Technology + Racial and Indigenous Justice 

Technology + Racial and Indigenous Justice 

We the CTSP leadership acknowledge that academia, grantmaking bodies, foundations, science, policy, and technology have historically and currently reproduced and reinforced structural and systemic racism. As a grantmaking body that is part of an academic institution that sits on occupied territory, we are actively committed to restorative justice practices such as encouraging and educating fellows and the UC Berkeley community at large to contribute to the Shuumi Land Tax. In addition, we promote active and ongoing reflection on how we can ensure that our research and community is aware of both adverse and positive impacts of research, even social impact and social good research. Therefore, all applications for the 2021 CTSP Fellowship must address racial justice in addition to one of the focus areas. We offer the list of resources below as a starting point for applicants (and others) to reference when considering how issues of race, anti-Black racism, and Indigenous rights intersect with technology.

This is a living document – this means that you can suggest books, media, and other educational resources through this form. 

Race & Technology

Books:

• Race after Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code by Ruha Benjamin, 2019
• Captivating Technology: Race, Carceral Technoscience, and Liberatory Imagination in Everyday Life edited by Ruha Benjamin, 2019
• Distributed Blackness: African American Cybercultures by André Brock, 2020
• Dark Matters: On the Surveillance of Blackness by Simone Browne, 2015
• Black Software: The Internet & Racial Justice, From the AfroNet to Black Lives Matter, Charlton D. McIlwain, 2019
• Digitizing Race: Visual Cultures of the Internet by Lisa Nakamura, 2008

• Technicolor: Race, Technology, and Everyday Life edited by Alondra Nelson, Thuy Linh Nguyen Tu, and Alicia Headlam Hines, 2001

• Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism by Safiya Umoja Noble, 2018
• Fatal Invention: How Science, Politics, and Big Business Re-create Race in the Twenty-first Century by Dorothy Roberts, 2012

 

Articles and Chapters:

• Race and/as Technology; or How to Do Things To Race. Wendy Hui Kyong Chun, 2009.
• Black Twitter: Building Connection through Cultural Conversation. Meredith Clark, 2015.
• A Genealogy of Critical Race and Digital Studies: Past, Present, and Future. Amber M. Hamilton,  2020.
• Black Cyberfeminism: Intersectionality, Institutions, and Digital Sociology. Tressie McMillan Cottom, 2016.
• Critical race theory for HCI. Ihudiya Finda Ogbonnaya-Ogburu, Angela D.R. Smith, Alexandra To, & Kentaro Toyama, 2020.
• Stop and Frisk Online: Theorizing Everyday Racism in Digital Policing in the Use of Social Media for Identification of Criminal Conduct and Associations. Desmond Upton Patton, Douglas-Wade Brunton, Andrea Dixon, Reuben Jonathan Miller, Patrick Leonard, Rose Hackman, 2017.
• Straighten up and fly right: Rethinking Intersectionality in HCI Research. Yolanda Rankin and Jakita Thomas, 2019.

 

Other Projects:

• AI For the People (AFP)
• AI Now
• Algorithmic Justice League
• Black in AI (@black_in_ai)
• Center for Critical Race & Digital Studies
• Data & Society (check out videos of past speakers)
• Data for Black Lives
• Equality Labs
• Media Justice
• Movement Alliance Project
• Radical AI Podcast
• We be Imagining
• Whose Knowledge

 

Indigenous Science & Technology

(These suggestions come from a longer syllabus put together by our colleagues at the Indigenous Technologies program of the Berkeley Center for New Media, see here for their whole syllabus)

Land Back/Land Stewardship

Recommended by Corrina Gould, co-founder of the Sogorea Te’ Land Trust

• “Decolonization is not a metaphor” by Eve Tuck and Wayne K. Yang (2012)
• The film “Beyond Recognition” is a great resource about sacred sites protection in the Bay Area

 

Indigenous Cyberspace

Recommended by Skawennati, Artist & Co-Director of Aboriginal Territories in Cyberspace

• She Falls for Ages (2016): a machinima by Skawennati. This sci-fi retelling of the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) creation story reimagines Sky World as a futuristic, utopic space and Sky Woman as a brave astronaut and world-builder.
  • Readings: The book Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson (1992) greatly influenced me in this machinima.
• TimeTravellerTM: a nine-episode machinima series developed by Skawennati between 2008 and 2013 in the virtual world Second Life, where users can create and activate avatars.
  • Readings: The Myth of the Earth Grasper influenced me in this work, as did the book Childhood’s End by Arthur C. Clarke (1953)
• “Imagining the Next Seven Generations,” Skawennati at TEDxMontrealWomen. Cinema Imperial, Montreal, QC. (30 May 2015)

 

Genocide and Survivance

Recommended by Corrina Gould, co-founder of the Sogorea Te’ Land Trust

• An American Genocide: The United States and the California Indian Catastrophe, 1846-1873 by Benjamin Madley (2016)
• A Time of Little Choice: The Disintegration of Tribal Culture in the San Francisco Bay Area 1769-1810 by Randall Milliken (1995)

 

Indigenous Knowledges/Indigenous Science

Recommended by Indigenous Technologies staff

• Native Science: Natural Laws of Interdependence by Gregory Cajete (2000)
• by Zapotec Science: Farming and Food in the Northern Sierra of Oaxaca Roberto Gonzalez (2001)
• Spiral to the Stars: Mvskoke Tools of Futurity by Laura Harjo (2019)

• Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer (2013)

• Dark Emu
: Black Seeds: Agriculture or Accident? By Bruce Pascoe (2014)
• Beyond Settler Time by Mark Rifkin (2017)
• Ritual: Power, Healing and Community by Malidoma Patrice Somé (1993)
• Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World by Tyson Yunkaporta (2020)
• “Indigenous Science Declaration” by Robin Wall Kimmerer, et al. (2017)
• “An Indigenous Feminist’s take on the Ontological Turn” by Zoe Todd (2014)
• “Indigenous Knowledge and Western Science,” lecture by Leroy Little Bear (14 January 2015)
• “Tending the Wild” Documentary series from KCET (2017)

Resources:

• Indigenous Science, Technology, and Society: an international research and teaching hub, housed at the University of Alberta

 

Futurity

• Walking the Clouds: An Anthology of Indigenous Science Fiction edited by Grace L. Dillon (2012)
• “Antíkoni,” a play included in The Beadworkers, a story collection by Beth Piatote (2019)
• “The Creation Story Is a Spaceship: Indigenous Futurism and Decolonial Deep Space” by Lindsay Catherine Cornum

• “Welcome to the Authentic Indian Experience™”by short story by Rebecca Roanhorse
• “Rupturing Settler Time: Visual Culture and Geographies of Indigenous Futurity” by Amber Hickey, from the Special Issue on Indigenous Futurisms in World Art, Vol. 9, No. 2 (2019) edited by Suzanne Newman Frickle.