The article reviews a digital repatriation project carried out by the Center for Native American and Indigenous Research at the American Philosophical Society over the course of eight years (2008-present). The project focused on building digital archives in four indigenous communities: Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, Penobscot Nation, Tuscarora Nation, and Ojibwe communities in both the United States and Canada. The article features insights from traditional knowledge keepers who helped to create a new system of co-stewarding the APS’ indigenous archival materials and recounts how the APS established protocols for cultural sensitivity. A new model of community-based scholarship is proposed to create a more equal and respectful relationship between indigenous communities, scholars, and archives.
I want to take back, as an ambassador to my people [the Ojibwe], that new lesson I learned [at the Penn Museum (UPM)], we no longer have to be afraid of having pictures taken because they don’t steal the spirit of what’s being taken. They can invigorate and enliven and inspire knowledge and wisdom and learning … Digital imaging is a new thing … that can [bring to life these Ojibwe artifacts] for our kids and our generation … We’re going to digitally image some of the things and take them back to our people … All of these things . . .
This problem of how to represent the black self on the white page, how to overcome the inherent ethnocentrism of the Western literary tradition, is one with which both the critic and the novelist of Afro-American literature must struggle to come to terms. As Gates points out, it is a tradition which dates all the way back to Plato's metaphor of the soul-of a white horse which is described as a "follower of true glory" and another, "of a dark color," which in turn attempts to lead the soul "to do terrible and unlawful deeds." For those who are able to control the dark horse and allow the white one to lead the way, Plato promises a vision of the soul which goes on to "live in light always," whereas those charioteers who cannot control the black horse are condemned "to go down again to darkness," to a life below the earth.
Celeste Tường Vy Sharpe and Timothy B. Powell describe how they use the design of digital platforms as teachable problems to engage students in a digital humanities course about the stories of Indigenous peoples and the Eurocentric “control over time.” Sharpe and Powell task students with creating a digital project that explores a more culturally specific and nuanced model of Iroquois or Haudenosaunee temporality. In the process, students and teachers alike imagine solutions that may enable digital humanities tools to more accurately represent how Indigenous peoples tell their histories.
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