Wikipedia:Meetup/HonouringIndigenousWriters/UBC 2021

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In December 2015 Daniel Heath Justice (author of “Why Indigenous Literature Matters") began a Twitter campaign to share the names of Indigenous writers. The reason for his efforts was to “...push back against the frequent assumptions that our literary history is any less complex, robust, or diverse than that of other peoples.”

Why focus on Wikipedia?

Wikipedia is a multilingual, web-based, free encyclopedia based on a model of open community generated knowledge. The community driven nature of Wikipedia is meant to support Wikipedia’s goal of providing “…every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge.” However, well documented systematic bias including, information gaps, exclusions, diversity of articles and editors, and assumptions about neutrality and notability greatly impacts the information that can be found in an information source with millions of views per day.

The Honouring Indigenous Writers on Wikipedia event is seeking to improve the coverage of Indigenous writers on Wikipedia and to encourage diverse community editors to actively work to dissuade assumptions about Indigenous literature by raising their profile in this increasingly influential information source.

Event information

This year, instead of our annual Wikipedia Edit-a-thon we have put together a schedule of events and wikipedia-related activities designed to be easily accessed and doable online with more flexibility. Every week, join us for an event and participate in weekly Wikipedia activities to make contributions (both large and small) to raise the profiles of Indigenous writers.

We are also excited to be hosting a book club featuring Tenille K. Campbell’s forthcoming book of poetry, nedi nezu (Good Medicine). The book will be available March 2, 2021, and can be pre-ordered from our event partner, Iron Dog Books. You can also order the book from these Indigenous-owned bookstores throughout Canada and the USA. Grab your copy, read it throughout March, and then join Tenille K. Campbell and special guests on March 24th, 2021 from 7:00pm-8:30pm PST for a reading and discussion.

Working in Good Faith on Indigenous Topics Online

Our planning group has had a number of discussions to figure out a way to ensure this project is working in good faith with Indigenous writers. At the core of our discussions was the desire to ensure the project respected cultural integrity and to ensure Indigenous perspectives and experiences guided the decision-making processes.

With this in mind, the following processes were integrated into the event development:

• Emails were sent to writers to inform them of the event, to ask for permission to create or improve their Wikipedia article
• Requests were also made for the kind of information they would like to see represented in their article
• If the writers declined or did not respond to the email, they were respectfully removed from the editing list

References