Indigenous Storytelling in Namibia: sketching concepts for digitization

Oral storytelling predates the written word and computer code by millennia and in passing it is easy to forget that oral storytelling has been part of all pasts of contemporary communities. While narratives and plots can take place in the metaphysical world, be presented with humor and seem like fairytales to outsiders with little relevance to the physical world, they are very functional and foundational for communities where storytelling is enacted. This paper debates concepts related to indigenous storytelling and its relevance to knowledge and learning for indigenous youths. In an attempt to understand indigenous youths’ own conception of storytelling the paper presents empirical data from a study with indigenous Khoisan children in Namibia. This is followed by a discussion of an effort of digitizing indigenous intangible cultural heritage in relation to technologies’ embodied bias and perspectives.