Advanced Imaging and Archiving Skills for Indigenous Communities

FAIN: PE-284368-22

Cultural Heritage Imaging (San Francisco, CA 94102-5867)
Carla Schroer (Project Director: May 2021 to present)

The creation of two five-day training sessions at three sites, with follow-up sessions and consulting both online and in person to capture cultural heritage materials with two-dimensional and three-dimensional imaging. The participating Indigenous groups from Alaska, Hawaii, and Maine would learn how to prepare their photographic data, their 3D work products, the contextual metadata that describes how these digital assets were acquired and built, and how to make a standards compliant submission to an archival preservation system.

This project provides a program of in-depth, hands-on training in advanced computational photography 2D and 3D documentary and archival technologies. It is a collaboration between Cultural Heritage Imaging and three indigenous community organizations: The Aleutian Pribilof Islands Association, serving the Unangax^ (Aleut) people; Huliauapa’a, serving Hawai’i’s native people; and the Passamaquoddy Tribal Government in Maine. The training sessions will build a sustainable core of culture bearers in each community to digitally document their material culture and heritage sites. A scientific imaging work flow and tools that simplify metadata management give the generated digital representations reliability and reusability. Tools supporting archival submission of the digital documentary materials help ensure the long-term preservation of each community’s digital collections. The project will help each community perpetuate their heritage and take control of their cultural narrative.