>> From the Library of
Congress in Washington D.C.
>> Guha Shankar: Good evening,
afternoon, thank you all so much
for coming to this
wonderful session.
It's been a long time in the
making for a number of us here.
Great to see old and familiar
faces, some new ones as well,
and it promises to be a really
exciting afternoon...as exciting
as online presentations can be.
One housekeeping note
- if you wouldn't mind,
turning off your cell phones?
Turn off your cell phones
because we care and,
they also interfere with the
wireless equipment in the room.
And I'm going to keep my remarks
[short], basically by saying
that I'm here to
essentially hurry people on
and off the stage
- or not hurry -
gently move people along
and introduce people.
And in doing so, let me
introduce my boss, the director
of the American Folklife Center,
my boss, Dr. Betsy Peterson.
>> Elizabeth Peterson:
Thank you, Guha.
As he said, I am Betsy Peterson
- I think I am anyway And I want
to welcome everyone today.
This has been an exciting and
a long time coming to get,
get all of us in the same room
so we can begin to reflect
and talk about what this
whole process has been
in the last couple of years.
But, let me step back
a minute and sort
of go back a little further and
tell you a little bit about AFC
and what AFC has done
in terms of working
with Native American
collections and communities.
The American Folklife Center
has long been involved
in initiatives to jointly
engage federal repositories
and Native American community
members in curating, preserving,
and providing access to
their own cultural heritage,
whether the focus was on analog
materials, on wax cylinders,
or whether it is on
emerging digital formats.
Notably, the Library was the
very first federal institution
to actively engage
in the repatriation
of recorded cultural heritage
to indigenous communities
to actively -- Whoops.
I just missed a line
there...In the repatriation
of recorded cultural heritage to
indigenous communities by means
of the Federal Cylinder Project,
which was initiated in 1979.
And Judith Gray is one of
the individuals who was
on that illustrious
team at the time.
Through this program,
the Library coordinated a tape
preservation program focused
on fragile wax cylinders
housed in several public
and university repositories,
bringing them together.
Subsequently, through
careful collaborative work
with community experts and
elders, we returned recordings
to over 100 communities
to assist
in community based
programs, for cultural
and linguistic preservation
and dissemination.
So, now let's jump ahead to
2018 and to the 2.0 version
of the Federal Cylinder Project.
This time around, we are working
on digitizing these fragile wax
cylinders, but so much more -
thanks to all this
wonderful new technology
that is making certain things
possible and really making,
I think, the dream of
collaborative curation,
much more possible, to
promote the ethical exchange
of information.
And it's also in part due
to the indefatigable -
and I want to underline
that - team of Jane Anderson
and Kim Christen, who
are piloting and -
and championing the Mukurtu
content management system
and the Local [Contexts] and the
Traditional Knowledge labels,
which they'll be able to tell
you a little bit more about.
I also want to thank our
esteemed guests and experts.
Donald Soctomah from
the Passamaquoddy tribe
and Dwayne Tomah.
Welcome! And what
you're going to hear
from us today is just
everyone talking a little bit
about what this process
of collaborative curation
is all about, what it means
to the different parties
involved, how they're doing,
what they're doing and where
we see things going - further.
I also want to just give a
brief shout out to Gene DeAnna,
who is the former
head of Recorded Sound
at Motion Picture, Broadcasting,
and Recorded Sound [division].
Gene was very instrumental
in working with us
to move the wax cylinders
out to the Culpepper facility
and really kind of jump starting
and pushing this project
and getting it started.
So it's wonderful to see you.
Glad you're here.
And with that said, I think
you'll be hearing a little bit
more about the history and bits
and pieces of these projects
as we begin our conversation.
And so I would just like
to welcome Donald Soctomah
to the podium, or you
may actually just sit
and probably talk from there.
Is that all right?
Ok... So thank you.
Donald.
>> Donald Soctomah: Thank you.
I'm happy to be here and
be part of the process
on the, wax cylinders.
This truly is - ancestral voices
returning back to the tribe.
It's so powerful to hear a voice
128 years ago of a grandfather,
a great grandfather that
could be lost in time.
But what's really powerful
is they're singing songs
and telling stories that haven't
been told, haven't been sung.
We've spent two years?
almost three [laughter] and
every time I take the recordings
to elderly in our
community to hear,
I get different types
of reactions.
The first type of
reaction is emotional.
And I thought about that.
What, you know, to me, this
is powerful, but I was trying
to think of different reasons
for the strong emotion.
And it - it came to me that the
language that's being spoken is
the same accent that the elders'
grandparents probably talked
to them, the same
accent, the same words.
It's so powerful.
So, it takes them back a couple
generations and then the memory
from the voices goes back
another couple of generations.
And, and the - the songs, the
war songs, the trading songs,
the stories that are on
these cylinders, they're...
they're just- just amazing,
because they're parts
of our history at
certain time periods.
The war song - you know,
if we think back into time,
the last big war
that the tribe was
in was the American
Revolution in 1776.
The chief at our
time, at that time,
was Chief Francis
Joseph Neptune.
So we were able to piece this
together, because, remember,
wax cylinders are only
two to three minutes
and native songs can go for
15 to 20 minutes, you know.
So we're getting just a
piece of the pie on that.
So we have a little view back
into the American Revolution -
a view from the eyes and
the voice of the ancestors.
It - that's so powerful,
you know.
And one of the stories
talks about -
talks about different
legends of the tribe
that have been passed on,
that some of the stories
I've heard growing up,
but I haven't heard
them complete
like they are in
the wax cylinder.
It's... pretty powerful.
We took the wax cylinders and
we sat with a group of elders -
I think the average age
was probably seventy-five
and Dwayne - Dwayne's the
youngest fluent speaker
in our tribe.
And, that's - that's
quite a comment,
because the youngest
fluent speaker
in our tribe...I can't remember
how old you are, but it's -
it's about fifty and
he's right there,
and everybody [else
is] above that age.
It just - the fluency
rate keeps increasing.
And so right now I think it's
over the age of sixty-five,
almost all the people in our
community over sixty-five,
I'd say ninety percent
are fluent speakers.
They were raised speaking
the language and they had
that memory going
back into time.
And then it just goes down-
percentage wise -to
our children today
that they hear words
here and there.
This- last three years
we were pretty lucky.
We started a language immersion
school for children three
to five, and this is the
first batch of kids growing
up hearing the language,
so it's bringing that back.
So, we -we took the
cylinders to the teachers,
to the master speakers and the
elders, and they sat in a circle
and we kept trying to make
the words out because some
of the songs are pretty -
pretty hard to understand -
because of the scratches,
but some of the songs are
[audible and] you can hear them
and you can feel the
emotion from the singer.
And we had some debate on some
of the words and the meaning,
because languages
over time changes.
And - the English language
I know has changed,
because I've tried to read
some old English books
and it's almost impossible
[laughter].
But even with Passamaquoddy, our
language has changed over time
in the last hundred years.
It's changed.
The words have gotten
a little bit shorter -
and some of the words
are out of use because -
we don't have these stories
of legendary creatures
like the Apotmakin You don't
hear that word very much.
It's a sea serpent, so
you don't hear the legend
of the sea serpent very much,
so it sort of gets out of use,
but these wax cylinders
are bringing them back,
bringing them back into
use, bringing the songs
that the singers
haven't heard before.
[There are] a couple of
the songs we still use
in our Indian Day ceremonies,
but I - I can say that some
of them I've never heard
before [and] I don't think any
of the master speakers in our
community have heard before.
So it's bringing a
gift back to the tribe.
And we're - we're at a
critical moment in our tribe
where language fluency
is - every year it goes
down a whole percentage point.
So last time I was here, it
was - we were at ten per cent
of our population
were fluent speakers.
Now it's probably down to eight
percent because the elders,
every elder - that's a
fluent speaker right there.
So this comes at
an important time.
It's giving some of us, a sort
of a shot in the arm of energy,
[and we're] saying, "Okay,
this is what we're going to do.
We're going to bring
this forward."
And - and it energizes
other people,
it energizes the
singers in our community.
I've had so many requests
from tribal - tribal singers
in our community - because they
want to hear the wax cylinders
and they want to sing the songs.
So to me, this is a
great project and it's
so much work ahead and so
much work has been done and -
the Mukurtu site is one way.
We put this all together onto
a Mukurtu site and Jane's going
to talk about [that], then Kim's
going to talk about that later,
but for us it gives us
a little bit of control
on our cultural films,
music books,
and the tribe's able to...have
a little bit of control
on our stuff that
we've never had before.
And that's, that's pretty
powerful on its own.
Everybody else has had
control over our songs,
over our stories [but]
this puts it back on to us.
And to me that's the
way it should be,
because our ancestors
shared the stories.
They didn't give the stories to
anybody, but they shared them.
And then for the tribe -
there's a tribe in Canada,
it's one of our neighbors,
they- they shared the stories
with a writer in the
mid-eighteen hundreds
and this writer said, "I'm
just going to document this
and I'm going to return
this back to the tribe."
Well, before he completed
[it], he passed on,
and his family got a
hold of the stories
and the family told
the tribe that -
that they have the copyright,
those are their stories,
and they [the tribe] were
being threatened to go to court
because those were the
writer's stories - copyrighted.
So the tribe was in
a turmoil, you know,
these are ours ...how can
anyone claim these stories?!
So - we're learning a lot
through this whole process,
especially with expertise that
helps us understand [the law].
Personally, I know what rights,
you know, my ancestors story,
my ancestors song belongs
to the Passamaquoddy tribe.
But the way laws
are today, you know,
it just makes everything
a little bit harder.
So - I'm grateful for being
here for the opportunity to work
with all these wonderful people,
for the Library of Congress and,
and for ones in the
back there that -
that have been working
just as hard.
It's - it, it takes a
team to make things work.
And that's what I see
here - a good team.
I want to thank you.
>> Guha Shankar:
Thank you very much.
Donald.
>> Donald Soctomah:
We're going to play the-
what was called a
trading song - when,
when Fewkes put the
titles together,
he just put a basic title on it.
I don't think he wanted to go
into detail, because his job was
to record and so things were
just labeled as "trading song"
or "war song one," "war song
two" or "war song three,"
but there's different
- categories of trade,
different types of trading.
In our- our history that's been
written, the tribes are known
for their trading skills.
When the explorers came over
[from Europe] in their journals,
they said, "Well, these guys
know how to deal in a trade.
I wanted to trade this - cook
pan for one beaver skin -
but I ended up giving two
pots for the one beaver skin!"
[laughter] So the tribe was well
known for its trading skills
and that's a part of survival.
So our tribe has - what I've
seen - three trading songs
over time, and one's
interesting -
its called a "clown
trading song.".
And the clown trading
song is ...wintertime -
everybody's in the
wigwam and you're sitting
around the fire staying
warm, and you sort of,
you're preparing the
kids for the big trade.
So you're making fun of
the trader, you know,
the one that's going to come
in: "Oh, he's coming in,
he's coming in with baggy
clothes, he's coming in."
And then there's the
other type of trade, the -
the trade where you're going
- trading the good for a good
at equal, equal par
and everything.
So - what we're going to
play here is the Trading Song
and this is the one that
the children - picked up.
We played it at a - at a - well,
one of the - we had the group
of immersion children that
were learning the language
and they sat at the table and
the teacher sat at the table -
the teachers are
master speakers.
So when...
one teacher heard that,
it started coming back
to her she remembers hearing
that when she was a young girl.
[Song from Passamaquoddy
Collection: The Trading Song"
by Newell Josephs, 1890]
>> So we worked on this
song for a couple months.
It's a short song, but I
worked with Wayne Newell
on this song and he...
we went over word by word, just
stopping the music and going
through and he's in his
late eighties maybe,
and he's never heard
that song before.
So it, it took us a while for
him to put the words together.
And - he was amazed,
he was really amazed.
So this song was done by
Peter...Peter Selmore.
So I, I tried to do a little bio
on Peter Selmore, but one thing
about our tribe - we have
sort of like a name game.
The traditional names
today - aren't really -
it's not our custom, but when
- when, a father has a son,
they'll call him Little
Joseph, so he'll be - Josap,
they'll say Little Joseph,
you know, in English,
they'll call him that
and then - then his,
his father's last name
becomes the son's first name,
so you're trying to
follow this on a census.
And then his son takes
his father's last name
as his first name, so it's
switching back and forth.
And then somewhere in
the mix there'll be,
maybe a nickname
becomes a first name.
So I've come across
..three Peter Selmore,
and his nickname was
kci-kakak, which,
which means the Crow, the Raven.
So, his father -- I found
last night in a document,
and his father couldn't
speak English,
he refused to speak French.
So he only spoke Passamaquoddy,
because French was
a second language
in the eighteen hundreds
of the tribe.
And then English sort of took
over in the nineteen hundreds.
So he had a brother named
Peter Selmore, well,
a cousin that also took the
name, so finding the birth date
in the census material is
usually - it's never right on -
from the 1860 census
to the 1880 census.
And then in the middle we
have the church census,
the baptismals and marriages.
So everything, the years
might be off one or two.
And, then Noel Joseph, the
other singer, his name I found
on the 1880 census, three Noel
Josephs and tracking them back
into time is sort of
like a detective story.
I'm trying to find out a
little bit about each singer.
And Peter Lacoot.
He sang one song and originally
he wasn't listed in the -
in the document as
being a singer,
but somebody did some
careful listening..
. I think it was Kelly?
>> Guha Shankar Kelly Revak
>> Donald Soctomah: Yep...
Kelly did some real
good listening
and she heard the
word "Peter Lacoot."
So, I got a phone
call and it said
"There's another singer
on the wax cylinder!"
[laughs] So we started
researching Peter Lacoot and -
he spent a lot of
his time in Canada
because we're a border tribe.
Half of our aboriginal
land is in Canada
and the other half is in Maine.
So Peter Lacoot happened to
be a guide for this family
that owned a big lodge
on the St. Croix and -
they took a picture of him.
So it was one of
the rare pictures ,
t was the only picture
of Lacoot.
We were lucky with Noel Joseph.
There's a nice picture
of Noel Joseph -
and we're still searching
for Peter Selmore.
I know he'll show up sometime...
so I don't know if you wanted
to show the video of...?
Okay, so that' s my part.
>> Guha Shankar Thank you
so much for that, Donald.
Let me introduce, please, Nicki
Saylor, Head of the Archives
at the American Folklife
Center, and she's going to talk
to us a little bit
about the terms
of the tech infrastructure,
web access
and other matters as are needed.
>> Nicki Saylor: Hi.
First of all - I 'd just like
to say that I'm really proud
of our institution for
committing real resources
and real energy into
making this thing happen.
I think, you know, when you
work in a federal agency,
you have a real appreciation
for how hard something
like this is to do.
And so I just want to spend a
minute shouting out to a few
of my colleagues who really,
really deserve the praise.
I want to mention the folks
at the National Audiovisual
Conservation Center -
Rob Christarella, Rob Friedrich,
Gene Deanna and a host
of other engineers who-
and Mr. [David] Giovanonni,
who was a help as well...
just got this thing off
the ground as mentioned.
What you'll see in this record
are three different versions
of the recording.
You'll see something that is the
flat transfer from the cylinder.
And correct me anytime I
don't say anything right.
There's a flat transfer from
the cylinder to digital.
Then there is a flat
transfer from the tape
that was made during the
Federal Cylinder Project.
And then there was something
that was snazzed up -
with a machine called
Cedar, Cedar Systems.
Yes. So it was - enhanced
for your listening pleasure.
And so we've decided to show all
three of, or provide all three
of those so that you can get
the full effect and understand
if you're an engineering
audio geek,
you can really compare
them and stuff.
So enjoy that.
I also want to thank the folks
from - the user experience team,
the R &D web services team,
in particular Jamie Bresner,
Barrack Stussman, Krista
Maher, Bill Kellum.
I pulled out a report,
actually it was a proposal
to the Web Governance Board Way
back in 2015 when we first said,
"hey, will you let us put
the stuff on the Internet,"
which you think would
be no problem.
You just push a button, right?
But that is not how it is here.
And especially to be - to be
able to associate these labels
with their audio
recording is a big deal.
It requires custom,
I think, as Hope said
in the meeting this
morning, amazingly..
artisanal approach...in
this environment.
So, I'm very grateful
for, for them.
And...finally I want
to mention the folks
in the American Folklife Center.
So of course Judith Gray, Maggie
Kruesi, Kelly Revak, Julia Kim,
Guha Shankar, Ann Hoog, John
Fenn and the list goes on.
Everyone had a hand in moving
the bits, doing the metadata,
you know, all, all
manner of things.
So I'm very happy about that.
So, I think what we're doing is
we're stopping at the endpoint
and then working backward
into sort of how we got here.
So we'll just get right to it.
What you're looking at as
a single cylinder record
and three different
versions of it.
Can I scroll down?
No. Okay. Well you're
missing the money
because [laughter] anyway,
look it on your own.
But it has wonderfully robust
metadata that has been provided
by the tribe and it is
translated, it's contextualized,
it's finally, we're able
to do this co-curation
that we've long talked about.
And so - and it's, it's sort
of antithetical to notions
of open access and scale
and all these things
that libraries prize.
And so - we aren't done.
We may not be done,
whatever done is -
with this for a while,
but that's okay.
We're in it- we're
in it to win it.
And so - it will take ..
the time that it takes,
but enjoy that record
and there'll be more
where, where that came from.
Okay. Thanks.
>> Guha Shankar:
Thank you, Nicki.
So let me call up
our indefatigable
and intrepid a partners in
crime here, Kim Christian
from Washington State
University and Jane Anderson
from New York University
and respectively Mukurtu
and Local Contexts....and I
see Jane's going to be first.
So, that's looking out
the corner of my eye.
Thank you.
>> Jane Anderson:
Thank you all so much
for coming to this presentation.
I know some of you have seen
different kinds of incarnations
of this project over
the last several years
as we've presented
little pieces of it.
As has already been
said, it's not over yet.
This is kind of..
we got to an important
stage where we really wanted
to share what we've
been able to do
and actually also
share the process,
some of the work behind
it...what the invisible labor is
that leads to this
kind of thing happening
in the Library of Congress.
And also what is, as
a parallel journey,
happening with the
Passamaquoddy as well.
I really want to thank everybody
at the Library of Congress
who has been involved
in this project.
It's been incredible
to be part of.
I want to also think Kim, but
I also want to thank Donald
and Dwayne for all the work
that we've been doing
together on this project.
And in my presentation,
I want to bring some
of the other voices
from Passamaquoddy
into the room today who
weren't able to make it.
So, Kim and I...dually - co-ly-
represent Local Contexts.
I'm going to talk a little
bit about Local Contexts
which was developed in
2012 as a digital platform
to create different
kinds of pathways
for indigenous communities to
deal with intellectual property
around the collections that they
don't necessarily hold legal
title over and yet are
the cultural authorities
and are not recognized as such
in the archives, libraries
and museums in this country
and around the world.
This project really
began because we knew
that there was a
really big problem
that indigenous communities
were, have been [facing],
particularly as this
material is being digitized
and re-circulated ...
problems in the original records
- that those names of the people
who were integral
to the production
of those materials
were not recorded
at that particular time.
And so as this material became
digitized, those names continued
to not circulate
with that material.
So the Local Contexts platform
has two major components.
The first part is an
educational component.
It does a lot of
work educating tribes
around Intellectual
Property law.
It provides template documents.
It provides a whole
range of training modules
around intellectual property.
And the other part
of the platform are these
Traditional Knowledge labels.
These really might be understood
as digital tags or protocols,
community protocols
that have been,
that have taken a digital form
which allow for a protocol
to travel with material, to
travel with a digital item.
We have seventeen labels that
we've developed in collaboration
with about the twenty
communities
that we have been working
with over the last four years.
And they range on a
spectrum, I'm not really going
to show them to you, but
they range on a spectrum
from multiple communities
or a label that indicates
that there are multiple
communities
that have responsibility
over certain kind of piece
of heritage to secret,
sacred material to...culturally
sensitive material
to attribution to outreach.
There's seventeen there
and they're all...what they
do is they provide nuance
in how indigenous communities
would like that material
to be circulated
into the future.
And that kind of nuance,
once you get into the project
and you look at the ways
in which communities are
defining what attribution is
for them, what outreach
means for that community,
you really see not only
the different contours
of how we want to think
about sharing information,
but that every community has
their own way of doing that.
So, one of the labels, and I'll
just give you this quick example
of the attribution label,
because it is the label
that every community
chooses to use
because the attribution
is what has been missing
from the record.
And in this sense, what
we did with this project,
the particular kind
of a pivot point,
is that the icon
itself remains the same.
That's why you've been able
to see the icon in the Library
of Congress record, but the
text and the description
of what attribution means is
where every community is able
to assert their own sovereignty
around what that means for them,
including translating it
into their own language,
which is what the
Passamaquoddy have done.
The Passamaquoddy have
three labels that they chose
for these particular
sound recordings.
We have the non-commercial
label,
we have the outreach label,
and we have, of course,
we have the attribution label.
So when we - in 2016,
we repatriated the
thirty-one digital files
to the Passamaquoddy nation...to
the elders and to the children
from the communities,
and we left them there
with no strings attached.
And then since 2016,
I've been doing a lot
of travel up to Passamaquoddy.
Donald's been creating enormous
amounts of listening circles,
just trying to hear
what's on these recordings.
And so we're dealing
with two minutes of sound
for one recording and for
a while were just working
on one recording.
It took nearly a year...
and we were playing
it again and again,
stopping it every twenty seconds
to see what could be heard
or what couldn't be heard.
And it was enormous
amounts of work!
And the concentration
that was needed to do
that over several days.
And that kind of process,
which has been, you know,
since we began it, we've
kind of streamlined it
in a different kind of way.
And now we have, you know, we
now have three records that are
in the Library of Congress.
They happened really quickly.
We have another four that we're
working on with Passamaquoddy
that are going to be
incorporated into the Library
of Congress [records].
So the kind of...we've worked
out a process that has sped
up a little bit, this work
of sharing the information
that Passamaquoddy have
been determining is
on these cylinders.
So I want to show you a...
just an example, of what
this process looks like.
This is Molly Neptune
Parker, and she's listening
to a one of these cylinders.
[Molly Neptune Parker
speaking in Passamaquoddy
and English while
listening to recording]
>> Jane Anderson: So you can
kind of get a sense of like,
the difficulty of, like
this constant listening,
trying to pick out words, make
sense of them and then trying
to kind of work out what
that is as a sentence or...
and then what it is as
a song and, you know,
we have these very, very limited
descriptions from Fewkes.
I think this one is Peter Lacoot
who actually Molly is a
direct [descendant] of,
who actually is singing
what - well, first of all,
he wasn't in the
record to start with.
Kelly found that [out] and
we went through the notebooks
of Fewkes and we found that
there was a tiny reference
to him in there in
relationship to this song
and then it's subsequently
titled "War Song".
And so then we're kind of
going, "What is a war song?
It doesn't sound
like a war song.
What does a war song
sound like?"
...kind of thinking through
what does a war song sound like.
And then, as Molly was
starting to [listen]...
so this also a two part process.
First, there's listening to
the tiny little pieces of words
and stitching them together
and then there's this part...
>> Molly Neptune Parker:
So that's more than one.
Him and whoever...he didn't say.
He said he was going to go
hunting and they were going
to go hunting, not just him -
they were going to go hunting,
and when they get to wherever
their hunting place is,
they said that they're going
to...they built a place
to stay - they must have
built some kind of a shelter.
And then he started ...
now, I don't know when
he started the story,
whether it was during, maybe
like dinner or something
or on the way when
they were gathering,
depending on how many
people they were,
because they usually
tell stories when there's
at least a handful of people
and they always went hunting
by groups, not just
by themselves.
So that's all I can tell.
But there, what bothers
me is one word
that he used [Passamaquoddy
word]
and I think that's what he said.
Yeah.
>> Jane Anderson:
So you can see ...
then there's adding the
larger cultural context
of what kind of, what
would they be speaking,
when would they be saying
this, what does this mean
within the larger context of
the Passamaquoddy tribe itself
and so what we have as a
tiny record called "War Song"
that Fewkes wrote down
is immeasurably increased
when communities are part of
listening and adding this rich,
rich data to kind
of what we have.
And this is happening,
you know, in 2018
and these recordings
are from 1890.
So that kind of work
takes a really long time,
but it's incredibly valuable.
The one key part I want to
tell you about this project
which I think is very important,
and just before handing
over to Kim, is that as we've
been doing this work together,
we've been creating
a parallel site
which is the Passamaquoddy
Mukurtu site, which is where all
of this material that
we've been gathering lives
and it's full of Passamaquoddy.
It's all the different kinds
of rich textual analysis,
understanding, interpretation
that each community
that will add ...
[that] the Passamaquoddy
community has been adding
as we go through each song.
And that just becomes enormous.
And so we've been building
that into Passamaquoddy's own
Mukurtu site for it to live
as another kind of record,
another kind of document,
another kind of place
that is really
for Passamaquoddy
interpretation.
And so we have these kind
of two different sites
now for this material.
We have the AFC record
which tells a very
particular kind of story.
We also have the AFC record
pointing back to the authority
of the Passamaquoddy community,
which is where authority
over this material
really does lie.
And with that, I'm going
to hand it over to Kim.
>> Kim Christen:
Thank you, everybody.
First, I have to thank all of
you for coming and acknowledge
that 2008 was a banner year for
me because I met Guha and Jane
and here we are a decade later.
And that was because Guha saw me
give a presentation on what was
yet to be Mukurtu CMS, the free
and open source content
management system
and community access
platform that it is today.
And he said, "I think
this is something!
I have to introduce
you to some people."
And he introduced me to
Rachel Frick, who was then
at the Institute of Museum
and Library Services,
where we got our first
grant, our second grant
for Mukurtu, to build Mukurtu.
I met Rachel Frick, Mary
Alice Ball from the IMLS.
Before that, in 2008
after meeting Jane....and
talking this through...and one
of my collaborators in
Australia where Mukurtu started,
where it comes from...had
been stymied by trying
to put a copyright on something.
She said," I know
this is our material,
can't we just put
a copyright on it?"
And I'm no lawyer, but
I know people who are.
But I knew we couldn't
just put a copyright on it.
And so this wonderful
relationship with Jane started
where we started thinking,
what can we do in that?
And I dug out my
very first NEH Office
of Digital Humanities startup
grant in 2008 and it had that -
we said we were going to,
with $50,000, you know,
not only build the software
platform, but also the licenses
and also do all this
stuff and, you know...
thank God, you know.
But anyway, they were there, the
idea was there, this is all part
of - I think what all
of us are saying today,
is this is all a process.
It's a slow process and it's
a slow process for a reason.
So, and I also want to thank
the NEH who has funded Mukurtu
and specifically Jen
Serventi and Jason Rohde.
Yes, NEH, yes, IMLS, but
there are people there
who champion these things
and we should honor
those people as well.
So Mukurtu CMS, like
I said, it's a free
and open source content
management system,
but there's four things
that set Mukurtu apart.
And like I said, it grew out of
my work in central Australia.
Mukurtu literally
means "dilly bag"
and a dilly bag is a
safe keeping place.
So for the Warumungu people who
I started working with in 1995
to build this, this
was the idea:
to create a digital safe
keeping place - that same sort
of keeping place
that that dilly bag
that held those sacred items.
So what Mukurtu, the
content management system -
there are four things that
sort of set it apart -
we have this cultural
protocol based access.
So what Donald was
saying, how do we ensure
that the protocols we
already have offline are
respected online.
So Mukurtu allows that
for any community.
We also have multiple
records and extended metadata.
So you'll see in a minute
that any one item can
have multiple records
because as we've seen, this
trading song isn't just
that one record with one
authoritative voice telling us
about that.
. And we have a suite
of functions,
that we call round trip, that
allows you to get things easily
in and out and share them
with other institutions -
specifically though,
using selective sync.
So if the Passamaquoddy don't
want to share everything,
then they don't have to.
So that's built in.
And then, of course,
finally, the TK labels.
So all of these come around
in the Passamaquoddy site,
which you can see here,
"Passamaquoddy people:
At home on the Ocean and Lakes",
and it's a beautiful
reminder -this site -that all
of these materials are
grounded in a place.
I mean, this..
this is why it's just, it's so
amazing to see this, that Donald
and all the people that work
with him have put this together.
So, of course, I want
to acknowledge Donald
and Ashley who's worked
with Donald, and at WSU -
Michael Wynne, Alex Merrill, and
Steve Taylor, who've done a lot
of the technical
heavy lifting here.
But, we start and we're grounded
in place and then we sort
of continue...and it
grounds us a bit further.
[playing Passamaquoddy
greeting from website]
>> So we're grounded in the
place and the language right
to begin when we come to
this site, and Mukurtu allows
for the sort of, you know,
the high level navigation
at the top can be
customized by each community.
And so Donald and the
Passamaquoddy have
customized this.
So on their "About" page you
can see the contextualization
continues and we
have Passamaquoddy
and English going back and
forth throughout the site
and it starts in the
"About" page and you learn
about the Passamaquoddy people
and why this is important.
And then we have a prayer.
[audio playing Passamaquoddy
prayer from website]
>> Kim Christen: And you can
also see at the bottom there,
the footer that runs throughout
the site that was very important
to -- there's three communities
that make up the Passamaquoddy.
So they're all listed there.
So each of these elements is
starting to build a people,
a place, why these
are important.
And we come to the
Passamaquoddy history.
And this tells a history of
the tribe in the northeast
and the emphasis is on place
and the multiple types
of relationships.
And there's a section on
contemporary events that sort
of brings us up to the
present and, of course,
this can always be
added to and Donald
and his group have
been adding to this
over the last few months
and will continue to.
It's one of those other things
that's sort of never done.
There's also a full
informational page that's
dedicated to the TK labels.
So this was a choice that the
Passamaquoddy made to...really
let people know why are there
these labels, when you get
to a record, what -why are there
these labels and what are they?
So you can see on this page,
there's an explanation,
not only the translation
into Passamaquoddy and then
into English of what that means,
but also a section on, well,
why did we want to use these?
And as Donald said at the
beginning, the contextualization
at the top is that we're
the rightful owners
of these materials, we're
the cultural authorities,
no matter who the sort
of western legal
copyright holder is.
So it's really bringing
us back to that
and that was very purposeful
and I'm sure if I'm Donald wants
to talk about that
later, he can.
[With] each of the labels
also - there's an audio file
so people can hear this
[audio from website].
So we have the attribution
"Elihtasik" -" how it is done".
I think that's a
wonderful, you know,
sort of translation
for attribution.
And so we get this sort
of richness behind it.
As we're starting off with
these 31 wax cylinders
that were taken back to
the tribe that we took back
in April 2016, then as
we started putting those
into the Mukurtu site,
all these other ideas
for other collections
came about, well,
what else can we
put into the site?
And they've used the
new collection feature
in Mukurtu quite extensively
to curate these materials.
So we can see at the top -
we have the 1890 wax cylinder
collection from the AFC
and then we have several
other collections.
One that's shared on the site,
for instance, is the Daughters
of the American Revolution
collection.
So this was important for
many historical reasons.
And also because it holds
one of the only photos
of Mrs. Wallace Brown and she's
central to this 1890 story,
because she introduced
Jesse Walter Fewkes
to the Passamaquoddy community.
That's how we get the 1890
wax cylinder recordings.
So again, it's stitching
this together
in a very purposeful way.
We saw these collections,
you know,
it isn't this just
what can we digitize,
let's digitize it and put it up.
It's very purposeful
at every step
to tell this sort
of community story.
And each of these collections
on the site highlights how
that knowledge is built
through these relationships.
And right now I know that
Donald - they're working
on a contemporary
collection of basket makers
to feature on the site.
So again, it's sort
of spurring this.
And finally we get to the
1890 recordings...along
with other content by
browsing the main site.
So we have "browse
digital heritage" here.
We - in Mukurtu, each discrete
element is called a digital
heritage item to kind
of really break away
from that notion
of a single record.
And so we can finally
get to the trading song
where we sort of began.
The important thing about
the trading song here is
that there are two tabs
across the top that you see.
These are the individual
records for this same material.
So here you can see..
is the first AFC records.
So this is what we had on the
first export that Maggie Kruesi
and others exported
from the AFC to Mukurtu.
We had this very sort
of sparse record.
You can just see a brief summary
and a description and that's all
that there was But
if we tab over then
over the next two
years, what we see
at the top right is now there
are seven related items.
So again, we start with
that one wax cylinder.
Now the Passamaquoddy have
added seven related items
to this one song.
And as we scroll down, we get
to the Mukurtu metadata fields,
which are those expanded
fields I told you about before.
And now we see the TK
labels on the right.
We see the cultural narrative
and the traditional knowledge
on the left by community
members.
And then we get to, because in
Mukurtu over time -every feature
and function is Mukurtu
is driven
by indigenous communities needs
and communities came back to us
and said, "we need
audio, we need video,"
because traditional knowledge
and cultural narratives aren't,
you know, don't necessarily
lend themselves to text.
So we made these
fields open to video
and Donald mentioned before,
Gracie Davis - not by name-
but he was speaking about Gracie
Davis, who when she first heard
that the trading song.
So in 2016 when we took
back those wax cylinders
that morning, Guha, Jane
and I were there along
with a room full of
Passamaquoddy children
in the immersion
preschool and the elders
who were the speakers.
And we started playing the song.
And the first time
everybody listened.
And then the second time
through something else happened.
[video excerpt of Gracie Davis
singing in Passamaquoddy]
>> Donald and others joined in,
as they were singing
along there.
And then as this circulated,
and as Donald mentioned
over a year later,
when Gracie was working
with the immersion preschool
children, now that song is taken
to the children as well
[video excerpt of children
singing in Passamaquoddy]
>> So it's sort of a wonderful
example of starting with this,
you know, that Donald
was talking about -
starting with this
one, two minute clip
and what it's generated
in the community
and how they're using
Mukurtu in..the community,
and what's given
back to the Library
of Congress as, as
Nicki mentioned.
So that cultural narrative
and traditional knowledge
that text was round, tripped
back to Library of Congress
and it's there, but these
videos remained for the past it
on their site and they can
choose to make those public
or as open or as
not as they want.
And another thing that happened
is that original Library
of Congress record has the
Traders song on it as well
as the "Song of Remembrance"
and over consultation
with this community we find
out that those two
should actually be split.
So in their Mukurtu site,
they have a second record.
So this isn't mirrored in
the Library of Congress,
because this is what the
tribe decided to do themselves
with that record- is now
create...a second record.
Similar to the "Trading song"
the community also have cultural
narrative and traditional
knowledge there.
And you can see the Traditional
Knowledge labels on every song.
And again, so the site,
once it goes live -
we're still on a staging
site - but once it goes live,
the community can decide on
the protocols for access.
And so already in the site we
see community-only protocols,
we see public, and it's again,
kind of what Donald was
going back to - that process
of curation and this sort
of community curation
that we've been doing -
collaborative curation -
over the last two years that
started with those 31 cylinders
and deciding - sort of
ethically and responsibly
who should manage those and
how they should be shared
and how they should be accessed.
And so that's all
I have [applause]
>> Guha Shankar Thank
you, Kim and all.
I think we're going to,
before we take questions,
we're going to conclude
this portion
of our...afternoon together
with a song and some remarks
from Donald and from Dwayne.
>> Donald Soctomah:
Wow, it looks real good!
I'm really impressed with
the way it was put together.
And this says it all.
It's really powerful.
This is Dwayne Tomah.
I said he's the youngest
fluent speaker of the tribe
and I've known him since he
was - this high [gestures
to the ground; laughter].
He's always been involved...
I remember when we had
our ceremonial days
and then out would come.
Dwayne dancing, really good
dancer, powerful dancer
and a very strong singer,
fluent in the language
and he's got so much passion.
When you mention tribal
language, a really powerful...
I think he wants to ..maybe
you want to sing for us or ...
you want to say something?
Okay.
>> Dwayne Tomah [begins greeting
in Passamaquoddy language]
This is a real emotional time
for me right now.
And I'm sorry that I'm actually
doing this, but it's really hard
for me because I'm
saying this because ...
we're still here.
Our language is strong
and it's still here.
And with the help of you
people...I don't know you,
but I feel your spirits in this
room, and I want to thank each
and every one of you for
making this possible.
For without you people and our
people this would not happen,
it would not go forward.
And for me to stand
here before you in 2018,
to be able to sing our songs,
to bring them back
home...is very powerful.
And to be able to
stand before you...
to know that our
language is still alive.
I want to thank each
and every one of you
for everything that you've done.
And this song I'm going to
sing is the "Trading song."
[drumming and song in the
Passamaquoddy language]
>> Okay. This next song is a war
song, which was very difficult
to be able to decipher, but with
the quality devices that we use
and all the sophisticated
instruments that we use,
we were able to break it down.
So for those that are involved
in that particular process,
you made my job a little easier.
[laughter] So I want to
thank you so much for doing
that because it was
really difficult.
I'm just going to
briefly...read it for you
so you can hear the
language and then I'll kind
of hum it a little
bit so you kind
of get an understanding
and see how it goes.
[reads text in Passamaquooddy,
then sings;
English translation] U,
tama ucuhsiyik nitapehsisol
[Where have you come
from my friend] U, natapi wici
suk nitapehsisol [You paddled
with your friend?] U, wasis
ma ktahcuwi wisanaqsiw,
apci wici nutehe nitapehsis
[Child you do not have
to hurry up, you will be
able to go out again] U,
nil na ntapi wici nutaha wiciw
nitapehsisol [I also went
out with my friend
(in the canoe)] U,
ma ktahcuwi wisanaqsiw,
apci wici nutehe nitapehsis
[You do not have to hurry up,
you will be able
to go out again] U,
nit na ntapi wicinu nitapehsisol
[I am going too my friend] Aw,
Wicinu nitapehsis,
kill u knaciphan naka knaciphin
[Go get him and get me too]
[Singing]
>> Donald Soctomah: Well,
you might not believe this,
but that's the first time that's
been sung in public in a hundred
and twenty-eight years.
It's the War Song by
Peter Lacoot [applause].
Thank you.
Thank you, Dwayne
>> Guha Shankar So...thank you
Donald and Dwayne for that.
That was extraordinary.
So we've covered a lot of
topics, a bewildering array
from control to intellectual
property to digital repatriation
to restoration, to
cultural curation,
ethical treatment
of...and I could go on
and we could make a meal of it
if we wanted to, but I'm going
to keep it short
because I know that ..
there's some refreshments
and we do need to move along
and folks need to
get fed and so on.
But we are going to
take some questions.
Please... you've had a lot to
think about, a lot to hear.
So yes sir, in the
back...the floor is yours
>> Audience Member : How
many cylinders have you found
so far related to our language?
>> Donald Soctomah 31 cylinders.
I think a few of
them were broken
and there's technology now that
going to piece them together.
I don't know if it's
at that point yet.
Is it close?
>> Guha Shankar Stay tuned.
We can neither confirm
nor deny ...we are
in Washington, after all.
>> Nicki Saylor We
are working on it ...
our best people.
>> Guha Shankar Somebody
else had a hand over here.
Sorry, yes.
>> Audience Member: Thank you
for showing us what this looks -
collaborative and
technical convergence
and respect can actually bring.
I had a question about
two words at the top.
Who logs in?
>> Kim Christen: You want
me to talk about that?
So, because Mukurtu has these
cultural protocols as I talked
about in the beginning,
community members log in
and so each item that
you see on the site...
that's sort of on the browse
site ..community members are
added to cultural protocols.
So in Mukurtu, you always
have the, "who" and the "how"
because nothing ever
circulates, right?
I mean in a Western
sense, we think of objects
that circulate out of that.
So Mukurtu puts that into a
context, so every single item
in any Mukurtu system has
to be enabled to actually
to upload it, you have to have
a who and a how - a community
and how do you want it
accessed - and so the who
and the how is decided
by the Passmaquoddy.
So you were seeing the
public site without a log in,
so that's already
been vetted and,
enabled to see- the login
will be the community members
and that's determined
by the community.
So we are training...Ashley,
right?
Yes...who's working with
Donald in the community.
>> Guha Shankar Yes.
Jeanine..
>> Jeanine Nault
Oh gosh, hi guys.
Nice to see you all again.
Nicki said something
interesting about how this type
of work is sort of in
opposition to a lot
of the push towards open
access and you know,
freely available material,
but it sounds like all
of you have had good
institutional support
with this type of work.
Do you anticipate that type of
institutional support continuing
as there's more interest
and more open access
to this type of material?
>> Guha Shankar: Nicki,
I think that's you
>> Nicki Saylor I thought Betsy
was supposed to sit down [here].
It is, it is my great
wish that it continues--
she says unofficially.
Yeah. I mean I think that
we are very interested
in this particular project,
we're very interested
in applying this kind of
co-curation and labeling
with other materials and we
were actually working on that
with Kim and Jane right now
>> Kim Christen I think
though, to your point, Janine,
it's up to everybody in the
room and all the institutions
that we work in because
it doesn't happen
from an institution, it
happens from people like Betsy,
like Nicki, like Guha, you know,
to push it through
because you know,
institutions are
...institutions.
>> Mary Alice Ball We can see,
we can see how labor intensive
this work is -the tremendous
amount of effort
that went into it.
So as the visibility, I mean,
it's so beautiful
what you've done.
So as more and more people
see what you've done,
more tribes will want
to replicate this.
How does Mukurtu plan
for sustainability,
for making this available to
other nations, other tribes
and you know, are you
considering selling, you know,
selling the software
or is it always going
to be federal or
private funders?
>> Kim Christen: Come on,
Mary Alice, you know me better
than that what're
you talking about?!
No, well thanks to our
generous funders...the Institute
of Museum and Library Services,
NEH and the Mellon Foundation
who is now funding us, but we...
we, for sustainability,
it's been something that,
exactly because of this
issue, we don't want
to create something that
then is going to go away.
And so.. my university,
Washington State University,
and the center that I direct -
the Center for Digital
Scholarship and Curation,
we've now moved it from
a project to just part
of our general library services.
So we don't rely on grants.
If the grants go away tomorrow,
which I hope they don't!
Mellon Foundation - .
If you're listening, we
still need your money.
But the library- we have, I
mentioned before, Alex Merrill
and Steve Taylor and
there are our developers
and we have Michael Wynne, who's
our Mukurtu support specialist
and we're hiring another one.
So we also, for sustainability,
provide support...that's
ongoing- to communities,
online support as well
as face to face training,
which we've done
with the communities.
So it's not a "build
it and they will come
and figure it out themselves."
The whole model works
on this collaboration
between indigenous communities
and those of us who are allies
in institutions - institutions
that should be doing this work
because the materials in
our libraries, museums
and archives got there in
very dubious circumstances.
So we should be doing this work.
>> Jane Anderson: And
I, I would add to it
that they're really ...it's
complex what needs to happen
at a community level, at
an institutional level
and at a technical level
and those three parts,
how we brought them together
and this project is partly
because we were piloting
how they come together
and we know much more about
kind of what that looks like.
But at the same time
we're constantly thinking
about what can this look
like for other communities
and the sustainability of that.
So we also have grants out to
support the training for tribes
around intellectual property
that is directly for tribes
so that they get a whole heap
of other kinds of information
in order to make different
kinds of decisions about how
to negotiate with
the institutions.
And we also have worked
out to start doing training
with institutions themselves
so that when tribes come
to institutions, institutions
are not saying, what is that?
What are we doing?
so that they already know
what their work flow would be,
they know what is needed
at an institutional level.
So that kind of helps smooth the
pathways and we've learned a lot
of that from this
project itself.
So that's kind of what the
next, the future looks like.
>> Guha Shankar Actually
following up on that question,
and this may be early days
for Donald and our colleagues
from Passamaquoddy, but
maybe you all could talk
about the fact that maybe
sustainability might best be
suited for tribal
communities to talk
to other tribal communities
about that.
Is that, is that a potential?
>> Jane Anderson:
That is the grant
that I'm talking about...around
training around these issue.
Actually, Donald
is involved in it.
Penobscot will be running
it and 12 other tribes
over the next two years.
It's something that is
like horizontal training
that is coming from tribes
themselves in terms of talking
about what this looks like.
>> Kim Anderson: And we,
we're in our fourth year
of our tribal stewardship cohort
program funded by the IMLS.
We've had two cohorts through
that are twelve tribal nations
that received full scholarships
to come to WSU for a year
and are trained in digital
stewardship that allows them
to create their own policies
and procedures for managing
and stewarding their
collections.
And we did that for three years
and we've just been funded
for another three years and our
next cohort starts in August.
And that was Mary Alice
Ball, who heart -started up,
who was very integral
to that happening.
>> Guha Shankar Questions?
Comments? All right, well ...
I wanted to make sure that
all of our panelists here
and especially our guests
from Maine, had a chance
to reflect on what this means.
I mean, I know Donald, you were
very eloquent and thank you
so much for that song, Dwayne.
That was brilliant.
What...would you have us
go away with, if you will?
>> Donald Soctomah: Well,
I think this material
was developed
because our tribe is a
sharing type of tribe.
Members of our tribe would
give the shirt off their back
for anybody, and I think
when the ancestors were sharing
the song, sharing the stories,
that's what they
were doing was...
sharing. When Fewkes came back
a couple months later [in 1890]
to play the wax cylinders
back to the tribe, you know,
nobody's ever heard this before.
I just can imagine what
they were thinking -
hearing their own
voices, you know,
nobody's ever heard
their voices before!
And then they were
the first ones
to hear their voices playing
back, singing back, you know,
what were they thinking?
what was going through
their mind...
this, the world changing.
You know, it was right at that
moment the world was changing
for them and I think
they realized we have
to continue to share.
Because if you look at the
timeline for the tribe right
after that, Charles Leland
wrote the Algonquian legends
and the tribe shared
most of those stories
on the Algonquian legends,
they're the stories of the,
mainly the Passamaquoddy,
and a few other tribes.
The tribe started
sharing, sharing stories -
continued on some of the older
..well, younger recordings
from 1947 ended up at
the Library of Congress
and the tribe kept sharing.
So that good will
of our tribe is sort
of saving the songs
for the future.
And just that good will..
I'd like to also
acknowledge David Francis.
He's, he was 99 years old
[when he passed away].
He started working on the first
round of the wax cylinders back
in the eighties ...when it
was really the wax cylinder --
rough, the rough cut.
So, he was a World
War Two veteran -
one of the singers [on the
1890 recordings] he knew
and he was able to
interpret as much as he could
from the rough recordings.
But, now it's like
night and day.
If David heard them now
he'd be writing up a storm.
So, you know, I wanted
to acknowledge his work
because that was the very
beginning on the wax cylinders
and today, you know,
we have Dwayne
and we have other...master
speakers
that are really getting
enthused with the work.
>> Guha Shankar Thank
you very much.
And, for a lot of us it's been
a pleasure and a privilege to be
on this journey with you.
So thank you.
Thank you all.
Let's eat.
[applause]
>> This has been a
presentation of the Library
of Congress, visit
us at LOC.gov.