Amelia Winger-Bearskin: I grew up as a young hacker in the ’90s, a 12-year-old girl with other 12-year-old girls who were hacktivists. So the dreams of decentralized storytelling, for me, started in those early days when I was first learning about the internet—when I’d go to school, and only one or two people at my whole school were online. And we would have these other lives, not just with our local friends but with people all over the world, some of whom we knew nothing about except their username.
But I’m Seneca-Cayuga Nation of Oklahoma, Deer Clan, which is a member of the six-nation Haudenosaunee—other people know us as the Iroquois. And we have a storytelling tradition that I believe is also decentralized storytelling.
My mom is a traditional storyteller from our tribe. Being a storyteller for the Seneca-Cayuga Nation is something that is a cross between being a historian, being a performer, being a creative writer, and being a leader within the culture.
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