Kimberly Christen Presentation
Kimberly Christen will give the talk, "Information Kin: Territories of Relation and Embodied Knowledge."
Abstract: In early January 2020 the federal Public Buildings Reform Board listed Seattle's branch of the National Archives as one of several federal sites to sell. Within days there was outcry from archivists, scholars, community members and Native American nations from Alaska, Idaho, Oregon and Washington. Closing and relocating the Seattle, Washington based federal archives would all but cut off access to records for Native American nations in the region. Chelsea Craig, a teacher and member of the Tulalip Tribes in Washington, said, "Personally, I believe when I come here, I see my ancestors on paper, their spirits are tied to that. Our ancestors are here, and they need us to hear and see their story." Maori scholar Alice Te Punga Somerville suggests that, "archives are full of interactions, messages, and connections." Indeed archives, libraries, museums, and other collecting institutions are more than storehouses for and of the past. They are sites of relation. What if instead of records we saw relations? What if we saw information as kin that needed to be cared for instead of managed? What if we saw stewardship as an information system? Indigenous Studies scholars have shown that the violence of extractive research methods rooted in colonial collecting practices and fictions of Indigenous demise continue. Those methods and the information they created, however, can be altered within a framework based on anticolonial practices. Archival, cultural heritage, and linguistic materials have the potential to be repurposed from those original traumatic research paradigms through ethical frameworks for research, return, repair, and reuse. This presentation explores embodied, tactile, and material forms of information kinship through an examination of digital return, repair, and repatriation. By foregrounding Indigenous sovereignty in its many expressions—territorial, cultural, visual, and intellectual—this presentation aims to advance an ethical and relational model and method for cultural heritage informatics.
[2] 'I do still have a letter': Our sea of archives' in Sources and Methods in Indigenous Studies, Edited by Chris Andersen, Jean M. O'Brien, 2016, quote at 123.
Dr. Kimberly Christen is the Director of the Center for Digital Scholarship and Curation at Washington State University where she is a Professor in, and the Director of, the Digital Technology and Culture Program. Her work explores the intersections of cultural heritage, traditional knowledge, information ethics, and the use of digital technologies in and by Indigenous communities globally as modes of decolonial practice and self-determination. She is the founder of Mukurtu CMS an open source community access platform designed to meet the information, curatorial, and data needs of Indigenous communities, she is also the Director of the Sustainable Heritage Network, and co-director of the Local Contexts initiative, both platforms provide practical tools and educational resources for stewarding digital cultural heritage and the management of intellectual property by Indigenous communities.
Meeting ID: 864 9706 8006
Password: 073067
Questions? Contact Lori Kelso