Oct 7-10, 2025

Neil Davies, “Indigenous Biodiversity Conservation and Traditional Ecological Management”

Davies’ research focuses on the intersection of Indigenous ecological knowledge and contemporary biodiversity conservation practices in Pacific island contexts. His work examines how traditional ecological management systems, such as the rahui (traditional conservation closures), provide sustainable frameworks for marine and terrestrial resource management that complement and often exceed Western conservation approaches. Through ethnographic engagement with local practitioners, Davies seeks to document the sophisticated ecological knowledge embedded in traditional practices while exploring how these systems adapt to contemporary environmental challenges. His research methodology emphasizes collaborative knowledge production that respects indigenous intellectual property while contributing to broader conservation science.

Vicente Diaz, “Pacific Navigation Systems and Inter-Indigenous Knowledge Exchange”

Diaz’ scholarship centers on the sophisticated navigational knowledge systems of Pacific Island peoples, with particular emphasis on how traditional seafaring practices embody complex relationships between astronomical knowledge, environmental observation, and cultural transmission. His extensive work with Micronesian navigation, particularly the Paafu star compass and Pwo initiation ceremonies, demonstrates how Indigenous seafaring knowledge operates through relational frameworks that fundamentally differ from Cartesian spatial concepts. Diaz’s research challenges Western academic tendencies to reduce Indigenous navigation to technical skills, instead revealing these practices as integrated cultural systems that encompass social relations, spiritual obligations, and ecological knowledge. His collaborative methodology emphasizes the importance of proper protocols and permissions when engaging with proprietary knowledge systems, particularly in the context of inter-Indigenous knowledge sharing.

Warren Essey, “Indigenous Pedagogies and Community-Controlled Education”

Essey’s research investigates innovative pedagogical approaches that integrate Indigenous knowledge systems within formal and informal educational contexts. His work examines how traditional knowledge transmission methods can inform contemporary educational practices while maintaining cultural authenticity and community control over knowledge sharing. Essey’s scholarship explores the tensions between institutionalized education systems and Indigenous learning methodologies, seeking frameworks that honor both academic rigor and cultural protocols. His research methodology emphasizes participatory approaches that position community knowledge holders as educational experts and curriculum developers rather than simply cultural informants.

Alex Kusenko, “Cosmological Principles and Traditional Worldviews”

Kusenko’s research focuses on cosmological principles, examining fundamental questions about the origin of matter-antimatter asymmetry in the universe, the composition of the universe (including dark matter made of particles not yet discovered), and the evolution of the universe during its earliest moments after the Big Bang. His work provides opportunities to explore these themes within the context of scientific versus traditional worldviews, potentially relating fundamental principles of cosmology with traditional “star knowledge principles” and origin stories. The question of matter and antimatter may be expressed as two oppositional forces in origin narratives, offering fascinating possibilities for understanding how different cultures express fundamental aspects of the cosmos through their respective knowledge systems and languages.

Elizabeth Landers, “Collaborative Marine Practices and Responsible Archiving”

Landers’ historical research examines the collaborative and complementary nature of gendered marine practices, challenging colonial archival records that documented rigid divisions between male fishing and female shellfish harvesting in Haiti and Brazil from the 16th century to present. Her comparative methodology reveals how colonial administrators often imposed binary gender categories that misrepresented the fluid and interdependent nature of Indigenous marine economies, creating artificial distinctions that obscured the collaborative relationships between different forms of marine resource extraction. Landers’ work in Mo’orea offers a crucial comparative case where traditional practices demonstrate more fluid gender roles and collaborative approaches to marine resource management, providing insights into how Indigenous systems organized labor and knowledge in ways that colonial records failed to capture. Her research methodology combines critical archival analysis with contemporary ethnographic observation to understand how gendered marine practices have evolved under colonial pressure while maintaining certain collaborative patterns that resist binary categorization.

Parallel to her historical research, Landers is developing a framework for “Responsible Archives” that centers local practitioners’ perspectives and knowledge in determining how marine heritage and traditional ecological knowledge should be preserved and accessed. Her archival methodology challenges extractive academic practices by positioning community members as co-creators and custodians of archival collections rather than subjects of documentation, ensuring that fishing and shellfish harvesting communities maintain authority over how their knowledge and practices are represented in permanent records. Landers’ approach to responsible archiving emphasizes the importance of understanding how communities themselves conceptualize knowledge preservation, recognizing that Indigenous archival practices may prioritize relational and experiential forms of knowledge transmission over static documentation. Her work explores how institutional archives can be restructured to serve community goals while respecting cultural protocols around sensitive or proprietary knowledge related to marine resource management and traditional ecological practices.

José Luis Passos, “Storytelling, Language Reclamation, and Sacred Knowledge Transmission”

Passos’ research explores the intersection of storytelling traditions and endangered language reclamation, with particular focus on how narrative practices serve as vehicles for cultural transmission and linguistic vitality. His work with the critically endangered Yaathe language of the Fulni-ô people provides methodological insights into how AI technologies can support community-driven language reclamation while respecting cultural protocols and data sovereignty. Passos’ scholarship emphasizes the importance of mythological and narrative content in language reclamation efforts, recognizing that stories carry not only linguistic information but also cultural values, ecological knowledge, and spiritual teachings. His research methodology prioritizes community collaboration and Indigenous data sovereignty while exploring how digital technologies can amplify rather than replace traditional transmission practices.

Shannon Speed, “Community-Based Language Revitalization Ethnography”

Speed’s ethnographic research examines community-based language revitalization efforts, drawing on her extensive experience with the Chickasaw Nation to understand how communities develop and implement culturally appropriate language maintenance strategies. Her work focuses on the social dynamics of language transmission, including intergenerational relationships, community motivation, and the integration of traditional and contemporary communication technologies. Speed’s scholarship emphasizes participatory research methodologies that position community members as experts in their own revitalization efforts while contributing ethnographic insights to broader comparative studies of language endangerment and recovery. Her research explores how successful revitalization programs balance linguistic goals with cultural integrity and community self-determination.

Zrinka Stahuljak, “Indigenous Knowledge Transmission and Decolonizing Digital Archives”

Stahuljak’s research focuses on developing culturally appropriate approaches to Indigenous knowledge transmission that prioritize elder accessibility and community control over AI preservation processes. Stahuljak’s scholarship emphasizes the critical importance of ensuring that elders can directly engage with and contribute to digital knowledge systems in their own language, rather than being relegated to passive roles as informants for Western-designed technologies. Her research methodology requires extensive collaboration with community knowledge holders to understand how AI tools must be restructured to align with Indigenous ways of knowing and teaching. She proposes to examine how technological tools like astronomical software (such as French Stellarium) can be transformed from colonial knowledge frameworks into platforms that genuinely serve Indigenous epistemologies and linguistic preferences.

Central to Stahuljak’s work is a fundamental reconsideration of what constitutes an “archive” within Indigenous contexts, moving beyond Western institutional models to explore how communities conceptualize knowledge storage, organization, and transmission. She investigates whether Indigenous archives might function as living, relational systems rather than static repositories, encompassing not only preserved materials but also the ongoing social relationships and ceremonial contexts that give cultural knowledge its meaning. Her work suggests that the concept of “archive” could serve as an organizing framework for interdisciplinary collaboration, providing a lens through which questions of preservation, transmission, access, and cultural protocols can be addressed across different knowledge domains. Stahuljak’s research focuses on developing culturally appropriate approaches to Indigenous knowledge transmission that prioritize elder accessibility and community control over AI preservation processes. She proposes to examine how technological tools like astronomical software (such as French Stellarium) can be transformed from colonial knowledge frameworks into platforms that genuinely serve Indigenous epistemologies and linguistic preferences.

Workshop Themes

1. Living Archives

Enlarging and shifting the Western institutional concepts of archives to explore how communities conceptualize, organize, and transmit knowledge through relational and experiential systems that encompass oral traditions, ceremonial practices, and embodied knowledge. This theme draws on Stahuljak’s reconceptualization of Indigenous archives as relational systems with Landers’s “Responsible Archives” framework. 

2. Bridging Knowledge Systems: Cosmology, Navigation, and Science

Drawing from Kusenko’s cosmological research and Diaz’s work on traditional navigation, this theme would create dialogues between Indigenous astronomical knowledge and contemporary scientific frameworks. Workshops would explore how different cultures understand fundamental cosmic principles, potentially using tools like Stellarium but redesigned to center Indigenous star knowledge and navigation systems.

3. Language as Cultural Vessel: Storytelling, Transmission, and Technology

This theme combines Passos’ work on endangered language reclamation through storytelling with Speed’s community-based revitalization strategies. Workshops would focus on how communities can use both traditional and digital tools to strengthen linguistic vitality while ensuring that stories carry their full cultural, ecological, and spiritual content across generations.

4. Collaborative Resource Stewardship: Marine and Terrestrial Practices

Integrating Davies’s work on traditional ecological management with Landers’s research on gendered marine practices, this theme would examine how Indigenous resource management systems demonstrate sophisticated ecological knowledge. Workshops would explore how traditional practices like rahui can inform contemporary conservation while challenging colonial misrepresentations of Indigenous labor and knowledge organization.  Investigating how traditional knowledge and practices are organized along gender lines in ways that emphasize collaboration and complementarity rather than rigid divisions, challenging colonial documentation that imposed binary categories.

5. Indigenous Knowledge and AI

Taking up the example of astronomical software (such as French-based stellarium) and Essey’s pedagogical research, this theme seeks to transform colonial knowledge frameworks into platforms that genuinely serve Indigenous epistemologies and linguistic preference. We will start with the Pleiades constellation, which is not only orientational but also rules rituals, fishing and building, navigation, etc. With it comes also a very specific vocabulary. Pleiades connect with all aspects of our individual projects and form an exciting base for developing an AI project within the framework of cultural preservation and knowledge sharing.

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