Yellowknife (Dec 22/03) - Roy Dahl said it was an unusual experience walking past guys holding submachine guns.

"As long as their hands are near the trigger you feel a little nervous," he said.

Security was tight in Geneva two weeks ago when Dahl, Northern correspondent for APTN, was attending the United Nations Global Forum on Indigenous Peoples and the Information Society.

Two other forums were taking place at the same time, one on electronic media and the other a world summit on the information society.

Dahl and Elizabeth (Sabet) Biscaye attended the conference on UN fellowships.

Biscaye, executive director of the Native Communications Society, made a presentation on community radio.

"Our session was well attended," she said. "We went over our time slot there were so many questions."

The frustrating thing for Biscaye, especially at a conference about communication issues, were the language barriers.

"A couple of ladies from Bolivia came up to me afterwards and I could tell they really wanted to ask me questions but they only spoke Spanish," she said.

Biscaye is still curious to know what they wanted, and is trying to correspond with them by e-mail.

The global forum drew 12,000 delegates from 1,000 different organizations.

Preserving languages

Delegates discussed both the benefits and the dangers the Internet poses for indigenous cultures.

One of the benefits of the Internet is that it reduces the isolation remote communities face.

"When I was a kid I had to actually write a letter and take it to the post office," said Dahl.

"Now kids can just zap messages back and forth. You've got e-pals in Wha Ti talking to people in the Southern States."

But one of the growing challenges is how to foster the use of aboriginal languages when the main language of Internet communication is English.

"How do you enable an elder to write a letter in syllabics to someone down South?" asked Dahl.

"How much resources do you give to it? The Dogrib Bible took eight to 10 years to develop."

Dahl said it was inspiring to meet representatives from far flung communities who shared common problems and goals.

"But at the same time that they were lamenting the challenges, they were also celebrating their culture and promoting it," he said.

Biscaye said she learned not to take the freedom we enjoy in Canada for granted.

"I spoke to a man who said their radio station is regularly raided by the militia," she said.

Many took the opportunity to network and two new groups have sprung up as a result. One is Indigenous Reporters Without Borders, and they plan to start a Web site focusing on news stories that promote their cultures.

Another is Arctic Communicators, made up of Dahl, Biscaye and Shirley Adamson from the Yukon, as well as reporters from Norway and Greenland.

"It's really important to get as many Northern indigenous people involved as possible," said Biscaye.

"And not just communications people. People need to know how to get stories across. We need to tell our own stories using the new technologies."

The next global forum will be in 2005 in Tunisia.