‘The Book of Beyond’

B08 2

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Abstract

This paper describes some of the dilemmas confronting health-communication professionals seeking the best formats for communicating health information, including life-saving self-treatment techniques for chronic conditions – to members of remote Indigenous communities in Central Desert Australia. The authors are working through issues relating to cultural literacies involving print-based or oral delivery of information. They are preparing to design and test short-format health information delivery systems which can both supplement and replace print materials, by using the spoken word and visual delivery techniques of traditional Indigenous communication. It is now possible to provide scientific healthcare servicing in remote communities via small battery or solar powered personal digital devices already familiar within those communities, such as MP3 players and mobile telephones. Challenges discussed here include the ways new technologies are taken up within Indigenous contexts; how the discursive structures of scientific medicine need modifying for traditional cultures; and how digital platform design and function selection reflect their emergence within commercialised, urban, post-modern, mainstream, Web 2.0 interpersonal communicative flows – and so require careful recalibration for the sorts of tasks outlined here. This paper outlines the main strands of investigation and community consultation necessary to the design, testing and use of digital spoken-word information among traditional Indigenous communities – a new form of ‘book’ for what Australians call ‘the back of beyond’.