A website collaboration between Simon Fraser University and the Fraser Valley's Xa:ytem Longhouse Interpretive Centre is being honoured by the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).
The interactive website -- Journey into Time Immemorial -- has been awarded UNESCO's Grand Prix award.
The project is a collaboration between the SFU Museum of Archeology and Ethnology and the Xa:ytem Centre in Mission.
The site (http://www.sfu.museum/time/) has generated well over a million hits since it was launched last spring.
It's based on First Nations' traditional knowledge and oral history and provides a picture of life in B.C.'s Fraser Valley as it was hundreds of years ago.
Museum curator Barbara Winter says the idea was to show items from the SFU and Xa:ytem museums in use as part of a living community.
"The project is an excellent example of SFU collaborating with an external first Nations agency to create a product of world calibre excellence," Winter says.
Winter and staff from the SFU Learning and Instructional Development Centre's Media Design group collaborated with First Nations representatives to produce the site.
First Nations community members and a team of SFU students participated in the project.
The teams digitally reconstructed a pithouse and longhouse village and incorporated First Nations actors to depict early life in the region.
"Using actors and inserting them into landscapes allowed us to show cultural continuity and the strength of tradition," says Winter.
The site was one of many being considered for the UN prize.
Others were from France, Hungary, Taiwan and the United States.
The site was funded by the Department of Canadian Heritage through its Virtual Museum of Canada initiative.
