Global North and South Collaborative Efforts towards an Anti-Colonial Digital Humanities
Channel: MSU Digital Humanities
Date: 2023-05-15

Sylvia Fernández | University of Texas at San Antonio, USA
Brian Rosenblum | University of Kansas, USA

This presentation will discuss the pilot version of the “Urarina Digital Heritage Project,” a multilingual (English, Spanish and Urarina), Global North (United States) and South (Peru) collaborative effort between scholars and a digital humanities center at an R1 research institution in the United States and the Indigenous Urarina community in the Peruvian Amazon. This project explores various ways to make a collection of Urarina cultural heritage items publicly and digitally available through the use of Indigenous information management systems (the Mukurtu publishing platform) and cultural protocols (via Traditional Knowledge content licenses) in collaboration with the Urarina community. Throughout the development process, the project team has explored issues such as contextualization, collaborations, accessibility, and sustainability related to Indigenous digital archives while working in the Global North with Global South Indigenous heritage. With the intention to spark further discussion about this type of work within the global digital humanities community, the presenters will open a dialogue about ethical transnational, collaborative efforts to address the imperial and colonial violence that has separated Indigenous cultural collections held in memory institutions from their original communities. Similarly, it questions the function and objectives of a digital project in a context characterized by difficult access to the internet or a telephone network. This recognizes a real limit for such communities and feeds a critical stance towards the real scope of digital resources. However, it is important to underline that this does not presuppose a rejection on the part of the communities involved, but represents a highly-valued opportunity to achieve greater visibility and facilitate communications between communities and beyond. Thus, this presentation examines transnational and decolonial approaches while working with Indigenous communities in Latin American and pushes for further conversation on anti-colonial digital and public humanities at large.

For more information about the symposium visit: https://msuglobaldh.org