Local Contexts: Supporting Indigenous Rights and Interests in Data and Collections
DATE: Tuesday, May 10, 2022
TIME: 3:00 p.m. (EST)
LOCATION: Zoom, register for link
Every Indigenous community has cultural and biological knowledge within educational systems, archives, libraries, and museums that they do not own, do not control, and cannot govern circulation over. Significant information about that knowledge, including individual and community names and proper provenance information, is absent. Issues of responsibility, ownership, as well as incomplete or significant mistakes in the metadata extend to every other knowledge asset or digital record building upon this information. Increasing digitization continues to disregard Indigenous rights affecting cultural memory; the accuracy of historical narratives; present day Indigenous culture, health, and well-being; and is also a critical matter pertaining to Indigenous knowledge and data sovereignty.
Local Contexts offers a robust decolonial information system of labeling as digital markers to intervene in the structural colonial legacy of Indigenous erasure. The Traditional Knowledge (TK) and Biocultural (BC) Labels and Notices work to enhance and legitimize locally based decision-making and Indigenous governance frameworks for determining ownership, access, and culturally appropriate conditions for sharing historical, contemporary, and future collections of cultural heritage and Indigenous data.
This presentation will give an introduction to the Local Contexts initiative and demonstration of the newly launched Local Contexts Hub. The Local Contexts team will explore the Traditional Knowledge and Biocultural Labels and Notices and the practical implications for Indigenous communities, researchers, and institutions.
Speaker Bios
Dr. Janette Hamilton-Pearce
Janette is from the Te Whānau Ā Āpanui iwi in Aotearoa New Zealand. She is the Local Contexts Programme Lead recognizing the inherent sovereignty that Indigenous communities have over knowledge and data that comes from our lands, territories, airspace and waters. She has a Ph.D. and over 21 years background as an academic in information systems for Indigenous communities. Janette works for Te Kotahi Research Institute at the University of Waikato on the homelands of the Tainui iwi. She specializes in supporting Indigenous communities in managing intellectual and cultural property rights and data within information systems.
Felicia Garcia
Felicia Garcia, a member of the Santa Ynez Band of Chumash Indians (Samala Chumash), is the Local Contexts Community Outreach Manager. In her role, she supports Indigenous communities' use of the Traditional Knowledge and Biocultural Labels as well as access to the newly launched Local Contexts Hub. Felicia earned her BA in Psychology at Willamette University and her MA in Museum Studies at New York University. Her master’s thesis focused on the need for Indigenous land acknowledgements in United States museums and led to the development of a guide to land acknowledgements for cultural institutions (http://landacknowledgements.org/). Felicia strives to use her position as a museum professional to carve out space for Indigenous people to tell their own stories so that our communities both see themselves in these spaces and feel seen.
Corrie Roe
Corrie is the Local Contexts Institution Outreach Manager. In her role, she supports staff at collecting and research institutions who are interested in applying Traditional Knowledge and Biocultural Notices, joining the newly launched Local Contexts Hub, and engaging with Indigenous communities about the appropriate use of the TK & BC Labels. She earned a BA in Anthropology from the University of Vermont (2014) and a MA in Museum Studies from New York University (2018). Her roles in cultural and arts institutions in Lenapehoking (New York) have involved project management, community building and support, and collection and exhibition research and management.
