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- Convenors:
-
Annick Thomassin
(The Australian National University)
Karen Soldatic (Toronto Metropolitan University)
Kim Spurway (Western Sydney University)
Janet Hunt (Australian National University)
Alicia Johnson (Sydney University)
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- Format:
- Panel
- Sessions:
- Tuesday 7 June, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
Indigenous knowledge applications, digital mapping and storytelling platforms have become important tools for Indigenous groups to reinscribe their philosophies and lifeways in the landscape. This panel explores the opportunities and challenges linked with such technologies for Indigenous futures.
Long Abstract:
Over the last decades, there have been a multiplicity of Indigenous knowledge and environmental stewardship applications, open-source collaborative GIS mapping tools and digital storytelling platforms. These technologies have opened new spaces for Indigenous peoples and their allies to perform their sovereignty by taking the lead in producing data, maps and digital material that support their own life projects. These tools have increasingly been used to reinscribe Indigenous contemporary presence, knowledges, values, lifeways, placenames, languages and stories across land and seascapes. They are also useful to support the revitalisation of environmental stewardship practices, relationships and responsibilities towards Indigenous territories, as well as understandings and approaches to climate change and natural 'disasters', while enabling Indigenous peoples to draw the contours of the futures they wish to see unfold for their territories and communities.
For this panel, we are seeking contributions from Indigenous and non-Indigenous researchers and partner communities whose work explores the opportunities and various challenges (including ontological, social and ethical considerations) emerging from the digital and artificial intelligence environment for the actualisation of Indigenous projects. We are also encouraging contributions that reflect on the ways such technologies have been used or can be used to foster a shift in the relationships that non-Indigenous peoples have with the lands, waters, seas and the non-human entities with whom they share these environments.
This panel will take a hybrid format combining short paper presentations followed by a discussion period during which the panel members will exchange ideas on key themes emerging from the presentations.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Tuesday 7 June, 2022, -Frances Morphy (The Australian National University)
Paper short abstract:
Digital technologies are a double-edged sword for indigenous peoples. This paper discusses the global Indigenous Data Sovereignty movement, which aims to combat the deployment of ‘big data’ as a technology of power and reclaim governance over it for purposes of self-determination.
Paper long abstract:
New digital technologies constitute a double-edged sword for indigenous peoples. Digital technologies facilitate the capture, storage and analysis of vast quantities of data – “big data”. And this quantitative data drives policymaking and governance at every level of political organisation, up to the global. Indigenous data sovereignty (IDS) describes a movement that has arisen in response to concerns about the data that state governments and other agencies collect about indigenous peoples, and the uses to which it is put. Its main proponents are themselves indigenous people – academics, representatives from indigenous organisations and government agencies. In the spirit of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, IDS proponents insist on the right of such peoples to be self-determining, including having governance over collection and use of data collected by state agencies and ‘development’ NGOs. They reject the ‘deficit’ view of encapsulated indigenous populations that pervades the attitudes and policies of both settler state governments and development agencies, and that underlies the indicators that frame the data they collect about them. This paper discusses the development of the movement as an increasingly global phenomenon and its attempts to forge an international discourse with national governments and other agencies that gather data on indigenous populations. The aim is not only to change national conversations, but also, at the more local level, to create the conditions and the support for indigenous peoples and their organisations to collect data – for themselves – that is relevant to addressing their self-perceived needs and furthering their own aspirations.
Bree Blakeman (Australian National University) Howard Morphy (Australian National University)
Paper short abstract:
We focus on processes involved in the articulation between different ontologies. In mapping Yolŋu names in a way that reflects how they remember, what might that ‘map’ look like? We consider what products might fit the dynamic trajectory of Yolngu society in its articulation with the state.
Paper long abstract:
The map produced for the 2005 Blue Mud Bay case led to collaborative project on place names and personal names. The map, as a court document, relied heavily on European traditions of spatial mapping of country. However it was welcomed by the Yolŋu applicants both for its utility as an explanatory tool (to non-Yolŋu) and for its reference to Yolngu ontology conveyed through miny’tji (designs) and manikay (songlines). The ‘Western’ map’s utility is reflected its adaptability to new contexts – such as native title court cases and ranger land and sea-management programs. Moreover, significant changes are occurring in the intergenerational transfer of Yolŋu knowledge, with the adoption of literacy and digital technology as modes of transmission.
In this paper we focus on emergent processes involved in the articulation between different ontologies, which might have the capacity to create new possibilities for both. If we were to map Yolŋu names (yäku), in the contemporary context, in a way that closely reflects how names are remembered and recalled by Yolŋu people, what might that ‘map’ look like? The paper will consider what the tangible products might be, and how they might reflect the dynamic trajectory of Yolngu society in its articulation with the encompassing settler Australian state. Arguably indeed the development of Western topographical mapping has itself been a product of global processes of articulation and cross-cultural communication – processes that have been masked by Western-centric perspectives from modernity.
Diane Smith (ANU)
Paper short abstract:
The fast-growing field of Electronic or E-Governance appears to offer potentially powerful digital tools for First Nations to enact self-determined governance. But it also has the power to undermine self-determined Indigenous participation and voice, and perpetuate unequal power relations. The paper addresses the question of how E-Governance can be governed by First Nations in self-determined ways.
Paper long abstract:
AI has profound implications for First Nations peoples in Australia and internationally. In particular, as a result of digital and online application of information and communication technologies it has given rise to a paradigm shift in the way governance is conducted globally. The fast-growing field of Electronic or E-Governance appears to offer potentially powerful digital tools for enacting self-determined governance; including how First Nation governments and representative organisations make collective decisions, manage information, transact business, provide services, and take actions on behalf of their citizen members, as well as for how citizen members participate in their own nation’s governance. However E-Governance also comes with considerable challenges (cultural, political, economic and social) that have the power to undermine self-determined Indigenous participation and voice, and perpetuate unequal power relations.
Indigenous peoples in Australia are creatively exploring, strategically adopting and customising digital tech – giving rise to digital hybridities imbued with their cultural imperatives and values. Sometimes these are the result of deliberate innovation, sometimes in response to dire circumstances such as the Covid-19 Pandemic. But there is also a digital divide in Australia owing to the ongoing impacts of settler colonialism, and now its digital normalisation of Western values, rules and lifestyles. In this context of both great promise and great risk, the paper draws on research to address the question: How can E-Governance be governed by First Nations in self-determined ways? At the heart of this question lie many others: Is the Indigenous digital divide leading to an E-Governance divide? Is it possible to have culture-centred E-Governance? Can AI algorithms be decolonised? How might Indigenous Nations exercise digital sovereignty? What principles that might inform digital sovereignty and E-Governance by Indigenous peoples?