The Impact of Technology on Indigenous Peoples: An Introduction

by AJ Johnson

Indigenous peoples across the world have been affected by the introduction of technologies from foreign cultures for hundreds of years. In some cases, the technologies have been adopted and adapted to the group’s daily life without dramatically changing their way of living. In other cases, new technologies have completely changed self-identities, lifestyles and worldviews. Modern technologies are being introduced to indigenous societies today at an accelerated speed. This undoubtedly creates some negative consequences for traditional ways of living. On the other hand, it also gives indigenous groups the ability to communicate with each other and other groups in similar situations from around the world. Modern technologies allow indigenous groups to participate in the larger societies and economies around them, and also enables them to preserve and promote their way of life for their own future generations and for our collective knowledge of human history.

This pathfinder, which can be found at http://www.gslis.utexas.edu/~vlibrary/edres/pathfinders /ajohnson is designed to serve as part of a virtual library of educational resources for pre-service teachers at the Northwest Indian College in Lummi, Washington. All sources are available for free on the World Wide Web unless otherwise noted. Because technology, encompassed in a broad definition, can be used to include anything from sticks and rocks to books and farming methods to computers and spacecraft, this pathfinder only covers the most recent technologies that have been proliferating throughout indigenous communities and the world since the 1980’s. Sample Web sites from different indigenous peoples worldwide are used, but the primary focus is on Native American peoples.

The sources included in this pathfinder are accessible by performing searches on various Internet search engines, such as Google, Alta Vista, and HotBot. The most effective searches were conducted using combinations of the terms "technology," "indigenous,’ and "Indian or Native American." To find more good Web pages, it is often effective to look at the pages that have already been found and look for a page or list of links to other pages. There are many pages created with the sole purpose of providing links to other pages. A good example of this is the Digital Librarian, which has a Native Americans link page (http://www.digital-librarian.com/nativeamericans.html), leading the user to many good resources. The majority of the sources that are in the pathfinder, instead of specifically addressing the impact of technology on indigenous communities, are illustrations of the profound changes that have come about since the technologies were introduced and adopted by indigenous communities. The sources were evaluated by analyzing content and looking for the creators, or authors, of each source. The last three letters of a Web site reveal what kind of an organization the authors of that site are, and only several companies (.com) were used, and those were well-known companies that produce worthwhile information. The rest were either government Web sites (.gov) or educational Web sites (.edu), along with some non-profit organizations (.org). The sites included were chosen because they are excellent representations of information available on the World Wide Web about indigenous communities and how they are using new technologies, from online digital photo collections to assessments, reports, articles and statistics that members of other indigenous communities can view and use online.