AI has powerful uses for First Nations oral cultural knowledge. Here’s how

" We began using a generative AI tool – Claude, made by Anthropic – to assist in making sense of data...We used it for deciphering difficult handwriting in decades-old field notebooks, cross referencing genealogies across multiple sources, and organising hundreds of extracted PDF scans into usable files. Work that normally takes months could be completed in hours.

But the real shift came when we began directing the AI to work only within a defined set of curated sources – published research, verified archival material, community-approved records – rather than drawing from the open internet.

Within that controlled environment, we could ask questions about Wororra culture in plain language and receive grounded answers drawn only from material we trusted.

It became a way of learning through dialogue rather than reading dense academic text. For those of us working to understand a culture’s depth from scattered published sources, it accelerated learning dramatically.

If a curated AI environment could help researchers engage with cultural knowledge through conversation, could a purpose-built system do the same for community members – especially younger generations living in town, away from Country?

It is alive, it adapts, and it demands to be spoken. AI is just the latest tool that could help make that happen – if communities are the ones holding it. " >>
https://theconversation.com/ai-has-powerful-uses-for-first-nations-oral-cultural-knowledge-heres-how-276043

‘I claimed our data’ – confronting the colonial archive is ‘intense Aboriginal love’ in action. "This is my data. And this is my sovereign right. No more whitewashing. Let Truth be told. — Data Sovereignty Words " >>
https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-i-claimed-our-data-confronting-the-colonial-archive-is-intense-aboriginal-love-in-action-240338

#archives #AI #IndigenousKnowledgeSystems #EurocentricKnowledgeSystems
#ColonialityOfKnowledge #ColonialArchives #Claude #Anthropic #FirstNationsPeoples #DataSovereignty #culture

👨🏻‍🎓 We're ending the month of June on a high note, with yet another PhD thesis defence: we wish Wilson Ricardo Mingorance the best of luck as he defends his thesis on colonial and post-colonial archival history on Monday 30 June.

ℹ️ https://ihc.fcsh.unl.pt/en/events/wilson-ricardo-mingorance-phd/

#Histodons #AcademicLife #PhDLife #PortugueseHistory #BrazilianHistory #Archives #ArchivalHistory #ColonialArchives #VidaAcadémica #HistóriaDePortugal #HistóriaDoBrasil #Arquivos #ArquivosColoniais #Arquivística #PósColonialismo

Interesting research project concerning the #decolonization of #colonialarchives and it’s use of #AI the article is in Dutch but has options for different languages

“For this project, the National Archives automatically transcribed the scans of the wills and made them machine-readable using the handwriting recognition tool Transkribus. This allowed the students to unlock the wills in a new way with Artificial Intelligence. And decolonise the VOC wills by including _all_ the names in these records in indexes”

https://www.nationaalarchief.nl/archiveren/nieuws/vrouwen-en-tot-slaafgemaakten-voc-niet-langer-stille-getuigen

#GLAM