Tod Swanson

In this paper, we present technical implementation details, describe the virtual world procedural generation pipeline, and discuss potential uses in cultural preservation, museum exhibits, and education of HeritageRoots, an innovative software infrastructure designed for preserving indigenous narratives and oral histories. HeritageRoots consists of two interconnected systems - (1) a web-based knowledge graph (KG) data collection and management system which stores, connects, and presents indigenous traditional knowledge (ITK) in the form of narratives, myths, and testimonies from multiple cultures and languages; (2) a virtual environment rendering pipeline which utilizes large language models (LLM), Unity3D, and Meta Quest software development kit (SDK) to procedurally generate virtual worlds from the KG data. Preliminary system evaluation with Ecuadorian Kichwa narratives showed promising results in (1) academic community interest and support, (2) the possibility of developing an infrastructure capable of connecting indigenous narratives with modern scientific knowledge via KGs and (3) procedurally generating virtual worlds from KG.

Evan Berry, Devoted to Nature: The Religious Roots of American Environmentalism(Oakland: University of California Press, 2015), 272 pp., $29.38 (pbk), ISBN: 978-0520285-73-6.

This article offers an account of Quichua thinking about beauty in the Ecuadorian Amazon: how it is grounded in a philosophical tradition that conceives the world and the self in “perspectivist” and relational terms, and how experiences of beauty play specific roles and attain a particular kind of sense within that context. In particular, we show how indigenous Quichua ideas about beauty inform a range of everyday practices and are intimately connected to distinct ideas about what it means to live a good or mature life. This maturity involves cultivating the self as a body shared with the land, taking on its styles, and responding empathetically to it. But it also means leaving space for others, respecting the boundaries of privacy that emerge through the differentiation of species and the formation of distinct aesthetic communities within particular territories.