KFA_Rock_Art from Mark Jones on Vimeo.
Simply stunning! And yet the Western Australian government wants to mine this environment and destroy it. Please support Kimberley Foundation Australia.
Aboriginal Healing, Sharing Culture
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KFA_Rock_Art from Mark Jones on Vimeo. "If Australians did not go deep into their own history and the culture, and the vegetation and the animals, and deeply understand their own country, then they would never have anything than a shallowly rooted, transplanted European culture. So the dates are one thing, but knowing the stories of what this is about..."
Simply stunning! And yet the Western Australian government wants to mine this environment and destroy it. Please support Kimberley Foundation Australia.
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Yesterday, I included a section from Educator Chris Sarra's article 'Delivering Beyond Indigenous Policy Rhetoric' which appeared on the NITV website. Here is another section: '"We as Aboriginal people want to be on a journey with you. This journey however, must be one that enables us to be the best that ‘we’ want to be, not a journey in which we are forced to be who ‘you’ want us to be" When Cowboys coach Paul Green, set about conjuring a way to win the NRL Grand Final, he collaborated seriously with his Indigenous captain, Johnathon. He did this because Thurston has wisdom and sophisticated insights to offer. He did this because he had an authentic belief in the strengths and knowledge that were obvious, and sometimes not so obvious, in his team’s captain. A key pillar of the stronger smarter approach is high expectations relationships as opposed to high expectations rhetoric. Sometimes high expectations rhetoric espouses lofty ideals that are often imposed with good intentions from the outside rather than negotiated with the individuals to be affected. I mentioned earlier the fundamental importance of understanding that as we contemplate the challenges we face together, we are in a relationship in which we must ensure that it is healthy and a source of mutual benefit. My greatest intellectual insight of the last two years, I think, is understanding the profound difference between high expectations ‘of’ Aboriginal people versus the notion of high expectations ‘with’ Aboriginal people; high expectations rhetoric versus a high expectations relationship. I can assure you that we as Aboriginal people want to be on a journey with you. This journey however, must be one that enables us to be the best that ‘we’ want to be, not a journey in which we are forced to be who ‘you’ want us to be. Let me assure you that as Aboriginal people we have an interest in being the exceptional people that we can be and often are. None of us aspire to be downtrodden, uneducated, disempowered and dysfunctional. It is often the case that sometimes well-intentioned non-Indigenous Australians make fatal mistakes at the very genesis of their relationship with Aboriginal Australians. Imagine you and me preparing for an important journey together, standing alongside each other, and calibrating our compasses for a stronger smarter destination. Even just to stand together, we must have purged from our relationship the toxic stench of low expectations, mistrust, and stifled perceptions of each other. From this point we have a chance of getting our compasses aligned. If you stand beside me well intentioned, but in this relationship feeling sorry for me, as if I have to be rescued, the relationship is contaminated from the start, leaving us a few degrees out from each other and destined to become parted in the long run. [My bold - DC] You might come to the relationship assuming that I must change my ways and become ‘like’ you in every way, emulating your way of existing… assimilated if you like. In this circumstance you assume you are superior to me and I am inferior to you. With this as our starting point the relationship is again contaminated and we calibrate our compass in a way that gives us no chance of taking an honourable journey together. In some ways this analogy explains why we spend billions on Aboriginal affairs and achieve no appreciable gains. If however we start the relationship in which our strengths and humanity are acknowledged and embraced, and we are convinced of an authentic sense of hope for all, then our hearts can truly beat closely together, and our compasses can be calibrated for an exciting, sometimes bumpy, yet honourable journey into the future. In a practical sense this means identifying and embracing local community leadership that is proven, rather than anointing Aboriginal leadership that will only tell you what you want to hear. On the Aboriginal education landscape, if we have the courage, it means acknowledging that Aboriginal parents DO want the best for their children and being bold enough to offer those parents who work in partnership with schools to get their children to school for more than 85 % of the school year, the guarantee that their child will achieve the national minimum standard on all Years 3, 5, 7 and 9 benchmarks. Beyond year 9, if we are bold enough, it means offering a guaranteed service outcome in the form of a job, a place in training, or a place in a university to all Indigenous students who complete Year 12 with better than 85% school attendance. It means doing whatever it takes to inject exceptional school leadership into remote Aboriginal community schools. This is honouring and embracing humanity. This is offering hope. This is doing things with people not to them. In some ways the three things I have articulated here, can in essence be seen as the triple bottom line for Indigenous policy analyses. My critics may well want to accuse me of being overly philosophical but after 17 years as a very successful educator on the Indigenous education landscape, I have nothing to prove. As an educator I said I wanted to change expectations of Aboriginal children and today expectations have changed. Today there is no place to hide for any teacher with low expectations in any classroom in any school in Australia. Of course they are still out there, but it is only a matter of time before they are exposed and challenged. "If however we start the relationship in which our strengths and humanity are acknowledged and embraced, and we are convinced of an authentic sense of hope for all, then our hearts can truly beat closely together."' Thank you for this excellent article, Chris. Here is a lecture from a person with whom I am really impressed. Please take your time to read the whole lecture and check out the short video. Here I will highlight two sections: 'Earlier in the day I had approached Malcolm Turnbull to congratulate him on his ascendency to the Prime Minister ship and, as I described, his clever appointment of Senator Arthur Sinodinos to the role of Cabinet Secretary. As I mentioned to him, at least now we can have something that resembles a functional cabinet as opposed to the crippling centralized way of governing that many of us had become so frustrated by. 'This whole Prime Minister for Indigenous Affairs thing' I told him, 'has done more harm than good, and seems to be more about gimmicks, personalities and polls, rather than proper policy process'. The Minister for Indigenous Affairs must be trusted and able to get on with his role, without distractions and confusion about who is responsible for what. He then said 'Chris what are three things we can do in the Indigenous policy space to make a difference?' It’s too important and too complex a question to answer at an NRL grand final, and I did have to focus on the game, so I said to the PM, 'I do have an answer for you but I'll get back to you with those three things at some stage soon', to which he responded, 'Please do'. So here I am offering just three things that we can do in the Indigenous policy space to make a difference. It occurred to me that the answer to Prime Minister Turnbull’s question was being played out right before us on that epic NRL grand final night. What we watched that night was nothing less than a festival of positive fast thinking about the relationship between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australia. On a level playing field we saw the humanity of Indigenous Australians authentically acknowledged, embraced with enthusiasm, and celebrated with passion. We saw young Indigenous Australians nurtured by hope, which cultivated their strengths and excellence and encouraged them to chase down their dreams, no matter how lofty they seemed. We saw Indigenous leadership working with non-Indigenous leadership together in an elite and honorable, high expectations relationship. This is the perfect analogy for the Australian society we can develop. There are three things we can do:-
Here's a section from Point 2 above. 'Another way of explaining this is that makers of Indigenous policy, including government anointed ‘so called’ leaders, do not understand the fundamental importance of a strength-based approach to community and individual transformation. Even those who enjoy choreographed visits to Aboriginal communities cannot fully understand the depth of complexity required to be useful, especially if they listen and observe simply to confirm their own way of thinking, rather than listening and observing, to really understand. Whilst they may be great at spending taxpayers’ money conjuring expensive yet ineffective government programs and quasi-bureaucracies, their unsophisticated, deficit-based elucidations expose them as impotent amidst the profound need for stratified, strength-based approaches to individual and community transformation, and almost completely ignorant amidst the profound need for deep and compassionate understanding of the stratified ontology of Aboriginal people and their communities. When I worked as school principal in Cherbourg for six and a half years, we fixed attendance with a sophisticated and stratified strength-based approach. 38% of children were not attending school. We didn’t immediately resort to cutting welfare payments of all parents as if 100% of children were disengaged. We recognized that 62% actually were engaged and if we celebrated and reinforced this great strength both extrinsically and intrinsically, then we were likely to positively influence most of, but probably not all, of the remaining 38%. By acknowledging and celebrating the strengths on display attendance went to 94%. The remaining 6% had more hard-core needs and so we pursued this as best as we could, in a more low key way. It was an approach simple to understand, yet hard work to execute, but one that was effective and cost less than 1% of the taxpayers money we see spent in some schools today in deficit approaches that assume all students are chronically disengaged. I was in Warburton in remote Western Australia as recently as last week. The week before I was in Wiluna and the week before that in Ampilatawatja, NT. The conversations there remind me that such frustrations and such despair persists with policy and program approaches that simply conflate single-barreled understandings about Aboriginal people and communities, and offer ineffective, unsophisticated blanket approaches that simply don’t make sense. Not only do they not make sense; they are causing an even greater sense of despair and disengagement from Australian society. This is an aspect of the stratified ontology of Aboriginal people that your makers of Indigenous policy simply do not understand. As blackfullas you can bring on your policies and programs and bash us and bash us and bash us! We will not change. We will not become the people you want us to be. We will submit in some way but in a way that will see us become passive, simply disengage or readjust because we are so accustomed to you smashing us and our communities. I am sure some of you may have seen this passivity and disengagement, without even knowing you have seen it. Some of you have been tricked into believing that such passivity is the result of welfare, when in fact it is the result of chronic disengagement from a local and vibrant economy. Welfare and a basic social security structure did not cause chronic disengagement from the economy. A lack of desire to pay equal wages to Aboriginal people in the late 1960s caused chronic disengagement from the economy. A lack of desire to invest substantially into innovative, vibrant and sophisticated localized economies entrenches ongoing chronic disengagement. But you’ve never been seriously challenged to understand the deep complexities here! You’ve never been challenged because in order to seduce you, it’s better to pretend you’re not culpable in any way for the challenges we face. If I can make it seem like Aboriginal people are entirely to blame here, you’ll describe me as a hero and you’ll throw millions at me and never seriously question the efficacy of my approaches, even if they take us back to the policy approaches of the last century. You’ve never been challenged because frankly there is great power and money to be had from the entrenched despair of Aboriginal people. Personally I think this reluctance to challenge underestimates your intelligence and your humanity, leaving us all floundering with limited hope of transcending the challenges we face together. Today I challenge the Prime Minister! Not to pick a fight with him, but because I respect his interest in a positive future for all of us. I respect his intellectual and emotional capacity to embrace and be honest about the extent to which he is culpable in a high expectations relationship with Aboriginal Australia and I am committed to the same. And you Prime Minister, and your policy makers have a choice. You can choose the more expensive and ineffective option of continuing to devise policy approaches that continue to demonise us and entrench despair. You can bring policy approaches to bash us and bash us and bash us…. Or you can bring policy approaches that offer hope, and a sense of pride, and a feeling that we can trust and walk with you into what I would call a stronger smarter, more honourable future, where your emancipation is bound up in mine.' Well spoken Dr Sarra! Thomas Amagula, executive support officer, and Djami Marika, managing director of the Dhimurru Aboriginal Corporation. Djami Marika stood at the edge of a pristine Arnhem Land beach and shook his head at the boat moored across the channel. “There are campers here and they have their permit and they’ve helped out with some cleaning, but behind us we have a boat that shouldn’t be here,” he said, frustrated that the vessel’s registration number wasn’t visible and concerned at what damage its occupants might do. “The boats catch fish and they fillet the fish, chuck it outside here and the crocodiles come. It’s dangerous, very dangerous,” he said, pointing to the sign displaying a warning in English and Yolngu Matha. Marika is managing director of the Dhimurru Aboriginal Corporation which cares for more than half a million hectares of Yolngu land and - uniquely - sea in north-east Arnhem Land, dedicated by traditional owners under an Indigenous protected area (IPA). 'A remote beach in northeast Arnhem Land, Australia, which is part of the Dhimurru Aboriginal corporation’s Indigenous protected area.
Rangers are employed under the Working On Country program, and a report released Thursday has called for its expansion, along with the program which manages the IPAs, deeming them to be among the most successful Indigenous initiatives ever run by the federal government. The land and wildlife under Dhimurru’s IPA is diverse, from rocky islands and coral reefs to sand dunes and monsoon forest. It encompasses nesting sites for four marine turtle species and habitat for 54 migratory bird species and 18 threatened species. The stunning and relatively undisturbed environment of the Yolngu land is also a drawcard for visitors coming via the township Nhulunbuy who must apply for a permit through Dhimurru before visiting Aboriginal-owned areas. While showing Guardian Australia around several key Dhimurru areas, Marika joked that he liked to give tourists a bit of a shake-up and check everyone for their permits, but there was a serious side to controlling visits. “You’ll see it’s a very good thing for the benefit of my people and all the visitors to come here,” he said. “We are generous to bring people here, but they must do the right thing. What we require is that they must come through the right channel because the whole area is like our backyard.” This year Dhimurru launched its seven-year management plan at the annual Garma festival. The main aims are to conserve the natural and cultural heritage values of the IPA and to sustainably share the region between Indigenous, commercial and recreational uses. Dhimurru works with the support of the Rirratjingu Aboriginal Corporation. Marika is a senior member of the Rirratjingu clan. Dhimurru cares for one of 70 IPAs across Australia which cover 63m hectares of land and sea. Since 2007 the federal government has funded 770 full-time equivalent Indigenous rangers across 108 ranger groups to care for the IPAs, managing cultural sites, fire regimes, biodiversity, feral animal and weed control and biosecurity monitoring. Both the Working On Country and IPA programs have generated high demand among Indigenous people for work as a ranger, high job retention and qualification attainment, and a beneficial economic effect on communities. Thursday’s report by the Pew Charitable Trusts and Synergies Economic Consulting found “there is considerable evidence that ranger programs are contributing directly to COAG’s [the council of Australian governments] strategic priorities for closing the gap”. The two programs cost about $67m in 2012-13 and represented 0.2% of the $30.3bn estimated to have been spent by governments on Indigenous services, the report said. It put the success of the program partly down to adequate funding by successive governments. “Despite this relatively small share of funding, Working on Country and IPAs are delivering significant benefits. Working on Country has resulted in almost 800 full-time ranger jobs and many more casual, or part-time, positions,” it said. Daniel Oades, IPA coordinator for the Bardi Jawi rangers in the Kimberley region, is in charge of 14 employees, and engages about 50 traditional owners each year in caring for their land and sea. “On top of getting a better grip of what’s happening out on country … you’ve got the social side of things, including more jobs being created on country,” he said. “And there’s pride - it’s great that when we do monitoring evaluations we can see fire management working, less late fires doing damage on country, building fences in community. We’re reinvigorating traditional knowledge about water places and letting elders get back more control of country through the ranger program.” The Bardi Jawi rangers are based at One Arm Point on Western Australia’s Dampier Peninsula, and manage over 250km of coastline. Caring for sea country is a complicated addition to the IPA management process, as there is no land tenure. “Over the sea, we’ve got a collaboration system, an advisory group where all the stakeholders involved in any sort of sea country management have been invited by Dhimurru to one central point,” said Vanessa Drysdale, who facilitates the sea country plan. Dhimurru rangers sometimes do aerial sweeps of the inaccessible shoreline for ghost nets which are swept in by the currents of the Gulf of Carpentaria. “Our biggest issue is marine debris,” Drysdale said. Dhimurru, which has 15 rangers on the ground, works with the CSIRO and customs. When some rangers become qualified compliance officers, there are plans to work with the fisheries department too. “We’re in a good position. Most of the IPAs and rangers are set up in these incredibly remote areas where it would be so costly for government to put in their infrastructure,” said Drysdale. “Increasingly I think organisations are seeing that, understanding that our capacity is increasing and that we are here and ready to do it.” A “fairly new but pretty big” learning on country program is also run for local school students. “That’s about getting kids excited about being at school but also skilled up so when they hit the real world they’re off and running and ready to be rangers,” said Drysdale. The Pew report found benefits of the IPA and ranger programs flow through to communities, improving health outcomes, reducing crime and improving national and environmental heritage protection. Studies by the Menzies School of Health Research have found evidence of a link between working on country and better mental and physical health outcomes in Indigenous communities. Patrick O’Leary, conservation partnerships manager at Pew, said: “We think the report released today is a really compelling case for increasing funding for what are possible best value programs in remote Australia, in terms of delivering on environmental protection and against the key measures the government say are important for reducing social and economic disadvantages for Aboriginal people. “Let’s not let this go. We’re on a winner now, and we need security through to 2030 at least. We need a high level target of 5,000 jobs nationally … if we’re going to tackle native animal decline, biodiversity and have a healthy landscape.”' This article appeared in the Guardian. The Pew report 'Working for Our Country: A review of the economic and social benefits of Indigenous land and sea management' can be found here. Take some time out and immerse yourself in an Aboriginal Cultural Story. I love this short animation.
Dust Echoes is a series of twelve beautifully animated dreamtime stories from Central Arnhem Land, telling stories of love, loyalty, duty to country and aboriginal custom and law. "Dust Echoes is one way that we are bringing everyone back to the same campfire - black and white. We are telling our stories to you in a way you can understand, to help you see, hear and know. And we are telling these stories to ourselves, so that we will always remember, with pride, who we are. " Tom Lewis, actor, musician, Indigenous consultant Please check out more about Dust Echoes and explore the fascinating website. Dr. Vincent Felitti, the co-founder of the Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) study, details the connection between childhood trauma and negative mental health outcomes in adulthood in a powerful video by Big Think.
"... with a so-called ACE score of six, experiencing any six of the ten categories we studied, that person was 4,600% more likely to become an IV drug user than a person who had experienced none of those ten categories. ... you read in the newspaper the latest cancer scare of the week, prostate cancer or breast cancer increases 30% and everyone goes nuts. I'm talking 4,600% increase. The same ACE score of six produces a likelihood of attempting suicide that is between 3,100 and 5,000% greater than the likelihood of suicide attempts in someone with none of those life experiences." You can watch the full version of Vince Felitti's 2006 presentation on the ACE research project here or an edited 13 minute version here. Here's an excellent article in The Conversation from a group carrying out important research on Indigenous- related issues. 'Our research shows how Australia imprisons thousands of Aboriginal people with mental and cognitive disabilities each year because of a lack of understanding, and a dearth of community-based services and support. It also shows what can be done about this shameful breach of human rights. We have data on hundreds of Aboriginal people with mental and cognitive disabilities that tells the story of their early and regular contact with police, courts and custody. And Aboriginal researchers in our team have spoken with Aboriginal people with disabilities, their families, communities and service providers in New South Wales and the Northern Territory so we can better understand their experiences. What will make a differenceBased on that research, we are recommending these principles and strategies to underpin policy reform: 1. Self-determination Self-determination is key to improving the human rights and well-being of Aboriginal people with mental and cognitive disabilities. This means an ongoing process of choice on matters affecting them, their families and communities. Community-led knowledge, solutions and services to respond to the over-representation of Aboriginal people with mental and cognitive disabilities in prison should be properly supported and resourced. And we must ensure the input of Aboriginal women on their needs and aspirations given their particular disadvantage and vulnerability in the criminal justice system. We also need better services for Aboriginal people in regional and remote areas. Education and cultural competency for non-Aboriginal organisations and people working in this area is crucial. 2: Person-centred support Person-centred support that puts Aboriginal people with mental and cognitive disabilities at the centre of their care and that’s appropriate to their culture and context is essential. People should be supported to make decisions about their own needs and recovery. Disability services and the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) need an overt strategy to support Aboriginal people with disabilities in the criminal justice system. This initiative should also cover the needs of people with borderline intellectual disability and fetal alcohol syndrome disorder (FASD), who may not be recognised as having a disability but who often need targeted support so they don’t end up in prison. Specialised housing, services and treatment options should be available in the community to prevent incarceration and improve well-being. 3. A holistic and flexible approach A determined holistic and flexible approach to services for Aboriginal people with mental and cognitive disabilities is needed from a young age to avoid contact with the criminal justice system. Early recognition by maternal and infant health services, early childhood and school education, community health services and police is important. Governments should provide positive and preventive support that allows Aboriginal children and young people with disability to develop and flourish. We need supported housing and case management options for people with cognitive impairment to help keen them out of the the criminal justice system. The NSW Community Justice Program is a good example. It provides specialised intensive 24-hour supported accommodation to drop in support for people with an intellectual disability who have been in the criminal justice system. 4. Integrated services Government and non-government services need to work in a more integrated way to improve referral, information sharing and case management, and to better support Aboriginal people with mental and cognitive disabilities. Justice, Corrections and Human Services departments and non-government services should take a collaborative approach to program pathways for Aboriginal people with disabilities who need support across their sectors. All prisoners with a cognitive impairment should be referred to the public advocate of the state or territory they are in. Better practice and preventionIt’s vital that Aboriginal understandings of “disability” and “impairment” underpin support for Aboriginal people with mental and cognitive disabilities in the criminal justice system. The particular experiences and perspectives of Aboriginal women should be central. Better education and information on Aboriginal people with disabilities is needed for police, teachers, education support workers, lawyers, magistrates, health, corrections, disability and community service providers to help them understand and work with Aboriginal people with cognitive impairment, mental health disorders and complex support needs. More resources are also needed for Aboriginal communities, families and carers so they can better support people with mental and cognitive disabilities. Our data tracks the pathways of Aboriginal people with mental and cognitive disabilities into early contact with police, courts and custody largely due to a lack of appropriate health, education, disability and community services. We heard about the racism and stigma faced by Aboriginal people with disabilities that drives the cycle of over-policing, under-servicing and incarceration. This predictable path is preventable. Early intervention and diversion into holistic, therapeutic, culturally responsive, local community-based services are essential. These will enable Aboriginal people with mental and cognitive disabilities to live with dignity and support in their communities. This is the fifth in a series of articles by this research team. Click here to read more on the Indigenous Australians with Mental Health Disorders and Cognitive Disability in the Criminal Justice System (IAMHDCD) Project.' Various pieces of information about the research project can be found here. Here are links to the four other articles in The Conversation: > Why Aboriginal people with disabilities crowd Australia’s prisons > Aboriginal people with disabilities get caught in a spiral of over-policing > How Aboriginal women with disabilities are set on a path into the criminal justice system > Supporting, not imprisoning, Aboriginal people with disabilities could save millions Whale Calling Corroboree from David Clark on Vimeo. Sharing Culture Advisors Miliwanga Wurrben and Margaret Katherine conduct a whale calling corroboree at Byron Bay Lighthouse in Australia. Julian Silburn plays mago (didjeridu) accompanied by Jeshua Ball on clapsticks. Shot on an iPhone 6 during the Earth Treasure Vase Cultural Sharing Tour in October, 2015.
Miliwanga adopted me into her family after my visit to Katherine in June this year, so I am very proud to say that I am a Rembarrnga man of the Mirratja group. Margaret Katherine is also my Yappa (sister). Julian has been adopted by Margaret and Miliwanga's family so he is my nephew. He has recently become a Sharing Culture Advisor. Paintings from the Heart from David Clark on Vimeo. I thought I'd highlight a Film Story - 'Paintings from the Heart' - produced by my colleague Michael Liu, which is on one of our past projects pages. It's a fascinating story, well worth a watch.
In 2013, considerable attention was focused on the return from the USA of a collection of world class paintings done by Aboriginal children of The Stolen Generation at the Carrolup mission during the 1940s. These paintings, which are now housed at Curtin University in Perth, highly influenced subsequent Noongar art practice. Our short film by Michael Liu focuses on another facet of the Carrolup artists’ Story, an unknown Story of how three of the Carrolup artists - Revell Cooper, Parnell Dempster and Reynold Hart - gave gifts of their paintings to Ida Colbung for providing a place to stay during their visits to East Perth in the 1940s. These ‘paintings from the heart’ have been passed down to Ida’s granddaughter Karen Hume, who relates the fascinating Story to Professor Marion Kickett, Director of the Centre for Aboriginal Studies at Curtin University. It is a Story of life in East Perth in the '40s, with the restrictions placed on the movement of Aboriginals and the ongoing fear of Aboriginal children being removed from their families. It is also a Story of Aboriginal people coming together at the Coolbaroo Club dances and the Aboriginal values of giving, sharing and reciprocity. > Read more about the Carrulup child artists An Alaska Native group decided to make a video game. It's like nothing you've ever played before11/5/2015 And now for something completely different, found on the Upworthy website. "One of the most groundbreaking, critically acclaimed, and delightful video games of 2014 began in a highly unlikely place - Anchorage, Alaska. It's called "Never Alone" (or "Kisima Ingitchuna"). And it wasn't developed by Nintendo, Electronic Arts, Ubisoft, or any of the other big game studios. It was the brainchild of the Cook Inlet Tribal Council (CITC) - a nonprofit community support organization for Alaska Natives and their families. Many Alaska Native communities are struggling to hold on to their identities in the 21st century. As more and more Alaska Natives move out of traditional communities and into urban areas, indigenous languages are disappearing - and with them, traditional knowledge. Many don't have a choice because climate change threatens to erode and, in some cases, even destroy native towns and villages around the state. For many, life in Alaska's cities is hardly easy. According to Amy Fredeen, executive vice president and chief financial officer of the CITC, Alaska Native youth in Anchorage are plagued by high dropout and suicide rates. Passing traditional knowledge down under these conditions becomes all the more challenging. The council saw "Never Alone" as both a way of becoming more financially self-sufficient and a necessary new method of transferring cultural knowledge from one generation to the next. "We saw video games as a way to connect to our youth in a place where they're already at," Fredeen told Upworthy. The group also hoped that sales of the video game would help reduce their dependence on federal grant money. There was a problem, however: No one on the CITC had ever made a video game before. Undaunted, the council cold-called E-Line Media, a Seattle-based entertainment and video game development company with a message: "Come to Anchorage." "What was funny is they actually came up and tried to talk us out of it." According to Fredeen, E-Line urged the council to approach the project with caution: Video game development is a highly risky business and particularly challenging for a nonprofit with limited cash supplies. But the group was determined - and the developers were impressed. E-Line signed on. And off they went. The team started by analyzing how indigenous characters were typically portrayed in video games. What they found was upsetting - and unsurprising. "It ran the gamut from being terrible stereotypes to just appropriation," Fredeen said. The group found that not only were native video game characters exceedingly rare, but when they did appear, it was often as sidekicks exhibiting a mishmash of cultural signifiers cobbled together from various and unrelated communities or, worse, as one-dimensional villains. "Some of them were really almost obscene," Fredeen said. In contrast, "Never Alone" features an Alaska Native main character and is based largely on a traditional Iñupiaq story. E-Line chief creative officer Sean Vesce teaches Minnie Gray, an Alaska Native elder, storyteller, and consultant on the game, how to play. Nuna, the game's hero, teams up with an arctic fox to find the source of the blizzard that's threatening her community. Players explore themes of resourcefulness, cooperation, and the transfer of knowledge from one generation to the next through the beautifully rendered gameplay. "When I saw that come to life on screen, when they were using the scrimshaw in an animated way to tell a story, it brought tears to my eyes." Amy Fredeen E-Line credits the game's part-Iñupiaq lead writer, Ishmael Hope, for helping ensure that Alaska Native voices were front and center in the development process. “We want to be culturally appropriate without cultural appropriation," Matt Swanson, one of the game's producers told Upworthy. That meant checking their egos at the door and questioning some assumptions they didn't even realize they had. According to Swanson, the original villain of the game was slated to be a raven before their collaborators pointed out that wouldn't make sense in an Alaska Native context. "As Westerners, we have lots of stories where [the raven] is a trickster character, and things like that. And they pushed back on that and said, 'Look, that's not really culturally appropriate. The raven in our culture is a much more sort of sacred character.'" It was a surprise to the E-Line team, which highlighted the importance of listening and their role as students in the story development process. In addition to the main game, "Never Alone" features hours of documentary footage of Alaska Native elders and community members sharing traditional stories, explaining customs, and passing down knowledge. The team was initially worried that the footage - which the player has the option of watching - would disrupt the gameplay but later received tons of positive feedback on the feature. For Fredeen, the moment she knew "Never Alone" was going to be something special was when she saw the first cutscene - rendered entirely in serialized scrimshaw. Scrimshaw is a traditional form of bone or ivory carving. According to Fredeen, while scrimshaw today is most often done in single panel, it was traditionally used in Alaska Native communities as a multi-panel, serial storytelling device. "When I saw that come to life on screen, when they were using the scrimshaw in an animated way to tell a story, it brought tears to my eyes," Fredeen said. "The instant I saw that, I knew the team was listening to who we were as a people and how we really connected with each other." The game debuted to terrific reviews and has since won some very big awards. Its effects are being felt far beyond Alaska's borders as well."After the game launched, we've been getting this incredible response from people of all different backgrounds on how getting to see an indigenous main character in a game, and seeing cultural representation in a game has resonated with them," Swanson said. For Fredeen, the importance of that representation can't be overstated and was evident from the first time she saw a group of Alaska Native youth encounter the game. "When they saw the video game on the screen, and when they saw a character that looked like them and the dress was familiar to them, and they saw their community members on the video with the video game, you could just see the pride on their faces." The game is expected to make money - a big deal in the video game world - and the team continues to be impressed with its success. “It's been amazing all around," Fredeen said. "People just get excited in Alaska," she added. "... They're excited to see something that was made with Alaskans." |
AuthorProfessor David Clark is Founder of the Sharing Culture initiative. Archives
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