Videocom researchers travel to rural and remote First Nations to learn about use of technology
Video project seeks to understand First Nation use of technology
March 3, 2010 - by: Chris Kornacki
A group of researchers from the National Research Council of Canada hosted a community video festival in Mishkeegogamang First Nation Feb. 27.
The video festival was part of a new research initiative by the National Research Council of Canada.
For more information about this research project visit http://videocom.firstnation.ca
“We want to show people the whole range of what’s possible with just a little video camera and how you can use that to tell your story,” said Susan O’Donnell, senior researcher with the National Research Council. “The technology is out there now that didn’t exist before … video technology is really powerful now.”
Through the research project, O’Donnell and a group of researchers are looking to examine the creativity, ideas and community life of different First Nation communities in the Sioux Lookout area. They are also looking to provide an idea of how First Nation communities are using current technologies to communicate with the rest of Canada and the world.
“Just a couple years ago you had to have a television station to be able to show those stories, but now because of YouTube and other sites you can create videos and upload them there and share them,” O’Donnell said.
The group is also traveling to Fort Severn First Nation to show the same videos they did in Mishkeegogamang.
The videos were all gathered from YouTube, an online video-sharing site, to show what First Nations people are already doing with this technology in the Sioux Lookout area. The festival, which featured about 25 short videos, was an opportunity to show people how video can be used to communicate with other people outside of their community.
In January a poster was sent out to all the First Nation communities in the Sioux Lookout area asking for submissions to the project. O’Donnell said they were often directed to videos on YouTube.
“We had about 50 videos to work with,” Jessi Jones, a research team member said.
Jones is the person who compiled all the videos together to showcase at the video festival.
“We didn’t crop or edited anything. If a video was longer then three minutes, we just took a three minute chunk out of it to use in the festival,” Jones said. “It took me about a week or so to put the videos together once we found them all online.”
The research team was only able to visit two communities. They sent out letters to about 30 chiefs asking if they would be interested in the video festival visiting their community. “The first two that got back to us was where we were going to go,” O’Donnell said. “And Mishkeegogamang and Fort Severn were the first two that replied.”
However, during the festival anyone was able watch it through live web streaming on the VideoCom website hosted by K-Net: videocom.firstnation.ca.
Along with the video festival the research team also did 30-60 minute long interviews with community members about what video technology they were using and what they were not using; video workshops aimed at developing video skills, and a community discussion based around technology.
O’Donnell said they want to understand how communities are using different technologies, how it’s used, and how it could be used more efficiently.
“Basically, how they are using it in their daily lives … how they’re using it to be a youth worker, a mother, a schoolteacher, anything they do in the community,” she said.
“There’s barely any research being done about this, and we want to know how we can use it (video technology) to help develop First Nations.”
Erin Bottle, community based researcher in Mishkeegogamang, said she’s been planning the video festival for about two months.
“We want to engage our people … to show them that they can use technology to voice their opinions and showcase what they have to say about the community,” Bottle said.