2021 Projects

Total Indigitization Grant Funding awarded: $46 857

Project Title: Digital Preservation and Long-Term Storage Proposal
Participant: Carrier Sekani Tribal Council
Amount: $12 000
Description: Through a generous grant from the Indigitization Program, the Carrier Sekani Tribal Council is building digital infrastructure to ensure the long-term preservation and access of our digital cultural heritage, information, and data. The project seeks to test the viability of server implementation at the Band and Tribal Council level, and to develop a set of guidelines and recommendations around in-house infrastructure solutions.

Project Title: Heiltsuk Open Reel Digitization Project
Participant: Heiltsuk Tribal Council
Amount: $10 000
Description: The Heiltsuk Cultural Education Centre (HCEC) has a large and varied media collection. There are over 2200 audio-cassettes, hundreds of ¼” open reel audio recordings, 244 VHS video cassettes, 100 ½” open reel video recordings and several other less common AV formats. The HCEC has developed skills and technical capacities for the digitization of audio-cassettes, photographic and textual materials. We wish to train a new employee to digitize cassettes and would also like to gain the capacity to digitize ¼” open reel audio. We have recently worked with your program to help assess and deliver new Inventory and Collections Management guides. We would very much like to utilize the new training guides to relearn cassette digitization, and gain the skills required to digitize our open reel collection.

Project Title: Skeetchestn Oral History Collection II (1999-2001)
Participant: Skeetchestn Natural Resources LLP
Amount: $10 000
Description: This Skeetchestn Secwepemc lndigitization Project involves the digitization from audio-tape cassette to uncompressed digital format of an additional collection Dr. Marianne Ignace and Chief Ronald Ignace of many elders from Skeetchestn Indian Band between about 1999 and 2001. The recordings involve interviews and narratives in Secwepemctsin and English on the topics of traditional land use and traditional knowledge, stories told in Secwepemctsin, and a number of other topics.

Project Title: Meetings and More: Digitizing UBCIC Audio Cassettes
Participant: Union of BC Indian Chiefs
Amount: $9957
Description: The Union of BC Indian Chiefs is a non-governmental organization founded in 1969, representing and advocating for Indigenous interests, rights and title. This project will preserve audiotape recordings of UBCIC meetings (from 1993 to 2002) and other currently inaccessible cassettes.

Project Title: Nachii Chwęą
Participant: West Moberly First Nations
Amount: $4900
Description: Usability of traditional ecological knowledge that Indigenous governments collect is often rendered inefficient or inaccessible due to technological advances. Even the best available media eventually becomes antiquated. This project aims to update the media of interviews two-decades old as part of our efforts to build the future upon our past.