Story 5: Mukurtu and Voices of the Land

When we started conversations before building Voices of Amiskwaciy, we set out to determine what platform would best meet the needs of community and would honour the principles of Indigenous data sovereignty. Mukurtu was selected as the platform to host and manage content for Voices of the Land.
Mukurtu is an open-source content management system specifically designed to manage and care for Indigenous content online. The Mukurtu project began in a Nation in central Australia called Warumungu (war-oo-mooN-do). It started as a collaborative project to produce a safe-keeping place to store and share content online. Mukurtu is a Warumungu word meaning ‘dilly-bag’ – a community safe keeping place for sacred items.

The Mukurtu platform allows for community partners to control and curate their own collections. They can also manage, preserve and share their content in a culturally relevant and more ethical way. The intention is to support a fully collaborative process.

Mukurtu is built with this in mind, understanding that information can have different levels of access. They thoroughly believe that Indigenous people within their own communities have the right to maintain ownership and control over what is posted on the site. This website has been updated significantly to reflect the needs of communities in Alberta. It can and will continue to be updated based on community feedback to ensure it meets the data sovereignty needs of the communities who use it.
Due to the web-development requirements of Mukurtu, and our limits on in-house tech support and web development, we chose to contract Kanopi Studios. Kanopi Studios is a company that specializes in website design and user experience. We have made significant changes to the base code to meet the needs of Indigenous nations in Alberta, as well as the unique contexts of public libraries.

We encourage you to check out the Mukurtu website where you can find more information about the platform as well as tour additional Mukurtu website developments by Indigenous nations, museums, as well as other community uses.