Decolonial Approaches to Data Ethics and Re-Storying

This interdisciplinary book navigates applying decolonial theories to practices across disciplines.

Decolonial work requires remaining deferent to communities and collaborators while also leveraging resources to support their priorities. Decolonial Approaches to Data Ethics and Re-Storying: From Biocultural Landscapes at Risk to Archiving the Dead provides a roadmap tracing the ways in which digital technologies, global biodiversity, cultural heritage, and decolonial futures are deeply interconnected.

In conversation with Indigenous, Black, Latinx, Asian, and Nordic postcolonial and decolonial studies, this handbook surveys decolonial approaches to digital and academic practices. The authors argue that digital spaces and media can act as spaces of decolonial intervention within community-based work, historical re-telling, biocultural research projects, educational and historical archives, and museum display.

Data comes in so many forms that there is no one definition used by all scientific societies or national funding bodies. What has become evident is that data can be wrought with social meaning, often reflecting the values of the people who collected it, through how and why it was collected, what information was collected and what was ignored or left out of a study or collection.

Taking a decolonial stance to data is to accept that data might hold multiple truths, and that data should expand past the Western concept of sterile objectivity to take many different forms that respect different ways of knowing. At the core of this handbook’s argument, digital spaces and platforms are often overlooked as simple mechanisms to display information and organize data. Much to the contrary, digital technologies do not create neutral spaces where information is arranged without implicit meanings built into their structure, social and cultural use, and experience. Digital spaces, like Western academic ways of thinking and doing research, require decolonial approaches to organize and make data available in ways that avoid replicating colonial values, and to tell stories of epistemic resistance, resurgence, and survivance.

Developing new decolonial digital content or databases, whether for climate crisis storytelling, updating outdated colonial histories, environmental conservation efforts, or decolonizing museum displays, requires being held accountable to postcolonial and decolonial educators, scholars, thinkers, and advocates.

This practical book addresses:

• Relational work with communities
• The ethics of social science methods
• Re-storying colonial narratives through media interpretation at heritage sites and parks
• Decolonial issues within environmental conservations efforts
• The deep entanglement of cultural items and ancestors with environments and landscape
• Issues of epistemic justice in data categorization, archiving, and mapping

Designed for undergraduate, master's, and interdisciplinary PhD students in digital conservation, ethnobiology, museum studies, decolonial studies, Native and Indigenous studies, STS, ecology, environmental communication, archival studies, environmental media studies, environmental justice, digital futures, environmental studies, human ecology, archaeology, anthropology, public history, postcolonial studies, community-based research, social science ethics, environmental conservation, and critical technology studies.

‘What role do digital technologies have to play in decolonial practice, institutional change, and reparative justice? Meryl Shriver-Rice and Sarah Hiepler-Basty’s superb new book brings a cross-disciplinary range of new thinking to this urgent question, from universities to museums and heritage sites. An essential text for students and practitioners alike, this landmark volume reframes approaches to whose stories are told, by whom, and on what terms.’
– Professor Dan Hicks, FSA, MClfA, Curator of World Archaeology at the Pitt Rivers Museum, School of Archaeology, University of Oxford

‘Centering Indigenous Knowledge systems, relationships, and responsibilities is essential to transforming how research, data, and interpretation are practiced across academic and cultural institutions. Work that challenges extractive traditions and encourages relational, community-centered approaches is critical for creating more ethical and accountable scholarship.’
– Wunneanatsu Lamb-Cason (Schaghticoke/HoChunk), Assistant Director, Native American & Indigenous Studies, Brown University

‘This guidebook is much needed in media classrooms to apply decolonial theory to media practice. It is essential reading for Western Practitioners and demands a re-thinking of colonial approaches.’
- Nicole Richter, Ph.D. Associate Professor, Critical Media & Cultural Studies, Director of Film Studies, Rollins College. Author, The Moving Image: A Complete Introduction to Film

‘Are humans separate from nature, or did we separate from nature? Is decolonialization a method or a theory? What do I do with my data after my research project and who does it belong to? Now more than ever, students need a solid grasp of decolonial strategies. Decolonial Approaches delivers a vital interdisciplinary method for teaching these core principles at the undergraduate level and above, ensuring they are ethically grounded and mastered prior to the complexities of fieldwork and analysis.’
- Phillip Mendenhall, Ph.D., RPA (ᎾᏍᎩᎠᏍᎦᏯ ᎤᏤᎵ, Western Band of the Cherokee Nation), Board member, Committee on Native American Relations, Society of American Archaeology

‘Prepare to unsettle the settler within; this book ignites the internal fire to navigate decolonial practices in an era of reflecting on the consequences of colonial systems. It creates an opportunity for the reader to look at the darker colonial constructs of Western practices and the need to become consciously aware of decolonizing systematic procedures.’
- Faith Decontie, Ph.D. (Algonquin/Nakoda Sioux), Founder of Sagasige

‘This accessible volume addresses the scholarly barriers that too often limit decolonial approaches in Indigenous studies. In clear and engaging prose, Meryl Shriver-Rice and Sarah Hiepler-Basty explain the field's ethical and intellectual stakes while offering a practical set of guiding principles for writers and researchers working within it.’
– Andrew Frank, Ph.D. Allen Morris Professor of History, Director of the Native American and Indigenous Studies Center, Florida State University

‘In an era when the past is increasingly encountered virtually, Decolonial Approaches to Data and Re-Storying: From Biocultural Landscapes at Risk to Archiving the Dead provides an essential intervention for digital technologies. The authors bring their experiences across disciplines for those seeking to work with communities and for sustaining an inclusive past for historic justice.’
- Uzi Baram, Professor Emeritus, New College of Florida