The Pacific Storytellers Cooperative is a website that provides a platform for place-based stories from the Pacific Islands to be shared with a global audience. This multimedia effort organized by Pacific Resources for Education and Learning embraces the rich Pacific storytelling heritage and brings it into the internet age.
The Cooperative seeks to find the nexus between oral traditions of island communities and present-day modalities of communication, especially among Pacific youth. Recognizing that storytelling is an embedded part of Pacific and indigenous cultures generally, the Cooperative aims to encourage the younger generations to tell their stories, while utilizing greater levels of connectivity and improved technical capacity.
The Pacific Storytellers Cooperative accepts submissions in all forms from indigenous Pacific Islanders including written stories, photos, videos, and poetry. An editorial advisory group composed of volunteers from across the region will serve as content curators and submissions will be edited for clarity and length. Submissions can be emailed to Dan Lin, PREL Senior Specialist for Research and Policy, at lind@prel.org.
The project is currently supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation. This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant Number #1239733. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.
Intellectual property and copyright
The story belongs to the storyteller, now and forever. They have the freedom to tell their story in any way they choose to whomever they choose.
When storytellers submit material to the Pacific Storytellers Cooperative, they provide full permission for Pacific Resources for Education and Learning to share their story in different types of media today and in the future. The goal of the Cooperative is to provide a global platform for these important, place-based stories and we aim to be a good steward of that which is shared with us.