0.21 Negotiating the cultural turn as universities adopt a corporate  (Page 5/5)

As we wait for this day to come, other possibilities may be considered. For reasons not readily known, the present age presents an unprecedented opportunity to forge much stronger bonds between archives and tribal communities. Federal granting agencies like the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the National Science Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Humanities are making millions of grant dollars available to Native American projects and strongly encouraging partnerships between tribes, institutions of higher education, museums, and archives. Many, not all, tribes seem eager to explore how digital technology can repatriate materials to their communities to stimulate language preservation and cultural revitalization projects.

Like an architectural drawing that might be influential, even if never completed, I want to conclude by sketching a model for a culturally based archive built to withstand the crisis of sustainability, yet crosshatched with more shadowy questions. The heart of this imaginary edifice is defined by a productive tension—the pull to centralize the digital infrastructure to maximize efficiency, balanced by an equal and opposite inclination to de-center the authority such that Native communities play a meaningful role in the relationship.

One of the centrally important issues for any digital archive of Native American culture must be the creation of protocols governing the digitization of culturally sensitive material. This complicates the open-source ethic, but is nevertheless absolutely necessary. Disappointingly, the Society of American Archivists has refused to issue standards regarding the handling of what are called Traditional Cultural Expressions of Native Americans. The American Indian Library Association and the National Museum of the American Indian have formulated protocols, but most archives do not have existing policies; another powerful reason why digitization projects need to be carried out in close consultation with cultural affairs officers and tribal governments.

As the word gibagadinamaagoom (“to bring to life, to sanction, to give permission”) powerfully suggests, the stories told by wisdom-keepers, endowed with traditional forms of cultural authority, can bring digital objects to life. Undoubtedly digitized versions lack some of the spiritual dimensions one would experience in the presence of, say, a Medicine Man telling stories while looking west at the setting sun reflecting off the ice of Leech Lake. This is important to consider, for the stories can be instilled with the power to heal, a gift not to be taken lightly given the historical wounds inflicted upon the indigenous inhabitants of this land and the haunted memories of non-Native people. The Ojibwe wisdom-keepers involved in the Gibagadinamaagoom project believe, nonetheless, that digital media is capable of conveying the healing powers of storytelling, if done with great care. South is the direction associated with the gift of healing, if you would like to see for yourself whether such powers can be infused into digital technology (please let me know what you think!).

If protocols and a deeply founded sense of trust can be put in place, the foundation will exist to consider carefully the opportunity to federate collections of Native American materials, creating access to a cultural heritage now dispersed across the world. It is possible that these federated materials, perhaps in exhibits designed by the tribes and supported by a platform like Omeka, could be considered valuable enough to charge a subscription fee based on a model similar to, albeit much smaller than, JStor. Would it be fair, though, to charge Native American communities to view their own cultural heritage? No. One imagines a technical solution and the dream continues. These subscription fees would indeed solve the sustainability problem. But are digital humanist scholars ready to take this step? Is there a market in the academy, among the general public, or across public school districts for an archive that organizes the digital objects into stories that emanate from the oral tradition? Our hope is that this model will one day support a digital humanities center that will make the cultural heritage of Native Americans, approved for display by the tribes, accessible to scholars, fourth graders doing research projects in school, and a new generation of digitally empowered tribal historians. This digital humanities center would, then, have a mission that extends beyond scholarly value to build digital infrastructure in Indian country that would make Native communities eligible for larger grants. This funding would in turn create new economic opportunities for the upcoming generations to utilize these materials for language revitalization and to build virtual museums curated by tribal members, telling their own histories in their own language based on culturally specific knowledge systems, like the seven directions of Gibagadinamaagoom . One wonders, then, about the shape of things to come, while drawing courage from Ken Price’s opening exhortation: “the theoretical possibilities of digital scholarship oblige us to boldness.”