Notify visitors to your website of where they might be.
Where are we? is a tiny javascript widget that adds a dismissible banner to the bottom of your website to let visitors know who the traditional owners are of where ever they are located.
Note: The information derived by this script is an estimation and should be engaged with critically.
TODO: add instructions on installing on your website.
(insert installation fragment)
This project has the intention to raise awareness,
- about indigenous nations within settler societies;
- and how IP addresses are exploited to track location.
Within the Australian context, acknowledgement of country is increasingly being understood as a small but important step towards ending the exclusion of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people from Australian society. Within the arts many organisations are adding an acknowledgement of country to their websites. For example the Museum of Contemporary Art Sydney, Liquid Architecture, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Firstdraft, and many more. At frontyard we have also chosen to acknowledge the stolen land on which we are based. However, it has always seemed a bit uncomfortable to me to acknowledge place on a website that is hosted often in other lands (sometimes multiple simultaneously). How can we think about practices of acknowledgement in a way that considers the networked reality of the internet. Visitors are coming to your website from many places, each with their own particular histories, their own particular forgetings. Where are we? is an small experiment in broadening this practice of acknowledgement by trying to encourage visitors to think about their own placement, the histories and peoples there.
This script uses the visitors estimated longitude and latitude from their IP address to cross-reference the maps at native-land.ca to check for any possible traditional owners. Native-land.ca does not claim to represent or intend to represent the official or legal boundaries of any Indigenous nations. As a project it is intended to be engaged with critically and definitely not as an authoritative reference. Anyone seeking to learn about definitive boundaries should contact the indigenous group directly.
Locations derived from IP addresses are already inaccurate estimates, so this is multiplied in combination with the native-lands disclaimers. Any information presented from Where are we? will likely be inaccurate. It is intended as a prompt to start thinking about the histories of the land on which visitors stand, not to provide final answers.
My name is Benjamin Forster, I am a white Australian settler, artist and software engineer. I currently live in Sydney on the land of the Cadigal Wangal people of the Eora nation. I grew up in Bundjalung country on the mid-north coast of Australia, although my childhood eduction only included the white history of australia. It was not until adult life that I learnt that Australia does not have a singular indigenous people, but has a living legacy of over 500 indigenous nations. I am endlessly ignorant, and am seeking to remedy that.