Autumn General Meeting
Owen M. Fiss

The recipient of the 2020 Henry M. Phillips Prize in Jurisprudence is Owen M. Fiss, Sterling Professor Emeritus of Law and Professorial Lecturer in Law at Yale University.  The citation reads: “In recognition of his lifetime of contributions to American law and jurisprudence, most especially his inspirational interpretation of legal equality in terms of overcoming and resisting social stratification; his path-breaking explication of how courts might realize constitutional values in the real world of government institutions; his global writings illuminating human rights as ideals rooted in both universal principles and national self-determination; his mentorship of generations of legal scholars, both in the United States and abroad; and his abiding faith in the power of law to light our way toward a just future.”

In the course of his long, productive, and influential career, Owen Fiss has been a deep student of civil procedure, teaching the American legal system about judicial remedies addressing systemic wrongs as well as the essentials of public law adjudication. He led the way in proposing revolutionary new understandings of the theory and application of antidiscrimination law, advocating that it become an instrument for the removal of structural conditions of inequality. He has been a profound student of the war on terror, illuminating how it might be brought to heel by the values of the rule of law. He has been a force for legal reform throughout Latin America. He has proposed an influential reinterpretation of the First Amendment that emphasizes the social functions of speech in a democracy. He has authored important reinterpretations of American constitutional history. 

Established in 1888, the Henry M. Phillips Prize in Jurisprudence is awarded in recognition of outstanding lifetime contributions to the field of jurisprudence and important publications which illustrate that accomplishment.  In the 125 years since its inception, the Society has bestowed the prize only 26 times.

The selection committee was Linda Greenhouse, (chair), President of the American Philosophical Society and Knight Distinguished Journalist in Residence, Joseph Goldstein Lecturer in Law, Yale Law School; Jane C. Ginsburg, Morton L. Janklow Professor of Literary and Artistic Property Law, Columbia Law School; Martha Minow, 300th Anniversary University Professor, Distinguished Service Professor, Harvard University, Carter Professor of General Jurisprudence, Harvard Law School; Robert C. Post, Sterling Professor of Law, Yale Law School; Geoffrey R. Stone, Edward H. Levi Distinguished Service Professor, University of Chicago Law School; and David S.Tatel, United States Circuit Judge, United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

The 2020 Karl Spencer Lashley Award is awarded jointly to Winrich Freiwald and Doris Tsao “in recognition of their ground-breaking discoveries of primate cortical areas that selectively encode visual information about faces, the computational principles underlying face encoding in these areas, and the implications of these discoveries for social cognition.”

In a technical tour de force, Winrich Freiwald and Doris Tsao combined functional magnetic resonance imaging, electrophysiological recording, and anatomical tracing to define and characterize a set of cortical ‘patches’ in the primate visual cortex that selectively processes information about the faces of conspecific animals.  Along a posterior-to-anterior gradient in the cortex, the face patches shift from a general selectivity for faces to selectivity for the faces of specific individuals irrespective of the angle from which they are viewed.  In subsequent independent work, Freiwald explored the significance of this pathway for social cognition, and Tsao performed causal experiments using electrical microstimulation to show that the face patches exert a major influence on behavioral face perception.  The physiological sophistication, exquisite anatomical specificity, and computational coherence of this pathway provide some of the most elegant results in modern behavioral neuroscience.  

Winrich Freiwald is Professor of Neurosciences and Behavior at the Rockefeller University.  Doris Tsao is Professor of Biology, T&C Chen Center for Systems Neuroscience Leadership Chair, Investigator for Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and Director of the T&C Chen Center for Systems Neuroscience at Caltech.

The Karl Spencer Lashley Award was established in 1957 by a gift from Dr. Lashley, a member of the Society and a distinguished neuroscientist and neuropsychologist.  His entire scientific life was spent in the study of behavior and its neural basis.  Dr. Lashley’s famous experiments on the brain mechanisms of learning, memory and intelligence helped inaugurate the modern era of integrative neuroscience, and the Lashley Award recognizes innovative work that continues exploration in the field.

The members of the selection committee are William T. Newsome III (chair), Harman Family Provostial Professor, Vincent V. C. Woo Director of the Stanford Neurosciences Institute, Professor of Neurobiology and, by courtesy, of Psychology, Stanford University; John E. Dowling, Gordon and Llura Gund Research Professor of Neurosciences Emeritus, Harvard University; Catherine Dulac, Higgins Professor of Molecular and Cellular Biology, Lee and Ezpeleta Professor of Arts and Sciences, Harvard University, and Investigator for Howard Hughes Medical Institute; Ann M. Graybiel, Institute Professor, Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Investigator, McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; John G. Hildebrand, Regents Professor of Neuroscience, University of Arizona; Eric Knudsen, Sewell Professor of Neurobiology Emeritus, Stanford University School of Medicine; Edvard Moser, Professor of Neuroscience, Director, Kavli Institute for Systems Neuroscience, Norwegian University of Science and Technology; and Larry R. Squire, Distinguished Professor of Psychiatry, Neurosciences, and Psychology, University of California, San Diego, Research Career Scientist, Veterans Affairs Medical Center, San Diego.

The selected recipient for the 2020 Jacques Barzun Prize in Cultural History is Francesca Trivellato, Andrew W. Mellon Professor at the Institute for Advanced Study, for her book The Promise and Peril of Credit: What a Forgotten Legend about Jews and Finance Tells Us about the Making of European Commercial Society, Princeton University Press, 2019.

This remarkable book ‘examines key episodes in the West’s millennium-long struggle to delineate the place that finance ought to occupy in the social and political order’.   It centers, as its title says, on the idea of credit, a word that suggests and requires faith but also makes people worry about whom to trust.  This ambivalence is at the center of Professor Trivellato’s work, where ‘the disruptive character of credit’ and ‘the hidden dangers of credit markets’ have to be negotiated alongside their obvious commercial merits.  How were ‘far-flung merchants’ in the 17th century to operate if they could not rely the scraps of paper known as bills of exchange?  How were they to modernize?  

The book begins with a 2002 quotation from Warren Buffett, and moves back to a close study of crucial earlier documents before returning to the present day.  It tells a story of financial facts but also of unshakable fantasies, all of them involving a supposed special relation between Jews and money.  This is the ‘legend’ that Professor Trivellato keeps invoking  -  the baseless but endlessly repeated notion that medieval Jews invented bills of exchange and marine insurance.  The legend is understood either as a tribute to their ingenuity or (more frequently) a sign of how manipulative they are.  The ‘anxieties created by Jews’ potential invisibility in the marketplace’, we learn, ‘could be mapped onto the increasing abstraction of the paper economy’, allowing the legend to ‘bring to the fore the misgivings that went hand in hand with the rise of capitalism and formal equality as pillars of European modernity’. 

They could be so mapped, and they were, since this legend ‘constituted conventional wisdom from the 1650s to the 1910s’.   The Jews’ ‘potential invisibility’ was for many people a matter of their ‘perceived ubiquity’, so the Jews could take the blame for ‘the perils lurking behind ever more complex financial markets’.  The Promise and Peril of Credit makes a very strong case for studying historical fantasies alongside historical facts.   ‘Tales that once held sway over people’s imagination’, Professor Trivellato writes, ‘disclose forgotten cultural models’, and ‘origin stories continue to fascinate historians, anthropologists, and literary critics, less for the veracity of their content than for what they tell us about shared beliefs of societies different from  ours’.   This claim is all the more powerful, we may think, when the content has no veracity, and the society in question is perhaps not as different from ours as we would like to think.

The Jacques Barzun Prize in Cultural History is awarded annually to the author whose book exhibits distinguished work in American or European cultural history.  Established by a former student of Jacques Barzun, the prize honors this historian and cultural critic who was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in 1984.   

The selection committee consisted of Michael Wood (chair), Charles Barnwell Straut Professor of English and Comparative Literature, Princeton University; David Hollinger, Preston Hotchkis Professor Emeritus, University of California, Berkeley; and Robert B. Pippin, Evelyn Stefansson Nef Distinguished Service Professor, Committee on Social Thought, Department of Philosophy, University of Chicago.

Keith Marshall Jones III

The 2019 recipient of the Society’s John Frederick Lewis Award is Keith Marshall Jones III in recognition of his book John Laurance: The Immigrant Founding Father America Never Knew (Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, Volume 108, Part 2).

This is the first substantial study of a little known immigrant to the New World who collaborated with Alexander Hamilton and James Madison in the creation of the American nation. Born in 1750 in Cornwall, he forged a legal career in New York. His association with Hamilton has obscured his contributions to the War for Independence and its Federalist aftermath.  He helped Hamilton in the passage of the treasury secretary’s transformative financial agenda and, together with Madison, converted the paper Constitution into the machinery of government in the vastly underappreciated First Federal Congress. This biography of John Laurance, who survived until 1810, restores important missing pieces to our nation’s founding narrative and exposes the Cornish émigré’s remarkable ascent into Federalist America’s governing inner circle. 

Keith Marshall Jones III is an independent scholar who has written several articles and books on the American Revolution. He is a direct descendant of Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall. Publications include Congress As My Government (2008), the “definitive account of Marshall’s military service in the War for Independence”; Framers Against the Crown (2002, 2014); and The Farms of Farmingville (2001). His article in 2017 on “John Laurance and the Role of Military Justice at Valley Forge” (Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography) re-introduced the forgotten immigrant New York lawyer to scholars. 

In 1935 the Society established the John Frederick Lewis Award with funds donated by his widow.  The award recognizes the best book or monograph published by the Society in a given year.  Members of the selection committee were Glen W. Bowersock (chair), Professor Emeritus of Ancient History, Institute for Advanced Study; Julia Haig Gaisser, Professor Emeritus of Latin, Eugenia Chase Guild Professor Emeritus in the Humanities, Bryn Mawr College; and Noel M. Swerdlow, Professor Emeritus of Astronomy and Astrophysics and of History, University of Chicago.

Extended answers from Rose Miron (RM) and Heather Bruegl (HB), panelists from “Relationships, Reciprocity, and Responsibilities: Indigenous Studies in Archives and Beyond,” panel 5: Community-Based Archival Initiatives (Click here to watch)

Question: Has the Stockbridge Munsee historical society had other objects (as opposed to papers) repatriated in the past? I'm kind of (pleasantly) surprised that the Oshkosh museum reacted well, and wonder if the reactions to repatriation requests have changed over time? (Kai Pyle)
RM: Yes, the Arvid E. Miller Library-Museum has had other objects repatriated in the past. The historic Bible and Communion set that was repatriated from the Mission House Museum in Stockbridge, MA is an especially interesting case for many reasons. While the Communion set was returned through a formal NAGPRA request in 2006, the two volume Bible set was returned in 1991. The agreement for return was made just six months before NAGPRA was passed and the actual return happened outside of a formal NAGPRA request in March 1991. The Trustees of Reservations, who manage the Mission House Museum, were quite resistant to this repatriation for a long time however. The tribe began asking for the Bible and Communion set to be returned in 1975. The story of that return is outlined in a 2018 article I published in the journal Native American and Indigenous Studies, Volume 5, Issue 2. I believe the Library-Museum has also successfully recovered at least one wampum belt, but Heather will know more about other repatriations than I do. 
HB: The Library/Museum has been able to successfully repatriate several items, those mentioned above as in the Bible and communion set as well as a partial wampum belt in addition to sacred objects as well.  We are extremely excited that the repatriation of the powder horn is going so well as this will help set a precedent for us and hopefully allow us to be successful in other objects that we currently have our eye on.
 
Question: What are the panelists’ reasons for or what do they see as benefits to working on archives-related topics outside of the formal archives world, for example, pursuing a PhD in anthropology versus in library and information studies? (Anonymous) 
RM: While I can't speak for Anthropology (my PhD is in American Studies and I am a historian) I guess I came to this topic a bit backwards--I didn't think I would be writing about archives when I started working with the Stockbridge-Munsee Mohican Nation in 2011. But, I quickly realized that I was interested in the process of how historical narratives are produced, and that archives are key to that process. So, coming at my research from a historical lens not only allows me to really interrogate the ways that tribal archives specifically intervene in the production of history, but also allows me to think about how the growth of tribal archives fits within the longer trajectory of Native activism in the second half of the 20th century. 
HB: I think being able to pursue a degree in archives can be extremely helpful when you are working on history related projects.  While I don’t have a PhD, both my BA and MA have an emphasis on history and I am a historian.  Being able to work with archives and learning how they work can be extremely beneficial when you are working in the history field.
 
Question: Are there any positive outcomes of archives’ ethnographic material returned to tribes and away from universities? (Danelle Gutierrez)
RM: I think there is tremendous potential for positive outcomes. Ethnographic material does often need to be carefully critiqued and interrogated because of the fact that so much of it was created within an exploitative research model. However, Native people are the best experts on how to do that. They have the capability to interrogate these items and recognize how colonialism likely impacted the conclusions made by the author, while also taking knowledge that does resonate with them and using it in support of language and cultural revitalization. In other words, I do believe these materials can be read "along the grain" as Ann Stoler puts it, but Native researchers are best equipped to do that work because of the knowledge they hold. Some tribal nations may not want those materials repatriated or may already have copies, but I think it is worth having conversations about where that knowledge belongs. 
 
Question: What are your hopes with regard to establishing a precedent with the powderhorn repatriation? any changes in methodology or process? (Stephen Curley)
HB: I think that our main hope, other than having the object finally home, is that it helps set a precedent for our tribal nation to use when trying to bring other objects home.  Under NAGPRA, Cultural Patrimony is extremely hard to navigate.  The burden of proof is put on the tribal nation as opposed to the holding facility.  We have to show why an item is important to us and we are at the mercy of the holding facility telling us no, we are wrong.  So it is the holding facility who dictates to us how our history is told.  While NAGPRA does help, it is still the holding facility that can dictate whether or not our oral histories meet their criteria.   The success with the Oshkosh Public Museum is a huge step because it was a case argued under cultural patrimony and the museum saw and heard us and agreed.  This can be extremely beneficial for future repatriations using cultural patrimony.

Extended answers from Johannah Bird (JB), panelist from “Relationships, Reciprocity, and Responsibilities: Indigenous Studies in Archives and Beyond,” panel 3: Indigenous Researchers in Non-Native Archives (Click here to watch)

Question: How can research programs support specific emotional needs of researchers experiencing or re-experiencing trauma through archival work? (Bimadoshka Pucan)
JB: Thank you for this question. I think developing awareness around how histories of colonialism and racism can (and do) come to bear on researchers’ experiences both in and outside archives is important. This requires knowledge—of these histories and of the range of ways researchers can be impacted by the materials they work with. As a practical example, it helps if a researcher doesn’t have to educate the staff and archivists who are working with them about, say, Indigenous histories while the researchers are also trying to do their own work in the archives. However, what a research program—and the folks who administer it—is able to do depends on the program itself. From my own experience, my archival research processes have always benefited from being in contact with other scholars and thinkers, both Indigenous and non-Indigenous, who are thinking about similar questions and issues and with whom (if not in person, then through their work) I can process my own experiences. So, developing ways for researchers to have that support from knowledgeable, experienced peers or colleagues is important. Finally, what is being done within archives to mitigate the possibilities of re-traumatization? What conditions of support, care, and understanding surround troubling materials?

Question: Can you talk more about your experiences at the Six Nations Archives as a model for what non-Native archives can do to better care for Indigenous researchers? (Anonymous)
JB: My relationship with the Deyohahá:ge: The Indigenous Knowledge Centre is facilitated by my participation in the Two Row Research Partnership, a group of researchers and thinkers committed to thinking about research methodologies arising from the Two Row Wampum. As a group of both Indigenous and non-Indigenous thinkers, we are hosted by Deyohahá:ge: and also work to support the Knowledge Centre in practical ways. I have not conducted extensive research in the collections at Deyohahá:ge:, but I have always experienced hospitality that I do not often experience in state archives. Deyohahá:ge: is focused on Haudenosaunee collections, reflecting its place in Six Nations of the Grand River, but as a non-local Anishinabee, I felt welcomed and was provided with materials to help me begin thinking with folks in Six Nations in reference to their stories, history, and epistemologies. There are also so many things assumed or taken for granted at a place like Deyohahá:ge:--the responsibility to serve the local community, the necessity of repatriation, centering Indigenous knowledge and experience in research, understanding around the stakes of research priorities for Indigenous researchers, to name a few. 

Question: What can archives do to improve care for researchers? (Anonymous)
JB: First and foremost, learn about colonial histories and the ways archives and archival processes have been and are implicated in these histories (e.g., reifying notion of Indigenous people as always objects of study). 

Question: Johannah, thank you for sharing your feelings you felt working with archives. I, too, work with our Peoples ethnographic material and was an ethnographic manuscript transcriber so the emotions that humans can feel I went through very one of them. Do you think some of the materials should be kept private regarding burials and ceremonies?  The informants were interviewed by their family members otherwise they wouldn't have shared any of this info with the anthropologists of UC Berkeley California. (Danelle Gutierrez)
JB: I am unfamiliar with the question-asker’s context, but I do see a place for some archives remaining or becoming private. However, I think it is difficult to make general rules about this applied to all contexts. Rather, the communities affected by the materials should be able to impact this kind of decision.
 

Extended answers from Genevieve Weber (GW), panelist from “Relationships, Reciprocity, and Responsibilities: Indigenous Studies in Archives and Beyond,” panel 2: Outreach and Relationship-Building through Indigenous Archival Materials (Click here to watch)

Question: With regards to repatriation, the term (repatriation) is challenging for archivists to accept, as the definition is rather specific to the 4 categories currently defined by NAGPRA. Rather than referring to it as 'repatriation,' archivists can choose to 'deaccession' materials they identify as needing to be returned to other repositories, including those where concepts of repatriation/deaccessioning can be argued to justify this transfer. (Jonathan Pringle)
GW: This is a very good point. However, in the Canadian context, we do not have legislation equivalent to NAGPRA, and many archives are embracing repatriation as a way to honour Indigenous people's intellectual sovereignty over archival materials created by or about them. A Reconciliation Framework for Canadian Archives (currently under public review, this document is similar to the Protocols for Native American Archival Materials and can be accessed here includes the statement: “Archives that hold materials created by or about Indigenous People(s) shall actively seek ongoing consultation and collaboration with the documented Indigenous communities to identify and address issues in acquisition and creation, repatriation and retention of reproductions, rights in possession and disposition, and custodial approaches to collections management. They shall work together to develop new, or build on existing, community-specific protocols and guidelines that ensure Indigenous rights over the ownership, control and possession of their documented heritage.” The BC Archives (where I work) is part of the Royal BC Museum. The Museum published a Repatriation Handbook in 2019, which includes information about archives. 

Question: What are some differences between "consultation" with Indigenous communities and "engagement" with Indigenous communities in managing archives? (Cesar Castillo)
GW: I often use the terms "consultation" and "engagement" interchangeably, but for me it really depends on who I am talking to. In Canada, there is a particular meaning connected to "consultation" in the context of treaty negotiations. Many Nations are in negotiation with the federal and provincial government, and as my co-presenter Margaret mentioned, using the word consultation regarding archives can be very confusing and misinterpreted. In such cases I will use engagement. I tend to think of consultation as the act of seeking direction from the community - e.g. I am consulting with a group because I want to know what the community protocols are regarding information, or what they want in terms of repatriation, access, etc. Engagement can mean so many things - it can mean consultation as described above, or it can mean activities such as community-led descriptive work, workshops, or presentations, or it can be awareness and access events, etc. Ultimately I use the term preferred and defined by the community with which I am working. 

Question: Can you talk more about the workflow when the items are identified via consultation? For example, is the session recorded? Do they have their “cataloging sheet” that they fill out? Once you are given the new identifications—how is this new documentation kept and entered in the record, files, etc? (Liza Posas)
GW: Each time I have done this kind of work, it has been different!  So much depends on the people I am working with and their comfort level. I have not recorded sessions, but I had a colleague that did so with a previous project. My main concern with recording is that we are often encountering restricted and potential sacred, secret, or harmful information that we wouldn't want captured in that way. In a few examples, we produced a kind of cataloguing sheet for the community members to use to make notes. Other times, particularly when I have been working with Elders, I have been the note-taker. It can be hard to keep up as people get excited to go through photographs, for example, but then I share the document after the fact and give the consultants a chance to make corrections. (This works best in cases where the records are digitized and can be referred back to later). In terms of documenting it, I do a few things. I keep a consultation file with all my notes, the notes of those I have worked with, and any other related information. In that file I also keep a chronological running document where I mark down every interaction, from phone calls to in person meetings. This consultation file is a sub-folder of my Finding Aid development file. These are meant to be fully retained, but to be certain, I also write quarterly consultation reports (high level summaries) that I put in the accession file. (In my institution, the accession file was often the only record kept of work done on collections in the past, so is always the initial place staff will look for information). In our database, I will be including notes in appropriate fields (e.g. arrangement and description note, or terms governing use note) indicating when decisions were made based on consultation. I try to be as specific as possible in these notes - if not naming individuals, at least naming the department or agency with which the consultants were connected. 

Question: Have any of the panelists experimented with conducting virtual consultations? How did that go? (Tessa Shultz)
GW: I have done some virtual consultations. Initially I did these at my desk with my laptop camera, angling it to show physical records. The results were mixed - although it was exciting for people to see the records, there were technical glitches on both ends, and the camera angle wasn't ideal. However, the Learning Team in the museum has started doing digital fieldtrips and has invested in a document camera and other cameras that are much better. I have done a couple sessions in their space with their equipment, and it was really positive. Overall, the consensus has been that virtual consultation is a great part of the process, but most communities still want at least some in person activity. 

Question: Could the presenters talk to the effects of COVID on NAGPRA and archival consultation initiatives, in terms of funding, personnel, methods… Do you foresee long-lasting effects on your projects? (Anonymous)
GW: I had to work from home for 6 months due to COVID, which meant that I wasn't able to be with the records. Although I have been in contact with people that I had been working with before the pandemic, and reaching out to make new connections, it has been hard. Without access to the records, there isn't much we can do, in a practical sense. And although I have had some success making new connections, many Indigenous communities in BC were (understandably) focused on keeping their members safe and healthy, and simply didn't have the time and resources to engage with us. The one positive part to it is that as an institution we have become much more comfortable with virtual communication and programming. I think this will help us going forward, as I suspect that travel restrictions in BC will continue for some time. 

Question: How much are music archives taken into account, say at Indiana, etc.? (Kathleen Shea)
GW: Music archives are very important and have in the past been the focus of our Indigenous engagement and repatriation work. We have been working with descendants of the singers captured in this collection. We have been working with this collection for many years and are still in the early stages of determining rights and ownership over the songs. You can read more about it here. Some of these recordings are reproduced and sold by Folkways Recordings, managed by the Smithsonian. We have been working with the Smithsonian and the families of the singers to determine what should be done about the recordings. With the (relatively new) Smithsonian Shared Stewardship Policy, that institution has been completely open to acting on whatever the families decide, a very positive reaction. We are hoping that the work we are doing with these records will pave the way for similar projects going forward. As you mention Indiana, we have copies of recordings from other institutions such as Indiana and we hope to work on these in the future. 

Question: If records regarding an Indigenous community are already available online but have been deemed sensitive by the community, what options are there to give control to communities over these records? (Gordon Lyall)
GW: Our first response would be to remove them from our online database and include a note to explain why they have been taken down. Of course, there may still be instances of the record online or in hard copy, but we must do what we can to mitigate damage done by them being online in the first place. In terms of ownership and control, at the Royal BC Museum/BC Archives the practice has been to enter into Memoranda of Understanding with the community to determine rights holders, and to create procedures unique to that community. Some communities want to hold and control records, others want all requests for access to go through the rights holder but for the institution to manage the copying and sharing of the records. Each MOU is different, and if a community prefers a different kind of document, we would be open to exploring other methods of agreement. It is important to consider the future rights holders as well and build that into the agreement. 

Question: If a digitization project is not of interest to an Indigenous community due to other priorities, but records concerning them are part of a larger collection, and of great value to other groups, what are the ethics of making those records available? (Gordon Lyall)
GW: It is important to engage the community to whatever degree they are able at the time. It is also important to note that there is a difference between digitizing records and sharing them with interested parties, and digitizing records and putting them online. We try to be as transparent as possible - if we are going to share records that we know relate to an Indigenous community, it is important to let them know, even if they have indicated that they are not able to consult on them at this time. I would recommend keeping records offline until explicit permission to share them publicly is received. 

Question: I was wondering if those of you in institutions or belonging to indigenous communities have engaged in metadata changes. I am primarily curious if there have been changes based on an indigenous community perspective on institutional metadata. Is this something that you have engaged with? (Ian McAlpin)
GW: Although we haven't made changes to back-end metadata, a colleague worked with Kwak̓wala Speakers to provide better descriptive data for songs in the Ida Halpern collection. This includes correct spellings of names and places, translations taken from the sound recordings (rather than the ethnomusicologist's notes) and the inclusion of diacritics in the text. You can see an example here but there are many others in the collection if you are interested in browsing.
 

Extended answers from Claire Bowern (CB), panelist from “Relationships, Reciprocity, and Responsibilities: Indigenous Studies in Archives and Beyond,” panel 6: Engaging Digital Archives to Meet Indigenous Communities Priorities (Click here to watch)

Question: Do you think version control of data and metadata would be a useful software feature in Mukurtu and archive websites? (Kavon Hooshiar)     
CB: I think that would be very useful in theory, though there's always the question of how much more additionally complex it might make the software (which is already quite complex).

Question: Do the panelists see consent as an event or an ongoing process? (Anonymous)    
CB: It's definitely an ongoing process for the work we do, as the nature of the work changes and we all learn more, it's reasonable that opinions may change. This work is a partnership, not one person deciding what gets to happen with initial input.

Question: How do you define the communities you work with? The communities themselves are not homogenous, so how do you identify the people you work with and call "the community"? (Taylor Hummel)
CB: In the grammar bootcamp cases, we work with representatives who are recognised as authorities on language. Regional language centres typically have local boards, who represent their language groups, and language centres typically consult widely (and are much more able to do so appropriately). The bootcamp projects use and acknowledge their views. 

Question: As part of your projects, are you digitizing or working with material that are only for the community that will not be of open access. And if so, how are you planning on doing this? (Luz Maria Mejia Ramos)
CB: Some of the bootcamp grammars are "public" in the sense that they will be published as open access grammars, while others are only for the communities and we expect that the language centre and language representatives will distribute them locally.