Knife | the Smithsonian’s MacFarlane Inuvialuit Collection

The Critical Ethnography and Digital Heritage Initiative (CEDHI) is dedicated to designing innovative methods for safeguarding cultural heritage resources using digital technologies. With dedicated laboratory space with the School of Communication at SFU’s Burnaby campus, the CEDHI will respond to the urgent need for new strategies to document, preserve and control access to cultural heritage resources in art worlds and Indigenous communities. This university-based facility will be unique in Western Canada, with its emphasis on innovations in ethnographic research methodologies that integrate contemporary approaches to sound recording, visual imaging, and 3-D image modelling. Digital information management will remain a key issue in the 21st century. This research will develop protocols and content management systems so community-based groups, private sector entrepreneurs, and public sector organizations can undertake economically sustainable and culturally meaningful initiatives in the digital era. We are funded by the Canada Foundation for Innovation.

GOALS:

Working in collaboration with community-based stakeholders and entrepreneurs, the activities of the researchers focus on culturally appropriate, scientifically informed and economically sustainable initiatives to:

Identify and document cultural heritage collections of digital media assets (through the development of innovative ethnographic methodologies using state-of-the-art audio visual recording technologies and 3D image modeling);

Design an open source content management system for archives that can be tailored to the specific needs of preservation projects and cultural protocols and enhance control of valuable assets; and

Provide knowledge and training for students and community-based cultural heritage preservation projects in ways that enable participants in cultural heritage initiatives to develop competence and expertise.