WikiCred/2022 CFP/Towards Citational Justice: Strategies for Decolonising Citation Practices on Wikipedia
- Note: This application was originally submitted via email due to a technical issue with the grant portal; this page was generated on behalf of the applicant by a member of the WikiCred team.
To bring indigenous communities, journalists, researchers into dialogue with each other at an event to address the question of how their knowledge is cited in published sources, and how their knowledge is represented on Wikipedia, especially in the context of climate change and environmental conservation. While this would be a one-off event, we intend that this meeting will generate documentation detailing best practices, use cases, issues and challenges with regards to how citational justice can be achieved in spaces such as Wikipedia: as well as possible routes for advocacy within the Wikipedia community to create awareness with regards to the particular contextual importance of oral citations as credible sources when it comes to the representation of indigenous communities.
| Towards Citational Justice: Strategies for Decolonising Citation Practices on Wikipedia | |
|---|---|
| A WikiCred 2022 Grant Proposal | |
| Project Type | Event |
| Author | (Prm_1302) |
| Contact | p.raymurray@gmail.com, ranjanila@gmail.com, faisal@keystone-foundation.org |
| Requested amount | 8-10,000 USD |
| Award amount | Unknown |
- What is your idea?
- Why is it important?
Media coverage of environmental conservation, and climate justice is one of the most significant sources for the general public to learn about indigenous communities and their ways of living. Both their vulnerability in the face of the destruction of fragile ecosystems as well as their immense lived experience and knowledge of how to co-exist peacefully with their natural environment, mean they are a vital part of the conversation around climate change. Indigenous communities, thus, are the most authentic sources in these discussions, but often their lack of codified writing cultures means that their contributions are not considered as credible citations. This bias towards knowledge production practices in the Global North is echoed in the way Wikipedia frames its policies around published sources as the only evidence of credibility, thus meaning that indigenous community knowledge is often represented by white/colonial/settler scholarship, rather than the community members themselves.
- Link(s) to your resume or anything else (CV, GitHub, etc.) that may be relevant
tinyurl.com/prmwikicred, Ranjani Prasad (LinkedIn, Archives of Maritime Traditions, People and Nature Collectives)
- Is your project already in progress?
No.
- How is this project relevant to credibility and Wikipedia?
Wikipedia’s current policy with regards to credibility rests on the assumption that if something is published and therefore, can be cited, that is more likely to fulfil that criteria than an oral citation. However, as we establish in the example below, the source to be considered most credible is likely to be authored by someone outside the community who has access to publishing and knowledge infrastructures, than members of the community themselves:
The need for citational justice is particularly relevant for communities that do not have writing cultures. As people who work with several indigenous communities of Nilgiris (all without a script) a major part of their documented knowledge has been in English and is copyrighted by European researchers. The Wiki pages of these communities (Toda, Irula, Kurumba, Paniya, Kattunaickan, etc) in English, Tamil and Malayalam, cite very few sources (5 references average) and all by writers from outside the country. Much of this information is contested and borders on misrepresentation.
Through this event, we wish to start a conversation which valorises indigenous sources as the more credible source for journalists and researchers, and through this challenge the conceptual framework of what constitutes credibility on Wikipedia.
- What is the ultimate impact of this project?
This project aims to create a conversation around the representation of indigenous knowledge online, especially on Wikipedia, and to establish a standard for oral citations that can be developed in collaboration with representatives from these communities.
- Can your project scale?
Yes, absolutely: this project can form the basis of a larger and necessary conversation transnationally, even though we will be addressing it in the context of India.
- Why are you the people to do it?
Padmini: I am a researcher who works on the ethics of digital archives and how marginalised voices are represented in online spaces - with a keen awareness that multilinguality shapes different forms of knowledge. I am a former Trustee for Wikimedia UK, and am currently Regional Ambassador for South Asia for Art + Feminism.
Ranjani: I am a researcher and archivist situated in Nilgiris Biosphere Reserve. As I continue to build Archives of Community Knowledge with some of the communities here, I seek to explore alternative sources of history and how communities themselves will be able to leverage it.
Faisal : I am a researcher and advocate interested in the politics of knowledge production, access and circulation. My work has been focussed on ownership of knowledge and how marginalised communities can collectively represent themselves. I have founded and managed the People and Nature Collectives at Keystone Foundation over the last 4 years - this centre incubates initiatives around Community media, fellowships, archives and foundations.
- What is the impact of your idea on diversity and inclusiveness of the Wikimedia movement?
Communities that are directly affected by the inadequate information or misrepresentation are participants through this project. They will take up hyper correction and inclusion of new sources and references in local languages and multimedia formats. By also diversifying the way that Wikipedia considers credibility this project could have a significant impact on how indigenous knowledge is represented online in fairer and more representative ways.
- What are the challenges associated with this project and how you will overcome them?
The major challenge of this project is with regards to the difficulty of pushing against long established protocols at Wikipedia which tend to regard oral citations as having low credibility: through the outcomes of our discussions we hope that we will be able to demonstrate that journalistic practices that privilege lived experience can shift this paradigm without compromising on credibility.
- How will you spend your funds?
- -Pay participants for travel, participation, accommodation and expenses
- -Venue costs
- -Salaries for three individuals undertaking research and organisation, plus one research assistant
- -Collateral such as publications
- How long will your project take?
Four - six months
- Have you worked on projects for previous grants before?
Not for Wikipedia projects but have experiences of working with large grants from other sources.