Hands on Culture - Participatory 3D Modelling with Mandingalbay Yidinji People in Australia

This video is about the 3D mapping project of the Mandingalbay people near Yarrabah North Queensland. This project was supported by the Wet Tropics Management Authority, IUCN and CTA to producing a short film based on the amazing project the community took on to bring their 3D mapping project to life.

Di mbei di dee Saamaka sëmbë mbei di ageesi kaita de seei u de sa seeka sondi u de (video voiced in Saamaka)

Feifi teni jaa pasa kaa, di wan feifi dusu Saamaka sёmbё so bi abi u voloisi di de mbei di dan. De bi abi u kumutu disi di kamian te ka dee gaan sёmbё u de bi ta libi a di Saamaka lio. Te ku di daka u tide di voloisi aki dё a de pakisei eti. Dee Saamaka sёmbё dee ta de a moo libasё u di Saamaka lio ta abi umёni boöko hedi, we bika de an feni leti u di matu jeti. So seei pasi ta mbei ta ko a di kamian te ka de ta libi. Di mbei u di ageesi kaita u di tan kamian u de, ta konda fa de seei ta si di libi u de, fa de ta woko ku di matu, so sei di kaita sa heepi de u gaan lanti sa fusutan de moo bunu u de ta sa a wan taki a dee sondi di ta pasa a di konde.

Version française: http://goo.gl/ggXyw5
English version: http://goo.gl/hS5nKb

Speaking of Home - The story of the Mount Elgon Ogiek

The Ogiek peoples live on the slopes of Mount Elgon in Kenya. This documentary shows the Ogiek's relationship to their homeland and to the world.

As indigenous peoples without official minority status in Kenya, the Ogiek have gone through evictions from their native land for decades. Time after another they have returned to their land to continue living in the forest.

The documentary is the Ogiek's story, in their own words, of their hopes before the 2013 Kenyan elections. It was filmed in Chepkitale, Mt. Elgon in 2012 during a 3D mapping workshop.

Through developing a 3D map of their land, the Ogiek not only strengthen their cultural identity, but can show that the land said to belong to someone else, is rightfully theirs.

Credits: The film has been produced by SHALIN Suomi Ry and has been featured at the Helsinki African Film Festival.

More on the case is found here.

Knowledge and cultural transmission in Kenyan participatory 3D mapping

This film interview of Dr. Nigel Crawhall, Director of Secretariat at the Indigenous Peoples of Africa Co-ordinating Committee (IPACC), is his explanation of the intergenerational ecological knowledge transmission in participatory 3-dimensional modelling (P3DM). Crawhall discusses his observations on intergenerational interaction when the Ogiek community of Nessuit, Kenya, built a geo-referenced 3D model of their mountain forest landscape in 2006.



The mapping exercise was attended by representatives from 21 Ogiek clans, and an area of 52,800 hectares (ha) was mapped at a scale of 1:10,000. Participants included close to 120 representatives from the different clans, both men and women. Elders populated the model with their memories dating back to 1925 and reconstructed the landscape as it was at that time. The model displays 64 data layers including different types of areas, points, and lines. In 2008, the Ogiek people expanded the coverage of the model to include further 40,000 ha.

This kind of physical 3D model creation can serve the community for the following:

• Generating spatial geo-referenced data based on a community perspective on land use, vegetation cover, resource distribution, tenure, etc;
• Storing and displaying such data at a community level;
• Supporting intra- and inter-generational knowledge exchange;
• Adding value and authority to local knowledge;
• Involving communities in developing resource use and management knowledge;
• Conducting preliminary collaborative research on distribution of species;
• Monitoring jointly with the concerned stakeholders' changes in land use, vegetation cover, human settlement, infrastructure development, and other features;
• Serving as a benchmark; and
• Supporting the learning of local geography and resource use.

The purpose of the model was to record traditional territory and land use patterns, as well as memory and history from a land use and environmental perspective. As reported here, through map building and coding, the clan experienced participatory community enthusiasm and cooperation between elders, young adults, and youth on intergenerational knowledge, language, and heritage transfer, tapping knowledge otherwise lost over time. The 3D style of the map encouraged explanation of the clan’s historical land use patterns and included creating a key or legend to increase understanding of the interrelationships of land, vegetation, altitude, and layers more of information, leading to more complex environmental knowledge that other methods, for example walking on the land, might not provide.

In addition, young people gave attention to the process and listened while elders debated historical use patterns from their memories. A linguistic dimension, which evolved due to the use of English, Kiswahili, and Ogiek, drew out more explicit meaning of vocabulary in Ogiek. Intergenerational knowledge transfer affirmed the elders' lived experience, and the process transferred to the younger members of the community the realisation of the complexity of their environment and the depth of knowledge available to them through their elders.

Source: The Communication Initiative

More information on the case is found here.

The Right to be Different: Struggle for Water and Identity in the Andes

In the parish of Licto, near Riobamba, in Ecuador, the indigenous population fought for its water. Indian peasants participated in the design, construction and organisation of the irrigation system. After more than 20 years the water finally reached the community. The story is told by Inés Chapi, an Indian woman, who came a long way from being oppressed and discriminated against to become a most respected irrigation organiser in the system.  In the Andes they call it blood of the earth, the source of life from which other life grows. Water, feeding the land as well as the imagination. Giving rise to rituals and myths, fueling tradition and culture. Ancient and modern conquerors of these highlands denied the indigenous people access to springs and rivers. Water became a source of conflict. And usually the Indians got a raw deal.

Based on: The Rules of the Game and the Game of the Rules’ by Rutgerd Boelens; Executive producer and scenario: Barend Hazeleger; Photography: Thom Deelstra; Sound recordist: Juio Gorck; Editing: Jan Pieter Tuinstra & Barend Hazeleger; Scientific research and Interviews: Rutgerd Boelens; Produced by Agrapen and Wageningen University (2003)

More on the case: http://bit.ly/1OAlBsX

Le pouvoir de la cartographie participative en 3D chez les Saramacas du Suriname (video)

Il y a cinquante ans, quelque 5000 individus du peuple Saramaccan du Suriname ont dû quitter leurs terres traditionnelles, le long de la Rivière Suriname en raison de la construction d'un grand barrage. Les blessures de cette transmigration se font encore sentir aujourd'hui. Pendant ce temps, les Saramaccans qui vivent dans cette région font face à de nouveaux défis, car leurs droits territoriaux ne sont pas encore officiellement reconnus et les infrastructures routières pour accéder à la zone sont en voie d'amélioration. La création d'une maquette participative de la zone qui visualise et documente leurs traditions et l'utilisation traditionnelle des ressources contribue à surmonter leur frustration et leur redonner espoir.

English version: http://goo.gl/hS5nKb
Saamaka version: http://goo.gl/9XC2Jb

The enabling power of participatory 3D mapping among the Saramaccan Peoples of Suriname (Video)

Fifty years ago, some 5000 Saramaccan Peoples of Suriname had to leave their traditional lands along the Suriname River due to the construction of a major dam. The wounds of this transmigration are still felt today. Meanwhile, the Saramaccans who live in the Upper Suriname River area face new challenges since their territorial rights are not yet officially recognized and road infrastructure to access the area is improving. Creating a 3D model of the area that tells the inside story of their traditions and land use can help them to overcome their sense of being misunderstood by decision-makers and rediscover their voice.

Language versions:
Version française: http://goo.gl/ggXyw5
Saramaccan version: http://goo.gl/9XC2Jb

The 15 min video production "The enabling power of participatory 3D mapping among the Saramaccan People of Suriname" has been launched on October 9 at the 13th Caribbean Week of Agriculture in Paramaribo. The launch occurred during the session "Maps as media in policy processes: Bringing the 3rd dimension to the negotiating table" in the presence of representatives from the Saramaccan community.

The launch was followed by reflections done by Saramaccan representatives Mr Godfried Adjako, one of the captains of the village of Kaajapati, and Ms Debora Linga who spent her infancy with her grandparents on their farm on the shores of the Brokopondo Reservoir and later on kept visiting them in Ginginston village along the banks of the Upper Suriname River.

Mr Godfried Adjako recalled that in the process of populating the 3D model the community, especially the youth, learned a lot from the elders. "The map now shows our life, the Earth we live on, the Earth we walk on, the Earth without which we cannot live."

"We can use the map to take decisions on where to locate future developments", he added. Both men and women contributed to the map. "Women know a lot about the surrounding of the villages, while men who use to go hunting, know the most about far away areas."

Mr Adjako stated that when developing the legend ahead of the mapping exercise, the community decided to omit sensitive and confidential information. Therefore the data contained in the model and currently being digitised by Tropenbos international Suriname should be considered as publicly available.

The P3DM process has been a discovery journey for young Debora. "In the 60's my grandparents had to resettle because their village had been submerged by the rising waters of the Brokopondo Reservoir . They resettled along the Upper Suriname River in a village called Ginginston where I grew up. I could not understand the reason why my grandfather kept on navigating a long way along the river to reach the shores of the lake where he was growing watermelon" she said. "I discovered the reason while chatting with an elder who explained to me that transmigrating families were welcome by Saramaccan villages uphill the lake, but were granted limited access to resources. In fact they were sort of borrowing the land from people who occupied it for generations. Thus they only had access to small farming areas. In Saramaccan this is how you feel: they were living on somebody else's land."

Socially engaging, user-friendly, and user-useful approaches in ecosystem service research

Participatory 3D modelling was presented as a ground breaking approach to use in participatory ecosystem service research during the 8th Ecosystem Service Partnership Conference, held in Stellenbosch, South Africa from the 9th to the 13th of November 2015. The Conference saw the participation of around 380 scientists from around the globe.

Socially engaging, user-friendly, and user-useful approaches in ecosystem service research from CTA

The presentation by Sara Ramirez A socially engaging, user friendly and user-inspired approach in ecosystem research took place within the workshop “Indigenous peoples in their ecosystems’’. An ecosystem service research project was designed and implemented in Suriname, which used Participatory 3D Modelling (P3DM) to engage local communities in a process of co-producing knowledge about ecosystem services and competing land uses.

P3DM is an effective tool to involve scientist and local knowledge holders in an equally and transparent co-production of salient and legitimate knowledge about ecosystem services. Parallel to research outputs (of main interest to the researcher), a P3DM approach yields directly tangible outputs for the local communities which makes research inclusive and legitimate. Attendees during the session participated actively through questions and feedback.