This double issue of Museum Anthropology Review collects papers originally presented at a January 2012 workshop titled “After the Return: Digital Repatriation and the Circulation of Indigenous Knowledge.” Hosted by the National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution and funded by the (U.S.) National Science Foundation and the Understanding the American Experience and World Cultures Consortia of the Smithsonian Institution, the workshop was organized by Kimberly Christen (Washington State University), Joshua Bell (Smithsonian Institution), and Mark Turin (Yale University). The workshop brought together scholars from diverse anthropological fields, indigenous communities, and collecting institutions to document best practices and case studies of digital repatriation in order to theorize the broad impacts of such processes in relation to: linguistic revitalization of endangered languages, cultural revitalization of traditional practices, and the creation of new knowledge stemming from the return of digitized material culture. Like the workshop itself, the peer-reviewed and revised papers collected here ask how, and if, marginalized communities can reinvigorate their local knowledge practices, languages, and cultural products through the reuse of digitally repatriated materials and distributed technologies. The authors of the collected papers all have expertise in applied digital repatriation projects and share theoretical concerns that locate knowledge creation within both culturally specific dynamics and technological applications.

Published: 2014-01-12

Introduction: After the Return

Joshua A. Bell, Kimberly Christen, Mark Turin

1-21

The Inuvialuit Living History Project: Digital Return as the Forging of Relationships Between Institutions, People, and Data

Kate Hennessy, Natasha Lyons, Stephen Loring, Charles Arnold, Mervin Joe, Albert Elias, James Pokiak

44-73

Tlingit-Smithsonian Collaborations with 3D Digitization of Cultural Objects

R. Eric Hollinger, Edwell John, Jr., Harold Jacobs, Lora Moran-Collins, Carolyn Thome, Jonathan Zastrow, Adam Metallo, Günter Waibel, Vince Rossi

201-253

Defining the Digital

Haidy Geismar

254-263

Books Briefly Noted

Jason Baird Jackson

271-273

Books and Media Recieved

Jason Baird Jackson

274-279