Kimberly Christen-Withey Digital Dialogue: 'On Not Looking: Ethics and Access in the Digital Humanities'

Welcome, everybody.

Kimberly Christen-Withey is an Associate
Professor and Associate Director

of the Digital Technology Cultural
Program, in the Department of English

and Director of Digital Projects

at the Plateau Center
for American Indian Studies

at Washington State University.

Her work explores the intersections
of cultural heritage,

traditional knowledge,
intellectual property rights,

the ethics of openness,

and the use of digital technologies
in and by indigenous communities globally.

She's worked in Tennant Creek,
Northern Territory, Australia

over the last decade with the Warumungu
community members on a range of projects

including a book, an interactive website,
and a community archive.

Her collaborations with the Warumungu
focused on alliance-making

in cross cultural projects.

Her book Aboriginal Business:
Alliances in a Remote Australian Town

was published in 2009 by
The School of Advanced Research

as part of their global indigenous
politic series.

Currently, she is working on several
digital humanities projects

that explore the ethical and practical
issues of openness and access,

in relation to indigenous cultural
protocols and digital archives.

These are to me crucial issues
that the bureau faces

and I'm so happy to welcome Kim here.

(Kimberly Christen-Withey) Thank you.

I don't know if we want to keep the lights
on, or off, or how you want to do it?

You just let me know how
the slides look, but.

Oh, there you go!

Thank you to Neil and Trevor
and everyone for inviting me here today.

I have to confess that I have--
I present and speak in a lot of places,

never in what appears to be a garage.

(laughter) But this is awesome.

Or, with a green screen behind me

so I'm feeling very sort of Hollywood
here, this is great.

We're in the midst of,
we don't have a physical space

for what will eventually be something
like a digital humanities center.

We don't even know what the name
of it's going to be at WSU yet,

so I'm scoping out all the places I go
and this is just a fantastic space

that you all have created here,
so it is indeed,

as Neil sort of foreshadowed,
an exciting time to be here.

It's an exciting time to be thinking
about the digital humanities in general.

And more specifically, really, I think
about how we can all shape

what the trajectory of this
still-emergent field.

It's still pretty new, we're still
defining the contours.

There's a lot to love about
digital humanities.

It's exciting to be or at least sort of
imagine oneself on the cutting edge

of humanistic scholarship.
You know, especially in universities

we often in the Humanities get pushed
to the bottom rungs and the scientists

are the ones doing the creative
and cutting-edge things.

So, digital humanities brings all that.

And digital humanities of course
is rooted in fields dedicated to things

like textual analysis,
historical examination.

And the present moment is filled with
DH practitioners extending these

modes of inquiry to create visualizations
with big data, right?

It's the thing, hot topic right now.

Wrangling, searching, and compiling sets
of data for interpretation and analysis.

There's also a lot of alternative mapping
projects that're really exciting,

that bring together literature, history,
and geography to raise new questions

about the importance of places,
nations, and cities

in the circulation of knowledge.

And of course, sort of one
of the bedrocks, digital archives.

One of the things that digital humanities
started out doing and does really well

that provide new ways of exploring,
linking, annotating, and curating content

across and between fields of study.

And while we're doing this, I'll use
the "we" since we're all here today

as digital humanities practitioners.
We're not only creating things,

we're also defining a field that's
interdisciplinary by it's nature.

And we're asking ourselves,
what sets us apart?

What is digital humanities or what are?

And I'm going to move
between the two today.

I don't like to stick in any one place.

So, I'm not going to go down that road.
It's a persistent question though.

Who are we?

Who and what counts among us,

and how does that matter
to our scholarship?

Whether it be how we publish,
where we publish,

the theories we extend to our data sets
and by what means we get tenure.

There's a lot of talk and debate,

will this digital humanities project
count, to get tenure?

I have tenure so I have to no longer
answer that question,

but it's a persistent question

and it's one that we're
all grappling with.

And this kind of self reflection
is necessary for any field.

It inspires growth.

It provides a fertile ground
for collaboration, I think.

It can also often be daunting,

this type of self reflection.

And it can provoke some anxiety.

And in my very quick
and very non-scientific sample

of quotes pulled from recent publications
by thoughtful digital humanities folks,

looking to intervene, make a difference,

and engage a diverse audience
of scholars and practitioners.

I see that things are critical.

They're pivotal.
We need justification.

There's anxiety and uncertainty here.

Just reading these quotes
makes you a little nervous,

just imagine reading all the articles
that led to these.

This is an active debate
and it can sometimes be tiring,

but it's also positive.

One answer to this anxiety about
definitions and the state of the field

has been the creation of manifestos,

that seek to define a core set of ideals.

Ok, if we're going to be
the digital humanities,

we have to have a core set of ideals.

We may not have to have a cannon,
but we have to have something we stand by

and manifestos are a good way
of doing that, of staking your claim.

The digital humanities 2.0 manifesto,
created by a group of scholars at UCLA,

suggest that the digital humanities
bring together,

"An array of convergent practices
that explore a universe,"

"in which print is no longer
the exclusive or normative medium,"

"in which knowledge is produced
and/or disseminated,"

and, in which, "digital tools,
techniques, and media"

"have altered the production
and dissemination of knowledge."

So there's a lot going on there,
print has been displaced.

We have these new production
and dissemination tools,

and theories, and methods behind them,

but they go on to define
the borders of this universe.

The contours, the how we're going
to make ourselves different.

Arguing that the digital is the realm
of "the open source open resources."

"Anything that attempts
to close this space"

"should be recognized for what it is..."

"...the enemy."

Their words.
(laughter)

I have two boys, so this is
my enemy in my house.

(laughter) You may have other ones.

Certainly, as a manifesto,
some of this is inflated prose, right?

Manifestos by their nature
are meant to inspire action.

They want to mobilize people around
something that we need to stand for.

And in American culture, there's no
better way to do that

than to have an enemy,
an us and a them,

so we know where we are.

So, the us knows the them

and we can mobilize resources around that.

So part of this seemingly vigilant focus
on open access, I think,

comes from a general and often unreflected
love affair with the ideal of openness.

The ideal of openness
and not necessarily

a critical apprisal of the cultural
or historical basis of openness.

So, the ideal of openness has deep roots

in liberal scholarship, where the
digital humanities is growing from.

And of course, progressive notions
of academic freedom and research.

So this is not necessarily a negative form
or connotation and it's not necessary

to say that open access should be
something we strive for in certain cases.

But while we're loving openness so much,
I think we have forgotten that open

is only one form of sharing.

There are in fact many modes of sharing,

only one of which is complete openness.

And we already practice these modalities

of sharing in our everyday lives,
online and offline.

Long before Facebook ever gave us
the choice, people had varied

social and cultural protocols to filter
how and with whom we shared information.

Sharing and circulating knowledge

is an integral part
of the digital humanities,

and Todd Presner has suggested
that there have been two waves, thus far,

of digital humanities scholarship.

First, large scale digitization projects
and technical infrastructure projects.

These focus mainly on text

and making them open
and accessible to a general public.

So, we have a library, let's open up
some of these collections.

Let's digitize them,
let's get them online.

Let's create the infrastructure
to do that.

He suggests that was the first wave
of digital humanities scholarship.

With what he calls DH 2.0,
he suggests a move to producing,

curating, and interacting with materials,

particularly those that are born digital.

So these overlap and I don't think
that he would suggest,

and I'm not suggesting that either
of these waves are complete.

They're still both going on.
They crash into each other.

I don't want to suggest another wave here.

Instead, what I'd like to suggest
and what I'd like to throw out

is more of a beacon,

somewhere in the distance
as these waves are crashing.

A reminder that as the waves are going on,

as we mingle, as we digitize,
as we create,

as we curate, as we archive,

that we also, and at the same time,

unpack the underlying assumptions

about this gaze that we are producing.

Digital humanities project are producing

a way of seeing and being seen

and the act of looking as a process
of knowledge acquisition.

We see it.

We get the knowledge
from it, right?

These are quite literally grounded
in a new visual field

that we're all taking part of
and creating.

In their recent book,

Practices of Looking:
An Introduction to Visual Culture,

Marita Sturken and Lisa Cartwright
argue that there is

"an economy of looking,
whether tacit or explicit,

"in all cultural practices."

So practices of looking then,
are deeply embedded

in our own cultural logics
and our social structures,

and as such, I want to suggest today
that these are deeply ethical acts

and they're worthy
of our attention because so.

Our practices of looking tell us more
about how we understand the world

than what we're seeing.

We need to examine how technology,

particularly the technological tools
that we're creating and culture,

not only our own culture,
the various cultures interact.

And more importantly, how these modes
and cultural practices can inform

our uses of technology to create
various types and tools for looking.

One way of doing this, not the only way,

but one way of doing this is moving away
from this center of digital humanities

that Presner and other have defined
and that I started out with.

That's the center, that's the core
of digital humanities to date.

If we move off to the margins,
where subaltern, post-colonial,

and indigenous projects are asking us
to see and look differently,

we might be able to integrate those
back into the center.

So, in 2002 after seven years of working
with the Warumungu Aboriginal community

in Australia's Central Desert,
together we embarked on a collaboration

to create a digital archive

based on their own
cultural protocols for viewing,

circulating, and creating knowledge,

both tangible and intangible.

This all started when the gentleman
in the middle here, Michael Jampin Jones

and I and a group of other people
went to the National Archives.

So Tennant Creek, if you
imagine Australia,

Tennant Creek is almost
exactly dead center.

It's 500 kilometers north of Alice Springs

and 1,000 kilometers south of Darwin.

So it's almost right
in the middle of the desert.

So we drove to Darwin to look
at the National Archives

and we looked at physical collections
and then we sat and looked

at their database of things
that they had digitized.

As I sat with Jampin, we saw images
of deceased relatives.

We saw pictures of sacred sites
and initiation ceremonies

that should not be seen
by a public audience.

Jampin and others were distressed

at this sort of public presentation
of their cultural protocols.

The Australian archives, like many
worldwide in the 1990's,

embraced the possibility
of digital technologies

to make their collections
open to the public.

Without examining the colonial collecting
logic that populated the public domain.

So not only in Australia but in settler
nations around the world,

it takes some historical amnesia for us
all to forget that the public domain

has never been a welcoming space
for indigenous peoples,

whose cultural materials found their way
into public and private collections

by dubious and often violent means.

This was certainly true for the Warumungu

and the collections we saw at
the National Museums throughout Australia

as well as in their online databases.

So, a lot of the museums throughout
Australia have heralded this call

and they are bringing communities
in to look at the collections

and if there are items that they
don't want to be seen,

oftentimes now, there has been a change
over the last 10 to 15, 20 years

where museums will oftentimes not display
items if communities don't want them to

and you will see, and this is where
Australia is a little more the forefront

than the United States, you will see
warnings on collections,

sometimes online but also offline,

that there's material in here
that you may not want to see.

So the collection's not necessarily
taken down but there are warnings.

It's a step.

For the Warumungu community,
cultural materials and knowledge

are shared within a set
of cultural protocols,

driven by their relationships to places.

Very specific places on the landscape.

Where they were born,
where they were conceived,

where their parents lived, etc.

And their ancestors,
human and non-human,

and kin, the contemporary
Warumungu people.

These variables determine multiple types

of information circulation.

So they combine and move.

In the Warumungu context, there's this
continuum between open and closed.

There's rarely anything that's just
completely open,

or anything that's completely closed
and shut off.

There are several factors that go into
actually defining this continuum.

There's death, when people die
often for various amounts of times,

pictures, images, songs that they sung,

everything will be taken down
but eventually it will come back.

Ritual affiliations, so the knowledge
that you have of particular rituals.

Country, like I said, the physical places
on the landscape.

Your kin groups and gender
is a big influence

in the way that information circulates.

There's always men's business
and women's business.

Now, this isn't a type of patriarchy.

This isn't a form of oppression,
in fact, it's a complementary system.

Men's business and women's business
work together.

They don't necessarily know exactly
what the other is doing,

but in order to ensure the growth
and continuation of the community

and of knowledge, they both
have to do their business.

It's interesting and that's where
the title of my book comes from

that they chose the word
in English, "business,"

to talk about their ritual practices

because that's what's important.

Right? That is what keeps things going.

So, it's an interesting choice
in English to use that word.

So for example, there may be some songs
that are only accessible

and to be sung by women
from a certain kin group,

at a certain place.

Or there might be a water hole
that is cared for by a certain kin group

at certain times and if someone dies

you don't sing their songs
at that water hole

for a certain amount of time.

And so on, and so on.

The point is that there are multiple
social and cultural factors

that go into the diffusion
and creation of knowledge.

So over several years, we worked
to take this sort of offline system

and make it flexible enough to accommodate
any set of cultural needs.

Rather than working from
a Western paradigm

that information wants
to be free and open to all,

what indigenous communities around
the world remind us is that, in fact,

information and knowledge
is always grounded.

It's rooted to local places
and people even as it travels and moves.

When it travels, it gathers stories,
narratives, histories.

It joins people together as they seek
to make their worlds more meaningful.

How people define these travels
are driven by their cultural values.

For the Warumungu
and other indigenous people,

this is based on not seeing,
or partially seeing,

or seeing differently.

This is one of my favorite
types of images.

The first time I saw this was at Uluru
in the Central Desert in Australia

at the Visitor's Center.

The Aboriginal population there
had gone into the Visitor's Center

and taken cardboard and duct tape
and taped over a bunch of images

of an elder who had passed away.

So you have this very stark example

of this is our cultural practice.

You shouldn't be looking at this.

Right? And so it was the first time
I saw that and I'm thinking,

"Wow, it's very material practice for us
to actually jolt you out of that."

When you go to a visitor's center,
a learning center,

you want to go there and learn about
the other people, right?

And here we were learning
about a viewing practice.

So not seeing seems counter-intuitive,

not only to the work of the humanities,
but libraries, archivists,

because we rely so deeply on texts
and circulating images

and making them open for everybody.

But if we start here, we may find new ways
of defining the digital humanities.

So in 2005, based on these practices
and my work with the Warumugu,

several Warumungu community members
and I worked with the Vectors team

out of USC, lead by Tara McPherson,

who's wonderful, who many of you
probably know.

And we created the Digital Dynamics
of Cross Cultures Online Space,

as part of the, I think it was the second
or third issue of Vectors

when it came out, way back in 2005.

Our goal was to use the medium itself
to disrupt the message.

So the default viewing protocols online
and underpinning many DH projects

is search and you will find, right?

Search has become this framework
for the ecology of information sharing

on the internet.

Like colonial frameworks of searching,

the expectation of online search is that

you will find what you're looking for

and you can use it and take it
for your own purposes.

Right?

It's that same sort of paradigm.

This is what our students do,
this is what I do.

I got this on there, right?
I search. Google.

This is what comes up
in their image archive.

So our Vector site is meant to challenge
this mode of knowledge collection

and it's attempt at ethical assumptions.

So when a viewer begins,
they begin in a place.

So these are representations,

and all of the artwork was done by
Warumungu artists,

so each of the circles is a place.

And when they first did this,
we did not have them in correct

geographical relationship to each other.

They said, "No, no, no. We don't want
people to be able to know"

"exactly what the place looks like"

"but they always have to be in place."

So they still have to be
at the proper coordinates.

And one of the things Jampin reminded me
was that all knowledge is placed

and all places have knowledge.

So you can't know without being there.

So, we start in place
and a viewer starts there.

And then, you click on a place
and these are your tracks.

The site will chart your tracks
as you move throughout the place.

You will get a textual introduction
overview of the place.

So this place is Manga-Manda.
It's an old Christian mission

where children were taken,
a stolen generation.

Some of you may have heard they were
taken away from their families

not too far from Tennant Creek,

taken to this mission to learn
European skills.

So you'll get a little bit
of information there

and then you can click
on the nodes off to the right.

And then you'll get some more specific
information about what happened there.

You might learn something
about the ceremonies

and what we're trying to do here
is start you down the path,

this sort of expectation of an online site

is that you're going to be learning
something, right?

You're going to be learning something
about Warumungu culture,

that's what you're here for.

And so we start to fulfill
that expectation.

Except that we don't.

So as viewers continue to maneuver
throughout the site, you're stopped.

A photo may be partially covered
because the person in the picture

has recently passed away.

Or you might be watching a video,

(woman speaking on video clip)

and it'll stop.

Or you might be listening to a song,

(traditional chanting audio clip)

and it'll fade in and out,
depending on the content.

(chanting audio clip begins again)

We purposely did not translate
any of the videos, or songs,

or anything and we got this
sort of feedback from some anthropologists

when the first site came out,

but we can't understand
what they're saying.

And I tried to explain, well because
it's not really about what they're saying.

We're actually trying to teach you about

your own learning practices
and cultural protocols.

And this was an anthropologist

and he's like, "But I can't hear
what they're saying!"

(laughing) So we had a long debate
on an anthropology blog about that.

But the site is designed in such a way,
there's an algorithm

that a random sampling of material

will always come up with
one of nine protocols.

And the protocols were chosen
by the Warumungu community,

related to circulation and access.

So in each case though
when a viewer is stopped,

we don't want to just stop them
and have them be frustrated.

We do want to frustrate them
for a moment

but then you'll go to or learn
about this protocol site.

And you'll get a short explanation.

So, why is it that I can't see this?

Well, in some cases, custodians
for country are gendered

and so it goes on to define that
and what that means.

And then the Warumungu artist
that we worked with also created

short animations for several
of the protocols.

So you'll get a touch tool explanation
or you'll watch a short animation

about the protocol.

So you're starting to see, ok,
it's not that the site isn't working,

it's not that I should be learning this
and I'm learning that,

the hope was that as users
maneuver throughout the site,

they'll grapple with their own biases

about information freedom
and knowledge sharing online.

Through a set of alternative
looking practices.

Where not looking,
or averting your gaze

or being denied access
is a type of ethical behavior.

It's not a repercussion,

it's not a penalty,

it's not an error.

It's a different type of looking behavior.

So by presenting all of this information

throughout a set of Warumungu
cultural protocols.

The site's internal logic, challenges
many of the presumptions

about knowledge acquisition
and looking that we all hold.

And this project in 2005 was the catalyst
for the creation of Murkutu CMS.

So Murkutu due is a free
and open source solution

for managing and sharing digital heritage,

built with and for
indigenous communities worldwide.

Now Murkutu literally means
in Waramungu "dilly bag."

So as we were creating
the first iteration of Murkutu,

which was just for those collections
that we got back from the National Museums

that we went to and from.

We got back collections from
missionaries, school teachers,

other people who have worked
in Tennant Creek.

The first iteration was just going to be
a community archive.

It was browser-based, it was standalone,

it wasn't online,
it was just for the community.

And when they were naming it,

Jampin said that he wanted
to name it Murkutu.

And I had never heard the word before

and I worked in the community
for over 10 years and he said

the dilly bag was a safe keeping place.

Elders kept sacred items in the dilly bag

and as younger generations,
you had to approach the elder

to find out about that knowledge
and about those items,

so about your cultural heritage.

However, it was also
incumbent on the elder

to open those up and share that,

otherwise, the knowledge would die.

And that was his word in English,
the knowledge would die.

So it was actually about creating
a dialogue and reciprocation,

sharing cultural knowledge,
not shutting it off or closing it down

but sharing it properly
is how Jampin put it.

So the dilly bag we thought
is a good metaphor

for the way that Murkutu functions.

Murkutu centers around protocols.

These are the heart
and soul of Murkutu.

They allow any community, however defined,

to determine how materials are shared
through fine brain levels of access.

So that slide I put up
with the ritual, gender,

for the Warumungu, those would be
the protocols that they define

within their instance of Murkutu.

We're working with the Zuni libraries,
they use clans.

All the groups, and that was the thing.

One of the things
we grappled with early on.

We couldn't just use
a cookie cutter set of protocols.

Oh everybody'll have gender, no!

So it had to be flexible enough
that any community can define whatever

and that they're flexible
enough to change.

So it was interesting with
the Warumungu community

at first that deceased protocol

was very strict

and over the last five or six years,
we've seen it so thumbnails are ok.

But bigger versions aren't.

So, right? Because people change.

And our protocols is for viewing
and circulating knowledge change

and so, as a database, Murkutu
also had to be that flexible to change.

But within the content management system,

I can add any protocol to any single item

or in a collection and with one click

that protocol will be added
across the field.

So within Murkutu this happens
in a really simple interface.

And you choose
"add your cultural protocol"

and then you add your protocol over here,

define it however you want,
so this is a youth protocol.

And then there's three sharing protocols

that allow you to create
those levels of access.

So there’s s community level,
there's what we call community strict,

which is something where you'd have to be
a woman from that country, right?

And in that kin group, you have to have
all three of those protocols met,

to see something.

Whereas, if it's just
a community protocol,

you can be any of those
and you will see it.

So the protocols overlap
and create these sort of Venn diagrams.

But one of the other things that I
worked with the designers on

and the folks that were architecting this

was, I gave them a two-click mantra
when we started, which is

if anything takes longer than two clicks,

we're going to lose people.

We're dealing not only
with literacy issues,

but digital literacy issues as well.

So this is a matter of design
and functionality, too.

Who's your audience?
Who's the user base?

What do they need?

We knew there was a need.
We also couldn't create something

that people wouldn't be able to
sit down and use.

And interestingly,
in the communities that I work in,

both in the Pacific northwest
and in Australia,

I don't ever see people sitting
at the archive,

at the computer, by themselves.

It's always in groups, whereas,

you know, you think of the archives,
you go in and

(whispering) you're quiet, you sit
and you just do your own thing.

No! It's about sharing stories
and telling what's happening

and looking at these things.

So, in this case, our philosophy
has always been to make

the technology bend to the culture,
as opposed to the other way around.

Where generally we say, "Ok, well,
we know that's your cultural value"

"but the technology will only do this."

That's what started us down his road.

I was a graduate student in 2002
and I said, "Oh I'm sure we can just buy"

"some software to do this."

Ok 14, you know, 12 years later!

Now, we're creating software.
I mean, I was a cultural anthropologist,

I didn't write a line of code.
That's not me.

But the cultural ideal behind it,
and I worked with great technologists

who understand that this idea,
bending the technology to make it work

so that people don't have to relinquish

their cultural values for this sort
of open and shut model that we have.

So for me, it's not necessarily about
building technology, but building trust.

And of course there has to be trust
in the technology.

It's a big thing and I've seen this
with the work that I do

in the Pacific northwest with the tribes
when I started working at WSU,

we used Murkutu
to create something called

the Plateau People's Web Portal.

And at the first couple meetings
with the tribal representatives,

they said that, "And are you
going to be here, Kim?"

I was like (gasp).

I mean it was really about,
and nine years later, I'm still there

but it took several years
just to establish

that we could all work together,

that we're not going to take
your stuff and leave.

They've been burned by researchers
and universities before.

And so it really is, so the technology
should inspire that trust.

So the protocols really have to work
and people have to see them working.

So our Murkutu team works directly
with groups to encourage

these types of relationships.

We worked with the Smithsonian,

we've worked with other collecting
institutions to bring these materials

back to communities and not just
hand them back on a hard drive,

but actually have a relationship together.

In December, we launched MIRA,

which is a mammoth example
of what can be done with Mukurtu.

MIRA is a collaboration between Mukurtu,

the Center for Digital Archeology
at Berkeley,

and the Canning Stock Route Project
team in Australia.

MIRA has over 40,000
digital heritage objects,

providing the most comprehensive database
for the artwork, stories, and histories

of the Aboriginal people who live
on the Canning Stock Route,

which is the major colonial artery

that cuts across the Australian continent

and affected hundreds of Aboriginal
communities, disrupted their lives,

disrupted their cultures
and their languages.

MIRA uses Murkutu's customized fields

to provide a rich and detailed set
of linked content in what we call

in Murkutu digital heritage items.

And you can link them together
to create digital heritage stories,

including video narratives
by artists in their country,

individual pages for artists
and contributors,

richly and multiply-narrated stories
with text, audio, and video.

And all of these were curated by hundreds
of Aboriginal community members.

They're the experts.
That's the difference here.

These are curated by the Aboriginal
members themselves,

in different languages and with
different sets of protocols

across these images.

So one community happened to have
some protocols,

another will have
another set of protocols.

It pushed us to our limits

and now within Murkutu, every field
can have a protocol attached to it.

So you may be ok with someone
seeing this painting,

you may not want them
to hear the song or see the map.

So you can still get to this page
but those fields will be hidden.

So now our protocols are
every single field,

every point of metadata can have
its individual protocol.

That's a new feature in Murkutu,
stemming from the MIRA project

and we're really happy about that.

And because this project
really took us out

and worked with hundreds
of Aboriginal communities,

we started looking at this on the go
recording in curation.

So we launched Murkutu Mobile
in October 2012 for iphones.

We just got an NEH grant
and we will soon be also

releasing it on Android as well.

But this allows users to instantly upload
content to Murkutu sites,

keeping their protocols
embedded at that level.

So they're never without their protocols.

They can also add their stories.
They can talk into it.

They can do an oral history interview
right there in the field

and link it to the photo of the person,

geo locate it, and upload all of that.

If they're offline, once they get
back online, they can sync it.

And it'll go right into
their instance of Murkutu.

All of this, in fact, all of the
development of features of Murkutu

happens around what we call community
agile software development.

So the notion of agile software
development is already there, right?

We add the community to it,
so every feature,

every upgrade of Murkutu comes
from what the community wants.

They can vote things up or down.

So, this type of mobile was something
everywhere we went.

We did some workshops
across New Zealand

and everywhere we went people said,
"What about mobile? What about mobile?"

And the reason why is kids.

They want to get their kids involved

in creating and sharing heritage
and not just uploading it to Facebook.

They want this stuff to remain
within their communities;

they might also be on Facebook
but they want stuff in the communities.

So I think that projects like Murkurtu
can help us define the present future

of the digital humanities as a field,
whereas one of my mentors,

Donna Haraway, reminds us,

"We become answerable,
for what we learn how to see."

As we move forward, carving out this field

and creating it's contours,
we should remind ourselves

to hold multiple, challenging,
and often times conflicting perspectives

about knowledge and it's value
for the many publics that we engage with.

Aboriginal practices of masking,

deleting, defaming images,
objects, and artifacts

disrupts this act of looking

and the privileging of seeing
as a precursor to knowledge acquisition

that we hold in this Western tradition.

They help us see that communities
have different ways of knowing

and that culturally responsive technology
can be leveraged to achieve their goals,

without giving up
what makes them different.

Collaborations between scholars
and the many communities we move between

can, and should, keep these tensions
in place; let's not give them up.

As we seek to create a productive center
for the digital humanities,

where we think differently

about this seemingly benign
act of looking,

it's one thing to call attention
to difference,

it's another to alter
our visual practices,

challenge archival curation practices,

and question modes of access.

Moving forward, I think digital humanities
scholars can be at the forefront.

We can play a role in defining
a new economy of looking,

where localized project scales,
divergent ethical systems,

varied access models,
and collaborative tool-making

come to the center
and, therefore, enliven

and expand the digital humanities
for all of us.

Thank you.

(applause)

So I know that was a lot.

(laughter)