Total Indigitization Grant Funding awarded: $56,113.27
Project Title: Hul’q’umi’num Digitization Project
Participant: Cowichan Tribes
Amount: $8,985.00
Description: Cowichan Tribes has many departments with audiocassette archives that will benefit from digitization. These contain recordings of elders’ interviews, oral history, stories, songs and testimony. The valuable resource this represents will be preserved for present and future generations to benefit from cultural knowledge continuing to be accessible as media formats rapidly change.
Project Title: Gūza ̄́gi ̄́ Gūtīe Sūdzenehʼīn: We Are Looking After Our Language
Participant: Liard First Nation and Lower Post First Nation
Amount: $10,000.00
Description: The focus of this project is twofold: 1. To preserve a collection of audiocassettes, containing voices of our elders, sharing their knowledge, majority in the Kaska language. 2. To develop skills and local capacity to be able to fill a regional gap by providing digitization services to other communities in the north.
Project Title: Preserving the History of the Nicola Valley Peoples’ Past to the Future
Participant: Nicola Tribal Association
Amount: $8,656.15
Description: Since 1998, Nicola Tribal Association began interviewing Elders to plan a future for the upcoming generations. To digitize 600 audio cassettes to commemorate the history of our Ancestral Title and Rights. To preserve our past Elders in oral history and for our future generations in enhancing history through technology. The information is to be made accessible to the 8 Nicola Valley community Bands.
Project Title: Simpcw Archives Oral History Digitization Project
Participant: Simpcw First Nation
Amount: $5,032.91
Description: The Project aims to continue the digitization of community oral histories. To date, 67 oral histories have been digitized for preservation and accessibility. Many have been transcribed, although original Secwepemctsin (Simpcw indigenous language) words need to be re-visited. Increased accessibility will improve community knowledge and privacy protocols will be instigated.
Project Title: Witsuwit’en Traditional Medicines and Culture Indigitization Project
Participant: Witsuwit’en Language and Culture Society
Amount: $5,117.14
Description: The Witsuwit’en Traditional Medicines Indigitization Project is a capacity building project to train Witsuwit’en Youth to digitize the priceless traditional medicinal knowledge of our ancestors. The original audiocassettes were returned to our community from the collections of ethnobotanist, Dr. Leslie Main Johnson who has recorded our Elders since the 1980s.
Project Title: Xaxli’p Digital Archivization Project
Participant: Xaxli’p First Nation
Amount: $8,322.07
Description: In preparation for a land use planning process, Xaxli’p conducted an inventory of our archives and prioritized records to be uploaded to a new web-based content management system. We identified approximately 160 cassette tapes to be digitized containing invaluable knowledge, including nearly 100 traditional land use interviews, songs, stories/legends, language recordings, Elders’ voices, and more. A thorough search of the Xaxli’p buildings failed to turn up any previously digitized versions of the tapes.
Project Title: Haida Nation Archives
Participant: Secretariat of the Haida Nation
Amount: $10,000.00
Description: The digitization of the Haida Nation’s history through the transfer from tape to bits will ensure that important aspects of our oral history are revealed and alive today. The political, social and family tape recordings that we are going to explore in this project will reveal deep knowledge that will inform our policy and legislation as we continue to build our national government.