Huri Whakatau

Jason Edward Lewis is a digital media theorist, poet, and software designer. He is the University Research Chair in Computational Media and the Indigenous Future Imaginary as well as Professor of Computation Arts at Concordia University, Montreal. Born and raised in northern California, Lewis is Hawaiian and Samoan. (Publications)

Aboriginal Territories in Cyberspace is an Aboriginally determined research-creation network whose goal is to ensure Indigenous presence in the web pages, online environments, video games, and virtual worlds that comprise cyberspace.

The Initiative for Indigenous Futures (IIF) is a partnership of universities and community organizations dedicated to developing multiple visions of Indigenous peoples tomorrow in order to better understand where we need to go today.

From Interactions of the ACM: The Humboldt Cup: On narrative, taxonomies, and colonial violence:

• Historian of science Londa Schiebinger [6] offers a compelling account of how the creation of racial and gender hierarchies has permeated the construction of biology and medicine as fields of knowledge. Engaging with the taxonomical system devised by Swedish naturalist Carl von Linnaeus, she points out that traits such as the breasts or the skull were subjected to processes of racialization and sexualization in attempts to produce arguments that would justify the subjugation of femininity and of all racialized peoples. Schiebinger argues that scientists were, in fact, fundamental actors in the colonizing process: In describing, classifying, taxonomizing, and representing this so-called new world, European powers sought to claim ownership over lands, peoples, flora, and fauna. Classifying entire groups of animals based on the presence of breasts was a choice; other characteristics could have been highlighted, such as the presence of hair [6]. White patriarchal domination was thus asserted through notebooks, measuring tools, pens, and paintbrushes just as much as it was through firearms.