Indigenous Storytelling in Namibia: Sketching Concepts for Digitization

Abstract

Oral storytelling predates the written word and computer code by millennia which has been part of all pasts of contemporary communities. While narratives and plots can take place in the metaphysical world, be presented with humor and seem like fairytales to outsiders with little relevance to the physical world, they are very functional and foundational for communities where storytelling is enacted. This paper debates concepts related to indigenous storytelling and its relevance to knowledge and learning for indigenous youths. In an attempt to understand indigenous youths' own conception of storytelling the paper presents empirical data from a study with indigenous Khoisan children in Namibia. This is followed by a discussion of an effort of digitizing indigenous intangible cultural heritage in relation to technologies' embodied bias and perspectives.

Toward a More Just Library: Participatory Design with Native American Students

“…The main approach in Participatory Design has been about paying attention to power relations within an organization, and providing resources with a view to the empowerment of traditionally marginalized groups (Bannon & Ehn, 2013;Rodil & Winschiers-Theophilus, 2015). PD has strong connections with Human-centered Design (IDEO, 2015), Participatory Action Research (Giesbrecht, Miller, Mitchell, & Woodgate, 2015;Bocci, 2016;Rowell & Hong, 2017), and Community-based Participatory Research (Banks et al, 2013;KiaKeating, Santacrose, Liu, & Adams, 2017), disciplines which also focus on user needs, activism, justice, and community impact via participation in design.…”