I’m in the news! Did you know I’m writing an archival book on US Archives and Sovereignty Violence? Want to learn about what data professionals really mean when we say colonization is ongoing and systemic? Interested in other ways of archival decolonization beyond repatriation or reparative cataloging?
About the Upcoming Book
Decolonization in archives is often cast as an undoing process or as determining the limits of ongoing colonization of Indigenous peoples. “Archives and The Politics of Tribal Sovereignty Violence” challenges this emphasis, exploring how archival politics surrounding decolonization are haunted by the ever-changing complexities of modernity that demand ongoing acts of sovereign violence. In archives, decolonization–the active and metaphorical shattering of colonial structures (institutions, logic, workflows)–is in conflict with the United States’ (US) sovereignty violence by reinscribing and sustaining four fictitious myths the settler state pushes as fact. As the nexus for societal structures, archival praxis is a mechanism through which settler colonial fictions are reproduced. Grounded in US tribal politics, this book critically examines the deep-rooted connection between US settler state politics and tribal sovereignty from the lens of archival work. It traces the political-economic impacts on tribal sovereignty in direct connection with archival efforts to decolonize recordkeeping.
How the Heck Am I An Expert
- I’m a Data Consultant, Freelance Digital Asset Manager, and FullStack Developer who works with nonprofits, archives, museums, libraries, and creatives to manage their IT systems, databases, websites, and media.
- I have a Masters in Information and a Bachelors in American Indian Studies.
- My community work with Indigenous peoples transcends several countries and spans from the east coast of the US to Madagascar and Japan.
- Two examples of my previous research include “Archives, Decolonization, and the Politics of Tribal Sovereignty” (federal recognition politics) and “UX in Online Catalogs” (Implementing TK Labels).