For the Indigenous Mapping Workshop 2016, Rosie Child and Charles put together an Overview Video
In the summer of 2015, Kitasoo/Xai’xais Nations joined the Indigenous Laws Project spearheaded by the Central Coast Indigenous Resource Alliance. Funding was found to hire 5 KX community researchers to work with 3 lawyers and assorted records management experts. A secure web application was built to house the resulting interactive database, a “Digital Archive”, of Collections, Items, Places and Case Briefs. As of Fall 2016, more than 1900 KX Items have been cataloged and ‘tagged’ using 50 different research fields—such as title, author, era, LUP theme, sensitivity, location, etc. These Items include maps, letters, charts, interview transcripts, books, photographs, reports, paintings, and carvings. The Items are grouped into 40 Collections, and have been collated into 29 Case Briefs. In addition, 201 Places have been identified.
A brief tour of the App starts with…
- An Items page for browsing the catalog (e.g. find all letters that refer to fishing camps)
- A search page allows for search of all Items, indexing research fields and full text of uploaded files (pdf, doc)
- An interactive map shows where all the named Places are located, and when drilling down into a Place, one can see a list of all Items and Briefs that refer to that Place
The Highlights of the Project are… We now have well trained community researchers able to do complex records management, file scanning, and basic legal review. The App is used daily by the community researchers. Items cataloged and Briefs researched have been used in a recent court case. Additionally, we have created a ‘school’ role in the App and allowed community students access for research projects.
For more information on the project, please contact Vern Brown or Rose Child at Kitasoo/Xai’xais Nations.