The Story of our logo
Listen to the meaning behind our logo below, as told by Rios Pacheco.
This audio was recorded and edited by Monica Smiley.
Our Goals and Values
Our team is committed to working together toward the achievement of the following shared goals:
Making the process of research more equitable and transparent as we build research expertise across our team
Disseminating research findings in ways that generate increased community awareness and maximize the impact of our shared work
Supporting the development of technological and media literacy skills of tribal community members while also striving toward making media integration a norm within tribal culture
Mentoring tribal youth as they develop and share their cultural identities through the process of storytelling with technology
Strengthening cultural identity and preserving cultural heritage of tribal members
Connecting tribal members across generations through storytelling and knowledge sharing processes
Bringing together diverse members of our community in order to highlight different ways of being and thinking
Research
The Daigwade team adopts a combination of what are called "culturally disruptive" and “culturally sustaining/revitalizing” approaches, which have the purpose of pushing us to constantly reflect on ourselves as cultural beings and recognize the power and privilege connected to that while also seeking to cultivate cultural identities of participants. For example, disciplines like science are often thought of as “acultural” or without culture, and instead we see science as a rich cultural activity and process. We also employ a unique community-driven design research process where the Northwestern Shoshone maintain sovereignty over all parts of our work — the goal here is to disrupt the the inherent power researchers have in an academic university or institution. We are carrying out these approaches by developing family and community programming with a culturally sustaining/revitalizing design approach, which has the goal of cultivating deep and generative connections between Native learners and their culture. From this approach, we are exploring how culture, technology, and nature are woven together through storytelling. Along the way, we are working toward our overall goal of designing family workshops that preserve and share culture. Sites include everything from families’ own backyards to Tribal Offices in Utah and Idaho to various land sites around Northern Utah and Southern Idaho. We hope our process will help other tribal communities who might want to engage in similar work and will inform researchers, educators, and designers who think about things like culture, science, and technology.
We express our gratitude to the Northwestern Band of the Shoshone Tribal Council for their support of this work.
Daigwade is a collaboration between Utah State University and the Northwestern Band of the Shoshone Nation.
This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No #1943630. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.
Copyright 2021 Northwestern Band of Shoshone Nation and Utah State University. All Rights Reserved.