How can I use the Archive?

The Archive of Indigenous Languages and Culture of Ecuador can be used for a range of different purposes. The main applications are for educators, members of indigenous communities, and researchers. Of course, many users will fall into more than one of these categories. These are some potential uses for each:

FOR EDUCATORS:

(1) BASIC EDUCATION:
Pre-university educators in elementary and high school may give students assignments that require them to consult the general information and publicly-accessible items in the archive.

(2) HIGHER EDUCATION:
University-level educators may use both publicly-accessible information as well as request permission for access to items that are not publicly-accessible in order to give advanced assignments involving primary data analysis.

(3) BILINGUAL EDUCATION:
Bilingual educators can request media (DVDs) of oral history and literature for use in their classes.

FOR INDIGENOUS COMMUNITIES

(4) SAFEGUARDING CULTURAL KNOWLEDGE AND HISTORY:
While many urban communities and institutions have means of recording their history and accumulated knowledge, in rural indigenous communities ancestral knowledge has relied on face-to-face transmission. The archive will allow future descendants of indigenous communities to see and hear their ancestors and learn from them after they are gone.

(5) MEDIA FOR COMMUNITIES:
Indigenous communities all around Ecuador have adopted DVD technology in recent years. Often communities prefer to watch videos about their own culture than Hollywood-style movies. Native-language materials can be created on DVD media for distribution.

FOR RESEARCHERS:

(6) PROTECT DATA:
Researchers of Ecuadorian indigenous languages and nationalities can safeguard their collected data to protect it for the future. Until the archive was established, options for archiving documentation of indigenous language nationally were minimal, and researchers could only store their materials outside of Ecuador. Now researchers can keep the materials in Ecuador where they will be more accessible to indigenous peoples and other Ecuadorians.

(7) FIND INFORMATION:
Researchers who wish to access the materials from the archive can freely use the public materials (with proper citation) and can request access to the protected materials, which will be made available as long as permission requirements are satisfied.