten zeigen, finden vor allem mobile Kommunikationstechnologien in zunehmendem Maß für die lokale Protestorganisation Verwendung.
Dennoch – abseits des Hype, auf dem Boden der Tatsachen, sollten zwei Punkte besonders betont werden: Erstens hat nicht die gesamte Weltbevölkerung gleichermaßen Zugang zu digitalen Technologien (einerseits aus finanziell-wirtschaftlichen und infrastrukturellen Gründen, andererseits, weil politische Regimes versuchen, diesen Zugang aktiv zu kontrollieren). Und zweitens sind es auch im Zeitalter von Facebook & Co. die Menschen auf den Straßen, die die entscheidenden Handlungen setzen, um „Revolutionen“ herbeizuführen oder eben nicht.
Philipp Budka
Initiative Teilnehmende Medienbeobachtung
Institut für Kultur- und Sozialanthropologie der Universität Wien
From ABC News:
“It took three years to do it, but finally today President Obama announced that the United States will support the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, a document instituted in 2007 and signed by 143 nations but not the US. …”
From the “Remarks by the President at the White House Tribal Nations Conference”:
“… And as you know, in April, we announced that we were reviewing our position on the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. And today I can announce that the United States is lending its support to this declaration. …”
Let’s see if it works…
Official Press Release Government of Ontario, December 22, 2009
As part of Ontario’s continued efforts to enhance cooperation, and to build strong relationships with Aboriginal people based on mutual respect, Premier Dalton McGuinty has asked the Government of Canada to reconsider its position on the United Nations’ Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
Ontario supports a review of Canada’s position on the Declaration as a means to demonstrate its commitment to improving the lives of Aboriginal people throughout Canada. Reconsideration of the Declaration would demonstrate Canada’s willingness to foster an open dialogue to improve the lives of Aboriginal peoples.
from the NYT:
The federal government announced on Tuesday that it intends to pay $3.4 billion to settle claims that it has mismanaged the revenue in American Indian trust funds, potentially ending one of the largest and most complicated class-action lawsuits ever brought against the United States.
The tentative agreement, reached late Monday, would resolve a 13-year-old lawsuit over hundreds of thousands of land trust accounts that date to the 19th century. Specialists in federal tribal law described the lawsuit as one of the most important in the history of legal disputes involving the government’s treatment of American Indians.
At the World Congress on ICT for Development held 10-12 September 2009 in Beijing, a declaration on ICT for development was created, which includes the following understandings and agreements:
1) Millennium Development Goal, for Remedying the Unbalancing Boat
2) Information Age, New Stage of Human Society
3) ICT, Effective Tool for Development in the New Age
4) Education, Key to the Use of ICT Tool
5) Responsibility for Governments and Citizens
6) Responsibility for International Organizations
7) Public Call
more detailed information: http://www.wcid-cic.org/home/view.php?id=137
Since some quite outdated concepts and views on sociocultural ICT practices are being deployed in this declaration, it certainly needs to consider current research projects and results e.g. from the fields of community informatics and media technology anthropology.
HELENA, Mont. – While the world celebrated as an African American assumed the highest office in the United States, Barack Obama was accompanied by his adopted parents, brother and clan members of the Apsaálooke, or the Crow Nation.
Twenty-four Crow members traveled from Montana to Washington D.C., hauling horse trailers and traditional regalia to participate in the inaugural parade Jan. 20, after Obama became the first U.S. president to belong to an Indian tribe.
Last May, then-presidential candidate Obama paid a campaign visit to Crow Agency, arguably the first stop at an Indian reservation by any presidential candidate since Robert F. Kennedy’s visit in 1968 to Pine Ridge, S.D.
Before the rally Mary and Hartford Black Eagle formally adopted Obama into the Crow Nation, conferring an honorary tribal membership. They gave him a family name, Barack Black Eagle, and a Crow name, Awe Kooda Bilaxpak Kuuxshish, which translates as “one who helps people throughout the land.”
more: http://www.indiancountrytoday.com/national/plains/38693927.html
Remember what you promised Mr. President:
From the workshop’s abstract:
As part of the “New forms of knowledge for the 21st Century” research agenda at Cambridge University, the workshop will explore why designers and developers of new technologies should be interested in producing objects that users can modify, redeploy or redevelop. This exploration demands an examination of presuppositions that underpin the knowledge practices associated with the various productions of information communication technologies (ICT). A central question is that of diversity: diversity of use, of purpose, and of value(s). Does diversity matter, in the production and use of ICT, and if so, why?
Links:
http://www.crassh.cam.ac.uk/events/71/
http://vectors.usc.edu/thoughtmesh/publish/12.php
Canada’s Prime Minister Stephen Harper apologies to Aboriginal students and survivors of residential schools:
“Mr. Speaker, I stand before you today to offer an apology to former students of Indian residential schools. The treatment of children in Indian residential schools is a sad chapter in our history.
In the 1870’s, the federal government, partly in order to meet its obligation to educate aboriginal children, began to play a role in the development and administration of these schools.
Two primary objectives of the residential schools system were to remove and isolate children from the influence of their homes, families, traditions and cultures, and to assimilate them into the dominant culture.
(…)”
from CBC News.