Digital technologies offer avenues for preserving Indigenous knowledge and making it accessible to future generations of Indigenous people. Besides, documenting Indigenous knowledge in digital form may encourage native-language education, universal literacy, and open up possibilities for online education, study, and publication. With such prospects, several educational institutions and university researchers had stepped to collaborate with Indigenous communities to create digital heritage projects. However, as noted in the Returning to Gitxaala video we came across in our second discussion, some researchers were inconsiderate of the Indigenous people who supported them along the way with their project/ research work. A statement that captured my attention in the production is that “people come to ask for things…and then leave” (Menzies, 2020, February 28); a resentment of Indigenous people who opened their homes and provided their time, resources, and stories, yet their efforts were not valued.
In line with this issue, in this post, I am sharing a recent publication entitled “Digitizing the Ancestors: Issues in Indigenous Digital Heritage Projects” citing five digital projects that failed to adhere to Indigenous cultural protocols. The author stated that these digital cultural heritage projects were held by university researchers (Christen, Ridington, and Hennessy; Shorter, Srinivasan, Verran, and Christie) between 2002 and 2007 in collaboration with Indigenous communities in Australia, Mexico, USA, and Canada (Stratham, 2019). Despite scholars are citing this work focus on the perceived benefits of the collaborative design process, yet, currently, these projects aren’t functioning as designed. They became software pieces that are “unusable to the community” (Stratham, 2019, p.3732) due to problems related to software security (i.e., Adobe Flash) and financial sustainability. The author warns that such situation is incongruent with the respectful research protocols and may lead to an unwillingness among many Indigenous people to allow their traditional knowledge to be accessible in the digital spaces. In her conclusion, Stratham (2019) called that the sacred cultural heritage of indigenous communities should not be left with stewards who aren’t committed to ensuring its survival. Until there are international standards that ensure that such projects will be safeguarded against the frequent technological changes, researchers working with Indigenous communities should have a digital maintenance plan for digital heritage projects before setting off their new research work.
References:
- Menzies, C.(2020, February). Returning to Gitxaala [Video post]. Retrieved from https://vimeo.com/394424406
- Strathman, N. (2019). Digitizing the ancestors: Issues in indigenous digital heritage projects. International Journal of Communication, 13, 3721-3737.