Wampum, Sequoyan, and Story: Decolonizing the Digital Archive
Archives have a long and troubled history as imperialist endeavors. Scholars of digital archives can begin to decolonize the archive by asking, how is knowledge imparted, in what media, by whom, and for what ends? Drawing on a six-year-long ethnohistorical study of Cherokee language and writing, I explore these questions and analyze the epistemological work…
Read MoreImagining: Creating Spaces for Indigenous Ontologies
For at least half a century, catalogers have struggled with how to catalog and classify Native American and Indigenous peoples materials in library, archive, and museum collections. Understanding how colonialism works can help those in the field of knowledge organization appreciate the power dynamics embedded in the marginalization of Native American and Indigenous peoples materials…
Read MoreDoes Information Really Want to be Free? Indigenous Knowledge Systems and the Question of Openness
The “information wants to be free” meme was born some 20 years ago from the free and open source software development community. In the ensuing decades, information freedom has merged with debates over open access, digital rights management, and intellectual property rights. More recently, as digital heritage has become a common resource, scholars, activists, technologists,…
Read MoreIndigenous Knowledge, Intellectual Property, Libraries and Archives: Crises of Access, Control and Future Utility
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Read MoreAffective Presence: The Metonymical Catalogue / Cara Krmpotich and Alexander Somerville
Drawing on exploratory research of online ethnographic records for particular types of Aboriginal bags in North America, we confront the absence of affective knowledge in museum catalogues and documentation. Although curatorial, ethnographic, and Aboriginal understandings of these items teem with affect, we find affect to be almost wholly lacking from available online records. We ask…
Read MoreThe Sustainable Heritage Network
“The Sustainable Heritage Network (SHN) is an answer to the pressing need for comprehensive workshops, online tutorials, and web resources dedicated to the lifecycle of digital stewardship. The SHN is a collaborative project that complements the work of indigenous peoples globally to preserve, share, and manage cultural heritage and knowledge. The SHN, along with our…
Read MoreThe Treatment of the American Indian in the Library of Congress E-F Schedule / Thomas Yen-Ran Yeh and Eugene T. Frosio
This historical reading from 1971 critiques the Library of Congress Classification system’s treatment of indigenous peoples, highlighting issues such as segregating American Indians from the United States, arranging American Indian history with bias, and representing American Indians as “savages.” Yeh offers proposals for improving the classification system, which is followed by comments and rebuttal from…
Read MoreMurkurtu
Mukurtu (MOOK-oo-too) is an open source platform and content management system for digital community archives. The name is a Warumungu word meaning ‘dilly bag’ or a safe keeping place for sacred materials. This grassroots project seeks to empower communities to manage, share, narrate, and exchange their digital heritage in culturally relevant and ethically-minded ways. [zotpress…
Read MorePlateau People’s Web Portal
The Plateau Peoples’ Web Portal is a collaboratively curated and reciprocally managed archive of Plateau cultural materials. The materials in the Portal have been chosen and curated by tribal representatives. Each item has one or more records associated with it as well as added traditional knowledge and cultural narratives to enhance and enrich understanding to…
Read MoreOpening Archives: Respectful Repatriation / Kimberly Christen
This article highlights the importance of partnerships in digitization projects in relation to indigenous communities. While digitization and the advent of technologies that make information and items widely available, the groups, in this case indigenous communities, should always be consulted before items are made widely available in an effort to ensure that the item should…
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