User:Oceanflynn

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Memory Work

This digitage [1]of my folksonomies helps visualize some of my areas of teaching, learning and research.

I began using Web 2.0 technologies in September 2006 without knowing what Web. 2.0 is. The blog is use as a matrix connecting to all the other Web 2.0 links is called Speechless and is hosted on WordPress http://oceanflynn.wordpress.com [2]. I realized that I needed to complement the original Memory Work article that I authored on Wikipedia with my own blog page entitled Memory Work [3] where I could provide a webliography of useful resources for teaching, learning and research. --oceanflynn 22:05, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

I have taken a break from my PhD which examines the potential of concepts such as memory work for revisiting distorted histories particularly in response to the 1996 Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples (RCAP) undertaken by the federal government of Canada using a Participatory Action Research methodology. I have turned to wikipedia and other Web 2.0 technologies to collaborate with others who want to contribute to a nuanced dialogue within a framework of civil society. In a sense I am attempting to move beyond academia to a larger community of knowers. There are limitations to what can be done in the name of research in embodied cultural institutions with which I am connected. I would like to investigate how knowledge can be managed differently using the capacity of the Internet for collaboration. I will focus on those areas of interdisciplinary investigation undertaken through my decades of inextricably linked teaching, learning and research.

Regarding my wiki article on Memory Work

I admire the organic process by which wiki articles develop through the work of volunteers. I really do relate to the way that sparks of insight emerge through clashes of opinion.

I began to contribute to wikipedia as a guest making an edit to the Canadian Inuit section c. 2005?. I began to do more focused research with the Canadian Inuit community in the early 1990s. My MA in Canadian Studies,Carleton University, Ottawa, ON, CA (1995) submitted as a CD-ROM, examined how interactive multimedia technologies, specifically Toolbook authoring software, could be useful to a more non-hierarchical approach to enhancing understanding of Inuit art.

While still enrolled full-time in my PhD, Carleton University's Dennis Forcese offered me a teaching position in Nunavut. From 2002-2003 I lived and worked in Iqaluit, Nunavut for 18 months (off and on) in a joint pilot project between Nunavut Arctic College and Carleton University's Centre for Initiatives in Education. I developed northern-centred Carleton University BA credit courses on Human Rights and Sociology courses that would give students living and working in Iqaluit the opportunity to begin, advance or complete their BAs while continuing to work full-time in Nunavut. The majority of students were adult Inuit, many of whom worked for the Nunavut government.

From the early 1990s onward I had formed lasting friendships with Ottawa, Ontario's urban Inuit through contract work with the National Gallery of Canada, the Inuit Art Foundation and front-line researcher on Donna Patrick's, PhD Urban Inuit Research Project. I was deeply moved by the suicide epidemic which continues to threaten every small hamlet in Northern Canada. Since leaving Nunavut I have formed even stronger ties with urban Inuit including elders who are now willing to share stories kept hidden.

As I add entries I will be scrupulous in ensuring that every detail has the most robust reference that readers can easily verify. If I make errors I would like them to be corrected by editors who are are as concerned about standards of credibility as I am. References, particularly regarding research on Inuit culture needs to recognize the most recent contributions by authoritative sources. The formation of the Inuit Circumpolar Conference in the 1970s was part of a larger shift in thinking about indigenous peoples worldwide. In Canada in the 1970s, Inuit and First Nations began to hire their own researchers and direct participatory research projects on land occupation and use. Some of these aboriginal knowledge leaders went to government schools in the 1950s and were fully conversant in the use of archives for doing research.

I will be using as much as possible sources that are informed by research in which Inuit have been either participants or primary researchers. One of my former students, Kirt Ejesiak now has an MA from Harvard. Paul Okalik the Premier of Nunavut had a law degree as well as a sound knowledge of IQ Inuit traditional knowledge. While some of the sources produced prior to the 1970s has a potential for being mined for information, it is unproductive to use these works as primary resources without contextualizing them and linking them to later research which reveals why their language, if not certain historical data, is not longer sophisticated enough for a post-RCAP teaching, learning and research climate.

I became a registered user only recently. I will continue to watch and contribute to articles on memory work and Inuit.

I forgot to add my signature to the previous post. I will also be adding a list of references to this. [4]

--oceanflynn 22:07, 21 November 2006 (UTC)