The Pacific Worlds Website: Representing Oceanic Indigenous Geographic Thought Through the Internet
摘要
This work tracks the creation and evolution of Pacific Worlds, an Indigenous geography website for cultural documentation and education. The project sprang from an initial effort, Geografía Indígena, at the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian in 1999. Pacific Worlds currently consists of eight community-based websites of extensive depth and detail, with the information derived almost exclusively from interviews with community members. As such, it offers and epistemological and ontological alternative to Western geography, addressing how members in these Pacific Island communities understand their places in their own terms. The project includes curriculum for secondary-school classes but is also used by primary school and university teachers. This resource is entirely free and non-profit. From its initial launch in 2000, Pacific Worlds has changed little as website design and internet technology has evolved substantially. This paper looks at what the project accomplishes in terms of presenting Indigenous geography as told by community members, and what more it might accomplish with funding to revamp and expand the entire project.