Indigenous storytelling is deeply rooted in places of meaning, in contrast to stories told in the “Hollywood” style that are disassociated from culturally meaningful places.The 3D immersive imagery of Google Earth allows us to better visualize our stories on a landscape when we come together in a virtual environment. Google Earth Web is a browser based version of Google Earth that is user friendly, creates easily controlled presentations that move through the virtual landscape, and can be shared online. In this session we will work with Joseph Erb to create five beat stories that better reflect storytelling traditions, and use Google Earth Web to virtually walk the land while telling our stories.

Indigenous Storytelling* has been characterized as having 5 beats:

Beat one: Set up the theme or the journey you are going on, and what land and cultural framework you will use in the story

Beat two: Introduce the main character

Beat three: The journey/crisis of the main character

Beat four: The resolution of the crisis of the main character

Beat five: The message and resolution of the theme where the character and land are once again in balance with one another

The first and fifth beats explicitly involve the relationship between the character, the land and the cultural/social context of the story. By creating a balance between land and character, the story provides a deeper role for place in our story as compared to a simple three beat story structure.

A story written in the three beat structure can be transferred to different places, different times, and different social settings without changing the structure or meaning of the story; in contrast, the five beat structure situates the story in a specific place and a specific social/cultural context and it can't be moved to a different place without changing the meaning of the story. In the three beat structure, place is often simply a stage upon which the action occurs; in the five beat structure, changing the location of the story changes the story in a fundamental way.

Often times "story maps" are created by marking locations named in a story without incorporating the land into the story itself. If we use the five beat structure, using a map in storytelling means that we forefront the land and provide a geospatial context for the story, moving through the landscape in specific ways. Using the five beat structure we can tell the story while walking the land, and that sets us up for storytelling using Google Earth Web or Google Earth Pro to virtually move on a path through the 3D landscape in an immersive fashion.

*Clague, Pauline. "The five beats of Indigenous Storytelling." Lumina: Australian Journal of Screen Arts and Business 11 (2013). You can read the article and a discussion CLICK HERE