Repatriating Indigenous Technologies in an Urban Indian Community
This project aimed to support students' navigation between Indigenous and Western scientific knowledge systems, and to shift science and technologies away from being considered something 'from Western cultures'.
Bang, M., Marin, A., Faber, L., & Suzukovich, E. S. (2013). Repatriating Indigenous Technologies in an Urban Indian Community. Urban Education, 48(5), 705–733.
Design research, community-based design research, community-based participatory action research
In this article, the authors offer four design principles for considering the uses of technology in science learning programs involving Indigenous youth and communities. These design principles shift science and technologies away from being considered something "from Western cultures" towards recognizing "original technologies". In this shift, "technologies are dislodged from colonial legacies that implicitly or explicitly position technologies as having only Western-European ontologies" (p. 708).
Community-based design research built on a foundation of community engagement and relationship building that spanned years before this project. Focused on Indigenous knowledge systems and technologies, strength based (not deficit focused).
This project aimed to support students’ navigation between Indigenous knowledge systems and Western scientific knowledge systems, and shift science and technologies away from being considered something “from Western cultures”, towards recognizing “original technologies” and narrating technologies as something “Indigenous people have been developing for millennia and can authentically do again” (p. 720).
Video recordings and transcripts
The article introduces four design principles that emerged during their work which could be used in designing future programs involving Indigenous youth and communities:
• Engage Original and Everyday Technologies
• Explore the Nature and Uses of Technologies
• Situate Technologies in Cultural and Sociohistoric Contexts
• Engage in Community-Driven Goals and Use Technology as a Tool Toward Those Goals
"In this case, technology and tools were no longer seen as objects with authority derived from outside of Indigenous communities, rather, students and teachers became makers of technologies for use in the construction of their own knowledge. While this shift may seem subtle, in our work the change in epistemic positioning in this learning environment opened the space for deep inquiry, creative engagement and innovative problem solving" (p. 724).
Education
STEM