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Michael Running Wolf - Launch Pad "The Madison Buffalo Jump VR Project"

rngwlf
Explorer
Hello! Here’s my first weekly update. 

First a bit about me: I am a member of and grew up on the Northern Cheyenne Tribal Reservation in Montana. I grew up in a tiny village named Birney. My rural community had erratic electricity, water, and got the telephone when I was 15. This naturally led to me getting a Bachelors and Masters in Computer Science.

Along with scholarships and fellowships I financed my education by inadvertently training myself to be a full stack web developer in Linux and Microsoft Windows: this was a result of Montana’s small IT economy where you’re expected to know and do everything. Originally I set out to be a OpenGL developer in my undergrad years but webwork was more plentiful and my interests drifted to database analysis and natural language processing.

Though C#, and other Java/C languages are comfortable territory for me, shifting to Unity and visual IDEs is new to a VIM developer like me. Luckily distant memories of Quaternion Spatial Rotation math must be like riding a bike. 

Virtual Reality, along with the Oculus DK2, reignited my interest in 3D programming and how it can help my personal and educational goals.

I pursued my masters degree because I want to help build software for Native American language revitalization. There are many technical problems involved, such as corpus construction with sparse datasets, but the biggest problem is time. Indigenous language speakers in America, and the world as I’ve learned in my international travels, are dying of old age. Despite decades of dedicated work by linguists and community advocacy, there’s been very little progress to save languages. Dozens of American Indian languages die every year. 

However the situation is not entirely dire: a few tribal nations have managed to reignite their own languages through intensive social and financial investment into advanced language education. Native Hawaiians, for example, can educate a pupil from kindergarten through a PhD entirely in their own language. My wife and I were invited speakers at the International Conference on Language Documentation & Conservation in 2015, where we were inspired by the Native Hawaiians’ success. Though our enthusiasm was shaken by how far behind Natives on the mainland were.

Unfortunately most tribes are just barely scrambling to begin their own language revitalization programs. I believe VR can be a shortcut to kickstart an effective language education program. 

My project, with an somewhat uninspired name, “The Madison Buffalo Jump Virtual Reality Project,” is an experiment to create a multilingual indigenous VR experience. I’ll provide more details as I progress, but here are the bullet points of my project goals:

* Use a real landmark sacred to Montanan tribes: the Madison Buffalo Jump State Park
* Demonstrate pre-Colonization life through a communal buffalo hunt
* Link elder knowledge through advanced technology relevant to Native youth.
* Create audio content to use multiple tribal languages in the VR experience.
* Make it difficult NOT to learn the fundaments of a language.
* Have fun being a VR technovangelist to tribes in Montana’s backyard.

My dad checking out my Gear VR:

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16 REPLIES 16

SBarrick
Expert Protege
I really like this idea Michael! What a brilliant application for something as historical and important as native languages! Are you thinking about filming the state park in 360 or modeling it in 3D?

rngwlf
Explorer
I'd like to do both... But I'm having trouble pinning down 360 filming talent (very spendy $$).  So I'm going to focus upon a 3D modeled landscape using GIS data 

NataliaVR
Explorer
Hi Michael, you might want to reach out to the Rosetta Project run by the Long Now Foundation for languages preservation: http://rosettaproject.org/

rngwlf
Explorer

The Madison Buffalo Jump Virtual Reality Project Week 2

I'm in the midst of moving so this week i'm a bit slow... 

Lately I've been working on possibly three fronts (aside from a new job that's going to leverage my newbie Mad Unity skills). Make that 4 fronts.

I'm making my update in the remnants of my apartment, lovingly referred to as Wolf Nest, in order to migrate about 244 miles westward, still within in Montana. My apartment is a sad affair now with all the fancy tea and associated apparatuses are currently on the Flathead Indian Reservation. 

Since the last update a non-profit I work with, http://www.madisonbuffalojump.org/, got a small grant to build Augmented Reality signs. I'm hoping to leverage the Unity assets I generate for that task, mixing Native American language and Unity tech for the Madison Buffalo Jump State Park. The first step on that project will be to develop Augmented Reality compatible signs. For AR I've been playing with the Vuforia library and am impressed.

Which leads to my ongoing Unity learning experience. Though I'm fluent in C# , I'm finding most of my development time is used up fiddling with configuration. Otherwise I've been exploring automated work flows using Unity scripts, and successfully checked my code into GIT without all the huge binaries. I'm a big fan of BitBucket, but have been looking at gitlabs.

Meanwhile I have been reaching out to Northern Cheyenne, Crow, Blackfeet, and Salish language experts for input. Montana is a big state and though we're all on Facebook, business is conducted face to face. The first step is to get someone to answer a phone and set up an appointment. So far of the 14 tribes four I listed answer the phone...

Nerd thoughts: anyone have an opinion on the new Unity pricing schemes? it seems minimal for all the hoopla.

Useful links:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/31374085/installing-adb-on-mac-os-x
https://github.com/github/gitignore/blob/master/Unity.gitignore
https://developer.vuforia.com
http://www.bitbucket.org/


rngwlf
Explorer

Week 3: Conducting business in Indian Country.

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Migrating my life along I-90 westward

Still alive! was moving and traveling between reservations in Montana.


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Me managing to move several hundred pounds of Running Wolf "stuff."


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... and put it in another zip code 244 miles westward 




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But I managed to see my tribe's big 4th of July celebration


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Where I grew up


This leads to some logistical issues in working with Native Communities in Montana, distance:

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When they show that red Verizon map, most of Montana is delightfully white and sans-cell phone coverage. So nearly all work involves extensive travel around Montana. Tomorrow I'll be making the short 3 hour hop to Bozeman for a folk festival to see one of my interview subject from my home reservation (titled Unnamed Road here).

He's a Northern Cheyenne elder and ethnobotanist expert with knowledge of the indigenous medicinal plants at the Madison Buffalo Jump. He's giving a presentation at the in Butte at a Folk Festival.

rngwlf
Explorer

Week 4: Working in Indian Country and Sovereignty

Trying to Catch up with my posts, with a side note and weighty subject: respecting tribal cultural boundaries.

Native Americans, particularly those of the Great Plains like me, exist in a confluence of romanticized nobility stoically gazing into every sunset on one hand and in the other grasping a can of beer awaiting the next welfare check. Grocery clerks who aggressively followed me as I bought my favorite chewing gum gave a 7 year old brown boy the impression that he was dangerous and lesser; to this day I consciously keep my hands out my pocket when in a  store. But simultaneously, I also grew up reading many exciting and heroic tales of noble Indians saving white women from corrupt railroad tycoons on the old west. This ever-present
 misperception, i.e "pop culture," and historical exploitation by western society makes tribal societies wary of outside researchers.

Though I am an Indian from Montana, I am basically a brown white man to anyone outside my home tribe, the Northern Cheyenne. I like to think that being able to relate to the struggles of being brown man with a Master Degree in a state that's 92% uneducated white, endures me to my fellow Natives. But there is a legal and ethical process: the Tribal approval that mimics a College Institutional Review Board process (IRB).

In Montana (and beyond) it's legally required , particularly if using Federal or State monies, to get tribal permission to conduct interviews, collect data, do research on/with tribal members, etc. The goal of which is protect the tribe from malicious research and exploitation (there is a history of this). In theory the process is simple: you contact the tribal agency in charge, get your letter of intent approved,  and present your request to a cultural committee for approval. Best case this is a month long process. Often it takes 6 months, which can be compounded by travel distance, weather, and if the cultural committee is absent for a ceremony.

It's a confounded process that is ultimately rewarding: you learn how to integrate yourself with a foreign and fully sovereign government body and make friends along the way. That is, if you have the patience.

For this project I've contacted a representative for every tribe, and visited 4 reservations in the last month while moving! I even declined a wedding invitation because it conflicted with a prior engagement this weekend.

The next post will come shortly on a big Kite flying event I helped organize at the madison buffalo jump. If you're my Facebook friend you may have seen the activity.

rkoman
Protege
So glad to see your update!

rngwlf
Explorer

Week 5: Kite day at the Madison Buffalo Jump

Every year the Friends of Madison Buffalo Jump, a non-profit I'm a co-board-lesser-poobah-chair of holds a fund raising event where children build and fly a kite at the jump. I helped with the event and waved my home brew stereoscopic setup at people 

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Professional kite makers

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Flying their creations
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We set up a booth and me and my wife evangelized VR and Augmented Reality. 
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Wooing onlookers with my Mad Unity3D skills

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Data gathering

More importantly I was able to hear a Blackfeet member, Craig Falcon, discuss how the buffalo jump was a shared sacred site for his and other tribes:

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After a shore ceremony I hiked up the buffalo jump with the Mayor of Bozeman, Carson Tayloryq4ifubfw6ow.jpg

The Mayor of Bozeman and a demo of my VR work on Google Cardboard (I'm really scared of breaking my Samsung Gear so I don't travel much with it...)
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We travelled a lot this week, so we I spent some quality time in a Hammock enjoying the mountains, iPad in tow.wcficb2z63mf.jpg

It was a successful week traveling, collecting data2asipadsljkw.jpg

rngwlf
Explorer

Week 6, Catch Up: Evangelizing VR and Augmented Reality

This week was spent prepping for an impromptu VR and AR demo at the Missoula Montana DAT Music Conference.

My friend and Unity mentor, Geoff Pepos, was hosting a Virtual Reality petting zoo along side a loud synthesizer wire monster.

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Geoff gesticulating about the importance of baking and me taking notes: "must bake!"

It wasn't technically VR, but I spent a fair bit of time working on a scene using the Vuforia AR library (unity asset). How Vuforia works, besides some intense optical recognition, is that you create an anchor/augmented image to be used as an parent game object for your 3D assets. You can have up to 100 anchor images and simultaneous mini-scenes.  There's a fair bit of check-box-hunting, to get everything to work, but its rather fun creating a real world object with Unity! It sorta has a hologram vibe.

I deployed it to my iPad which is a perfect demo device for this, as an aside iOS seems to run the AR better than my Samsung. I might be missing a checkbox somewhere but my old iPhone 5 does the AR quicker than the Samsung 6.

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Not much to see, in Unity, but using the proper augmented printout
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AR enabled photo and testing Play mode on my laptop.

The scenes can't be too complicated because the AR manages to kill batteries within 10-20 minutes unless you keep the 3D scene simple. But the effect is amazing to kids:

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One little boy kept coming back even after trying the Samsung VR headset.

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What i've learned is this week was that LOD (level of detail), has strange interactions with AR, and seems to have the exact opposite effect in AR vs VR. It seems to require more processing power when interacting with Vuforia.

I also noticed scripts that worked fine in VR totally blew up in AR.

Otherwise the event was fun and exhausting.  Kids seem totally get VR and AR immediately, while adults only want to do VR. I was nervous with the VR headsets because low cost premium Montana hop heavy beer was on tap...
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