ABSTRACT
The preservation, management and sharing of Indigenous knowledge (IK) is crucial for social and economic development in rural and Indigenous communities. Access to information and communication technologies (ICTs) to digitize Indigenous knowledge and cultural heritage is becoming increasingly important. However, Indigenous people face several challenges as they attempt to use technologies for preservation and management of their IK and cultural heritage (Duncker 2002). One of the issues is the gap of understanding among information system designers, knowledge engineers and Indigenous communities (users of information systems and domain experts of IK). Although IK is oral and performative in nature, ICT tools for IK management are designed in the same way as the tools for text based knowledge documentation and dissemination, such as e-readers with annotation facilities, meta-data and semantic search facilities, text-based knowledge sharing platforms and distributed databases.
