Indigenous Ecological Knowledges and Geographic Information Systems: Exploring ontologically compatible techniques and technologies - Hilo, Hawaii - November 2010

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This workshop of indigenous scholars and others will explore the creation of a Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) based on indigenous ontology. The focus of the workshop is to discuss the possibility of new ways to format Geographical Information Systems (GIS), Global Positioning Systems (GPS), and Remote Sensing (RS) technology for managing spatial data by drawing upon the spatial knowledge systems imbedded in the cultural principles, practices, and protocols of many indigenous groups. The PIs and CoPIs are PhD scientists from diverse indigenous groups, Alaska Native, American Indian, Maori, and Hawaiian, and the workshop attendees will include scholars from these, as well as other groups. The expertise assembled will be cartography, cultural ecology, anthropology, oral history, computer science, GIS technology, human geography, linguistics, and medical sciences. Participants will be invited through an open call for participation that will include Indigenous academics and cultural leaders, social scientists, computer scientists, SDI specialist, and others with relevant knowledge and interest; special attention will be made to reach out to new career scientists from underrepresented groups. Pointing to other international efforts (ESRI Conservation Program, Aboriginal Mapping network, Indigenous Mapping Network, and the Integrated Approaches to Participatory Development Project) where indigenous communities are engaging with spatial technologies in order to map their territories in a way they feel reflects their own knowledge, the research team successfully argues that there is potential to explore a different way of organizing spatial data. The organizers point out that in relationship to Indigenous cultural knowledges, GIS has been critiques for its limited potential or detrimental effects because it de-emphasized, ignores, or devalues concepts that are of central importance to Indigenous cultures, including the ubiquity of relatedness, the value of non-empirical experience, the need to control access to levels of geographical knowledge, and the value of ambiguity over binary thought. This workshop will go one step further than simply comparing the differences in cultural spatial knowledge and explore what kind of system could be based on Indigenous spatial realities, practices, and protocols and what would such a system look like? Not just looking at how indigenous knowledge differs from Western knowledge systems but at how one can actually structure a spatial information system that is based on indigenous conceptualizations.