Sociotechnical assemblages in digital work with Aboriginal languages

Abstract

In this paper I consider how three digital resources for the preservation and transmission of Australian Indigenous language function as ‘sociotechnical assemblages.’ The three projects under consideration are a digital archive of materials from a particular era in Indigenous education in Australia’s Northern Territory, an online template for presenting language data under Indigenous authority, and an online course teaching a specific Indigenous language (Bininj Kunwok) in a higher education context. Considering each of these as a sociotechnical assemblage – collections of heterogeneous elements which entangle the social and the technical – and exploring how they constitute connections and contrive equivalences between different knowledge practices, and how they resist such actions, highlights how they can open up spaces for new collaborative work. The Living Archive contrives connections between disparate elements by gathering all these materials to a single repository for preservation and access. The coding of the archive (intentionally and unintentionally) assumes particular equivalences. It connects the various components of each item – the information inscribed in the metadata, the digitised copy of the book in PDF form, the extracted text file, and the cover image thumbnail – and displays them together as a single record. It links materials to places and languages on a map which functions as the entry point to the collection (see Figure 1), and shows connections between different versions of a story where these are available, such as translations in other languages or updated versions. Search, browse and filter options in the interface were designed to enable users to make their own connections between items – whether people, languages and places, or words, topics and themes. The use of standardised forms, such as ISO 639-3 language codes (SIL International, 2015), OLAC metadata standards (Simons & Bird, 2003), and OAI-PMH protocols for harvesting (Lagoze, Van de Sompel, Nelson, & Warner, 2002) all support connection to other collections and improve the discoverability and accessibility of the Archive and its contents. Hosting the collection on a university repository contrives sustainability into the future, and extensibility into wider linguistic and academic ecologies. Use of a permission form and Creative Commons license create connections between Indigenous and non-Indigenous practices of intellectual property management (Bow & Hepworth, 2019). The Living Archive constitutes equivalences by enabling diverse groups of users to access these materials. A highly visual online interface was developed to support navigation without requiring high text or technical literacy, while also maintaining standard search and browse options expected by users more familiar with library catalogues. The contents of the Archive are treated equally, with no hierarchies within the materials: a simple word book with a line drawing on each page has the same status in the Archive as an intricate creation story with complex text and rich illustration. All languages and communities and people are treated the same, whether there are thousands of speakers or none – the only difference is quantitative rather than qualitative, with some groups having greater representation,