Session: Ka Maka ʻĪnana - Towards Placed-based, human centered and Indigenous design
Presented by: Ben Trevino, Alec Wagner, Diane OʻNeal, Kamuela Enos
Ka Maka ʻĪnana was a reaction to a realization in innovation and tech education: that the frameworks of common design thinking and entrepreneurship resources, like design kits and canvasses, don’t fully align with our cultural practices or the contexts of what we call, “indigenous innovation.” Consequently, when we implement or teach design thinking, we are unintentionally designing-out centuries of ancestral knowledge, practice, and protocol. Ka Maka ʻĪnana solution was to bring our Kona Region community (on the island of Oʻahu) together to observe and research ancestral practices unique to the Hawaiian culture–not by reading about them, but rather through stories, oral knowledge transfer, and direct experience–and translate the emergent processes of these practices and characteristics of the practitioners into a design “field guide” that is truly both by and for this community. Code for Hawaii members and Fellows from the 2018 Code for America Community Fellowship Team in Honolulu saw connections to the Civic tech and human-centered design work of their fellowship project joined the participatory effort. This panel proposes to share what we learned.
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Call to Action
- Learn about the lands where you live and post here. Use Code for Anchorageʻs Land Acknowledgement SMS App by texting your [city, state] or [zipcode] to 1-855-917-5263 (LAND), Facebook chatbot: Messenger or check out the interactive map at native-land.ca. post your results in the comments
- Share a story of a tool or technology that was developed where you live. post your story in the comments