Wikipedia:Meetup/HonouringIndigenousWriters/UBC 2020

     Indigenous Writers Wikipedia Edit-a-thon   

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In December 2015 Daniel Heath Justice (author of “Why Indigenous Literature Matters") began a Twitter campaign to share the names of Indigenous writers. The reason for his efforts was to “...push back against the frequent assumptions that our literary history is any less complex, robust, or diverse than that of other peoples.”

So why a Wikipedia Edit-a-thon?

Wikipedia is a multilingual, web-based, free encyclopedia based on a model of open community generated knowledge. The community driven nature of Wikipedia is meant to support Wikipedia’s goal of providing “…every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge.” However, well documented systematic bias including, information gaps, exclusions, diversity of articles and editors, and assumptions about neutrality and notability greatly impacts the information that can be found in an information source with millions of views per day.

The Indigenous Writers Wikipedia Edit-a-thon is seeking to improve the coverage of Indigenous writers on Wikipedia and to encourage diverse community editors to actively work to dissuade assumptions about Indigenous literature by raising their profile in this increasingly influential information source.

Event information

 Event Date: Monday, March 2 
 Time: 1:00pm - 4:00pm
 Location: Sty-Wet-Tan Hall in the First Nations Longhouse. UBC Vancouver is located on the traditional, ancestral, unceded territory of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam) people.
 Cost: Free!  There will be refreshments!
 Register:https://outreachdashboard.wmflabs.org/courses/University_of_British_Columbia/Honouring_Indigenous_Writers_Wikipedia_Edit-a-thon_(March_2,_2020)    
 Editing Passcode: Writers

This event is one of the many ways that UBC is participating in Open Education Week (https://www.openeducationweek.org/).

Event Schedule

Time	Session	Speaker/Facilitator
1:00 - 1:15	Welcome & Introduction	Daniel Heath Justice
1:15 - 1:30	Brief Introduction to Wikipedia & Editing	Erin Fields & Lucas Wright
1:30-2:30	Editing Part 1
2:30-3:10	Author Readings	Dallas Hunt, Sam Nock, Jessica Johns , Billy-Ray Belcourt
3:10 - 3:55	Editing Part 2
3:55 - 4:00	Thank You

Iron Dog Books, an Indigenous-owned bookshop and booktruck dedicated to bringing low cost reading to Tsleil-Waututh, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh and Musqueam territories (metro Vancouver), will be on site.

Other Honouring Indigenous Writers Wikipedia Edit-a-thons

• UBCO will also be hosting an Honouring Indigenous Writers Edit-athon on their campus on March 9th, 2020.
• BCcampus will have an editing session available for their employees.
• The University of Toronto Digital Humanities Lab will also be opening their space for those interested in participating.

Event Hosts

• Erin Fields, Liaison Librarian & Flexible Learning Coordinator, UBC Library
• David Gaertner, First Nations and Indigenous Studies Instructor, UBC
• The First Nations House of Learning

References