Alliance Project: Digital Kinship Database and Genealogy

Abstract

This study has three main aims: 1. to develop software for an indigenous kinship database and genealogy using a crossplatform Java engine; 2. to contribute to a kinship study, which will serve as a fieldwork support tool for anthropologists; and 3. to assess the importance and potential of the kinship database and genealogy in IT-based indigenous knowledge management. Regarding the third aim, we would like to emphasize the importance of kinship data in the post-colonial era, and the need for kinship data in land rights issues and the recognition of indigenous identity, as well as the possibility of the autonomous use of this visualized kinship database by indigenous peoples in the future. The Alliance Project, which is named after the alliance theory by C. Levi-Strauss (1969), started as the management of a kinship study for the Yolngu people of Eastern Arnhem Land, Northern Territory, Australia, and was later extended to the study of kinship in general.