Technology | Innovation | Creative | Solutions
About
Aboriginal Territories in Cyberspace (AbTeC) is a series of projects investigating innovative methods for First Nations to participate in networked culture to tell our stories while populating and shaping cyberspace itself.
Main
The main objective of AbTeC is to discover, define and implement methods by which Aboriginal people can use networked communication technology to strengthen our cultures. AbTeC’s Skins project will bring Aboriginal community organizations together with academic institutions to conduct research into the means by which the power of digital and networked technology can be put to use in producing and preserving our knowledge, culture and language. We will work with elder who have stories to tell, bands who have histories to preserve, and Aboriginal language speakers who want to share their knowledge. The goal is to provide conceptual and practical tools that will allow us to create new, Aboriginally-determined territories within the collection of web-pages, online games, chat rooms, bulletin boards and virtual environments that we call cyberspace.
Beth asks questions about alterNative Media, my opinions on fine art, and the future of video games for Indigenous people. My responses also came with a small peppering of nostalgia for some video-games-of-yester-year some of you might well recall.
Check out the interview here: http://www.abtec.org/blog/?p=118.
| In this portion of IPI, we are fortunate to hear from Jon Proudstar, creator of Tribal Force, a comic book featuring Native American superheroes and a historic first for a Native-created comic books, as he shoots the bull with Michael Sheyahshe (me!). In addition to his comic book milestone, Jon is a community leader and Indie filmmaker, working with such Indigenous artists as, Sterlin Harjo (a former classmate of mine, during our time at the University of Oklahoma) and others. I first became acquainted with Jon when he agreed to do an interview about Tribal Force for my book, Native Americans in Comic Books. Since then, Jon and I have continued communicating and sharing ideas about Native American portrayal, both in comic books and in mainstream pop-culture, in general. Here, Jon shares some wisdom and insight from his life experiences about how we Indigenous people can begin telling our own stories (which, if you've read my book, is one of my personal 'soap boxes,' as well). Enjoy. |
JP: My book is Tribal Force! It's the first all-Indian super hero comic in the history of the United States! I had always wanted to do an Indian comic book since I was a kid. I grew up in a heavily ethnic neighborhood. It wasn't till I was older that I realized all the heroes in comics where white. I began to contemplate what would happen if the heroes where Indian, Latino, or Black.
