Jennifer Wemigwans. A Digital Bundle: Protecting and Promoting Indigenous Knowledge Online. University of Regina Press, 2019. 256 pp. ISBN: 9780889775510.

https://uofrpress.ca/Books/A/A-Digital-Bundle

A well-needed and critical advancement in the fields of digital technologies and Indigenous resurgence, Jennifer Wemigwans' A Digital Bundle: Protecting and Promoting Indigenous Knowledge Online examines the practicalities and potentialities of safeguarding cultural heritage on the Internet for future generations. The book is grounded by a case study focused on the process of creating the website FourDirectionsTeachings.com, and examines the site's impact through carefully selected interviews with primarily Indigenous scholars, educators, activists, and workers serving in public or organization capacities. Based on an impressive breadth and depth of research, Wemigwans compellingly argues that it is possible for Indigenous Knowledge, a phrase she capitalizes throughout, to be cared for respectfully online, following Indigenous cultural protocols. Furthermore, she shows how providing a platform for stewarding this knowledge plays a crucial role in offline political action and resurgence movements.

A "digital bundle" is the term Wemigwans uses to describe the sacred meaning and "lifelong commitment" that Indigenous Knowledge kept online requires (35). Wemigwans is cognizant of the dangers that come with making Indigenous Knowledge accessible on the Internet--including appropriation and commodification by non-Indigenous audiences. Using this term communicates the risks involved in this work, and also highlights the need for following clear and intentional protocols when embarking on projects such as FourDirectionsTeachings.com. For example, as Wemigwans argues: "The cultural transference of the site, then, becomes a very important responsibility that must be considered and attended to in the future because, as a bundle of knowledge, it must be transferred lovingly and with great care, according to cultural protocols" (45). A Digital Bundle fills the pressing need for scholarship which lays out the theory and methods behind using the Internet as a space to steward and validate Indigenous Knowledge. While she is clear that no online tool can replace the face-to-face transmission of cultural teachings, A Digital Bundle convincingly shows how the protocols, wisdom, practices, teachings, and stories that FourDirectionsTeachings.com holds can contribute to imagining a future where Indigenous peoples are able to protect and share knowledge collaboratively across the globe.

Part of the accomplishment and significance of A Digital Bundle is in the use of Indigenous analytical perspectives in assessing the process of creating and evaluating the impact of FourDirectionsTeachings.com. Drawing on the works of Taiaiake Alfred (2009), Wendy Makoons Geniusz (2009), Leanne Betasamosake Simpson (2011) and Linda Tuhiwai Smith (1999), Wemigwans "connects and juxtaposes [their] interrelated principles and perspectives," not to identify a singular, coherent perspective, but to start a conversation around the ethics of keeping Indigenous Knowledge on the Internet from a specifically Indigenous framework (46). In adopting this perspective, the book seeks to apply an Indigenous research design that can be a guideline for Indigenous settler and non-Indigenous scholars alike.

In Chapters 1 and 2, Wemigwans lays out the scope of her project design to create FourDirectionsTeachings. She defines Indigenous Knowledge and "digital bundles," and outlines the goals and methods behind the book which proposes broadly to examine "how information communication technology (ICT) affects relationships among diverse Indigenous peoples and the flow of power between Indigenous Peoples and the state" (1). She also explains the content and background behind FourDirectionsTeachings.com, which hosts the teachings and worldviews of elders from five different First Nations: Blackfoot, Cree, Ojibwe, Mohawk and Mi'kmaq. To analyze how this online space can be "designed and validated through cultural protocols" (43), Chapter 2 identifies Linda Tuhiwai Smith's twenty-five projects as powerful methodologies that can provide an important framework for thinking about the connection between Indigenous Knowledge and resurgence. Wemigwans reorganizes these twenty-five methods under Leanne Betasamosake Simpson's Four Tenets of Nishnaabeg principles (Biskaabiiyang, Naakgonige, Aanjigone, and Debwewin): "culturally embedded concepts and teachings that bring meaning to our practices and illuminate our lifeways" (Simpson 61). Chapters 4-7 each focus on a single tenet, and carefully walk through how Smith's methods are applied to analyze the conversations Wemigwans has with each of her interview participants. Throughout the text, braiding connections between Indigenous scholars creates a web of interlocking methods and expertise. This in many ways mirrors the network of Indigenous Knowledge Wemigwans is tracking and assessing through FourDirectionsTeachings.com

The third chapter describes the recruitment and interview process, taking care to introduce each research participant, identify why they were chosen, and explain how each person uses the Internet, and FourDirectionsTeachings.com specifically, to facilitate their work. The interviewees each fall under the category of "educators, cultural arts workers, and systems workers (those who work in organizations/institutions such as child welfare systems or penitentiaries)" (74). Throughout the next four chapters of the book, Wemigwans puts each participants' experiences and opinions about Indigenous Knowledge online in conversation, providing detailed and extensive documentation of how this knowledge is being activated in a wide variety of spaces. For example, in focusing on Biskaabiiyang ("To Look Back"), she shows how this tenet is being activated by educators using Indigenous Knowledge online as "a political act of survival because it connects the values and beliefs of those in the past to those of the present" (109). Bringing forward knowledge found in the worldviews and stories stewarded on FourDirectionsTeachings.com is one way in which Indigenous activists are engaging with these teachings.

Finally, in Chapter 8, A Digital Bundle calls for recognition of the transformative potential Indigenous Knowledge online has for contributing to the political and decolonizing goals of Indigenous communities across Turtle Island, and beyond. Wemigwans' argument is well worth quoting in full: "In continuing to create digital bundles and to come together to decide on the future of an Indigenous presence on the Internet, Indigenous communities will control information and thus shape the minds of their people in ways that support healing and regeneration" (227). By connecting the varied ways people are engaging with Indigenous Knowledge online, Wemigwans persuasively shows how this diversity of uses is nevertheless united under the goal of working towards Indigenous resurgence. Her writing powerfully unites these activists together across territories, without losing the creative, context-specific, and inspiring ways they draw on Indigenous Knowledge in their own work. Foregrounded in Indigenous theory, methods, and analysis, A Digital Bundle is an invaluable case-study in how to ethically write and conduct a research project in Indigenous studies. An essential addition to digital technologies and Internet scholarship, this book is a must-read for any student or researcher writing on Indigenous topics.

Emily Jean Leischner, University of British Columbia

Works Cited

Alfred, Taiaiake. Wasáse: Indigenous Pathways of Action and Freedom. University of Toronto Press, 2009.

Geniusz, Wendy Makoons. Our Knowledge Is Not Primitive: Decolonizing Botanical Anishinaabe Teachings. Syracuse University Press, 2009.

Simpson, Leanne Betasamosake. Dancing on Our Turtle's Back: Stories of Nishnaabeg Re-Creation, Resurgence, and a New Emergence. Arbeiter Ring, 2011.

Smith, Linda Tuhiwai. Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples. Zed Books, 1999.