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Author: Sibyl DiverVisual Timeline DescriptionThe Visual Timeline technique uses a timeline format to reveal the history of why particular problems in a particular place came to be from a community perspective. This is a particularly useful tool for shifting the dominant narrative in marginalized communities. Creating a Visual Timeline requires goal setting with community partners, data analysis, and applying artistic design. The approach leverages community engaged research to explain linkages between policy decisions, historical events, and community outcomes. Timeline creators pour rigorous and defensible information into a scaffold that organizes, validates, and presents community knowledge with beautiful design. This technique was developed as part of a community-based participatory research project. Key goals included: validating community knowledge and experience through structured inquiry;creating awareness about the structural causes of community problems; andbuilding positive momentum around community action.InstructionsForm a project team with community members. Set project goals. Discuss community issues that require historical analysis and structural explanation. Determine questions for the inquiry (e.g. how have land use policies affected community health?). Create a shared project database. Collect relevant documents from community partners, libraries, and online.Undertake a document review to identify themes and patterns that address your questions. You may use coding categories, or information categories that help organize qualitative data (e.g. federal policy, water, community action). Arrange relevant information in a database. To help identify causal explanations, use a spreadsheet to organize information about relevant policies (e.g. local, state, or federal), actionable events (e.g. management actions, planning events, protests), and community outcomes (e.g. changes in socio-economic conditions, community health, local environment). For each entry, record the date (or date range) and reference source. Once your database is ready, reorder spreadsheet entries by date. Then group information into main categories: policies, events, outcomes. Lay out timeline entries in a table format, where rows and columns provide “bins” for sorting information. Use rows for grouping policies, events, and outcomes. Use columns for marking segments of time. The time segments can vary by increment. They should represent logical eras in community history. Include images, such as historical photos or community artwork, and space for references. Print your draft Visual Timeline on large format paper so that all text and images are visible. Organize a community review session. Document all feedback. Create time for connecting with community members, e.g. share food, take a walk or field trip. Revise your Visual Timeline. Expand your inquiry or incorporate additional design elements, as needed.Review your final draft and outreach plan with community partners. Present timeline findings to your target audience. Case StoryThe Karuk Tribe is the second largest tribe in California and comes from the Klamath Mountains, near the border between California and Oregon (see karuk.us). The U.S. Forest Service claims ownership over the majority of Karuk Territory. However, because no valid treaty was signed to legally cede Karuk territory to the U.S. government, the Karuk Tribe continues to dispute federal ownership of its territory.In 2009, members of the Karuk-UC Berkeley Collaborative, an organization that supports Karuk eco-cultural revitalization initiatives, came together to understand barriers and opportunities to community participation in land management within Karuk Territory (see ). The project team included Karuk land managers and UC Berkeley design students studying community participation. Over nine months, our team compiled data from more than one hundred sources on policies, land management actions, and environmental and health conditions affecting Karuk people. Community members contributed oral histories. We developed the Visual Timeline technique as a tool for synthesizing our data and validating community knowledge.Our process resulted in the Karuk Lands Management Historical Timeline (1850-2010)—a fifteen-foot artistic display that shows how land management history is linked to the social and environmental changes affecting Karuk people today (see ). The Timeline documents how extractive industries (e.g. mining, logging, agriculture, hydropower, industrial fishing) played a key role in displacing Karuk people and their land management practices. The resulting environmental and socio-economic changes have led to significant community health impacts. For example, dam construction and other industrial developments have devastated Klamath fisheries, which has contributed to a major shift in the local diet for Karuk people and disproportionate levels of diet-related diseases like diabetes. Recent shifts in environmental policy and the Indigenous rights movement have enabled important Karuk eco-cultural revitalization initiatives. Through the Karuk Timeline project, our team appreciated the importance of maintaining a strong connection to people and place, and we remain deeply grateful to the Karuk Tribe for the opportunity to learn from their experiences. For example, the most meaningful part of our community review was not the meeting itself, but rather the cultural resources training, salmon dinner, and forest walk organized by our Karuk colleagues. To acknowledge the ongoing relationships between Karuk people and the land, we organized the Klamath Art Contest, where local students submitted watercolors representing their relationship to the river. By incorporating student artwork, our design team recreated the Karuk Timeline as a cultural riverscape. ReflectionOur community partners viewed the Karuk Timeline as a highly effective “scientific” format for presenting Karuk perspectives on land management. The Timeline created a quick, visual communication tool that validated community experiences. In this way, the Timeline offers an important step towards reconciling a centuries-old dispute over land rights and responsibilities. The Timeline process also placed isolated Karuk self-determination initiatives in a larger historical context. One community member told us, “I usually feel like I am beating my head against the wall, but now I feel like we’re getting somewhere.” The Visual Timeline approach represents an important tool for working with marginalized communities to shift control over dominant narratives. For example, the Karuk Timeline documents historical injustices and community actions to address them, thereby establishing the rationale for greater Karuk community participation in land management decisions. By creating an enduring output for community partners, our Timeline technique also helped avoid the problem of extractive research, where community knowledge is gathered solely for external use. The Timeline has provided a useful resource for educators in local schools for teaching local history and reframing community struggles. References:Diver, S., Liu, L., Canchela, N., Tannenbaum, S., Silberblatt, R., and Reed, R. ?Karuk Lands Management Historical Timeline. May 7, 2010. ?Web published at?. ?Currently exhibited at the Karuk People’s Center (Happy Camp, CA). ?Previously exhibited at the Clark Museum of Anthropology (Eureka, CA).Diver, S.W. and Higgins, M.N. 2014. Giving Back Through Collaborative Research: Towards a Practice of Dynamic Reciprocity. Journal of Research Practice. 10(2). , S.W. 2014. Giving Back Through Time: A Collaborative Timeline Approach to Researching Karuk Indigenous Lands Management History. Journal of Research Practice. 10(2). 1: The Karuk Lands Management Historical Timeline is a 15-foot artistic display that summarizes land use policies, management practices, and environmental health conditions affecting Karuk people and landscapes from 1850-present. Downloadable from 2: Sketch of Visual Timeline components.Figure 3. This is a section of the initial, text-only version of the Karuk Lands Management Historical Timeline, prior to our redesign.Figure 4: Design team receiving a cultural resources training from community members as part of our Timeline review process. Foreground (left to right): Frank Lake, Raphael Silberblatt, Naomi Canchela, Sarah Tannenbaum. Background: Susan Corum, Ron Reed, Sibyl Diver. Courtesy of Lichia Liu. ................
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