About
This tool is the result of a project between the Tolowa Dee-Ni' Nation and Ecotrust to migrate an existing marine traditional ethnographic knowledge into a more user-friendly, spatially enabled web application. It is hoped that this tool will help tribes to retain and organize their traditional knowledge and have a new way to share it with future generations.
Technology
This tool was built using Open Source software. The code is readily available on Ecotrust's Github Page. It is a Django application on top of a PostgreSQL database spatially enabled with PostGIS. Documentation, including notes on how to install your own instance can be found here.
Philosophy
This project was built with sharing in mind, without abandoning privacy. As mentioned, the tool itself is all built with Open Source code so that anyone may download it, install it, or customize it free of charge, and with as few barriers as possible. In the meantime, the data to be kept in the tool is recognized to be confidential and private - only to be shared with explicit permission by the owners.
Keeping this in mind, the tool can be (and already is) installed on a tribe's private, internal servers so that only members have access to the data. Recognizing that nothing online is 100% safe, the data in this tool should be at least as safe as the other sensative files on your network.
Ecotrust
Ecotrust is powered by the vision of a world where people and nature thrive together. Since 1991, we have partnered with local communities from California to Alaska to build new ways of living and doing business. From forestry to finance, food access to green building, we work to advance social equity, economic opportunity, and environmental well-being.
Contact
If you would like to contact the tribe:
[Tribe contact info]
If you'd like to contact the developers of this tool:
Please email teksupport@ecotrust.org