Indigenous Approaches to Language Documentation 2019 Linguistic - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Indigenous Approaches to Language Documentation

2019 Linguistic Institute – Colleen Fitzgerald

Organization

• Class discussion of the readings
• Some indigenous-driven software

○ Miromaa ○ Murkurtu ○ ILDA

• Intellectual Property and TK rights
• Repatriation and stewardship

Class Discussion of the Readings

• Indigenous Data Sovereignty: Data for Governance: Governance of Data
• Advancing the ethics of Paleogenomics
• Miromaa packet

Miromaa

Miromaa

https://www.miromaa.org.au/ “developed by Aboriginal people for Aboriginal people” (from Your Language Journey

• p. 8)

What is Miromaa?

• Licensed software, used extensively in Australian indigenous communities as

well as in some U.S. indigenous communities

• Creates a digital library in one place of your language materials, including audio

(integrates with Audacity), video, documents, maps, photos, books, and wordlists.

• Can use those to create picture dictionaries, apps with language materials, for

example

• Allows users to set protocols which allow or restrict access based on traditional

community norms for usage

Pros vs. Cons

• Strongly grounded in the guiding

principles for why indigenous communities often do language work (reclamation)

• Reflects local knowledge and use of

protocols – not all people should have access to all (kinds of) knowledge

• Assigns and allows management of roles
• f team members
• Designed for community members, not

necessarily linguists

• Proprietary and requires the purchase
• f a software license
• The software serves as a place which

allows management of many kinds of materials, but is different from a DELAMAN archive in terms of sustainability of digital resources.

• (Designed for community members, not

necessarily linguists)

Mukurtu

Mukurtu – a content management system (CMS)

• “The word “mukurtu” in Warumungu means “dilly bag.” Dilly bags hold sacred

items and are accessible by acting responsibly within the community and gaining the permission of knowledgeable community leaders. Like the dilly bag the archive is a “safe keeping place,” a community repository for cultural materials and knowledge that grows from continued use, dialogue and

• negotiations. The Warumungu community maintains the original archive at

the Nynikka Nyunyu Art and Culture Centre where people access their materials, deposit new content, add knowledge and information to existing content, and create new materials.”

• http://support.mukurtu.org/customer/en/portal/articles/1305304-what-does-

mukurtu-mean-

What does Mukurtu do?

• Mukurtu (mukurtu.org) focuses on management of indigenous cultural heritage

and is used by many indigenous libraries, museums and archives:

• “Mukurtu is the only CMS that provides:

○

Customizable, granular cultural protocol-driven access to digital content based on local knowledge systems;

○

Pathways for sharing content and metadata between multiple community groups within the platform;

○

Layered narratives and curation for materials that go beyond the "item" level to connect content, metadata, traditional knowledge and cultural narratives in one view;

○

Flexible and clear licensing and labeling of content; and

○

Selective metadata transfer between collecting institutions and Indigenous communities using Mukurtu's "roundtrip" feature. “

○ From https://doi.org/10.1045/may2017-christen Christen et al. 2017

https://youtu.be/jpIZjIO1rkU

Pros vs. Cons

• free and open source platform

developed with and for Indigenous communities.

• Reflects local knowledge and use of

protocols – not all people should have access to all (kinds of) knowledge

• Assigns and allows management of roles
• f team members
• Inadequate for storing large video files
• Not designed specifically for language

work.

• The software serves as a place which

allows management of many kinds of materials, but is different from a DELAMAN archive in terms of sustainability of digital resources.

• Not designed specifically for language

work

• Not designed specifically for language

work.

TK Labels: a way to add local protocols

http://localcontexts.org/tk-labels/

• “an educative and informational strategy to help non-community users of

traditional cultural knowledge understand the importance and significance of this material, even when it is in the public domain and appears within an institutional catalogue as though it can be shared and used by everyone. The TK Labels are designed to identify and clarify which material has community-specific protocols of access and use associated with them…their proper use, guidelines for action or responsible stewardship.”

○

• P. 2, Background Brief on Local Contexts and the TK Labels,

http://localcontexts.mukurtu.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Local-Contexts- Background-Brief.pdf

Giving fine-grained detail to collections…

• “…I think the other thing that we see particularly in dealing with colonial

collections is that they do still cause trauma.”

• https://podtail.com/podcast/trust-me-i-m-an-expert/mukurtu-an-online-dilly-

bag-for-keeping-indigenous/

Indigenous Languages Digital Archive (ILDA)

ILDA

• Miami-Illinois Digital Archive – “a digital archival database that met the needs
• f both tribal linguists and community culture and language revitalizationists”:

○ Baldwin, Daryl, David J. Costa & Douglas Troy. 2016. Myaamiaataweenki eekincikoonihkiinki eeyoonki aapisaataweenki: A Miami Language Digital Tool for Language Reclamation. Language Documentation & Conservation 10. 394-410. https://scholarspace.manoa.hawaii.edu/handle/10125/24713

• Demo (sort of)

○ https://ildarchive.org/nuuweeya/index.php?group=nuuweeya

Intellectual Property Rights

World Intellectual Property Organization (https://www.wipo.int)

• "Intellectual property protects creations of the human mind, including trade

secrets, literary and artistic works, inventions, designs and symbols, and names and images used in commerce."

• "Traditional knowledge (TK) is generally understood to mean the know-how,

skills, innovations and practices developed by indigenous peoples and local communities, while traditional cultural expressions (TCEs) are generally understood as the tangible and intangible forms in which traditional knowledge and cultures are expressed.3"

• "the knowledge that indigenous peoples and local communities have developed

regarding the use of plants for medicinal purposes is TK, while traditional dances, songs and designs are TCEs. Traditional handicrafts may embody both TK (the method of making) and TCEs (their external appearance)."

(Page 9, Protect and Promote Your Culture: A Practical Guide to Intellectual Property for Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities) https://www.wipo.int/publications/en/details.jsp?id=4195

More resources

• http://localcontexts.org/educational-resources/publications
• CoLang 2016 Course on IP

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0BzIdfqwXyAYDbkJrc1ktQXVNdGc

• https://www.wipo.int/tk/en/indigenous/

Community Consultant

Food for thought…Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (1990)

• The NAGPRA Comics: https://nagpracomics.weebly.com/ by Sonya Atalay, Jen

Shannon, and John Swogger

• Next 3 slides are taken NAGPRA Comics 1

https://nagpracomics.weebly.com/the-comics.html