Making Tribal Histories Accessible: Collaborating with the Coushatta Tribe of Louisiana
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Title
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Making Tribal Histories Accessible: Collaborating with the Coushatta Tribe of Louisiana
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Description
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Equitable partnership with Indigenous communities is a challenge for Western-informed approaches in academia. In response to this problem, a collaborative project among ASU faculty, a graduate student, and the Coushatta Tribe of Louisiana has demonstrated a successful partnership between tribes and academic institutions. This project was funded by the Stowe Endowment Fund to maintain ASU's commitment to the communities it serves. The open-source digital archiving platform Mukurtu explicitly designed for the Indigenous communities has been employed to develop a mockup for the integrated materials currently held at the Coushatta Tribal Archives, and to make Coushatta history more accessible to tribal citizens. As a result, the unique digital representation protocol has emerged with a focus on producing decisions, rules, and behaviors that support the interest of the tribe in managing security, preservation, and sustainability of their information. In March 2019, the Coushatta Tribal Council approved the pilot and the recommended plan for uses of digital archives as an internal resource and as a means of enhancing tribal public educational programming. By offering educational opportunities in a culturally respectful way, universities like ASU have the potential to inspire other tribal communities to engage their citizens, as well as the broader public, similarly.
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Creator
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Arina Melkozernova
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Date
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2020
