English: Presentation slides for Wikimania 2023
Title: Decolonizing knowledge — a perspective from the Ukrainian community
Speaker: Anton Protsiuk, antanana
Abstract: Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 prompted a wide reevaluation of Ukrainian cultural legacy that had previously been viewed through colonial lenses. In this session, we’ll discuss how the centuries-long legacy of russification has impacted the content of wiki projects, what the Ukrainian community is doing now to decolonize knowledge, and how its experience might be applicable globally.
Empires have resources to create reliable sources – not just pure propaganda, that can be easily refuted, but respectable scholarly works. These sources outlive empires themselves, shaping how the rest of the world sees former colonies. A universal problem, it’is also applicable to Ukraine as a former Russian colony.
Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine prompted a wide reevaluation of Ukrainian cultural legacy that had previously been viewed through colonial lenses – museums are changing descriptions of Ukrainian paintings previously considered Russian [1], news outlets are changing names of Ukrainian locales from Russian transliteration to Ukrainian one [2].
Yet, a lot of the work still has to be done. The content of Wikimedia projects in Ukrainian and about Ukraine is still impacted by the colonial legacy – for example, some city names are yet to be renamed to reflect Ukrainian transliteration [3]. To give another example, after the USSR collapsed, the adjective “Soviet” was just replaced with “Russian”, and the role of other nations in WWII was erased– something that’s still acutely visible on the pages of English Wikipedia and other language editions.
Of course, Wikimedians cannot drive the change on our own – but we can and should raise our voice. For example, a system to render Japanese names into Ukrainian was never adopted during the Soviet times, so a system developed for the Russian language was used. Wikipedians are now petitioning the government to change it.
Our objectives for this session are:
- look at how the centuries-long legacy of russification has impacted the content of wiki projects
- discuss what the Ukrainian community is doing now to decolonize knowledge
- reflect how the Ukrainian experience might be interesting and informative for other communities across the world.
Presented at: Suntec Singapore Convention and Exhibition Centre, 2023-08-17 04:25 to 04:45 UTC
Video file: File:Wikimania 2023 - Room 324 - 17 August - Decolonizing knowledge — a perspective from the Ukrainian community.webm