Looking to future convergences
The Tribal Peace example is intended to demonstrate the potential of developing new media systems for communities that use digital networks and culturally authored databases. This research acknowledges that new media systems and video technologies can elicit and shape cultural ontologies that in turn impact the potential for communities to preserve, share information and develop collective infrastructures. Two important issues continue to stand out: Globalization of the Tribal Peace method: how would the localized process described briefly in the context of Tribal Peace apply when work- ing with multiple diaspora across different global spaces? Will the bridging efforts of Tribal Peace with 19 dispersed, but semi-local reservations, apply across such great distances? Eliciting truly culturally articulated ontologies: the ontology diagram demonstrated in Figure 3 was created by the project committee, but is it truly representative and indicative of the basic conceptions by which these native nations represent and classify the world? Researchers have revealed, for example, that aboriginal notions of history, time and geography are incom- mensurable with Western rationalistic knowledge systems. How could such an ethno-media project as Tribal Peace function within this setting? This is the enquiry of current ongoing research (Boast et al., 2006). As future research continues to explore these questions, the barriers between cultural difference and information/media technology will continue to erode and in turn a continued trajectory of ethno-media research will uncover new empowering potential uses of technology within the ethnic and indigenous realm.