“Ainu Success: the Political and Cultural Achievements of Japan’s Indigenous Minority” reveals the extent to which the Ainu hold agency over and revere their identity as indigenous peoples of Japan. In particular, I found the Marimo Festival to be one poignant instance where the Ainu “took conscious agency and control regarding the relation between modern social and ecological phenomena… [and subsequently] reshape[d] their cultural identity in order to successfully respond to the demands of their contemporary situations” (Wielding Culture). I can imagine some aspect of this festival manifesting into a short documentary style film or informative web game illustrating the Ainu’s cultural negotiations as they engage with the Japanese government.
“A Four-Century Retrospective of Marine Fauna and Fisheries Around New York City” was particularly interesting in that it provided detailed accounts and histories of particular species within the New York City area. As previously mentioned in class, I could certainly envision a digital inventory of all the menus advertising oysters (pg. 11) during the early-mid 20th century, or perhaps an animation or film featuring a first-person account (from the animal’s perspective) of the six shark sightings mentioned on pg. 14. The content delivered in this report contained a wealth of knowledge on specific species that may serve as a starting point for our projects.
MARCO’s EFH Highly Migratory Species dataset “provides information on where any EFH life stage occurs for a given species” which may be helpful in further developing a project based on the shark sighting anecdotes found in the above-mentioned report. We might use this data, for instance, to visually contrast the shark species existing during the late 19th through early 20th centuries (based on previous shark literature) with present shark species in similar areas. Using MARCO’s vessel counts data from 2011 through 2017, we might also overlay a map of vessel traffic in the Mid-Atlantic as it relates to and potentially impacts current shark habitats.
Link to past project – BioGraphics, an interactive case study on Chinese identity:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1J5eyx1lOdGiS8Xu1pYo19rGvLvrGVoMs/view?usp=sharing