Reuniting Objects, Records, and Indigenous Knowledge in Digital Platforms

In this session, Aaron Glass, Associate Professor, Anthropology, Bard Graduate Center; Cara Krmpotich, Associate Professor, Faculty of Information, University of Toronto; and Heidi Bohaker, Department of History, University of Toronto, discuss two innovative, collaborative projects using digital media to link diverse collections and Native American communities for the purpose of enhancing scholarship and cultural revitalization. The first is an effort to reunite Franz Boas and George Hunt's 1897 monograph on the "Kwakiutl Indians" with widely distributed museum collections and unpublished archival materials. It includes a prototype for a critical digital edition built on Indigenous ontologies and hereditary protocols. The second, Great Lakes Research Alliance for the Study of Aboriginal Arts and Culture (GRASAC), explores convergence, bringing together digitized heritage and language items from archival, ethnographic, and archaeological collections, while also interweaving Great Lakes Indigenous and non-Indigenous knowledge protocols and research methodologies. This session was part of the ATALM annual conference held in Prior Lake, Minnesota, on October 8-11, 2018.