Search

Welcome to the We are All Related AR Guide Open Educational Resource (OER). This OER was developed to help a team of Indigenous and settler partners navigate the process of co-creating an augmented reality (AR) project. It is designed for teachers and students working in partnership with Indigenous Knowledge Keepers, Elders, and storytellers. This document is the Student Guidebook - it accompanies the Teacher Handbook, which is aimed at facilitators and includes summaries of section topics, learning outcomes, discussion questions, and activities. While this curriculum package is designed as a team-based project involving a facilitator, individuals can also work through the materials by using both resources.

As part of an Open Educational Resource (OER), this teacher handbook is intended to work hand-in-hand with the student guidebook to help direct discussions and activities. The We are All Related AR Guide was developed to support a team of Indigenous and settler partners in navigating the process of co-creating an augmented reality (AR) digital media project. It is designed for teachers and students working in partnership with Indigenous Knowledge Keepers, Elders, and storytellers. This teacher handbook explains the intent of each part of the student guidebook, suggests discussion points, and highlights activities and items of note.

Understanding Community Broadband: The Community Broadband Toolkit has been designed for use by Alberta communities to assist in developing broadband solutions. The toolkit is organized into three general sections - learning about broadband, thinking about broadband, and planning broadband. Together these sections aim to identify the key knowledge and actionable steps that a community and its leaders can use to develop and achieve local broadband solutions. The toolkit also contains case examples of broadband solutions from communities across the province. The Toolkit was made possible by funding from the Government of Alberta - Economic Development and Trade. This version is a compressed version of the original toolkit.

Understanding Community Broadband: The Community Broadband Toolkit has been designed for use by Alberta communities to assist in developing broadband solutions. The toolkit is organized into three general sections - learning about broadband, thinking about broadband, and planning broadband. Together these sections aim to identify the key knowledge and actionable steps that a community and its leaders can use to develop and achieve local broadband solutions. The toolkit also contains case examples of broadband solutions from communities across the province. The Toolkit was made possible by funding from the Government of Alberta - Economic Development and Trade.

Digital self-determination elaborates the links between networked digital infrastructure development and the autonomy and agency of indigenous peoples. It foregrounds how indigenous peoples are involved in the diffusion, construction, governance, and use of networked digital infrastructures. Importantly, it considers how these infrastructures are not only tools of emancipation, but can increase the surveillance and control of indigenous peoples by state and corporate interests. They can also extend the historic and ongoing reality of the ‘offline’ economic, social, political, and cultural marginalization of indigenous peoples. However, to accept such negative effects at face value is to fall into the trap of the teleological fallacies of social and technical determinism. Instead, in this dissertation I argue that indigenous peoples can shape and use networked digital infrastructures to support their self-determination. These processes are often guided by a recognition of self-determination that is grounded in and emergent from diverse indigenous laws, customs, and institutions. This frames digital self-determination with reference to the long-term and ongoing work of indigenous peoples to shape their own community-based media organizations and endogenous development projects. My dissertation considers these issues as they articulate with several facets of digital self-determination. I ground my argument in empirical research on the Northern Indigenous Community Satellite Network (NICSN), a cooperative socio-technical network spanning the northern regions of three Canadian provinces: Ontario, Quebec, and Manitoba. The NICSN partners collaborated to build and manage regional infrastructure in ways that reflect the needs of their constituent communities. Moving beyond considerations of access, I frame these infrastructures as socially shaped platforms of agency that are the result of dynamic negotiations and struggles between political actors seeking to advance normative agendas. These activities play out in the formation of frameworks of subsidies and regulatory conditions that reflect attempts to decolonize state-based policies and institutions. Finally, I end with a discussion of how indigenous peoples and governments are shaping online applications into spaces of convergence that reflect their goals of self-determination. Throughout this dissertation, I situate my observations in broader political, economic, and cultural contexts to elaborate both the promise and the challenge of digital self-determination.

Across Canada, rural and remote First Nations face a significant 'digital divide'. As self-determining autonomous nations in Canada, these communities are building broadband systems to deliver public services to their members and residents. To address this challenge, First Nations are working towards a variety of innovative, locally driven broadband development initiatives. This paper contributes a theoretical discussion that frames our understanding of these initiatives by drawing on the paradigm of the 'First Mile' (Paisley & Richardson, 1998). We argue that broadband development policy in Canada must be re-framed to address the specific needs of First Nations. The First Mile position foregrounds community-based involvement, control, and ownership: a consideration we suggest has particular resonance for First Nations. This is because it holds potential to move beyond the historical context of paternalistic, colonial-derived development policies, in the context of broadband systems development. We argue First Nations broadband projects offer on-the-ground examples of a First Mile approach, and call for more research in this area.