Creating a Digital Archive - Blog Post 2 (DTC 356)

If I were to create my own digital archive, where I was the digital project designer, I would immediately want my website to be easily accessible to everyone and accurately informational. I’d digitally archive the indigenous communities because their communities, people, and tribes have been consistently stolen from, denied access, and overall abused just for living with their own traditions. Thus, the ability to archive their culture, who they are, and how they live, benefits both the indigenous communities and the non-Native communities because not only would these digital archives be recording the history and way of living for descendants of the Native communities to go to and learn about their culture, but the archive also educates everyone else who has access to the internet. The education aspect of online archives is huge compared to museums where families or communities would have to travel however many miles to visit, where with the digital archive of information, they only have to go online (assuming they have access to the internet).

After viewing and exploring some digital archives this week, I preferred the performative archive, that brought the user through a story and one-way presentation initially. Instead of having an overflow of information in the users face, the site had only one or two “Call To Actions” on every page, thus lessening the amount of information the user has to intake. On each page, not only will the users be faced with brief historical explanations, but there will also be unbiased information and equal account for everything positive and negative that happened during an event or era. This will create a balanced understanding of why these events and this culture needs to be talked about and why more people need to be informed about the indigenous community’s history.

Overall, this digital archive would create a world where both sides are seen, nothing is filtered, and it’s freely accessible by anyone. The resources and sources used would be from the communities themselves, as well as previous, unbiased research, and the pictures and items shown would only be presented through the tribe’s consent and accurate caption of the items name and purpose. The archive would be for the indigenous communities to spread their culture and record their history for generations to come.