Media.Knet.Ca

Digital Drum (http://digitaldrum.ca) is a community-driven performance space on the Net. It exists as a cultural expression post, cultural language and cultural music video viewing site, social gathering spot, forum to record and upload your own audio and video performances and educational teachings. We welcome you to our space!

From About Digital Drum ...

We hope that this website will be a resource for not only Aboriginal peoples across Canada, but for all!

Digital Drum is a place for Aboriginal Cultural expression — for example: storytelling, media literacy, community traditions, activism and music.

One of the main ideas for us was that Digital Drum would engage youth and increase their awareness of each other. Making us all feel youth have a sense of citizenship and pride in their Aboriginal heritage - both online and in the real-world.

Aboriginal language revitalization is also supported through excerpts from a rich collection of APTN Cultural videos and from a wide variety of independent productions from Aboriginal producers and filmmakers across Canada. We specifically chose excerpts that have different languages to show the richness and diversity of Aboriginal language across Canada.

Through having Aboriginal language, we hope to link Elders to youth. Building this bond — and creating a vehicle for this relationship — is a strong method to reconnect Aboriginal youth to their culture. It is a way to create respect for Elders — by providing youth the opportunity to dialogue and learn. Perhaps it will allow Elders to create stronger relationships with youth.

We also wanted to support a Learning Environment, where APTN Digital Drum supports schools accomplished by:

• Creating Teacher Resources as PDF tools, downloadable from the Digital Drum | Tambour digital site web site.
• Publicizing The Digital Drum Web site among communities where First Nations Studies is taught

We also wanted to support separate versions in English and in French. All APTN Cultural Vignettes and Elders media will be offered in both languages through translated transcriptions. The Elders media will also appear in its language of origin, which will reflect the main language groups among Aboriginal communities in Canada.

Lastly, we hope to increase user visits to Web sites containing APTN content aimed at Aboriginal youth.

Digital Drum is a Canadian Culture Online (Department of Canada Heritage) partnerships project in 2007 with Aboriginal Peoples Television Network.