This afternoon, Kado Muir, Guy Singleton and Jon Corbett presented ‘Outback Movement for Cultural Survival Using Web 2.0: An Australian Aboriginal Case Study’. This presentation was really invigorating. I came in a minute or so late, only to hear Kado Muir joke, ‘We are quite recently out of the Bush – and we’re now trying to take over the world!’ 

And Muir isn’t joking. ‘We wanted to rejuvenate, restore, study and protect our heritage,’ Muir says. The Ngalia people have been using ICTs, and now Web 2.0 approaches, not just to preserve, but to reinvigorate their cultural identity – and with some remarkable successes.  

‘Since 1986, we have been working to preserve our culture… recording things in books and databases. Now, we are making good use of Google Earth to record cultural and sacred places, we are digitising tapes of songs, and now we are using videos.’  As Muir, Corbett and Singleton write, ‘To date, and along with digital video and community web sites, the Ngalia community has embraced technologies such as You Tube, Skype, My Space, blogs, Google and Wikipedia. Plans are in place to develop a participatory GIS system also.’ 

And why? Since the 1980s, the Ngalia have been working to preserve their cultural and spiritual heritage. They must continually negotiate with mineral extraction companies to preserve their land and sacred sites – which has significant implications for their cultural survival. Only a generation ago, the Ngalia People of Australia had never come into contact with westerners. Now, only 20 out of 300 Aboriginal languages still survive. Kado’s own language is almost extinct except within his own family.  

In 2006, Kado Muir invited two Australian Universities to join the Ngalia people working on a participatory video project. The community used a participatory decision-making process to create the story they wanted to tell, and working with a group of young people, the project created a 40-minute film called ‘Caring for Country’. The final video was produced with Desert Knowledge CRC. 

There has been another startlingly successful story: a three-minute short film, ‘Papinmaru’. It was unscripted and shot entirely by three Ngalia youths from the Walkatjurra Cultural Centre. ‘Papinmaru’ was one of the winning videos in the Lonely Planet ‘Less Than Three’ video competition. And it really captured the attention of the mainstream Australian media. It’s selling. The community now have a product that can be easily reproduced and sold. It’s having a significant economic impact.  

The Ngalia Elders are really investing in the skills of these young people to continue using Web 2.0 in this process – investing in the human capital and the substantial technical capacity needed to continue making theses processes work.  As co-presenter Guy Singleton says, ‘There are serious short-term goals too – you take the most valuable asset you have [your culture] and reinforce it with the younger generation – the impacts are important economically, culturally, and spiritually.  

As Kado Muir says, ‘It was a long build-up to Web 2.0, but we’ll use whatever technology is available at our disposal to meet our ends. Give the youth these skills, and they can take them anywhere in the world.’

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