Consisting of the OMEKA digital exhibit “Nā Ahupuaʻa o ka Moku o ʻEwa” I designed for LIS 655 Digital Archives, my SLO 4 artifact has taught me that nothing is fixed and that technology changes with its community as demonstrated by models like the Digital Curation Lifecycle. Although I initially understood SLO 4 as highlighting only evaluation and application for information technologies, my understanding has grown to view SLO 4 as comprising three cyclical steps: 1. Evaluation: Information technologies should be created and evaluated by and for its service community, 2. Integration: Information technologies should be integrated in ways that are accessible and respectful to the service community, and 3. Adaptation & Application: Information technologies should be adapted to the service community as its needs and goals inevitably change. 

 

In library and information settings, technology serves as a navigator, teacher, and facilitator, especially in its capacity to facilitate collaboration, mediation, participation, and change across multiple parties and institutions. The literature on integrating technology in the information professions speaks to contrasting levels of intensity. For example, blended librarianship is “designed to encourage and enable academic librarians to evolve into a new role that blends existing library and information skills with those of instructional design and technology” (Blended Librarian Online Learning Community, 2004). Similar to blended librarianship, this artifact connects seemingly disparate spaces—whether social, cultural, and/or technological—amid Western practices and systems that innately mirror the U.S’s colonizing mission of eliminating Indigenous peoples by threatening their collectivity. Considering social and historical contexts, we have witnessed this mission in assimilationist legislation like the Dawes Act of 1887, which broke down communal reservation land into individual 160-acre lots (many of which Native American families ended up losing, leading to more dispossession and depopulation) (Toensing, 2012). Because of this, my artifact strives to unite the Hawaiian diaspora and bridge the disconnection existing between Kānaka (person) and Kānaka, Kānaka and ʻāina (lands and waters), and ʻāina and ʻāina. 

 

Ranging from reports, journal entries, testimonies, photographs, videos, and more, the items included in the exhibit vary in geography, time, provenance, and material type but are united in their genealogical ties to the Hawaiian archipelago. Each item represents one of the 12 ahupuaʻa (land division extending from the uplands to the sea) within the ʻEwa district on the island of Oʻahu. Their dispersal reflects the experiences of Kānaka Maoli living in the diaspora and their collective need to connect with their ancestral lands and people. This exhibit speaks to the concepts of digital culture as a tool to unite people and places that are physically dispersed, as a dynamic tool allowing for additions and revisions to the exhibit’s materials and descriptions, and as a participatory tool allowing space for community output. Bryan Sinclair observes that libraries must “develop new types of spaces for social, cultural, and technological ‘gathering,’” and information technologies—like the one utilized in this artifact—help transform and maintain that space.

 

Western standards of evaluation and measurement do not align with Kānaka Maoli worldviews and have been weaponized against us to diminish our humanity and power. Bound to mainstream cultural standards and norms, Western measurements reflect models of assimilation that the United States employs across all of its systems and that “embodies the Euro-American bias of the dominant U.S. culture” (Benham and Heck 1998, 7). When indigenous people are subjected to this assimilation model, the dominant group becomes our comparative reference and we fail to measure up. When evaluating the technology utilized in my artifact, I needed to tread carefully and intentionally to ensure the accessibility and respectfulness of the exhibit. I strongly considered two factors that have excluded Kānaka Maoli from technology and information services and that have deprived us of fulfilling community needs: cost effectiveness and functionality. As an open source web-publishing platform, Omeka is free to upload and access on multiple platforms and devices, making it cost-efficient. It also possesses high-functionality in that it easily allows users and creators to interact with one another, to exchange and create narratives, and to create custom maps for narratives.

 

On top of the possible problematic implications of the technology being utilized, I also considered and reconsidered the entire aspect of stewardship in digital archiving. While scholars like Peter Block have looked to stewardship as a framework to address patriarchal and problematic structures and institutions, some native communities assert that it is a “promotion of an unequal distribution of power” in that it focuses more on care and management than on sharing stewardship power with Indigenous peoples in decision making, policy setting, and everyday access and use of Indigenous materials (Roy & Trace, 2018, p. 23). The unwillingness of American archivists to share power speaks to the colonial roots of library and information science and its establishment as a profession in 1876, a time when U.S. federal policy sought to assimilate and eliminate Indigenous peoples (Roy & Trace, 2018, p. 26). Archivists replicate these colonial practices of assimilation and elimination in their resistance to relinquish control over Indigenous peoples’ cultural materials. Native communities combat this issue with projects like Mukurtu, a digital community archive established by the Warumungu community in Australia and the Center for Digital Scholarship and Curation at Washington State University (Roy & Trace, 2018, p. 24). Mukurtu incorporates public input for the elements, tags, and descriptions of records, and enforces detailed, cultural protocols and access restrictions, which, in turn, reverses colonial practices of privilege, facilitates relationship building, and allows for power to be shared among archivists and native communities. Looking back, I would reconsider technology integration from a more Hawaiian perspective and re-create my Digital Exhibit utilizing systems and platforms that are born from Hawaiian epistemology and engineering. It is necessary to check and re-check my original intention, which is for decolonization and not simply indigenization.

 

The literature on blended librarianship spoke to several key skills that future librarians need moving forward in the profession. I have strived to embody these values and align them with all of my choices and actions throughout the project’s development. As a result, this artifact demonstrates my effectiveness as an information professional because it showcases my skills in innovation, digital technology, adaptability, working with multiple mediums, and balancing a wide variety of skills. Moreover, future implications for my SLO 4 artifact include a stronger centering of community and connection as well as less resistance to movement and change, especially regarding new and unfamiliar technology. This is an ongoing lesson for me because, as an information professional, I embrace change and strive for connection and growth. 

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References

 

Benham, Maenette, & Heck, Ronald. (1998). Culture and Educational Policy in Hawaiʻi: The Silencing of Native Voices. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

 

Blended Librarian Online Learning Community. (2004). Mission Statement. Blended Librarian. http://bit.ly/3j8dI1V

 

Roy, Loriene, & Trace, Ciaran. (2018). Beyond Stewardship and Consultation: Use, Care, and Protection of Indigenous Cultural Heritage. In Cecilia Lizama Salvatore (Ed.), Cultural Heritage Care and Management: Theory and Practice (pp. 17-28). Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield.

 

Shank, John D. (2011). Blended Librarianship: [Re]Envisioning the Role of the Librarian as Educator in the Digital Information Age. Reference &User Services Quarterly, 51(2), 105-110.

 

Toensing, G. C. (2012, February 8). The Dawes Act Started the U.S. Land-Grab of Native Territory. Indian Country Today. http://bit.ly/3vmoJT7