Ashley Cordes is an Assistant Professor of Indigenous Media in ENVS and Data Sciences at the University of Oregon and a recent American Council of Learned Societies Fellow. Her interests lie at the intersections of Indigenous digital media, place-based storytelling, and Indigenous science and technology studies. Specifically, she researches how Indigenous culture and technology producers leverage discourse, emerging technologies (e.g., cryptocurrency, blockchain, AI/ML), and media to advance Tribal representational and data sovereignty, cultural revitalization, and the resurgence of Indigenous knowledge systems.
An enrolled citizen of the Kōkwel/Coquille Nation, Ashley also serves on the Climate Resilience Taskforce. Her work appears in venues such as the Journal of Cultural Economy, Feminist Media Studies, and Journal of International and Intercultural Communication. She is the author of Indigenous Currencies: Leaving Some for the Rest in the Digital Age (MIT Press) and is currently editing Envisioning Indigenous Methods in Media and Ecologies (Duke University Press).
Research areas at a glance: Media, Indigenous Science and Technology Studies (AI, blockchain, cryptocurrency), Digital Humanities, Environmental/Place-Based Studies, Visual Culture, Critical/Cultural Studies
Want to get in touch? Email me at ACordes [AT] uoregon [DOT] edu
This StoryMap responds to the multiple crises facing the Coquille River Basin, including climate change, pollution and the fall Chinook Salmon decline. The project includes multimedia art, an interactive map, and additional learning resources for visitors to learn about the cultural history of the Coquille River, its intelligences, and what can be done to help our salmon kin.
This project examines colonial dynamics that manifest in US currency systems and counter-stories of Indigenous systems that resist them. In the past decade, humans experienced what is being framed as a payment revolution considerably enabled by communication technologies. Indigenous peoples consistently innovate methods to store memories, transmit trust, and create reciprocity, yet are largely erased from histories of newer digital currency. This project addresses the problem and articulates how currencies form small parts of much larger stories of Indigenous resistance.
As part of the Indigenous Protocol and Artificial Intelligence project, this paper explores how to build trust and care for and with artificial intelligences through Indigenous epistemologies. Coquille values are applied to the production and use of AI, exploring relationships that act as an alternative to dominant capitalist, settler relations with AI.
