Comments | finella_c: Mapping Australia's Indigenous peoples

finella_c

Mapping Australia's Indigenous peoples

Jan 17, 2008 15:01

I was pleased to get a message announcing NativeWiki, a public wiki about indigenous nations and peoples of the world, past and present. Curious about what might have been added about Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, I clicked on "Geographic Regions" on the left-hand menu bar, only to find that the "Australia and New ( Read more... )

post-colonial, australia, culture

Comments 2

dalmeny January 18 2008, 11:29:32 UTC

Any idea why the NativeWiki developers are keeping it separate from Wikipedia? The Wikipedia pages aren't crash hot on Aboriginal peoples, but I did find myself using it the other day to check my explanation of the word "Anangu for a conference paper I was writing.

The map is excellent. I should buy one.

finella_c January 25 2008, 12:45:14 UTC

No, I don't know why they wanted to keep it separate. I haven't heard of any specific motivation, political or otherwise. Wikipedia's coverage on indigenous issues is definitely patchy, and I suppose one possible reason was to flesh that out. Although, last time I checked, quite a few of the entries do seem to repeat Wikipedia content. A bigger (related?) set of reasons might be: attempting to raise the profile of such groups, fostering a sense of community and 'ownership', and perhaps, shared purpose?