I would argue that any connection between humanity and the digital therefore requires an investigation into how computational processes might reinforce the notion of a humanity developed out of racializing systems, even as they foster efforts to assemble or otherwise build alternative human modalities. This tension is enacted through what I call a “technology of recovery,” characterized by efforts to bring forth the full humanity of marginalized peoples through the use of digital platforms and tools…

…The black digital humanities probes and disrupts the ontological notions that would have us accept humanity as a fixed category, an assumption that unproblematically emanates in the digital realm.

For Gallon, then, a transition to the digital--in our case from paper maps to online maps--is a chance to practice recovery. At this point in mapping the Palouse, we would do well to recognize that while previous maps have drawn their logics and discourses from colonial maps of the area and its peoples, simply digitizing those maps would be missing out on a very significant opportunity. Thus, there is no better time to theorize and implement a decolonial map than now, only a few years into the beginning of a new era of cloud-based mapping practices. Seeing such a map as a technology of recovery will affect every aspect of its form and function.

Similarly, in Network Sovereignty, Marisa Elena Duarte lays out her method of “reframing” for approaching intersections between Native and Indigenous communities and information and communications technologies (ICTs). According to Duarte,

One goal of reframing is to show the complexities of social problems that members of a privileged class deem endemic and inherent to reservation life. Reframing means deciding which historical factors shape the background of a problem and what conditions shape indigenous possibility within the contemporary moment.

The “re” in both Gallon’s “recovery” and Duarte’s “reframing” is a nice way to conceptualize how both authors are essentially prioritizing a historicity in humanities approaches to technology. For Gallon, that means exposing whiteness inherent in humanities disciplines and approaches, and challenging dominant scholarship conventions with regard to canonization, etc. Where Gallon speaks about such broad disciplinary moves, Duarte has the chance to act on the idea of “reframing,” both broad and specific, in her book. Through the process of historicizing broadband access, she is able to link digital technologies with access concerns, colonial narratives past and present, public policy, ecology, and Native and Indigenous culture. Working at these intersections and more, Duarte is able to reveal whiteness and colonial modes of thought–just as Gallon advocates–which have been imported into the world of science and technology: she highlights, as one example, how difficult it can get those working in such fields to recognize the need for Native and Indigenous communities to have fast and affordable internet access.

A decolonial map of the Palouse must therefore engage fully with discourses of measurement and a colonial history of the land in its development and implementation, even as it seizes tools in our contemporary moment as technologies of recovery. I found it necessary to approach this project, in light of these goals, as an iterative process of trial-and-error. The following three sections provide some critical looks at existing maps, as well as options for what a decolonial map could look like. Ultimately, a partnership with Native Programs at WSU has allowed work to begin on a map which I hope will prove worthwhile as both a useful tool and a chance to practice reframing and recovery.