In August, we covered the work that Native Bound Unbound (NBU) is doing to break the silence of historic captivity, documenting indigenous stories of slavery. The organization is led by anthropologist, historian, and native son of Questa, Dr. Estevan Rael-Galvez. NBU has been working to speak with people and families whose families’ oral history of slavery and captivity has been evident through many generations.
Recently, NBU was selected to participate in a Humanities and AI Institute Summit, which took place at the University of Oxford, England from September 11 to 13. Dr. Rael-Galvez attended.
The goal of the Institute was to advance efforts to advance the use of Artificial Intelligence-based (AI-based) technology for research in the humanities. While AI is rapidly moving across multiple disciplines, AI technology in the humanities has moved at a much slower pace, especially where scholars and practitioners who work with delicate cultural artifacts are involved.
The Summit aimed to create a digital repository centered on lives of the enslaved Indigenous people across the western hemisphere, to be cataloged and documented. The challenges faced in this monumental endeavor are reflected in many humanities projects: namely how to identify, digitize, transcribe, translate, encode, and associate data from historical documents on a large scale, and with precision.
Dr. Rael-Gálvez says, “We are working to create a well of knowledge, one that has been largely obscured, made so in part by previously inaccessible records, hidden in archives, but also made so by lack of paleographic attention and translation. In attending this Institute, I am able to learn from the work of colleagues from around the world, working or proposing to work at this intersection of AI and the humanities. Ultimately, the goal is to create a pathway to use this developing technology of AI automation at various points in our process to scale up our efforts and create efficiencies.”
For continued updates on the work of the organization, you can follow them on social media @natboundunbound.
