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After starting to use Terrastories in our work areas in South America with the Matawai in Suriname, the Wauja in Brazil, and the Kogui in Colombia, we have started to share our oral histories methodology with partners internationally, including the Haudenosaunee of the Six Nations Reserve in Ontario, Canada.

Presentation on ACT's oral histories methodology at a side event organized by ACT at the 2019 United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues.

The Matawai of Suriname, a community that once felt forgotten by the rest of the world, is breaking ground by using a new open-source geostorytelling app to create an extraordinary repository of traditional knowledge through oral history storytelling. The goal of the work is to ensure that future generations of Matawai will be able to learn about their history, culture, and identity in the way that their people always have: through the words of the elders.

The sacred site’s indigenous team has been trained in the use of georeferencing applications, enabling them to increase their knowledge of their territory. Linking the capture of cartographic information with the Terrastories oral histories mapping application developed by ACT in partnership with a team of volunteer developers broadens the scope of maps as well as the potential for describing the territory in multiple dimensions.

Field testing Terrastories to help communities protect place-based cultural knowledge. (post by Kalimar Maia from Mapbox)

The Matawai Maroons of Suriname, descendants of formerly enslaved Africans who fled into the rain forest, have lived in their ancestral territory for hundreds of years. Community elders still remember incredibly richly detailed oral histories about "fosten", referring to the early times when their ancestors first arrived in these strange lands. Today, the tradition of passing on these stories from generation to generation is at risk. The villages are frequently desolate as the youth have left to find work in gold mines or the city, and the elders are gradually passing on to the next life. This film documents a project to try to preserve the knowledge of the elders through participatory mapping and video recording, and using contemporary digital storytelling resources like the open-source application Terrastories powered by Mapbox, to make their knowledge accessible for generations of Matawai to come.

On Sept. 20 Brazil's sacred Xingu cave Kamukuaka, home to centuries-old indigenous engravings, was vandalized & desecrated. As development threatens to wipe out indigenous heritage, we will work to safeguard the sacred knowledge of the communities.

"I just came back from an exhilarating weekend at Ruby for Good 2018 to work with a team to develop an open-source, offline-compatible geostorytelling application. I want to share my experiences, but first, some history..."

Elder Aluakumá recounting the origin story and how he became a shaman.