The Indigenous Digital Excellence Agenda (IDEA) Summit recently held an event at the National Centre of Indigenous Excellence (NCIE) to discuss ideas to keep Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander culture alive through the digital world.

The IDEA Summit was established to make sure Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander culture could extend and live on through a variety of digital mediums including apps, networks, search engines, marketplace and cultural enterprises.

At the Sydney event attended by over 30 emerging and established Indigenous leaders, five key ideas surfaced.

“Over 50 per cent of the Indigenous population is under the age of 25. We are the generation that is using digital technology most so we should be digital ambassadors for our communities, getting elders and our peers involved online and talking about the opportunities and what it can bring for us,” young Indigenous leader Peter Dawson says.

• IDEA Global is an online Indigenous marketplace for ideas, projects, events, skills and resources.

• Kinship Indigenous Network, or KIN, aims to reconnect Indigenous people to their families by providing an online network to appropriately store information about individuals and their family relationships.

• ‘Doris’ is an Indigenous search engine which helps people find authentic Indigenous content and perspectives in innovative ways.

• Blaxess aims to connect Indigenous people without digital devices by providing second hand laptops, smartphones and tablets to communities.

• Blackfella Enterprises is an initiative aiming to commercialise traditional cultural knowledge in a sensitive and appropriate way that ensures ownership and benefits flow to Indigenous communities.

“The nation should be optimistic about the future participation of Indigenous Australians in the digital world. Our focus is to avoid a digital divide while holding on to our culture. The strength of the ideas coming from the IDEA Summit has thrown up some concepts we couldn’t have begun to imagine,” CEO of NCIE, Jason Glanville says.

The NCIE and the Telstra Foundation will continue to work with the participants to co-create a National Indigenous Excellence Strategy.

The Telstra Foundation will also be contributing $5m over five years to support the NCIE and Indigenous Digital Excellence.

Tags: digital, NCIE