From Oral Tradition to Digital Collectives:
Information Access and Technology in Contemporary Native American Culture[1]
Kari R. Smith
Columbia University
krs2002@columbia.edu
For people who may live both physically and culturally distant from the majority culture in their immediate environment, information technology can provide a boost toward accessing and documenting their own heritage. As early adopters of the Web, Native Americans began using the Internet for e-commerce and cultural outreach in the early 1990s. The University of Michigan School of Information (SI), through internships and workshop classes held since 1997, has been exploring ways that digital technology can facilitate appropriate access and greater participation in cultural heritage documentation and presentation in tribal colleges and communities across the United States.
The Cultural Heritage Preservation Institute (CHPI) and its research component, the Digital Collective, were developed by SI Professor Maurita Peterson Holland and the author working with Native American community leaders, educators, cultural experts, and SI graduate students. These efforts culminated in 2001 with an international meeting in Hilo, Hawaii, of indigenous culture and technology specialists; library, museum, and archives professionals; funders; and digital library researchers. At this three-day meeting convened by SI, issues were discussed involving the use of information technology in preserving, documenting, and participating in indigenous cultures.
The Cultural Heritage Preservation Institute
In 1997 a middle-school teacher on the Navajo Nation asked Holland to consider ways that SI could collaborate with K-12 schools and the tribal college to use information technology to enhance cultural education in the classroom. Holland was a key contact at SI, both as the director of the Academic Outreach Programs and as the faculty member instrumental in coordinating the internships on the Navajo Nation.
The author, who had recently returned from a sixteen-week internship at the Navajo Nation with an interest in developing culturally appropriate uses for information technology, worked with Holland as a graduate research assistant. By 1998 we had developed a plan and program for CHPI, a week-long technology and culture workshop for middle-school students and their teachers. Based on the teacher’s needs and our experiences on the Nation, there were several goals we wanted to achieve, among them:- create educational materials about Diné culture in Navajo voice
- create primary materials by and about contemporary Native American people and their cultural heritage for future use and preservation
- raise awareness of the role of museums and archives in preserving cultural materials.
The Institute’s goals were to encourage effective student participation in the information society by providing equipment and technology skills, stimulate interest in a career in information science, encourage use of the Web as a community space, raise the awareness of the tribal college, and encourage the pursuit of higher education by K-12 students. SI acted as institute organizer, technology trainer, and facilitator, with Holland as the project director and the author as the project manager. Using the SI workshop framework, [2] graduate students created technology instructional materials, led discussions on how the projects could fit into classroom teaching, and worked one-on-one with the participants in the creation of the projects. The challenges for SI, as identified in its Final Report and Evaluation, included incorporating information technologies into educational modules for use in a middle-school classroom, bridging the perceived gap between traditional culture and modern technological life (use of information technology to teach about Diné culture), and creating and producing an institute of high cultural integrity and significance for all participants.
The June 1998 institute held in Tsaile, Arizona, at Diné College on the Navajo Nation, was a great success. Twenty-two elementary and middle-school students and their teachers attended the week-long technology and culture workshop. They created educational Web projects and learned technology skills they could share once home. Each student became familiar with Diné College and learned not only about computers, the Internet, and creating Web pages, but also about Diné culture and history. The SI graduate students who taught the technology components gained valuable lessons in working in a challenging IT environment. They also learned about a new nation, culture, and language. Uniquely, the workshop was successful because of the combined approach of applying cultural education to technology skills. Several of the adult participants commented that although they had previously taken workshops on creating Web pages, CHPI was the most successful because there was a purpose to learning the technology skills.
Both the teachers and their students received instruction on Internet basics that included browsing, searching, and critical evaluation of Web sites. They also learned how to make basic Web pages, use a Kodak DC210 digital camera, [3] and scan and edit digital images. They developed skills to use the Internet and other digital technology tools to share their heritage with others. By the end of the institute each group of participants created a Web site project based on Diné culture using the information and skills they had acquired.
Image 2 Web page of the 1998
CHPI at the Navajo Nation
The participants toured the Ned A. Hatathli Museum on the college campus, which describes and displays collections of Navajo and other Native American artifacts from a Navajo point of view. In addition, they were able to experience Diné cultural heritage throughout the week from demonstrations and lectures by Diné artisans (woodcarving, pottery, basketry, and silversmithing). A guided tour of nearby Canyon de Chelly National Monument gave them a chance to learn about the historical and cultural significance of the canyon and enjoy its natural beauty. One night a local astronomer set up a telescope so the participants could see a special astronomical event and explained the stars and constellations in the Navajo sky.
During the final two days of the institute, participants designed and created Web-based projects that were to be the basis for ongoing education and curriculum development of cultural heritage education and community heritage documentation. For example, as part of their project on native plants, students from Kayenta Middle School drew pictures and took digital photographs of actual plants, then discussed native uses and stories of the plants on the Web pages they created.
Image 3 Web
page created by Kayenta students
On the last day of the institute, each participant took part in a public presentation of individual projects in the Diné College Museum attended by the president of Diné College, faculty, and guests.
CHPI in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula
The second CHPI was held in 1999 in Ann Arbor and in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Incorporating feedback and lessons learned from 1998, the institute was presented as two workshops. The first focused on digital technology and the Internet and was held at SI. The second, held in the Upper Peninsula in late June, focused on learning about and documenting Ojibwa cultural heritage. The participants, in the eighth through twelfth grades, were from the Upper Peninsula's Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians and the Bay Mills Indian Community."
Image 4 CHPI
1999 Web page
The CHPI participants in 1999 were Internet and Web savvy. The concerns and issues they addressed in their online projects were more about content than process. They were concerned with making sure information available on the Web was culturally sensitive, accurate, and from the point of view of the community and that no sacred, secret, or sensitive information was presented. These intentions were specifically manifested in Web pages created about an ancient tribal burial site visited during the institute field trip. Each person was careful to make sure there were no identifiable landmarks in pictures they took and that there was no information about how to get to the location on their Web pages. Those precautions were very important because ancient burial sites are often targeted by artifact hunters who might use the Web to find such sites. Participants also wanted to use their Ojibwa language and were interested in incorporating audio files into the Web site in the future. Their projects were all based on the theme of “Geography, History, and Culture of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.”
The CHPI Becomes a Model
After the second institute we wanted to go beyond a project-based approach to documenting culture and adapt our experience gained through CHPI to a more-extensible model for digital access and preservation of culture-based knowledge. As an archivist, the author wanted to build into the CHPI a process to capture, describe, and preserve the digital images, drawings, texts, and new knowledge created during the institutes.
Image 5 Initial
model of the Digital Collective
Some of the questions we addressed in our research were:
What we developed was a process and model called the Digital Collective: a model for storing and accessing shared information and knowledge, as well as for creating new knowledge and recreating global memory, and a place where people share personal and professional information and where they seek connections and build community. The Digital Collective’s power is in the people’s sharing of perspective, recollections, augmentations, and facts in the language of their culture. [4]How can the components of Web pages be reused and records and images that did not make it onto Web pages be kept for later access by a larger community?
How can these materials be used and shared, especially by and for indigenous peoples?
Can a new model for information creation, storage, description, and access be created outside the usual boundaries of archives, libraries, and museums?
Who should be involved in designing and implementing such a system?
In a presentation at the New Information Technologies Conference about digital libraries in China in 2001, we developed five basic principles [5] of the Digital Collective model.
Principle One. The digital library must be inclusive of all formats and digital instantiations. In so doing, it must adjust its definition to attend to new forms of information that exist only in virtual space.
Principle Two. Institutions of memory must work together to carry out their responsibility.
Principle Three. Research about learning will reshape how people use information and create new knowledge.
Principle Four. The Web offers two-way communication and publication. Every user of information is also a potential producer. Therefore, stakeholders can become collaborators in describing and sharing artifacts and experience.
Principle Five. Employing principles one through four, we can define a new digital library model: the Digital Collective.
Image 6 Model of the Digital Collective presented in 2001
The Digital Collective is not a digital library, nor a virtual museum, nor an electronic archive. It is a complex system for storing, describing, accessing, and using digitized multiformat materials. Unlike most existing digital libraries or virtual museums that are created and populated by experts from institutions, the Digital Collective is a community space where nonexperts and ordinary people can enter their digital objects along with their information, stories, and experiences about their own or other objects in the collective database.
The Digital Collective is special because it uses experts to catalog, describe, organize, and produce products from the multimedia objects in a Digital Collective, as well as nonexperts who have personal knowledge and objects and are interested in sharing these, in drawing connections among other objects, and in interacting with others regardless of time or space. Another distinctive benefit of the Digital Collective is its inherent focus on digital objects and therefore born-digital objects. Most institutions of memory that are creating databases for digital access to their collections are digitizing physical objects for greater or remote access. The Digital Collective model includes born-digital objects created by artists, writers, and musicians, as well as physical objects that have been digitized.
Another important aspect of the Digital Collective is its attempt to collect current objects and information, rather then wait until materials reach an archive, library, or museum. By allowing people to self-select materials to contribute to a collective and add their own knowledge about materials already in it, the Collective becomes a record of society itself in addition to a rich repository of objects and descriptive information.
We recognized a need for global discussion about initiatives to document and preserve indigenous culture and extend the conversation about the Digital Collective model. Working with Professor Daniel Atkins at SI, and with funding from the National Science Foundation and further support from the W. K. Kellogg Foundation, in 2001 SI convened a meeting, facilitated by The Grove Consultants, to share ideas and explore connections about the role of information technology in celebrating and extending culture. [6]
Invited attendees of the two-day meeting in Hilo, Hawaii, included Native North Americans (including Alaskan, Hawaiian, and Canadian); Maori, Australian Aboriginals, Sami, and Brazilian and African participants; relevant cultural institutions; academic experts in research and technology; and potential funders. All attendees shared an interest in cultural preservation, education, and sharing through information technology.
Each of the thirty-two attendees were asked five key questions before arriving at the meeting:
- What are the major issues for indigenous people in creating and accessing digital resources?
- Can we define and develop global digital collectives using collaborative technology that will enhance sharing, stimulate knowledge creating, and provide venues for research?
- In what ways can digital collectives and collaboratory spaces educate and preserve culture?
- How can digital initiatives leverage job creation, training, and, therefore, economic development?
- What are the appropriate roles for institutions of social memory, and how might they work together?
The discussions at the meeting centered on the topic “The Use of the Web in Indigenous Communities.” Based on initial discussion, three threads of interest were identified: preservation, technology, and networking. Participants illustrated their vision of the effect that the application of information technology could have on indigenous communities. Following that, a discussion of themes and threads drew together the critical points.
Image 7 Hilo participants discuss their vision statements during
the meeting
On the second day, the participants shared “what I can do” and “what I have to offer.” This led to defining major topics for discussions in working groups: 1) developing a guide for indigenous communities that want to use the Web and 2) building a global indigenous library.[7]
Several successful collaborations have taken place since the meeting. In addition, there have been discussions at funding agencies about developing new approaches to support indigenous projects. Work is continuing at SI and other institutions in applying the Digital Collective model for cultural preservation and access.
The experience reported in this paper began for the author in summer 1997 with a sixteen-week SI-sponsored internship on the Navajo Nation at Navajo Community College—now Diné College—in Tsaile, Arizona. [8]
Image 8 Aerial view of the Diné College campus in 1997
In addition to working on various information management and archives projects at the college and with the Navajo Nation Library System, in Window Rock, Arizona, there was ample opportunity to travel around the twenty-six thousand square mile reservation to learn about and visit other cultural collections and museums and archives.
A few of the places that impressed me in terms of their rich collections and potential were the Tuba City Museum, the Window Rock Tribal Museum and Library, and the Burger King in Kayenta with its WWII Code Talkers exhibit of original artifacts. This exhibit is perhaps the richest private collection on permanent display of WWII Navajo Code Talkers. The fact that it’s located in a fast-food restaurant means that a fair number of people visiting Monument Valley see it, but only people who visit Kayenta have this opportunity. In addition, there were various exhibitions and collections in trading posts across the Nation. Through conversations with people in many towns and trading posts, I was introduced to many rich depositories of information and cultural resources, as well as varying levels of technology used in the storage, organization, and dissemination of those resources. By the time I left the Nation, it was apparent that a directory of some sort would be useful for locating cultural collections across the Navajo Nation.
Image 9 The Tribal Museum and Library in Window Rock, Arizona
I was fortunate that my internship was coordinated by Professor Holland. Some of the other projects of SI the author and Holland worked on in collaboration with tribal colleges in the U.S. include:
"Alternative Spring Break" library and archival graduate students at Native American Educational Services College in Chicago. Fourteen students spent a week processing archival materials and documenting and advising on information technology for the college campus.
School of Information and the American Indian Higher Education Consortium. Internet public library technology customized for and by each tribal college.
Crow Nation, Montana—Little Big Horn College. "Alternative Spring Break" and archival internships at the Tribal College Library and Archives.Lessons Learned
During the four years that I worked with Native and indigenous communities, libraries, archives, and tribal colleges, I learned several valuable lessons.
Listen: Be a “guide on the side,” rather than “sage on the stage,” and don’t assume “you” know “it.”
Communities come first. This is a very important criterion that is sometimes difficult to keep in focus when working on a research or pilot project.
Understand funding administrative requirements and their potential impact. Who will be granted the funds, and who will be the subcontractor for collaborative projects? What perception might this give the local community? Are the deadlines and reporting expectations realistic for the partners?
Work with Native timetables. Be realistic about how much time is needed to complete a project. Be flexible when unexpected circumstances arise.
Know the technology constraints and capabilities of partnering institutions and locations.
Be clear about what you can provide and how you are an expert—and how you are not!
Become a part of the community in which you are working, including learning their history, customs, and expectations.
Future Challenges for the Profession
Indigenous people must be included in developing standards and technologies at national and international levels.
Education and training issues, such as funding, the ability to enter established programs, and time commitments need to be addressed. Increased access to indigenous knowledge has to be weighed carefully against the potential harvesting of that knowledge for commercial use.
Archives, libraries, and museums need to understand what they have in their collections, what ownership rights exist, and how and when the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) may apply.
[1] This paper is modified from a presentation for the panel “Creating Web Access to the Cultural Record” at the Society of American Archivists Annual Conference in Birmingham, Alabama, in August 2002. Special thanks are due to Professor Maurita P. Holland, teacher, mentor, and colleague, for all her support. Much of this work was supported by funding from the W. K. Kellogg Foundation, the Microsoft Foundation, and the National Science Foundation, in addition to the School of Information at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Michigan. [back]
[2] The W. K. Kellogg Foundation granted SI funds to re-invent the education of library schools for the twenty-first century. Part of this includes the Practical Engagement Program (PEP) is an integral part of SI's professional master's program. Designed to integrate the application of knowledge and skills to specific problems outside the classroom, PEP both enables and requires students to combine what they have learned in the classroom with what they observe and experience in the "real world." [back]
[3] Digital cameras and software for each school were provided through a grant from the W. K. Kellogg Foundation. [back]
[4] Holland, Maurita P., and Kari R. Smith. “Using Information Technology to Preserve and Sustain Cultural Heritage: The Digital Collective,” in the 2000 UNESCO World Culture Report, (UNESCO Publishing: Paris, 2000). [back]
[5] Holland, Maurita P., and Kari R. Smith, “What the Digital Library Doesn’t Tell You: Exploring the Gaps and Opportunities,” p. 89 in Global Digital Library Development in the New Millennium, ed. by Ching-chih Chen (Beijing: Tsinghua University Press, 2001). [back]
[6] The meeting was cosponsored by the American Indian Higher Education Consortium and the Smithsonian Institution Museum of the American Indian. [back]
[7] Digital Collectives in Indigenous Cultures and Communities, report of the meeting held August 10 and 11, 2001, in Hilo, Hawaii. Copies of the report may be requested from: School of Information, Office of Academic Outreach, University of Michigan, 304 West Hall, 550 East University Avenue, Ann Arbor, Michigan 28109-1092.[back]
[8] Diné College was established in 1968 as the first tribally controlled community college in the United States. In creating an institution of higher education, the Navajo Nation sought to encourage Navajo youth to become contributing members of the Navajo Nation and world society. [back]
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