North American Wikimedians/Indigenous North American issues team

The North American region has many dispersed indigenous people and languages. The North American Hub can sponsor a multinational team to support addressing issues regarding content about these folks and relevant topics on-wiki. The team can create events and partnerships, file easily for small-project funding, and look at on-wiki topics related to Inuit, First Nations, Métis and Native Americans (hereafter referred to as Indigenous or Indigenous peoples) across the continent.

By teaming up we can help address certain intrinsic problems: Indigenous languages are "small", dispersed, and many are considered at risk by UNESCO; Indigenous peoples are split across countries, political boundaries and jurisdictions that may not match their own geographies or preferred administration; Indigenous peoples are at some disadvantage regarding good computer/wiki or internet access; many of the Indigenous histories are passed down orally and not written (or written from a colonizer's point of view), both of which create friction with policies such as reliable sources and neutral point of view; Indigenous groups often lack sufficient resources and know-how to address persistent on-wiki disputes; most on-wiki editors are not well-educated on Indigenous matters (e.g. identities, organizations, jurisdictions and legislations). There is past success in addressing particular areas with dispersed editorship with WikiProjects, but they tend to be on particular wikis. Several North American hub organizers think this topic area in particular would benefit from a better-supported explicitly international, multilingual network. This could help reduce isolation (from information, and from one another) that make it harder to do a good job on-wiki and reach consensus on topical matters.

Collaboration hours

Our University of Maryland iSchool partners will host weekly-ish collaboration hours to collaborate and talk about Wikidata and Indigenous American content, methods, and projects. We don't have a very specific agenda. Let's meet one another, and share techniques and projects. We can work quietly too. We can expect a Hub to exist eventually and to support specific projects more formally.

We hold meetings on most Tuesdays, at 3pm Eastern Time. We meet here except when otherwise noted below: https://umd.zoom.us/j/96031170233

October 10, 2025
October 24, 2025
October 31, 2025
November 7, 2025
November 14, 2025
December 5, 2025
December 12, 2025: It was agreed to add here on meta a list or index to more of the relevant Wikimedia content for this team; and to meet again next week
December 19, 2025
On Jan 9th we have an editathon focused on anthropological/historical/indigenous content: https://wikimediadc.org/wiki/Upcoming_events#January_9; https://www.eventbrite.com/e/fairly-obscure-the-trilogy-an-anthropology-wikipedia-edit-a-thon-tickets-1974905470425
January 16, 2026
January 23, 2026
January 30 at 3:30 eastern time
time zone lookup on toolforge:
February 6 at 3pm eastern time - Y
Feb 13 at 3:30 ET; some will be busy with Douglass Day until 3pm; you all are invited to that too Y
Feb 20; skip due to conflicts
Feb 27 at 3pm ET Y
Mar 6 cancelled for Depths of Wikipedia and DC happy hour
March 13 at 3pm ET -- met Y
April 3, 2026 at 3pm ET -- missed, but note appearance of hub funding with an objective of delivering new indigenous content
April 24, 2026 at 3pm ET - hot topic: The new Hub is to have a Steering Committee, with a member from, or representing, "indigenous communities". How can we help?
May 1, 2026 -- discussion of updated draft paper
May 8, 2026 -- we discussed updated draft paper, relevant Canadian identities, possible references outside North America, and possible edits related to Wikimedia policy
May 15, 2026 at 3pm ET -- had to change the zoom; we used this one (meeting id 884 9148 5460, password 113351)
May 22, 2026 at 3pm ET -- had to change the zoom; we used this one (meeting id 884 9148 5460, password 113351)
June 2, 2026 at 3pm ET
June 16, 2026 at 3pm ET - discussed ATALM Wikidata workshop coordination and planning
June 23, 2026 at 3pm ET

Running agenda: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1AYicevQN6eHvo0qjuhJhvIE_qS85pLruj83SkfrZO14/edit?usp=sharing

Organizational partners for events and projects

Research:Guide for Indigenous North American identity on Wikipedia - a current research effort which will offer guidance for Wikimedians
Council for the Preservation of Anthropological Records (CoPAR) - Anthropologists network with data on Native Americans and interest in Wikidata
International Indigenous Librarians Forum
This Wikidata project is ideal for Wikimedians and CoPAR to integrate with: wikidata:WikiProject_Indigenous_peoples_of_North_America
The Rising Voices initiative of the Global Voices community supports small/indigenous/underrepresentation languages online.
Our next North American WikiConference will be in Edmonton. Shall we team up with these folks for something? https://www.ualberta.ca/en/indigenous/index.html

News items

A Wikimedia translate-a-thon on-wiki event is coming up, starting at 7am on Sat Dec 6. Do we have relevant work we might do in indigenous languages?
It has recently been propose to close the Iñupiaq-language Wikipedia. There are no fluent editors in that language keeping it going. We might still be able to make edits in the 'incubator' sub-site.
Cree-language content is on-wiki, but there are several sub-languages, and the general Cree wikipedia and wiktionary have been downscaled to 'incubator' sites circa 2024. If we have speakers of these languages we could make some edits in the incubator mode. For more see [1], wikt:Category:Cree language, wikt:Category:cr:Days of the week, and commons:Category:Cree_language.
Check out OpenHistoricalMap -- it shows where tribes were. You can scroll through the years! If we have map data to put online for tribes, we can work with them.
There will be an editathon mostly about indigenous wiki content with CoPAR and Wikimedia DC on Jan 9, 2026. You can sign up here: [2].
New publication: Piloting Wikidata as an Authority Identifier: The (In)visible Women Project at the Smithsonian Institution, highlighted by Pepperon107

Interested people

Freely sign up as an interested person, including if you wish contact info (e.g. home wiki) and topics of interest or expertise relevant to the potential team.

econterms (talk) 17:23, 8 April 2025 (UTC) -- I'm not expert on the topic area but would like to help make teams work well across the Hub.[reply]
Winslowtree 20:38, 11 April 2025 (UTC) -- interested in contributing and discussing research ideas. Via Editathon[3] today.
Jackiekoerner (talk) 17:45, 15 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
User:IncreasingArchivalAccess--interested in drafting North American protocols and undertaking community-led research on Wikidata representation
Bluerasberry (talk) 14:53, 25 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Pingnova (talk) 17:55, 25 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 18:38, 28 April 2025 (UTC) - focus more on Inuit and Canadian Indigenous peoples.[reply]
User:rfreemont
Merrilee (talk) 15:52, 17 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
User:Mvg2024
Pepperoni107 (talk) 17:45, 02 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
SophieWMCA (talk)
Rosiestep (talk) 17:16, 9 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
JamieF (talk) 20:34, 9 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Sawyer777 (talk) 11:30, 10 October 2025 (UTC) - i've got a long-term loose project improving enwiki's coverage of Wisconsin indigenous topics, especially in the archaeology-anthropology area[reply]
Mozucat (talk) 00:32, 15 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
PKM (talk) I’ve done some work on standards at wikidata:WikiProject_Indigenous_peoples_of_North_America.
Arlo Barnes (talk) 22:39, 4 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
E_mln_e (talk) Interested as wiki organizer on Ohlone land (who can't seem to remember the time of the meeting)
Mary Mark Ockerbloom (talk) 18:10, 13 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Yuchitown (talk) 16:39, 14 January 2026 (UTC) | Native American who's active on Wikipedia but happy to assist with Wikimedia. Learned about this project from the work of Skybristol[reply]