Indigenizing Cyberspace
Creating online territories that embody Indigenous storytelling practices
What does it mean?
Though hailed as a great equalizer, the current digital space operates under an intellectual tradition that values Western knowledge systems. Jason Edward Lewis, co-founder of Aboriginal Territories in Cyberspace, articulates it best: “It makes the assumption that there’s a clear distinction that can be made between data and process; it makes assumptions that privilege the individual over the collective. These support, in many different ways, a system that’s built on an enlightenment era separation of the human and the natural.” As such, while it gives Indigenous communities space to connect with one another, to reclaim their voices, and to contribute to the reframing of prevailing narratives, it also obscures elements that define Indigenous storytelling practices, such as the importance of place, relations, and context.
For more, see: Ginsburg, F. (2002), Howe, C. (1998), Loft, S. (2005), Maskegon-Iskwew, A.(1994), Wilson, P. & Stewart, M. (2008).
Why does it matters?
Stories shape how we understand ourselves and the world around us. They inform our sense of belonging, connect us to our past and breed life into us. Stories are our lives. And we are our stories. Given their undeniable weight, we ought to question what their form and content teaches us.
Increasingly, stories are shared as interactive digital experiences; a reshaping that impacts their configuration, their reach and their outcome. For Indigenous peoples, who live dominated by a paradigm that is not theirs, digital storytelling can be a weapon of subtle colonialism, a means to talk-take back or some hybrid.
For more see: Beaucage, M. (2005), King, T. (2003), Maracle, L. (2015)
What to consider?
1. Bodies in Code
Within Indigenous ontology, identities are intrinsically tied to place. Locations carry past stories that inform a tribe’s present and hints at its future. Since understanding flows from the stories that are embodied in the land, recounted and experienced through time, the establishment of a relationship between both, often through ceremonies, is key. Information garnered from lived experience, believes Lee Maracle: “feels more reliable than an idea arrived at by instruction, deduction, reduction, simple arithmetical reasoning, or any other such objective analytical process. It feels trustworthy”. Not only must an individual feel to know, one must feel to trust what one knows.
Since digital connectivity allows anyone to access information about anywhere from anywhere, how can we create grounded digital experiences?
2. Virtual Relations
Knowledge, for many Indigenous communities, is a mean to build stronger relationship between individuals and the cosmos. Accordingly, the way through which it is acquired should mimic its end. Storytellers, working within an oral tradition, take the time to acknowledge both the origin of the story they’re about to share and the audience’s character. In this setting, the tone and style, the narrators adopt carry additional information. An elongated pause can signal the importance of the memory being recalled and used to let the information settle in the listener’s mind. A whisper can help convey fear or intimacy.
Since storyteller and the audience are seldom in the same room when it comes to digital storytelling, how can you foster a virtual relationship between the two?
3. One step at a time
Some community members act as knowledge keepers, distilling information according to an individual’s position, experience, preparation and/or attention. Knowledge is not there for the taking, it has to be offered. For instance, hoping to convey their relationship to the land, the Aamjiwnaang community began by telling me of how they came to inhabit the territory, first in migratory terms, then through their creation stories. Recently, they allowed me to accompany them on a snake census, an experience that, thanks to the information gathered before, drove home the point that a relationship to land also means bearing the responsibility to protect it, further explaining why they remain within what has become a toxic landscape.
Given that cyberspace gives all an equal and immediate access to knowledge, how can information be distilled with deliberate parsimony?
For more see: Hopkins, C. (2006), Iseke, J. & Moore, S. (2011), Profeit-Leblanc, L. (2004)
Who’s doing it?*
*a non-exhaustive, ongoing list
- “God’s Lake Narrows” an interactive documentary by Kevin Lee Burton.
- “My Word” a digital storytelling project by the Rigolet Inuit Community Government.
- “ Skahiòn:hati: Rise of the Kanien’kehá:ka Legend” a video game designed by youth from Kahnawake with the guidance of Aboriginal Territories in Cyberspace.
- “Never Alone (Kisuma Ingitchuna)” a video game by the Cook Inlet Tribal Council
- “We Sing for Healing” an online experience by Elisabeth LaPensée
