Where are all the Aboriginal Home Pages? The Current Indigenous
Australian Prescence on the WWW
John Hobson, Koori Centre, Old Teachers College, University
of Sydney.
Abstract
There has been a lot of talk recently about the rapid growth
of 'Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander sites' on the World
Wide Web. Indeed, the number of sites with a predominant focus
on Indigenous Australian topics has grown from a handful to around
150 over the last two years. Where are these sites and what sort
of resources do they offer? More importantly, how many are actually
by or for Indigenous Australians, or only about them?
This paper attempts a thumbnail survey of WWW sites conducted
in July 1997, in an attempt to begin answering some of these
questions. It characterises participating sites in terms of the
level of consultation undertaken with Indigenous Australians
in their development, and the degree of Aboriginal and Torres
Strait Islander participation in various aspects of their construction.
As a final note, some consideration is given to the current
dearth of Indigenous Australian personal home pages and its possible
explanation in terms of mismatch between Aboriginal and Torres
Strait Islander preferred styles of communication and the nature
of the medium.
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