First Nations and Aboriginal communities in Canada are increasingly looking towards digital media to revitalize their languages and assert control over how their culture is represented. IPinCH Scholar Associate Kate Hennessy is continuing to both participate in and explore this movement, as she joins the faculty of SFU's School of Interactive Arts and Technology as an Assistant Professor. A former Trudeau Scholar, she was awarded her PhD in the Department of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia in 2009.
Kate uses methods of participatory ethnography as she collaborates with communities, providing her skills in recording, producing, and digital media training. Working with the Doig River First Nation in northeastern British Columbia, she is addressing how traditional protocols for care and handling of material culture are guiding new articulations of Dane-zaa rights to control their digital cultural heritage. Kate’s doctoral supervisor was linguistic anthropologist Dr. Patrick Moore. She has worked under the supervision of IPinCH team member Dr. Sue Rowley on UBC’s Reciprocal Research Network, an online database of internationally-held Northwest Coast First Nation collections and collaborative digital research environment. Her contributions to IPinCH will include acting as a research team member on a collaborative community study. Working with Dr. Natasha Lyons, she will provide assistance to Inuvialuit youth videographers as they document an elders’ visit to the Smithsonian Institution to view cultural items in the MacFarlane Collection.
