Holding Space: The Indigenous Knowledges Project at the Halfway Point
A blog post by Rhiannon Sorrell, visiting research fellow for the AHRC-NEH Indigenous Knowledges grant, to share her perspectives on the project.
As a new semester approaches us, and an entire new year, for that matter, begins, reflection on the previous twelve months is inevitable… as is this long overdue blogpost on the Indigenous Knowledges Project, my trip to London, Sarah’s visit to the Navajo Nation, and our joint trip to the International Conference of Indigenous Archives, Libraries, and Museums (ATALM). It has also admittedly taken this long to process all the meetings (planned or by chance), all the conversations (formal and informal), and all the spaces and places these encounters occurred. Contrary to western academic and grant deadlines, projects involving Indigenous nations and materials are slow, contemplative work, and this has been a common theme when talking about the progress and direction of this pilot.
Leading up to the submission of this project’s proposal to the National Endowment for the Humanities (on the U.S. side) and the Arts Humanities Research Council (on the U.K. side), I had been (and continue to be) involved in the Tribesourcing Southwest Film Project, as the coordinator of the Diné region of films. My work on this project allowed me to see the opportunity in digital humanities projects to give new life to early 20th century A/V materials featuring Indigenous peoples by embedding them back in their respective communities, on their terms. The Indigenous Knowledges’ primary aim — a model of collaborative practice for future digital exchanges over reciprocal and collaborative digital curation between U.K. GLAM and North American tribal college LAM professionals — spoke to the optimism I have around the role of digital technologies in giving agency of materials and collections back to tribal communities. Marisa Elena Duarte stated in her book Network Sovereignty, “Indigenous peoples resist and subvert colonizing systems, rules and practices, and state power through social and political engagement and mobilization. Indigenous peoples conscript digital devices and systems to do this work, and it is not necessarily in conceptual contradiction to Indigenous philosophies, spiritualties, and everyday practices.” In working with my own community I’ve seen how digital technologies could be viewed with caution and skepticism while also being powerful tools for mobilization on the most pressing issues around language revitalization, cultural education, political organization, and media representation.
Knowing that relationship building is at the heart of any Indigenous project, however, it was written into the grant to have a reciprocal residency exchange followed by a year-long virtual one. This meant that as the research fellow representing the Kinyaa’áanii Library, a tribal college library, I would visit the UK and Sarah French, the research fellow out of the University of Kent, would visit Diné College and the Navajo Nation. Prior to this trip, I’d never been to Europe before and the United Kingdom seemed a far stretch for potential visit of this caliber, given that the Navajos’ primary encounter with Europe was with Spanish colonists, then the Mexican and United States military. What insight could I possibly have that other Indigenous Nations haven’t already communicated to European heritage institutions? What place does tribal college libraries have in these transatlantic and international exchanges, debates, decisions? What form will this project take at the end of these trips? At the end of the project timeline?
Whatever anxieties I had upon arrival to London and to Wellcome were quickly assuaged on the first day, which coincided with a day-long meeting with the Murrup Barak group from the University of Melbourne. To meet a wonderful group of Indigenous scholars, storytellers, and artists showcasing their work far away from home — a documentary film called Warriors — on the first day was a source of inspiration and set the tone for the rest of the trip and for the project: relationship building and creating space for Indigenous thought and presence. Through the rest of my visit — which included meetings with staff and scholars from the Wellcome Collection, the British Library, the British Museum (all controversial and mammoth institutions compared to the tiny tribal college library) — I kept those thoughts at the forefront; holding space and reiterating that more Indigenous voices were crucial in order to meaningfully move forward toward many of the well intentioned, but lofty goals of the often misunderstood concept of “decolonization.” Among some of the most memorable moments of the trip to London were the conversations and debriefings that took place over coffee/tea breaks, over meals, and between meetings. One conversation in particular stands out: after meeting with staff at the British Library, Kent research fellow Sarah, logistics lead Sophie, and myself continued the conversation on Indigenous Knowledges, challenges, considerations in the Treasures of the British Library’s exhibit space, amongst works and artefacts from the Western canon.
After my return home (and amidst the start of a new semester) I knew I had my work cut out for me to put together appointments and meetings for Sarah’s visit. Also of big concern was the vast geographical space that we were going to cover as part of our visits and the logistics around transportation. Public transportation infrastructure is already not something the U.S is known for and even less so on the Navajo Nation. Thankfully, with the help of friends and community, we were able to make the necessary transportation arrangements and appointments. Starting with meetings here at the Tsaile, including staff from the Diné Policy Institute, the Navajo Cultural Arts Program, the Provost and Vice Provost for Research at Diné College, and friends/colleagues at Diné College Branch Libraries we were able to explore the role, challenges, and opportunities that tribal colleges see themselves playing in a transatlantic Indigenous knowledges project such as this. Historically, tribal colleges and their libraries played a multifaceted role in their communities — education at the forefront and a means of preserving and perpetuating tribal languages and culture. To accommodate this latter goal, the tribal college library often served as a de facto archive and cultural heritage institution for the tribe. Since Diné College (formerly Navajo Community College) was first charted in 1968, it and several over tribal colleges have made strides toward university status, including the development of graduate programs and increasing their profile of stand-alone externally funded projects and programs. With issues surrounding open access, digital repositories, and data sovereignty becoming increasingly pertinent to tribal colleges, leaders at these institutions are becoming aware that standing on the sidelines of these debates is not an option if they want to keep to the missions of the institution and uphold their responsibility to their communities with regard to cultural/traditional knowledge.
I think Sarah would agree with me that one of the breakthrough moments of her visit was the trip to Flagstaff, where we met with staff from NAU’s Cline Library and the Museum of Northern Arizona. Along with an overview of their predecessors’ development of the Protocols of Native American Archival Materials, archivists Peter Runge and Sam Meier discussed experiences and lessons-learned in working with tribal communities and fostering respectful relationships with individuals and tribal institutions, as well as with Indigenous students working there at the Cline library. In the afternoon, we visited the Museum of Northern Arizona’s Easton Collection Center, which was built specifically to house the museum’s Indigenous collections in manner that was welcoming of tribal communities and respectful of the items, which are considered to be living entities and not merely inanimate objects. In this building, we were told by Director of Research and Collections Anthony Thibodeau, there are no human remains housed here and there is a UV filtered skylight in the main collection holding area, incorporated with the idea that since the objects are living entities, they should be able to “see” the light of day and the changing of the seasons, as opposed to being locked away in the dark and forgotten. Interaction is highly encouraged and instead of keeping the object safe from people, people are kept safe from the objects (some textiles having undergone preservation treatment in the past with now-banned toxic chemicals). Wrapping up that day was a visit to the museum’s Native Peoples of the Colorado Plateau exhibit space. There, we met Samantha Honanie, visitor experience manager where we discussed our hopes for more Indigenous people to join us in this field and in this work.
The final week of Sarah’s visit was spent in Temecula, California at the International Conference of Indigenous Archives, Libraries, and Museums, hosted by the Pechanga Band of Luiseño Indians. Here, we were reunited with friends and colleagues we’ve visited in the past few weeks and also met some new faces who had much to share about their work relating to Indigenous archives in a digital setting. Sarah met with Melissa Dollman, the digital projects manager for the Tribesourcing Southwest Film project, who shared an overview of her work on the project, including incorporating TK labels into the site and the creation of an Indigenous language dictionary to describe key terms in the site’s metadata description. Throughout the conference, Sarah and I did our best to try to cover a wide range of presentations between the two of us, but with so many concurrent sessions, it was difficult to catch everything we wanted to. While there were so many sessions on digital initiatives and one on international repatriation, the overall message of these practices came down to ethical, collaborative, and inclusive partnerships with Indigenous communities.
Although October marks the new year for the Diné people, this new Gregorian year brings us closer to our final grant deadlines. The team will bring all these overarching themes to the table and begin our planning for the project’s symposium, to occur in Spring 2023. In the meantime, we will continue our reading/discussion group — the first of the year — focusing on the Protocols of Native American Archival Materials. In closing, I think of how every single Protocol cannot be acted upon and truly followed unless tribes and Indigenous peoples are actively and respectfully part of the process. Any project involving Indigenous materials, even digital ones, must hold space for Indigenous peoples and thought.
Text by Rhiannon Sorrell.
