Grappling With Technology: American Indian Youth Producing Digital Media in a Native Arts Class

• In Event: Indigenous Technologies: Lessons From the Field

Abstract

Objectives & Purposes:
As Indigenous communities become producers of digital technology, understanding the variation in how tribal nations and their members think about and engage with technology is crucial. This paper investigates youth perspectives on technology at a charter school for 7th-12th graders in an indigenous community outside of Phoenix.

Theoretical Perspectives:
Most research on Indigenous youth engagement with digital technology tends to emphasize either the skills associated with producing digital media or the connections to cultural heritage. Few studies have documented the linkages between digital media production and cultural hertitage learning (Eglash & Bennett, 2009; Lameman et al, 2010; Riecken et al, 2006). We suggest that, in seeking to link digital media production skills and cultural heritage, it is important to establish baseline data for how indigenous youth think about technology.

Methods & Data Sources:
Working with an experienced American Indian art and mathematics teacher, we co-designed a 10-week electronic textile (e-textile) unit for a Native Arts class with 12 junior high students (3 males, 9 females). E-textiles merge programmable, electronic circuits with crafting methods using new materials like conductive thread and sewable microcomputers.

Through analysis of interview transcripts in which students reflected on their understandings of technology, students’ e-textile artifacts, and field notes and video logs of classroom sessions documenting students’ day-to-day engagements with technology, we identified students’ definitions of technology and examined their engagements with e-textiles in relation to these definitions.

Findings:
We found that, when asked to reflect upon the connections between Native Arts and e-textiles, students could see some commonalities but mostly focused on differences. Students suggested that e-textiles involved technology, but Native Arts did not. This perspective was also evident in students’ e-textile artifacts.

Many artifacts—mostly felt patches with light up, electronic components that could later be affixed to hoodies or backpacks—highlighted personal interests—a favorite band, anime character, or YouTube video. These artifacts differed from other artifacts made in the Native Arts class, which often had a strong cultural connection. Students’ decision to draw primarily upon elements of teenage culture suggests that they viewed digital technology as external to their community’s cultural practices. When we examine what students actually did in the classroom, a more complicated picture emerges. Students unquestioningly used smart phones, checked Facebook, consumed various forms of media on the Internet, and programmed their e-textile projects with ease.

Discussion & Significance:
Our findings suggest a gap between students’ views of themselves as consumers and as producers of digital technology. These finding are significant because often when we think of resistance to digital technologies in Indigenous communities, we think of elders. In this context it is the youth’s narrow conception of technology as “electronic” that limits their ability to fully engage in spaces of digital media production. Further research is needed to engage American Indian youth in developing a more expansive view of technology that allows them to enter spaces of digital media consumption and production in ways consistent with the community’s history of conscientious consumption and appropriation of technologies.

Authors

• Kristin Anne Searle, University of Pennsylvania

• Cristobal Martinez, Arizona State University

• Bryan McKinley Jones Brayboy, Arizona State University

• Yasmin B. Kafai, University of Pennsylvania