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“Justice for Native People, Justice for Native Me”: Using Digital Storytelling Methodologies to Change the Master Narrative of Native American Peoples

Native American and Indigenous peoples are the original inhabitants of the U.S., including hundreds of tribes with distinct cultures and histories that inform their epistemological (i.e., ways of knowing) and ontological (i.e., ways of being) worldviews. Despite this, Western peoples continue to story the experiences of Native peoples for them, creating master narratives in which Native peoples are relics of the past, and impoverished, uneducated, drunkards in the present (Duran, 2019). Indeed, this is a longstanding effect of the colonial project that continues to erase the authentic, lived experiences of Native peoples, thus, limiting their self-understanding and future possibilities. To counter these enduring colonial narratives, it is critical Native peoples have access to both Native-centered and community-based spaces in which the complexities of Native identities and experiences can be voiced and storied. OrigiNatives sought to provide urban Native peoples in Minnesota a space that privileged their ways of knowing and being through digital storytelling workshops, in which Native peoples (n = 75) from 34 different tribal communities created original and authentic stories of their cultures, histories, and lives using digital media technologies. We review the process of creating and implementing OrigiNatives through partnerships with Native-serving organizations in Minnesota, highlighting implications digital storytelling methodologies have for challenging and resisting coloniality by empowering Native peoples to tell our stories, our way.