Nitɬ'am: everyday navigation
Sep. 30th, 2011 10:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
steorran_woruldeThe Nitɬ'am get around the world on a daily basis using a combination of echolocation and canes. It's a good combination. Canes can give certain kinds of information about the immediate environment that echolocation can't - according to one of the videos on human echolocation that I've watched, a cane can allow you to notice a sudden drop-off or hole that you wouldn't catch with echolocation. Echolocation, on the other hand, can give you information about things outside cane-reach distance, and more directionally distributed than a cane can give you at any one point in time. So they complement each other nicely.
Canes are probably made of, well, cane, or other lightweight sturdy grass-like plants such as bamboo. Children get their first cane at a very young age - probably around one or when they first start walking. (I wonder how they are taught not to wave the cane around in ways that will hurt people standing nearby. I'm sure they can work something out for that, though.) Children probably learn to use canes by a combination of exploration (give someone a tool and they'll figure out what they can do with it), observation (e.g., noticing an adult tapping something with their cane and figuring out what they're doing), and incidental teaching ("Hey, why don't you tap it with your cane and see if you can figure out what it is?" "If you poke with your cane like this, it won't get stuck in the grass like that.")
Because echolocation is in use by everyone all the time, children will hear echolocation sounds around them from birth. In our society, many blind children begin to figure out echolocation on their own at a young age, but unfortunately most of them are discouraged from making weird sounds by parents who don't realize the value of it. In Nitɬ'am society, children will of course not be discouraged from exploratory echolocation efforts, and they will also have models of echolocation all around them and will probably copy the sounds they hear others making. So they'll almost certainly figure out echolocation on their own, with no intentional instruction. However, there is probably also at least informal instruction added to the naturally-figured-out echolocation, refining it further, and possibly even formal instruction after a certain point to teach the subtlest aspects of echolocation.
I'm not sure whether they would wear shoes. It seems like shoes have both benefits and drawbacks.
Benefit: Shoes protect your feet from things you might step on that are sharp or sticky or prickly or slimy etc. If you can't see exactly what things are like where you're putting down your feet, this might be useful. (Also, shoes protect against cold; this is no different in a blind society than in a sighted society, though.)
Drawback: Wearing shoes, you can't feel as well what's underfoot; thus, you get less evidence about your environment.
I think what I'm going to go with at the moment is that they wear thin leather shoes, along the lines of moccasins - thin enough to get some significant information about the environment, though not as much as with bare feet, but still offering some protection against things stepped on.
Canes are probably made of, well, cane, or other lightweight sturdy grass-like plants such as bamboo. Children get their first cane at a very young age - probably around one or when they first start walking. (I wonder how they are taught not to wave the cane around in ways that will hurt people standing nearby. I'm sure they can work something out for that, though.) Children probably learn to use canes by a combination of exploration (give someone a tool and they'll figure out what they can do with it), observation (e.g., noticing an adult tapping something with their cane and figuring out what they're doing), and incidental teaching ("Hey, why don't you tap it with your cane and see if you can figure out what it is?" "If you poke with your cane like this, it won't get stuck in the grass like that.")
Because echolocation is in use by everyone all the time, children will hear echolocation sounds around them from birth. In our society, many blind children begin to figure out echolocation on their own at a young age, but unfortunately most of them are discouraged from making weird sounds by parents who don't realize the value of it. In Nitɬ'am society, children will of course not be discouraged from exploratory echolocation efforts, and they will also have models of echolocation all around them and will probably copy the sounds they hear others making. So they'll almost certainly figure out echolocation on their own, with no intentional instruction. However, there is probably also at least informal instruction added to the naturally-figured-out echolocation, refining it further, and possibly even formal instruction after a certain point to teach the subtlest aspects of echolocation.
I'm not sure whether they would wear shoes. It seems like shoes have both benefits and drawbacks.
Benefit: Shoes protect your feet from things you might step on that are sharp or sticky or prickly or slimy etc. If you can't see exactly what things are like where you're putting down your feet, this might be useful. (Also, shoes protect against cold; this is no different in a blind society than in a sighted society, though.)
Drawback: Wearing shoes, you can't feel as well what's underfoot; thus, you get less evidence about your environment.
I think what I'm going to go with at the moment is that they wear thin leather shoes, along the lines of moccasins - thin enough to get some significant information about the environment, though not as much as with bare feet, but still offering some protection against things stepped on.