TEAGUE SCHNEITER

‘When we are ancestors, we will be a product of our actions’.^{[1]Honiana Te Puni Love & Neavin Broughton, ‘Tuku Reo, Tuku Mouri: Information technology in the strategic revitalisation of Te Reo Maori o Taranaki (Taranaki Maori dialect) in Aotearoa New Zealand’, Information Technologies and Indigenous Communities Symposium, Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSI), Canberra, Australia, 2010.}

We are in the midst of a pivotal moment for online video – the tools for creating and disseminating video online are now prolific, and video sharing sites have encouraged an entire movement towards user-generated content. Content, tools and platforms continue to proliferate, making the world of online video one of significant and ongoing change. A Nielsen report released this in 2010 revealed that approximately 70% of global online consumers now watch online video.^{[2]How People Watch – A Global Nielsen Consumer Report’, Nielsen Wire blog, 4 August, 2010. nielsen.} As video creation and video sharing become ubiquitous, the web has become a battlefield, with the constant conflict typically framed as a struggle for digital freedom against digital censorship. Online video has created an ecology of uncharted openness; punctuated by the fact that it has become common for people to share and create videos without the relevant copyright permissions. Governments^{[3]According to the OpenNet Initiative’s website: ‘Drawing on arguments that are often powerful and compelling such as “securing intellectual property rights,” “protecting national security,” “preserving cultural norms and religious values,” and “shielding children from pornography and exploitation,” many states are implementing extensive filtering practices to curb the perceived lawlessness of the medium’, About Filtering, OpenNet Initiative, opennet} and companies attempt to restrict information and unchecked usage on the web, while independent organizations fight for freedom of information, transparency and fair use. In an important victory for free culture advocates, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) in 2010 won three exemptions to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), effectively ‘carving out new legal protections for consumers who modify their cell phones and artists who remix videos – people who, until now, could have been sued for their non-infringing or fair use activities’.^{[4]EFF Wins New Legal Protections for Video Artists, Cell Phone Jailbreakers, and Unlockers: Rulemaking Fixes Critical DMCA Wrongs’, Electronic Frontier Foundation, 26 July, 2010, eff.org} The workings of the net seem to require constant sparring between those in possession of distinctive ethical value-systems: proprietary vs. opensource, intellectual property protection vs. public domain, stringent digital rights management vs. digital commons, and open vs. restricted access.

In the midst of this sparring, the movement to embrace openness for digital tools for video is off to a running start. In 2009, the Open Video Alliance, a ‘coalition of organizations and individuals committed to the idea that the power of the moving image should belong to everyone’^{[5]See the Open Video Alliance’s ‘About’ page: openvideoalliance} held its inaugural gathering, with 800 attendees in person and 8,000 online participants. The 2010 conference saw 950 attendees, 160 presenters, and, again, an estimated 8,000 viewers online. Also, in 2009, the Association for Moving Image Archivists initiated their first Open Source Committee, which focuses on developing open source solutions for digital moving image preservation and presentation on the web. These efforts are evidence of the increasing acknowledgement of the need to find answers to the vast range of often complex questions that emerge with online video technologies and shifts in practices of media consumption. The fact that video distribution and presentation is increasingly migrating online, a medium which by nature encourages openness and sharing, is re-structuring the processes of knowledge dissemination itself. Increasing access to media, as well as moves to create openness in coding and software that are behind video distribution online, are two important yet distinct sides of the same coin. However, in the midst of this opening, the rights of some internet users are being pushed to the side.

Indigenous media – that is, media created by and about First Peoples – can raise issues that do not fit as easily into the typical dichotomy between ownership and openness. This poses questions about the full, or uncritical, embrace of openness. If it is not properly managed, free, open, and highly mutable methods of video dissemination could have profound impacts upon Indigenous knowledge and media dissemination. In this article, I will mostly focus on archival videos that depict traditional culture, documenting cultural tradition, language, and storytelling. It is important to note that these potentially culturally sensitive images and forms are distinct from the content produced by various Indigenous communities and individuals who are presently creating moving images. Nevertheless, the two forms converge in their need to be self-managed and controlled by Indigenous practitioners.

The Age of Open[ing] Video

The attempts to create openness on the web – open sharing, open remixing, open networks, open democracy, open content, open licenses, and ‘the commons’ – may automatically seem like ethical practices, as they work in the interest of universal access to all human knowledge. However, when we take into account that there are, in fact, many diverse cultures – especially traditional and Indigenous cultures – struggling to maintain their distinct knowledge systems, which are engrained in distinctive cultural values and endangered languages, the idea of entering all knowledge into a vast soup appears more problematic, for much of the cultural context and tools for cultural interpretation are lost. There is potential for distinct cultural practices to become blurred, and for lack of context to lead to misinterpretation and even denigration of Indigenous cultures. In this era of rapid change – of climate change, corporate takeover and technological advancement – Indigenous groups are fighting to preserve cultures, languages, ways of life, and knowledge systems that differ dramatically from non-Indigenous forms.

Continuing to fight a pervasive history of misrepresentation and institutionalization of media on the part of museums and archives, Indigenous groups are not only reclaiming the means of production, but of preservation and presentation.

The small and large-scale repatriation efforts undertaken by cultural institutions to return objects and documentation to the Indigenous communities in which they were created are a testament to the importance of Indigenous people controlling and managing their own heritage materials.^{[6]Institutions such as the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies, Australia’s National Film and Television Archive, and the Smithsonian Museum of the American Indian, are beginning to acknowledge the traditional owners of the material they hold in their collections. They are doing so by small and large-scale physical object and digital repatriation schemes, as well as working with Tribal advisors and collaborators.} Some of this material, such as video recordings of sacred ceremonies, is not meant to be viewed by non-initiated people either within or outside the Indigenous community. So, when museums and archives make efforts to digitize films recorded by anthropologists, missionaries, scientists, photographers, or explorers and repatriate them to communities, if they make them accessible in ways that are counter to Indigenous knowledge formations, the same power imbalances can be reinforced. A long history of colonialism, bolstered via the control of media production and access, means that Indigenous and other marginalized media must be self-managed.

Because it is ‘the commons’^{[7]I am using the term ‘commons’ in the sense of universal participation.} that decide what resources should be shared as a society, in accordance with what is assumed to be good for a generalized public, the principles that emerge from the movement towards openness online do not necessarily suit Indigenous people, and their diverse ways of knowing and living.

Within the rhetoric surrounding a video commons is a universalist assumption that all media should be freely available to all users.

According to researcher Kimberly Christen, co-developer of two innovative digital archives designed around Indigenous protocols, ‘In their critique of the current “romance of the public domain”, legal scholars suggest that the prevalent commons talk, especially among the advocates of a digital commons, ignores the multiple disparities between those assumed to make up the commons’^{[8]Kimberly Christen, ‘Gone Digital: Aboriginal Remix and the Cultural Commons’, InternationalJournal of Cultural Property 12.3 (2005): 332-333.} Christen goes on to point out that intellectual property regimes misrepresent the nature of knowledge allocation and distribution within Indigenous knowledge systems.^{[9]Christen, ‘Gone Digital’, p. 333.} Many Indigenous cultures abide by cultural protocols, forms of cultural exchange, and knowledge management that can be significantly different from Western forms; for example these protocols may be collective, based on ‘systems of accountability’,^{[10]Christen, ‘Gone Digital’, p. 333.} or connected to the land. For some Australian Aboriginal groups, certain knowledge, stories, songs, dances, and ceremonies are only meant for initiated members of the community, so that knowledge is classified according to the groupings of gender, age, and level of initiation.

There is also a cultural tradition of not speaking the name of loved ones who have died.^{[11]But with the advent of recording technologies and now new digital technologies, this practice continues to shift. For more on this, please see: ‘On Not Looking: the Ethics of Aesthetics in Online Exhibits’, Invited presentation as part of the University of Rochester’s Visual and Cultural Studies Program’s conference, Visual and Cultural Studies the Next 20 years, Rochester, NY, October 2, 2009.} Additionally, the languages of many Indigenous groups do not have written forms, or are embedded within so much culturally specific knowledge that they are difficult to translate or make meaningful to outsiders. Thus, when we acknowledge the diversity of knowledge systems, and that those systems need to be differently and separately managed, the idea of sharing everything becomes not only unattainable, but undesirable. The need for cultural distinctiveness, cultural rights and cultural protocols suggests the need for coordinated, specific strategies for video presentation that may not fit harmoniously within the overwhelming outcry for universal openness.

Not everything is meant to be shared, remixed, or turned into a meme.

It is perilous to assume that, since mainstream culture seems to be slowly migrating towards an acceptance of universal openness, all content will or should be Creative Commons, freely accessible, usable, shared, or remixed. However, as media tools and use proliferate both for Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples, these protocols for viewing are shifting in relation to the technology. Indigenous online video demonstrates that cultural tradition and protocols are constantly in Flux, as are the digital commons themselves. To assume that technology is constantly evolving towards the future, whilst traditional cultures are in stasis, is fictitious. According to Christen,

The allure of studying indigenous uses of new technologies lies in the juxtaposition of two seemingly contradictory elements: the past-oriented, romantic notion of indigenous peoples who are somehow in modernity but not of it, set against the future- oriented, equally romantic notion of new technologies as the signifier of a progressive, fast-paced, global modernity. For a contradiction to be imaginable, it must function in a given set of standards and practices: this one says that indigenous people cannot be simultaneously traditional and modern, technologically savvy and politically astute, materially oriented and authentically indigenous. That logic is wrong.^{[12]Christen, ‘Gone Digital’, p. 318}

Online Indigenous media portals and digital archives have the potential to activate the simultaneity of tradition and ongoing change within contemporary Indigenous culture. When the tools are accessible, audiovisual objects such as videos, audio, and photos which document traditional (and ever-evolving) cultural practices and language can be easily shared online or offline by web-based technologies, thereby empowering and enfranchising Indigenous individuals and communities. As David Nathan notes, the online environment ‘has reconstituted the balance between visual, oral and textual modes of presenting information in a way that supports cultural perspectives’.^{[13]David Nathan, quoted in Martin Nakata, ‘Indigenous Knowledge and the Cultural Interface: Underlying Issues at the Intersection of Knowledge and Information Systems’, IFLA Journal, 28 (2002): 287.} To take this point further, it might be argued that video and databases, being based less on the written word and more on oral and visual ways of knowing, are particularly suited to Indigenous knowledge representation and dissemination. The database allows for the organization of information in new and multiple ways, and thus allows Indigenous knowledge to be structured and presented on its own terms – whether visually, or according to metadata fields based on Indigenous knowledge. Additionally, improved metadata, enhanced by users with specific cultural knowledge, protects material against misinterpretation and misappropriation.

As the landscape of Indigenous video online is constantly in flux, we can ask the following questions: How can we make use of an ecology of openness while at the same time protecting Indigenous knowledges? In upholding protocols and restricting cultural information for specific groups, can we at the same time denounce censorship? How can we make an argument for Indigenous peoples (or ethnic groups) being able to maintain culture (by keeping certain parts of it for initiated members of the community) in ways that do not work against universal access to knowledge? Is open Indigenous video an oxymoron? The landscape of open video presents us with the possibility of offering Indigenous media on its own, ever-shifting terms. This article is only a small contribution to what must be a widespread, collaborative, inventive, and ongoing discussion between all stakeholders in online video. It seeks to open up critical areas of discussion about technical and cultural protocols of openness, property, and propriety.

The Proliferation of Indigenous Media

Indigenous communities and individuals have been engaging in media creation for decades, for more reasons than can be counted. Video has been used as a tool for human rights struggles, artistic expression, cultural and language preservation, and for delivering forth Native voices to and between local and global arenas. Despite the long history of media creation from countless communities, Indigenous issues continue to be marginalized within public debate, resulting in unequal distribution of resources and even human rights violations. Additionally, interviews; recordings of ceremonies, stories, songs and dances; documentaries; fiction films; video art; testimonies; animation; new media art, and many other forms of media creation, whether created by anthropologists in the 1890s or by Indigenous video artists today, all have an important place in the history of moving images that relate to Indigenous peoples, as well as the history of moving images more generally. These might include interviews, recordings of ceremonies, stories, songs and dances, documentaries, fiction films, video art, testimonies, animation, new media art, or other forms of media creation. To leave this content out of the collective memory, simply because of its politically charged or complicated nature, would be yet another iteration of colonialism. In most cases, material that is not appropriate for public display (which is usually not content created by Indigenous artists, but rather visual images taken by anthropologists or researchers since the time of contact),^{[14]A good example of this is when ceremonies are recorded without permission. One notable exception is in the situation of Aboriginal Australian visual media, images of individuals who have passed away become too painful to view, regardless of how the images were taken.} still has a need to be preserved and made accessible to communities themselves.

However, as the distribution of Indigenous media is becoming more and more common, the landscape seems to be shifting. The scores of Indigenous individuals, collectives and communities who are creating content more prolifically than ever before do not only have access to more avenues of distribution in the growing number of festivals and events centred around Indigenous media,^{[15] In 2009, Toronto’s imagineNATIVE Film + Media Art Fesitval, now considered the world’s largest and most prolific indigenous film festival, had a record number of attendees: 11,561 people in total attended festival events. Information from Violet Chum (Festival Assistant), e-mail message to author, February 26, 2010.} but also in the emerging use of online media. One historic yet recent example of this emerging use of online video took place in 2008 when independent Inuit film production company Isuma Productions went online with their interactive multimedia platform IsumaTV.^{[16]IsumaTV: www.isuma.tv.} The platform was created out of a need by Inuit, Aboriginal, Métis and other First Nations film-makers to have independent means of distributing their work. Inequitable access to national distribution and broadcast licensing for Inuit or Aboriginal-language films in Canada makes it difficult, if not impossible, to have more films financed or produced. IsumaTV’s multimedia platform for global Indigenous media, has a variety of content, functionalities, and projects. It allows users not only to record, store and present content, but to share and create an active community around Indigenous knowledges, languages, experiences, opinions, ways of life, and around issues that traverse the local and the global. Once called a ‘YouTube for Indigenous media’, it is now a trusted repository of important Indigenous language, cultural and political content, which in its first fifteen months had 7.5 million hits from over 40 countries. IsumaTV is innovative, in that it provides free tools for users to upload multimedia content posted to channels based on the categories of community, organization, artist, issue, or project, among others.

Although IsumaTV’s Inuit and other First Nations users seem to be more interested in public access and openness than in private or limited access, the platform also has the capacity to make any information private. This capacity is only available to people who are designated ‘members’ of a channel: private channels allow information to be ‘open’ to a specific community of users but ‘closed’ to all other users. IsumaTV also offers tools to share content within the general public, or with a community of choice. Furthermore, IsumaTV is working on hybrid combinations of online and offline means of distribution, such as using local server networks to make sure that Indigenous people are able to access content in poorly connected areas. IsumaTV’s moves to create increased openness via broadband solutions that improve access and allow users to define their own sets of openness demonstrates one way of negotiating the tensions that exist between access and restriction.

[Open] Indigenous Video

Within the more specific contest of online video, the seemingly inherent and at times over-valued concept of openness has important ethical implications for Indigenous content. Part of the mission of the newly formed Open Video Alliance is to facilitate the creation of ‘a more decentralized, diverse, competitive, accessible, interoperable, and innovative future of video’.^{[17]Open Video Alliance public wiki, http://openvideoalliance.org/wiki/index.php?title=Some_principles_for_open_video.} The Open Video Alliance, a collective venture between an ad-hoc group of organizations dedicated to fostering the growth of open video, including the Yale Information Society Project at Yale Law School, Kaltura, who are the developers of the world’s first full open source online video platform, the Participatory Culture Foundation, who are the creators of the open source Miro internet video player, and iCommons, hope to contribute to a much needed shift toward greater access and the free and open use of media in everyday life.

In the context of Indigenous video online, the recent emergence of the concept of open video and its defining principles – such as combating censorship and upholding ‘universal accessibility’ – have important implications for Indigenous content, because of the aforementioned variety of knowledge systems and cultural protocols, which differ greatly depending on the community in discussion. Critical issues emerge when considering the potential free and open distribution of Indigenous online video content, including issues of the sacred, safety and security (especially when media tools are used during times of civil unrest), and Indigenous intellectual property differences.

These issues are highlighted in the case of images taken without permission which also violate Indigenous cultural protocols, such as films of sacred cultural ceremonies recorded by anthropologists, or pictures of deceased persons that are too ‘sorrowful’^{[18]While it’s true that images of the dead can also be sorrowful in a western context, in those contexts this does not usually restrict their showing. However, in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities, seeing an image of or speaking the name of a deceased person is usually not done out of respect, and because of an overwhelming feeling of pain felt by the grieving family. Many films in Australia are required to have a title card warning Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders to ‘use caution viewing this film, as it may contain images or voices of dead persons’, an act of respect for their cultural views.} to view. Images of such a sensitive nature require a media landscape that provides autonomous control over this content to those pictured, or their relatives and ancestors, especially for the goal of making positive cultural or community use out of problematic material. The cultural, political and ethical dilemmas of moving images and their potential consequences demand understanding from online video practitioners. Thus, they might conceive of ways that open practices might help to actually expand cultural sovereignty, increase awareness in the field of online video, assist projects in becoming more sustainable, and enable such powerful modes of sharing and collaboration to encourage wider culturally and epistemologically sensitive access to Indigenous content.

Somewhat surprisingly, upon its birth, the open video movement had already begun to be a part of the conversation surrounding ethics and Indigenous content. The 2009 Open Video Conference, in conjunction with the Open Video Alliance, hosted a panel entitled ‘Human Rights and Indigenous Media: Dilemmas, Challenges and Opportunities’. An introduction was given by WITNESS Hub Manager Sameer Padania regarding the intersection of open video with ethical concerns relating to human rights, and more specifically to Indigenous rights. In the context of human rights video documentation, Padania raised the question of whether a culture of openness can be supported when it comes to concerns of consent, dignity, representation, and security for Indigenous communities.

Subsequently, NYU’s Faye Ginsburg spoke about the movement of media technologies into Indigenous communities, and the effectiveness of video for visibility, such as the use of camera by Indigenous groups as protection by recording injustice and mistreatment. However, she also acknowledged the danger of open video when it comes to cultural protocols that vary between Indigenous communities. As a first step, Ginsburg recommended conversation about what is ethically acceptable and what is not. Ideas regarding cultural protocols are proliferating, with the interest in ethics of presentation garnering interest and support. Quite a few academics and practitioners are focusing on this area, including Kimberley Christen, and the Association of Tribal Archives, Libraries, and Museums, including their associated events. The issue has also been addressed in the cultural protocols developed in collaboration with the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies^{[19]The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Protocols for Libraries, Archives and InformationServices was published in 1995 by ALIA. It was endorsed by the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Library and Information Resource Network (ATSILIRN), has been looked to in developing other protocols globally, and is available in full online: aiatsis} and the Society of American Archivists.

The Problem of Access

Online public domain and open access information resources, knowledge, and media are proliferating. And yet, despite the intense focus upon openness – open content and open source – access to online video is actually closed in a number of ways to many potential Indigenous viewers, users and sharers. Currently, those most frequently accessing Indigenous media online are often researchers or non-native people with high-speed broadband or satellite connections. Many Indigenous people living in remote settings do not have access to adequate bandwidth to stream video at high-speed, and those in rural or urban settings sometimes do not have adequate access to computers. In Igloolik, a town with a population of about 1,500 in the remote Nunavut territory in the Canadian Arctic, maximum download speeds of 762 kb/sec are available at $400 Canadian per month: a rate that is 65 times slower than in Montreal or Ottawa at five times the price. And unfortunately, low bandwidth northern communities who are already 365 times behind cities like Ottawa or Montreal in cost-per-kilobit see the size of this gap grow every year.^{[20]Norman Cohn, DIAMA: Digitizing the Inuit and Aboriginal Media Archive 2008-09 Final Report, funding report, 1 August, 2009, p. 29.} Limited technological infrastructure on reservations and in remote communities means that potential users and user communities attain limited benefit from innovations in online video. These same limitations also restrict offline, community-centred uses of video.^{[21]Such as content management systems that are created only for local, community use.}

This lack of media infrastructure, when combined with the remoteness of communities, has garnered some interest from researchers and even film-makers (such as those at IsumaTV), who are able to make a case for national and international philanthropic and university funding and resources. As a result of these partnerships, a number of extra-institutional digital places/ archives for cultural heritage preservation have been emerging in the last few years, especially in Australia and North America. Culturally appropriate databases based on Indigenous knowledge systems have been created, built, and maintained both online and offline, in collaboration with archival professionals, information scientists, anthropologists and programmers. Many of these projects are increasingly open source, demonstrating the recognition of the need for sharing the tools that have been created specifically for Indigenous cultural heritage management, allowing an open system for creating the structure of ownership. These efforts have come at a time when there is an increasing awareness on the part of cultural institutions that Indigenous content belongs to its cultural owners, including a large number of repatriation efforts. However, like any other media, the magnitude of content exceeds the limited technological infrastructure possessed by many Indigenous communities, especially if there is no funded archivist or researcher to assist them.

For most Indigenous communities, once content is repatriated, a lack of further resources prevents them from making it accessible.

The most ethically and epistemologically robust way to preserve Indigenous heritage is through community collaboration, especially in the design of the infrastructure and contextualization of the content. This is the case, for example, in projects developed by engineers, designers, ethnographers, and developers – including Ramesh Srinivasan, Kimberly Christen and her team, as well as others.^{[22]See the project descriptions in: Ramesh Srinivasan, ‘Tribal Peace – Preserving the Cultural Heritage of Dispersed Native American Communities’. Paper presented at the biennale International Cultural Heritage Informatics Conference: Digital Culture & Heritage, Haus der Kulturne der Welt, Berlin, August 31-September 2, 2004, www.archimuse.com/publishing/ichim04/4763_Srinivasan.pdf; Kimberley Christen et al., ‘Digital Dilemmas, Cultural Solutions: the Mukurtu Wumpurrarni-kari Archive’, project description, 29 January, 2008,. www.mukurtuarchive.org/doc/mukurtu_press_release_02_08.doc.} These innovative projects have been created out of the need for people to access content in culturally appropriate ways. They illustrate how both offline and online models are able to be maintained whilst upholding ethical and culturally appropriate presentation of media content.

In 2003, development began for Mukurtu Wumpurrarni-kari Archive, an offline digital archive housed at the Nyinkka Nyunyu Art and Culture Centre in Tennant Creek, Northern Territory, Australia. The archive allows content to be uploaded, managed, shared and annotated through a specific set of cultural protocols designated by the Warumungu community. As a browser-based digital archive for multimedia content that emphasizes ‘access’, ‘accountability’, and ‘cultural protocols’ that drive the way people interact with content, Mukurtu is highly successful in its use of Warumungu cultural protocols to facilitate access to content. In using those protocols, the Mukurtu Wumpurrarni-kari website explains, ‘the archive mirrors a system of accountability in which many people engage in the responsible reproduction and transmission of cultural knowledge and materials’.^{[23]Mukurtu Wumpurrarni-kari Archive, http://www.mukurtuarchive.org/about.html.} Its database structure, user-friendly visual interface, and interactive features (such as a profile-based content delivery system, and user-generated content groupings) allow users to navigate through content and arrange items according to their own categories, add tags and comments, and make their own access copies. These systems, by being restricted to members of the community, allow users to form their own safe public spaces around media content.

Extending upon the software created for Mukurtu, Christen and her collaborators subsequently created the Plateau Peoples’ Web Portal (PPWP). Instead of a browser-based offline digital archive, PPWP is online, as the Plateau tribes are physically located across three states, and because the material users wanted access to was held at regional and national collecting institutions. This is an online digital archive space that allows Plateau peoples’ cultural materials, which are held in Washington State University’s special collections and in the Museum of Anthropology, to be curated by Plateau Tribes.^{[24]Plateau tribes are the Indigenous people of the Plateau or Intermontane region of western Canada and the United States.} The PPWP website notes that the software, using extensive administration features, provides each tribe with ‘control over their content, narratives, tribal knowledge, metadata fields and categories’ so that ‘Tribal administrators and tribal users can add additional knowledge to the portal materials on an ongoing basis through the dynamic back-end features’.^{[25]Plateau Peoples’ Web Portal, http://libarts.wsu.edu/plateaucenter/portalproject/design.html.} Collaborators involved in both projects are currently developing the Mukurtu software tool into an open source, standards-based archive and content management tool geared to the specific cultural protocols and intellectual property needs of indigenous communities globally.^{[26]Check the Mukurtu website for updates regarding the new software tool: http://www.mukurtuarchive.org/.}

Another innovative project created out of the need for specific cultural needs is Ara Irititja. Ara Irititja (‘stories from a long time ago’) is a community-based digital archive and software initiative designed at the request of Pitjantjatjara / Yankunytjatjara (Anangu) peoples in South Australia.^{[27] This cultural protocol has to do with Men and Women having different roles in society and in ceremonies; these roles vary from language group to language group. Some ceremonies are for men only, others are for women only, and both men and women have their own particular Spiritual and sacred objects: http://www.indigenousaustralia.info/culture.html.} Officially commenced in 1994 to repatriate ‘lost’ material for Anangu, and to make it available and participatory at the community and personal level, the project has effectively drawn family and community members of all ages together, through the use of multimedia content. The innovative software is presented visually, organized according to Indigenous standards, in native languages wherever possible, and protects and/or restricts access to private and sensitive materials, such as images of people who have passed away, and information relating to men’s and women’s business.^{[28]This cultural protocol has to do with Men and Women having different roles in society and in ceremonies; these roles vary from language group to language group. Some ceremonies are for men only, others are for women only, and both men and women have their own particular Spiritual and sacred objects: http://www.indigenousaustralia.info/culture.html.} Over time, other Aboriginal communities and related organizations, such as the Koorie Heritage Trust in Melbourne, the Northern Territory Library System, and the Sisters of St John of God in Broome, have begun to use the Ara Irititja software in order to organize their own content.

To further its reach, this year the Ara Irititja project is launching server/browser-based knowledge management software that will be available for purchase to other communities internationally, and adaptable to their specific needs. The purchaser of the license will have control over software development, enabling extensive changes to be made to the interface, to data entry fields and to functionality, according to the specific needs of the community. For interested communities to make major adaptations to Ara Irititja, they of course need to have funding allotted to pay a programmer, train for community maintenance, and ideally to support members of the community, especially elders, to advise about cultural protocols. With the right support, communities will be able to make serious graphic and structural changes, as well as create individual ‘profiles’ under such headings as ‘people’, ‘flora’, ‘fauna’, ‘places’, ‘events’, ‘activities’, ‘cosmological narratives’, ‘stories’, and ‘historical stories’. These headings can be deleted, added and re-named to suit the needs of any community. The new software also allows content to be categorized as ‘open’, ‘sensitive’, or ‘sorrow’, according to cultural protocols. And since the updated Ara Irititja is web-ready, content can be curated, and ‘open’ content may go online (but not necessarily be made ‘public’),^{[29]If a community chooses, open content can be designated by senior elders or other knowledge holders. The new Ara Irititja will most likely be on an intranet – an online network that is kept private by multiple levels of security.} whilst sensitive content will remain available only to community members where the software is running. The new software also enables archive users to annotate material with text or even with audio or video comments. This new functionality removes the necessity for the written word, and allows users to record their knowledge in their own words and language. This has the potential to encourage not only knowledge about multimedia content, but increase the archive of video and audio material of endangered Indigenous languages.

All three of these web-based archives for multimedia materials – IsumaTV, Mukurtu and Ara Irititja – exemplify the use of web-based database technologies and customized informational architectures to provide digital archives that foreground user-centred design, networking, and sharing potential. Though the software used for these projects is not specific to video, it represents some interesting moves toward increased sovereignty and collaboration using web-based technologies. It also demonstrates how internet access and online knowledge-sharing can contribute directly to Indigenous livelihoods and can actually be productively aligned with traditional Indigenous knowledge systems and protocols. Though adaptations to the architecture may still require the assistance of a software developer, both the Ara Irititja and Mukurtu archive projects are moving towards the development of tools that are economically sustainable, open source, or both, and thus may help serve global Indigenous communities. These efforts also demonstrate how local, community-focused projects are opening themselves up to more global forms of collaboration.

To summarize, as more and more Indigenous media makers create content, and as museums, archives, and other cultural institutions rapidly decentralize their collections and acknowledge Indigenous protocols and rights to ownership through repatriation, there is an increasing need for tools and strategies to make fruitful use of the growing amount of content. In fact, the moves of Ara Irititja, Mukurtu and IsumaTV to think creatively about how their particular uses of technology might serve Indigenous communities globally brings to mind two Inuit principles in particular: Qanuqtuurunnarniq^{[30]Chris Corrigan, ‘What is Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit?’, 16 August, 2010, https://www.chriscorrigan.com/parkinglot/} is the concept of being resourceful to solve problems; Piliriqatigiingniq is the concept of collaborative relationships or working together for a common purpose. In the digital era, Indigenous peoples and their advocates are thinking resourcefully about future pathways, and exploring new methods and technologies to enable cultural and linguistic revitalization.

Indigenous communities have used video and online technologies to respond to challenges in representation, cultural preservation, language endangerment, and other political and cultural goals. The aforementioned projects are examples of how openness in sharing solutions and technologies can have positive effects for Indigenous knowledge, cultural sustainability, and cultural revival. However, although significant progress has been made, these efforts are dispersed and disconnected, and their impact has arguably been limited in comparison to the vast amount of global Indigenous-related video. The lack of a global alliance, shared tools, and standardized cultural and technical protocols that are able to cater to non-standard Indigenous cultural protocols is impeding further development. In order to make use of the technologies available, and to protect Indigenous cultural protocols and ways of knowing, the world of online video needs to invest in collaborations that will facilitate, develop and share sovereign and sustainable solutions. The benefits of congregating (if not entirely unifying) dispersed efforts into an alliance or network of interested parties (under Indigenous control with non-Indigenous and institutional supports or supporters from the online video and moving image archiving worlds) are great. There is also a need for an open source management system or tool for Indigenous video that is adaptation-ready. The Mukurtu team’s development of the new Mukurtu software, which will be an open source standards-based archive tool for global use, shows that significant steps are being taken, but they require further support if the diverse communities across the globe are to benefit. Sustaining these projects is difficult, as they rely on governmental, philanthropic and university funding, which can be sporadic and limited.

Unfortunately, in the fields of moving image archiving or online video, the knowledge needed to digitally archive and make Indigenous heritage accessible is not yet widespread.^{[31] A blogger named ‘Russell’ on the archiving blog Records Junkie seems unaware of indigenous epistemological differences, and therefore does not see why indigenous content should ever be under restricted access: ‘No one, Native American tribe or not, has any legal right to force the archives to limit access to the materials … I do not believe that cultural awareness or sensitivity to cultural norms or mores should dictate 1) who owns materials from different cultures or 2) who controls access and use to these materials’. See: Russell, ‘Who Owns Cultural Materials’, Records Junkie, blog posted 30 January, 2010, http://recordsjunkie.blogspot.com/2010/01/who-controls-cultural-materials.html.} In North America, a strong start has been made with the aforementioned panels at the Open Video conference, as well as the development of the Native American Archives Roundtable for the Society of American Archivists (SAA), and their subsequent work with supporters^{[32]The development of the protocols was also supported by the Society of the Council for the Preservation of Anthropological Records, the American Indian Library Association, the International Indigenous Librarians Forum, and the American Association for State and Local History.} on the Protocols for Native American Archival Materials.^{[33]The Protocols were devised from different professional ethical codes from the Society of American Archivists, American Association for State and Local History, American Anthropological Association, and the Oral History Association; a number of significant international declarations recognizing Indigenous rights, including several now issued by the United Nations; and the ground-breaking Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Protocols for Libraries, Archives and Information Services.} However, as protocols and standards addressing Native American material are neither widely known or used by the moving image archives or online video community, nor specifically focused on online moving image material, there is still a gap to be filled, especially for cultural institutions that have holdings that relate or belong to Indigenous groups who would like to make the material accessible.

However, the networking and knowledge-sharing capabilities that the web affords do provide the opportunity to develop numerous partnerships between activists, advocates, researchers, archivists, elders, technologists, community members, and programmers. In order for Indigenous peoples to reclaim culture on the net, the new sets of video tools and practices being developed need to be more broadly accessible. To develop these tools and practices, it is necessary to encourage the development of a network which would draw together all constituents and stakeholders from the open video movement: Indigenous media, (Indigenous) intellectual property, information science, and Indigenous libraries and archives.^{[34]Such as those involved in the American Indian Library Association; Tribal Archives, Libraries, and Museums; and the Global Indigenous Television Network.}

Based upon the formal experiments and technical successes of recent local projects, the network would most likely have three essential features. A central node would exist as an online platform and have a channel structure to allow the formation of different knowledge communities/committees surrounding various issues, such as intellectual property and best practice. Secondly, a blog containing information on Indigenous protocols for archiving and access would expand in-depth knowledge on special interest areas to media workers developing local projects, and providing close-up snapshots of project achievements and innovations worldwide, as well as advocating for varied cultural needs. And finally, a series of training events and conferences would expand and share knowledge on a variety of topics.

In addition, members of the network could write guest blogs for YouTube’s politics blog, in order to share the importance of Indigenous ethics and online video, just as WITNESS and YouTube have formed a partnership to increase awareness of the role of online video in human rights advocacy.^{[35]See: ‘Protecting yourself, your subjects and your human rights videos on YouTube’, 21 June, 2010, http://youtube-global.blogspot.com/2010/06/protecting-yourself-your-subjects-and.html} These efforts would increase cultural understanding of issues pertaining to online video, and the use of open technologies to achieve cultural goals for communities with distinctive cultural needs, as well as partnering communities with the software tools and programmers that are most suited to them. The network would be a way to foster and integrate Indigenous knowledge into the field of online video. Although thus far its efforts have concentrated more on open access to media, the existing global Indigenous media network IsumaTV could be the perfect online site for gathering those with the specialized knowledge and common goals that are necessary for more epistemologically sensitive, collaborative, sovereign, and sustainable access to Indigenous video.

While it might be difficult to find the additional labour required to maintain this global network, in the long run the network would prevent unachievable and under-resourced ‘reinventions of the wheel’ at the local and global levels. Although such an alliance might appear to threaten the sovereignty of individual communities, archives and networks, the proposed network would allow distinct cultural groups to maintain their own protocols, while sharing methods, tools, systems, and best practices. The value of such a network would be its independence from anyone institutional context. As part of the network, each organization could choose their degree of involvement and collaboration with other groups, individuals and communities.

Conclusion

If we understand the age of open[ing] video as one of increased and improved access, it becomes possible to imagine open video and Indigenous video existing harmoniously. Is openness inherently a public good, or does it depend on the way openness is instigated? As content, tools and platforms continue to proliferate, the world of online video can adapt to meet the needs of Indigenous communities. This is especially necessary because the needs of such communities are neither uniform, nor perfectly conducive to open standards per se. In fact, they are incredibly diverse: protocols do not only differ from community to community, but from family to family. The needs and expressions of knowledge, tradition, and living cultures are constantly evolving. But as the possibilities of web-based customizable tools evolve with them, Indigenous people will have more power to decide what becomes openly accessible to the public, thereby exerting continuous self-determined ownership of their own histories and cultures. Online video practitioners have a cultural responsibility to respect and nurture the fact that Indigenous cultural heritage ultimately belongs to the knowledge keepers, elders, communities, and individuals who have maintained their own systems of knowledge for thousands of years.

Despite constant battles for funding, the aforementioned multimedia Indigenous heritage projects have devised creative solutions in order to address the needs for Indigenous self- determination and sovereignty. Collaborative and participatory activities around video and technology have the ability to stimulate social, cultural, political and economic growth in Indigenous individuals, groups, communities, and cultures. However, organizational and structural models of collaboration need to be developed to give critical (in both senses of the term) support to unstable open content creation, and the ideals and realities of access. Developing technical and cultural protocols for such a distinct, diverse, and critical set of content as online Indigenous video will require that we extend available tools to those who do not currently have access to them. In order to achieve ethical openness, we must invest in an online video ecosystem that cultivates collaboration, sovereignty, and sustainability.