From Origins to Innovations in Land-Based Learning: Emergent Use of and Valuing of Digital Technologies in an Urban Indigenous Community

• In Event: Indigenous Technologies: Lessons From the Field

Abstract

Objectives & Purposes:

In this paper we explore the intersections of culture, technology, and learning in the context of an after-school learning environment in an urban Indigenous community developed through design based research methods. In this after school program, youth and adults created new technologies and learned complex scientific subject matter through culturally based programming. We argue that learning environments must build from socio-cultural contexts and expansive views of technology and learning that mobilize community-based knowledges with the goal of effectively and sustainably engaging Indigenous youth and communities.

Theoretical Perspectives:
Central to this work are the ways in which core understandings of culture are constructed. Increasingly scholars are conceptualizing culture as the routine practices in which individuals and communities engage, rather than “box models” of culture defined by categorical membership and tendencies to essentialize behaviors and beliefs of individuals assigned to such categories understanding of culture implies that there is no cultureless or “neutral” perspective any more than a photograph or painting could be without perspective. Sometimes these perspectives are explicit, but they are often implicit in practices, goals, and representations. Increasingly we will need to understand how technologies come into being - that is how they are both a process and a product of culture with their own logic.


Methods & Data Sources:

This project employed design research methodologies. Design research is in many ways a mixed methods approach to studying learning and teaching and was developed in recognition of the complexity of creating robust, effective learning environments. This paper examines data drawn from designer and teacher meetings as well as implementation video over the course of four years. The data set consists of 23 design meetings in which 7-18 community members participated and 25 teacher planning meetings in which 4-6 teachers participated regularly. All of our research assistants were members of the community. Pseudonyms have been used throughout the data. Transcribed data was coded in Nvivo.

Findings:
We present findings that suggest engaging with original technologies opened the conceptual space for technologies to be seen from long views of socio-historical contexts and consequently the use of digital technologies. This socio-historical repositioning enabled innovative teaching and learning with Indigenous knowledge systems and supported project participants to repatriate technology and use digital technologies towards land management. In other words, project participants shifted their views of technology and technology-related domains as being derived, developed, and adopted from non-Indigenous communities to conceptions of technology as rooted in both contemporary and historic Indigenous practices and tools for knowledge making practices towards meaningful goals. More specifically we trace early attitudes and conceptions of digital technologies (outright rejection) to their later incorporation in empowered and meaningful ways. As part of this practice however, these learning environments maintained a hybrid stance with contemporary technologies and historical technologies even within a view of technologies ontologies located in Indigenous communities. We explore some of the conceptual complexities, affordances, and consequences of holding multiple temporal references during learning and teaching.

Authors

• Megan Bang, University of Washington

• Ananda Maria Marin, University of California - Los Angeles

• Lori Faber, Northwestern University