Video Documentary: "First Speakers: Restoring The Ojibwe Language" ~ Viewing The World Through Sound and Eyes Full of Language Pride

Video Documentary: "First Speakers: Restoring The Ojibwe Language".  Several languages a day are lost to our world, but everywhere individuals are choosing to preserve their cultural identify and heritage through revitalization projects. This is a ground breaking film about the creation of an experimental Ojibwe "language immersion school" to restore their language heritage. Exploring language modelling and immersion revitalization schools for children of all cultures. 

 Quote from their website; "As recent as World War II, the Ojibwe language (referred to as ojibwemowin in Ojibwe) was the language of everyday life for the Anishinaabe and historically the language of the Great Lakes fur trade.  Now this indigenous language from where place names like Biwabik, Sheboygan and Nemadji State Forest received their names is endangered. 

The loss of land and political autonomy, combined with the damaging effects of U.S. government policies aimed at assimilating Native Americans through government run boarding schools, have led to the steep decline in the use of the language.  Anton Treuer, historian, author and professor of Ojibwe at Bemidji State University and featured in First Speakers: Restoring the Ojibwe Language, estimates there are fewer than one thousand fluent Ojibwe speakers left in the United States, mostly older and concentrated in small pockets in northern Minnesota with fewer than one hundred speakers in Wisconsin, Michigan and North Dakota combined. 

Treuer is a part of a new generation of Ojibwe scholars and educators who are now racing against time to save the language and the well-being of their communities.  Narrated by acclaimed Ojibwe writer, Louise Erdrich, First Speakers tells their contemporary and inspirational story. Working with the remaining fluent Ojibwe speaking elders, the hope is to pass the language on to the next generation.  As told through Ojibwe elders, scholars, writers, historians and teachers, this original production reveals some of the current strategies and challenges that are involved in trying to carry forward the language. 

First Speakers takes viewers inside two Ojibwe immersion schools: Niigaane Ojibwemowin Immersion School on the Leech Lake Reservation near Bena, Minnesota and the Waadookodaading Ojibwe Language Immersion Charter School on the Lac Courte Oreilles Reservation near Hayward, Wisconsin. In both programs, students are taught their academic content from music to math entirely in the Ojibwe language and within the values and traditional practices of the Ojibwe culture. Unique to the schools is the collaboration between fluent speaking elders and the teachers who have learned Ojibwe as their second language.

First Speakers: Restoring the Ojibwe Language provides a window into their innovative and intergenerational learning experience and the language they are determined to save.

Article: The Circle "Twin Cities Public Television documentary First Speakers: Restoring the Ojibwe Language was awarded a MidWest Regional Emmy Award for Artistic Excellence in the Documentary-Cultural category. The one-hour program features the work of the Niigaane Ojibwemowin Immersion school and other schools and scholars in the region working to revitalize and restore the Ojibwe language. Niigaane Ojibwemowin Immersion Kindergarten through sixth grade classrooms participated in the film during late spring of 2010. At Niigaane, all academic and social content is taught through the medium of Ojibwe language. Through this style of teaching the Leech Lake community hopes to reclaim the Ojibwe language as a vital, necessary language for the coming generations.

The Emmy award is currently traveling on a "Miigwech Tour" to all of the sites that opened their doors as participants in the film. First stop has been at the Niigaane school in Bena, Minnesota, where the Niigaane Kindergarten through sixth grade students have been taking care of the award and talking about the importance of the Ojibwe language in today's world. The Emmy Award statue will be at Niigaane until January 6, 2012. Niigaane will host a feast and farewell to the beautiful statuette on that day at the Niigaane classrooms.

From there, the award will travel to Bemidji State University, the Red Lake Nation, Waadookodaading Ojibwe Language Immersion Charter School Hayward Wisconsin, Birchbark Books in Minneapolis, and to the University of Minnesota Twin Cities Department of American Studies.


Many, many people contributed to the film and this is a great reminder of the strength and importance of Ojibwe language and culture today. The film was funded by an Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund Legacy Fund grant to Twin Cities Public Television and the citizens of Minnesota with additional support provided by the Minnesota Historical and Cultural Grants through the Minnesota Historical Society as a way to showcase Minnesota's cultural heritage and ongoing legacy. The film premiered November 2010 on Twin Cities Public Television, and can also be seen on local Minnesota Public Television stations."

More Videos via website "Indigenous People's Issues"

Photos - Leech Lake Band Of Ojibwe Pow Wow Memorial Day 2013 and Men's Dance Competition

Image Credit: True To Words ~ "Leech Lake Ojibwe Delegation to Washington 1899"

State Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund ~ Legacy Amendment

Music Video: Travis "Moving" ~ Animation Projected Onto Breath In Real Time

The music video "Moving" from the album "Where You Stand" by Travis is made up from a series of animations that are projected onto the bands breath, in real time using no post production, to give the effect of plucking shapes and figures out of thin air for an arresting visual accompaniment. Travis Website

Video 2013 TED Talk "Denise Herzing: Could we speak the language of dolphins?" ~ Wild Dolphin Project

2013 TED Video "Could we speak the language of dolphins?"  A dolphin’s brain-to-body-weight ratio is second only to a human’s. They live complex social lives, can understand abstract concepts and even use tools. But as Denise Herzing asks in Session 8 of TED2013, “Do they have a language? If so, what are they talking about?” (More info in this article)

For 28 years, Herzing has been researching dolphins in the wild, spending five months each summer living, sleeping and working at sea off the coast of the Bahamas with a pod of Atlantic spotted dolphins. It’s the mission of her Wild Dolphin Project. These dolphins can live to their early 50s and, at this point, Herzing and her team are tracking three generations of the pod.

More DOLPHIN VIDEOs and more about Wild Dolphin Project

Video: 2013 TED Talk "The Interspecies Internet? An Idea In Progress ..." with Peter Gabriel (musician), Neil Gershenfeld (internet visionary), Vint Cerf (one of the fathers of the Internet) and Diana Reiss (dolphin researcher)

2013 TED Video "The Interspecies Internet ~ Apes, dolphins and elephants are animals with remarkable communication skills. How we already are expanding the Internet interfaces to include communication with sentient species like them? Read More here

A new and developing idea from a panel of four great thinkers -- dolphin researcher Diana Reiss, musician Peter Gabriel, internet of things visionary Neil Gershenfeld and Vint Cerf, one of the fathers of the Internet.

Video short animation "Paradise" by Ishu Patel

(15 min) Watch video of this short animation film, "Paradise" a magnificent bird performs for the Emperor inside a glittering palace. Its plumage is a blaze of colour. A blackbird, watching enviously, strives to acquire what he so desperately covets, only to discover that a golden cage can’t compete with the open skies.

Ishu Patel website and filmography

Canadian Encyclopedia ~ About Patel Ishu

Videos: The Animated Live-Action-Multimedia-Films of Miwa Matreyek + Collage Art Pieces

Video TED Performance, Dreaming of Lucid Living (and website link) and Video TED Performance, Glorious Visions (short version of Myth and Infrastructure)

Interview atAnimasivo 2012

Miwa Matreyek is an internationally recognized animator, designer, and multimedia artist based in Los Angeles. She creates animated short films as well as live works that integrate animation, performance, and video installation. Arriving to animation from a background in collage, her work explores how animation transforms when it is combined with body, both physically in her performance pieces, as well as a composited video element in her short films. (see her website for all films)

Collage Art Pieces

Video short film "Lumerence"

In her projection based performances, animation takes on a more physical and present quality, while body and space take on a more fantastical quality, creating an experience that is both cinematic and theatrical. She is interested in the slippery meeting point of cinema and theater/performance, the moments of convergence where fantastical illusions are created, and the moments of divergence where the two struggles against each other.

Video short film "Circus"

Her work has been shown internationally at animation/film festivals, theater festivals, performance festivals, as well as art galleries, science museums, tech conferences, universities, and more.

Some past presentations include TEDGlobal, Sundance Film Festival, Anima Mundi Animation Festival, Time Based Arts Festival, REDCAT, ISEA, Theatre de la Cité, the Exploratorium, EXIT festival, Fusebox Festival, Questfest, Pixilerations, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, and more.

 Matreyek received her MFA (2007) in Experimental Animation and Integrated Media at the California Institute of the Arts.

She is one of the founding-member and core-collaborator of Cloud Eye Control.

Eye See Earth

Video: Peace on Earth Flag Ceremony with Dolphins, Hear the Dolphins Having Fun

Watch Video: Earth Flag Ceremony with Dolphins  

The year is 2009 in Cozumel, Mexico. 

My friends at Speak Dolphin having fun for peace.

 
Their description: 

"We created a vinyl double-sided flag with a large image of the Earth and the message "May Peace Prevail on Earth" which we had used for participation in the Grand Opening Procession of the Smithsonian Museum of the American Indian in September of 2004. 

This eventually prompted us into wondering how the dolphins would react to an image of the Earth from space. 

This was in 2005 when we were trying out the ribbon game for the first time, so we really weren't sure if the dolphins would be frightened by the large flag. 

To our surprise, the dolphins were not at all frightened and very quickly became interested in the flag. In fact, within moments we were surrounded by dolphins excitedly swimming and buzzing the flag loudly. 

It soon became difficult for us to swim forward because we were engulfed in dolphins! 

They swam around us, under us, over us. As we persisted in swimming through the pod of dolphins, it felt like a parade! 

Dolphins escorted us throughout their large lagoon, surrounding us on all sides.

Noel and I continuously chanted prayers for the Earth in our snorkels while the dolphins were filling the water with echolocation; joy overflowed in our hearts. 

Now, I must admit that joy is quite prevalent whenever we swim with dolphins, but creating a Peace on Earth ceremony with dolphins - that's just over the top!

I strongly believe in the power of prayerful ceremony with clear intent. The level of exaltation and joy we felt with the dolphins that day undoubtedly sent out powerful waves of change into the world.

The memory of that experience will stay with me for the rest of my life. Each year since, we have continued with the Earth Flag ceremony. The dolphins continue to be fascinated with it and escort us around their lagoon. I have wondered if the dolphins know that the image they are looking at is of the planet they are living on.

If somehow the dolphins already know what the Earth looks like from space, then perhaps they are thinking "Hey, the humans have discovered space travel - finally!"

Videos, Sounds and Photos of the Right Whale : Right Whale Listening Network at Bioacoustics Research Program of The Cornell Lab of Ornithology + Brian Skerry Right Whale Photographs

Watch, Listen, Map - Live Whales, as they travel: Video and Sound Archives of the Right Whale Listening Network of the Bioacoustics Research Program at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, has been listening in on the natural world for more than 20 years. In that time, they've pioneered the use of acoustic technology to record and analyze wild sounds, both on land and underwater.

All Right Whale Photo Image Credits:  Brian Skerry's photographs of Right Whales and About Brian Skerry

Right whales are large, slow-moving whales that can weigh up to 70 tons.There may be as few as 345 right whales remaining, and a leading cause of death is collisions with vessels. US law requires that all large vessels (vessels 65 ft and greater) slow to speeds of 10 knots (11.5 mph) or less in Seasonal Management Areas along the US east coast where where right whales are known to occur.

Program director Christopher W. Clark hit on the idea of listening to whales--instead of looking for them--nearly four decades ago. He imagined a computer-linked network of hydrophones that could locate whales by triangulating their calls. Since then, he and his colleagues have awaited computers powerful enough to handle the immense processing task--and helped the process along by inventing their own specialized software and instrumentation.

In 1987, Clark launched his first underwater monitoring project, counting Arctic bowhead whales by listening in on the whales' haunting voices as they traveled beneath the ice and out of sight. During those first days, the crew had to monitor the recordings continuously, listening for weeks at a time from a chilly shed perched on a snowmobile.

In the 1990s, the Bioacoustics Research Program introduced autonomous recording units that could listen alone, running on batteries for months and storing what they heard on hard disk drives. Among their designs is an underwater model, known as a "pop-up," that records from the ocean bottom, its hardware and batteries protected inside a watertight glass sphere.

At the same time, software engineers at the Lab were developing groundbreaking, easy-to-use sound analysis software: first Canary, then Raven and XBAT - Extensible Acoustic Analysis (read about and download software). Now armed with self-reliant listening hardware and powerful analysis tools, automatic detection of right whale calls was a relatively short step away. What began as the tinkering of a few visionary scientists and engineers has grown to include more than 55 people working on dozens of projects around the world: in North and South America, Africa, Asia, New Zealand, and the Pacific, Atlantic, Arctic, and Southern oceans.

Sound Detection Map 

Watch the Right Whale 

Explore the Right Whale's Up-Call 

Other Whales Sounds and Calls to Explore 

Read about and Maps 

Threats to Right Whales 

Archiving Underwater Sounds

Right Whale Population estimates

Right Whale Sighting Advisory System

Mandatory and Voluntary Measures To Reduce Risk To Right Whales

National Geographic Photos of Right Whales by Brian Skerry and Questions and Answers about Photographing Right Whales

Image Credit: Brian Skerry (slide show of Right Whales)

Video short documentary "The Surui Carbon Project" Indigenous People in the Amazon Use Google Earth Engine To Protect Their Forest For A Sustainable Future

Watch: " The Surui Carbon Project" 

Watch: "Chief Almir and the Surui tribe of the Amazon" 

A tribe of roughly 1,300 members, first contacted less than 50 years ago, "The Surui Forest Carbon Project" is an initiative led by the Metareilá Association, which works to defend and preserve the autonomy and the cultural and territorial heritage of the Surui people. The project aims to dramatically reduce deforestation and its associated greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the Surui territory, which is under intense deforestation pressure. In 2009, the Surui decided to discontinue logging and forest clearing for low-productivity agriculture. Instead, the Surui seek to generate income from ecosystem services (like carbon stock management), and through new, forest-friendly economic activities.The Surui territory consists of 248,000 hectares straddling the Brazilian states of Rondonia and Mato Grosso, in the “arc of deforestation” sweeping over the Amazon. (quoted from Code Redd article)


 "Since the Surui and other indigenous people were given training tools by Google, our land has received more visibility. All the information is shedding light on the invasion of our land ... and giving our people the responsibility for their own future." 
– Chief Almir - San Francisco Chronicle

Children of The Amazon talks about The Surui Carbon Project

The Rainforest Alliance talks about The Surui Carbon Project

Code Redd talks about The Surui Carbon Project

Fast Company Article