The Digital Native American and Indigenous Studies Project

FAIN: HT-231812-15

Indiana/Purdue University, Indianapolis (Indianapolis, IN 46202-5148)
Jennifer E. Guiliano (Project Director: March 2015 to June 2019)

Three three-day workshops of 35 participants each hosted by Yale University, Northern Arizona University, and Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) on teaching new digital methods and exploring issues of preservation and access in Native American Studies. 

The Digital Native American studies Project (DNSP) proposes to offer three three-day workshops that will educate participants on issues of digital humanities research and methodology in the context of Native American Studies. Native American Studies, an interdisciplinary field of study exploring the history, culture, politics, issues, and contemporary experience of indigenous peoples of America, intersects with a number of issues related to access, preservation, and methodology that are problematized through the development and deployment of digital tools and methods and the conduct of digital research. While tremendous work has been done around the preservation and access of analog materials within Native American communities, there has been much less attention paid to the ways in which digital objects, practices, and methods function within Native communities and through Native American Studies scholarship outside of the anthropological context. Each three-day long workshop will serve thirty-five participants drawn from academic, cultural heritage, and tribal communities.

Media Coverage

Grant Supports the Work to Inform on Native American Studies (Media Coverage)
Author(s): Nam Tran
Publication: Daily Nebraskan
Date: 8/28/2015
Abstract: Article reporting on award of grant and the workshops it will sponsor.
URL: http://www.dailynebraskan.com/news/grant-supports-work-to-inform-on-native-american-studies/article_ab66b82e-4d23-11e5-94b6-aff53f3c846f.html

Associated Products

Digital Native American and Indigenous Studies Institute website (Web Resource)
Title: Digital Native American and Indigenous Studies Institute website
Author: Jennifer E. Guiliano
Abstract: Website for the workshop series.
Year: 2015
Primary URL: http://digitalnais.org/

Digital Native American and Indigenous Studies Permanent Repository (Web Resource)
Title: Digital Native American and Indigenous Studies Permanent Repository
Author: Jennifer E. Guiliano
Abstract: Repository of primary sources and curriculum materials for the workshop series.
Year: 2015
Primary URL: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/ajxoq5wp6tfst43/AAAH7b6pmNP58qX2QoaKXDb1a?dl=0

Digital Native American and Indigenous Studies: Digital Futures in Indian Country: Reflections from the Digital Native American and Indigenous Studies Project Panel (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: Digital Native American and Indigenous Studies: Digital Futures in Indian Country: Reflections from the Digital Native American and Indigenous Studies Project Panel
Author: Jennifer E. Guiliano
Author: Meredith McCoy
Author: Ricardo Punzalan
Abstract: What possibilities exist for digital projects in Indian Country? As video gamers, artists, educators, authors, activists, and scholars grow the field of Digital Native American and Indigenous Studies, this panel looks to explore, articulate, and critique the relationship between digital technologies and NAIS. Weaving together interconnected experiences with digital projects and the questions their non-digital approaches to Native American and Indigenous Studies introduce, this three scholar panel will suggest the benefits and limitations of digital research, teaching, and community engagement for scholarly and public audiences. Meredith McCoy delves into her scholarly platform, the web-based literary magazine/blog The 90%: Stories of Diaspora from Indian Country, to reveal the possibilities for digital communities of Native artists and writers to interrogate colonial constructs, center Indigenous voices, and increase the visibility of diversity within Indian Country. Jennifer Guiliano explores the limitations of open access philosophies including the ways in which digital technologies encourage the reliance on historically problematic colonial archives that obscure Indigenous authority and knowledge. Ricardo Punzalan considers the implications and ethics of bringing Indigenous collections into digital aggregates given the legacy of collecting and social histories confronted by Indigenous communities.
Date: 5/22/2017
Primary URL: https://www.dropbox.com/s/2ldzx23cz953v2d/NAISA2017_DigitalFutures_Proposal.pdf?dl=0
Conference Name: 2017 Native American and Indigenous Studies Association Conference

Indigenizing the Digital Humanities: Challenges, Questions, and Research Opportunities (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: Indigenizing the Digital Humanities: Challenges, Questions, and Research Opportunities
Author: Jennifer E. Guiliano
Author: Carrie Heitman
Abstract: [final paragraph of much longer abstract] Digital Humanities articulates three parallel interdisciplinary commitments to “openness”: 1) a commitment to open access publishing; 2) a commitment to open access/open source software development; and 3) a commitment to open access data. While the first two trends have received deep and lasting attention via scholarly publishing and digital commons enterprises and the open source development movement promoted by github and other code repositories, the commitment to open access data has been largely undertheorized. Using case studies of Digital Humanities projects that have been developed using Native American and Indigenous content, this submission suggests that Native and Indigenous content complicates the current technical application of open source development driven by digital aggregators and application programming interface development. By highlighting ethical issues around the use, reuse, and distributed architectures encouraged by common digital humanities technologies, this submission suggests that the rhetoric and practice of the open access data movement obscures both Native agency in determining the use of community materials as well as the role of technical determinism in proliferating the violence of colonial archives on Native communities. Questions this submission engages with include: How do we deal with born-digital research data in Native American and Indigenous contexts? How do we as scholars responsibly engage in digital research in Native communities? How do organizations and institutions navigate the cultural, legal, and ethical contexts of the communities whose objects they hold? How can free and open source software solutions be leveraged to build community engagement? Finally, what might be recommended for tribal communities who desire to launch their own digital projects but may have concerns about resources, access, infrastructure, and preservation?
Date: 8/8/2017
Primary URL: https://dh2017.adho.org/abstracts/372/372.pdf
Primary URL Description: Abstract from DH2017 program.
Conference Name: Alliance of Digital Humanities Organizations Digital Humanities Annual Conference 2017

Difficult Heritage and the Complexities of Indigenous Data (Article)
Title: Difficult Heritage and the Complexities of Indigenous Data
Author: Heitman, Carolyn
Author: Guiliano, Jennifer
Abstract: Exploring open access of Native American and Indigenous data through the concept of difficult heritage, this paper highlights how the digital humanities open access data effort is inadequate and potentially perilous when considering not just the existence of NAIS collections but also their troubled status as colonial artifacts. We argue that the rhetoric and practice of the open access data movement obscures both Native and Indigenous agency and sovereignty in determining the use of community materials as well as the role of technical determinism and automated computational access (e.g. APIs) in proliferating the violence of colonial archives on Native communities. We illustrate how “difficult heritage” can assist digital humanists in thinking through not just the design and implementation of digital projects for NAIS communities but also the impact of NAIS data diffusion through open access protocols. And importantly, we suggest that the question of providing humanities research data is not just the deployment of an ecosystem for development, description, access, and reuse but a recognition that there are potentially multiple ecosystems of research and teaching that must exist simultaneously and be treated as part of a non-homogenous whole.
Year: 2019
Primary URL: https://culturalanalytics.org/2019/08/difficult-heritage-and-the-complexities-of-indigenous-data/
Secondary URL: 10.22148/16.044
Secondary URL Description: Article DOI
Access Model: Open Access
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Journal of Cultural Analytics

---