A Digital Bundle

Protecting and Promoting Indigenous Knowledge Online

Jennifer Wemigwans

• Publisher: U of R Press
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9780889775534
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

An essential contribution to Internet activism and a must read for Indigenous educators, A Digital Bundle frames digital technology as an important tool for self-determination and idea sharing, ultimately contributing to Indigenous resurgence and nation building.By defining Indigenous Knowledge online in terms of "digital bundles, " Jennifer Wemigwans elevates both cultural protocol and cultural responsibilities, grounds online projects within Indigenous philosophical paradigms, and highlights new possibilities for both the Internet and Indigenous communities.

Chapter 1

Indigenous Resurgence and the Internet

Indigenous ontologies and cosmologies are regenerating communities across Turtle Island and reconnecting Indigenous Peoples with their spiritual and cultural power. This book looks at how Indigenous Knowledge online has had socio-cultural effects and how information communication technology (Ict) affects relationships among diverse Indigenous Peoples and the flow of power between Indigenous Peoples and the state. Within an Indigenous framework, this work supports the notion that power residing in media networks is stronger than that residing in government (Castells, 2010). A series of interviews with Indigenous activists, artists, educators, and front-line workers demonstrates a vast network of cultural exchange based upon the flow of local Indigenous Knowledge from specific community contexts to the national stage and even the global stage. Indigenous Knowledge online is instrumental to the success of Indigenous community resurgence and radical application of knowledge in all fields, including education, health, law, and social well-being. The interviews conducted across Canada reveal not only the dialectical relationship between online and offline political action and engagement but also how activists, educators, and front-line workers use Indigenous Knowledge online to create, develop, and enhance their own work. Indigenous Knowledge online speaks back to dominant colonial systems of knowledge in Canada by representing an active presence rooted in the local soils of diverse Elders and Knowledge Keepers.

The revitalization of Indigenous Knowledge systems and practices is key to the movement of Indigenous resurgence and ultimately the transformation and sustainability of Indigenous communities. Indigenous resurgence is connected to Indigenous Knowledge and is acknowledged by writers such as Leanne Simpson who are bringing forward “fourth world theory—theories, strategies and analysis strongly rooted in the values, knowledge and philosophies of Indigenous Nations” (Corntassel & Spak, 2010, 135). However, such work is often not connected with the field of new technologies and Internet studies.

For example, scholars such as Kate Hennessy (Hennessy & Moore, 2007) and Linc Kesler,1 who have done extensive work on online projects for Indigenous communities, are concerned with the role of digital technology in the documentation and safeguarding of cultural heritage. The notion of safeguarding is also of great interest to many Indigenous communities, which have come to see information technology as an important tool for preserving their traditional cultures for the future (Dyson, Hendriks, & Grant, 2007). In fact, early writings on the relationship between the Internet and Indigenous Peoples stressed that computer technologies can be used as tools for self-determination and that “we can determine our use of new technologies to support, strengthen and enrich our cultural communities” (L’Hirondelle, 1994). These statements speak directly to the field of Indigenous resurgence, and they have inspired this work. Beyond safeguarding cultural heritage, how do we protect the flow of communication and access to Indigenous Knowledge for the next seven generations? Knowing that net neutrality is not a given and that access to the Internet and Icts is not a government guarantee, how do Indigenous Peoples safeguard freedom of expression and access to Indigenous Knowledge online for future generations?

This book investigates the role of knowledge production in the construction and use of the online Indigenous Knowledge site FourDirectionsTeachings.com. The term “knowledge production” is used in an academic context, and I use it here, but it has different implications when used in the context of “producing” Indigenous Knowledge online. What I am talking about here is not the “production of knowledge” in the sense of “creating” new knowledge, at least not in the sense of being part of the “progress” of knowledge usually assumed in modern Eurocentric thought (which would be a problematic concept from many if not all traditional Indigenous perspectives). “Knowledge production” here refers to the technical production, or really the reproduction, of aspects of long-existing Indigenous Knowledge in new formats and in relation to new contexts—in the sense of assembling, representing, and creatively configuring this pre-existing knowledge but certainly not of creating it.

Indigenous Knowledge is a complex epistemological paradigm. To better comprehend it, I have pulled the definitions below from my readings of Marlene Brant Castellano, Taiaiake Alfred, Leanne Simpson, and John Borrows. For example, I perceive Indigenous Knowledge in two distinct forms: sacred teachings and personal knowledge.

Sacred teachings consist of Traditional Knowledge passed on through ceremonial protocols. Only Elders and Traditional Teachers who have been gifted the Indigenous Knowledge and teachings in this way can share those teachings publicly and transfer them. This type of Indigenous Knowledge is often considered as belonging to the community and held in trust by Knowledge Keepers and Elders expected to abide by the cultural protocols entrusted to that knowledge.

Personal knowledge is acquired through individual educational pursuits, empirical processes, or the gifts that one is born with or has received through revealed knowledge, which includes spiritual knowledge gained through dreams, visions, intuitions, and meditations. Personal knowledge is not bounded by the cultural protocols of the community in the way that Traditional Knowledge is. An Elder or Traditional Knowledge Keeper also acquires knowledge through empirical observation as well as the gifts that he or she is born with or has received through revealed knowledge. However, the role of an Elder or Traditional Knowledge Keeper is very different from the role of an Indigenous artist or academic who has acquired personal knowledge. Although an Elder might choose to claim the role of an artist, it is highly unlikely that an Indigenous artist or academic or politician would claim the role of an Elder or Traditional Knowledge Keeper unless she or he is acknowledged as one and conferred with the title by the community. This distinction is important because it is a concept understood instinctively by Indigenous communities even though not always articulated or discussed.

As a producer of Indigenous Knowledge media projects and as an academic, I make it a part of my practice to articulate this distinction so as not to assume or usurp the role of a Knowledge Keeper or to disrespect Indigenous protocols held by Elders who carry the Indigenous Knowledge of their communities. In clearly articulating my knowledge as acquired knowledge, and in recognizing Indigenous Knowledge Keepers and Elders as representing the Indigenous Knowledge protocols of their communities, I hope to convey the importance and significance of locating how Indigenous Knowledge is respectfully represented in my media and academic work. I hope that this is a way of demonstrating Indigenous ethics and of reinforcing a type of Indigenous copyright on the cultivation and dissemination of Indigenous Knowledge for public consumption.

This book also explores the potential of the Internet and digital technology to serve Indigenous resurgence agendas by contributing to the efforts and goals of Indigenous nation building, and it aims to bridge the fields of Indigenous resurgence and Internet studies (Benkler, 2006), thus contributing to new understandings of the role of Indigenous Knowledge and education in a networked world.

The phenomenon of Internet users searching for Indigenous Knowledge online demonstrates the need for access to Indigenous Knowledge and reveals the intentions, experiences, and perceptions of Indigenous Internet users, who intuitively navigate the Internet within a complex understanding of Indigenous epistemology. This book discusses knowledge production in relation to the community, using the example of how FourDirectionsTeachings.com is taken up by visitors who use the site and how the site came to be accepted as a legitimate source of Indigenous Knowledge online by many Indigenous artists and educators and Canadian institutions and organizations that work with Indigenous Peoples. It is important to note that FourDirectionsTeachings.com was created and produced within Indigenous protocols, demonstrating Indigenous practice and applied Indigenous ethics in the construction of a digital site.

In Networks of Outrage and Hope: Social Movements in the Internet Age, Manuel Castells (2012, 11) looks at how mass self-communication supports the ability of the social actor to be autonomous via networks of the Internet: “This is why governments are afraid of the Internet, and this is why corporations have a love-hate relationship with it and are trying to extract profits while limiting its potential for freedom (for instance, by controlling file sharing or open source networks).” In a podcast, Castells defines the networks of the Internet as a new social structure that has transformed communication networks and socialization.2 These networks can be broadly defined as two competing streams on the Internet: the consumption model, which privileges features that support commercial transactions and advertisements, such as Facebook, Google, and Amazon; and the community model, which relies on communication features that support online community and public life (Foshay, 2016). The community model represents an inversion of mass media broadcasting and publication by allowing a bottom-up alternative through the self-produced communication features of the Internet. For Internet theorist Andrew Feenberg, “the future of the Internet depends on which actors prevail in determining its technical code” (see Foshay, 2016, 39).

To better comprehend the meaning of the technical code, it is helpful to look at Tim Berners-Lee (2014, 181), “widely acclaimed as the inventor of the Web because he wrote many of the fundamental protocols and created the original prototypes.” In an interview, Berners-Lee described web science as the design of two things: a social protocol and a technological protocol (184). Using email as an example, he identified the technical code created to send and receive email. This transaction, according to him, was designed as a microscopic system with the intent of person-to-person communication. However, spam occurred. He stated that “one of our social assumptions was wrong, namely, that everybody is friendly and will only send e-mail to another person when the other person wants to read it. So the academic assumption is broken, and we have to redesign e-mail” (184). For Berners-Lee, spam is the macroscopic phenomenon that emerged from email and produced a social and technological problem now in need of redesign and reconfiguration. Spam also demonstrates the ongoing tension between business interests and community/person-to-person relational networks.

As of 2018, the World Wide Web is twenty-nine years old, a young adult, yet it is now the most ubiquitous medium of communication for business, community, and education. Be that as it may, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, in the “Media and Reconciliation” section of its report (Sinclair, Wilson, & Littlechild, 2015, 335), completely missed any discussion of the Internet. This omission is a significant oversight, since the Internet is the main channel of communication for many Indigenous communities dispersed across North and Sout...

Table of contents

• Acknowledgements
• Chapter 1
• Chapter 2
• Chapter 3
• Chapter 4
• Chapter 5
• Chapter 6
• Chapter 7
• Chapter 8
• References
• Index