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Leonard Bruce

A Project Portfolio

A selection of projects I've created or worked on in the past couple of years -




What is this?

This is a summary of some of the projects I've finished, I'm working on, or things that I'm thinking about doing in the near future.


Why did I do it?

I go over it in the presentation, but three main reasons

Expose - I want to let more folks know about the cool stuff I create. I spend a lot of my time working on these projects because they help me learn and they help me explore our history. But, if noone knows about the work there isn't much use to it. So I want to get the word out!


Inspire - I know I'm not the only one working on cool stuff - I know there are lots of O'odham out there that are doing their own works and I'm hopeful that by sharing my work I will inspire others to do the same.

And if you are not doing your own cool work, take some of mine! I try to do blogs for a lot of my work on how I did it and what could be better. My dream is that someone takes these projects and makes them better - or adds on to them.


Listen - I do a lot of pre-listening and planning for the projects I work on. I usually introduce the idea to my Community mentors, talk about it publicly for a while, and then I start actually building on it.

But, I also want to make sure I give folks a chance to give feedback. I'm not always going to take your feedback - some of y'all are trolls. But, I do my best to listen to respectful comments and criticism and shift my work if needed.


How did I do it?

All of these projects are self-funded using my "free" time. I was lucky enough to receive funding to expand on the IndigeModels project and I'll be forever grateful for it.


But, all of these are works of love that I'm hoping will benefit our Community. That said though - if anyone knows any funding sources that want to expand or explore these projects - I'm happy to collaborate!


How long did it take?

... a while.

I've been thinking and building some of these resources for almost a decade now.


How much did it cost?

This varies - most of this is low/no cost. It is just my time finding data sources and re-imagining them or exploring them. I've been working on blogs about my process for lots of these projects to give some specific costs.


Final Thoughts

I shared this presentation with my community council (GRIC) in 2024 and I had a pretty good range of feedback. I'm very thankful that my Community leadership sees the value in the work and I'm sharing it more broadly.

I'll post some of the FAQs below!



FAQ

  1. Is this... legal?

The simple answer is "yes" - for the most part. Most of my work would be considered "Fair Use" by American law. All the work is done for education and research, not commercialized, and any automation I employ comes with a heap of manual work as well.


Also, I'm just sharing existing data and information!


I might do a blog about the legality someday to dive more in-depth...



  1. How are you protecting this information so only Community Members can see it?

I'm not for the most part. I'm proud of my heritage - our history, our stories, our beliefs. I don't feel the need to hide it.


I also believe that any attempt to restrict knowledge hurts us and hurts our families. I've done a lot of work in the Data Sovereignty space and I understand the issues - but my own family has non-enrolled member in it. If I only allow members of one community or another to access my work, I'm inevitably going to exclude my own future generations. So, no I don't think I will do that.


I do think there are some spaces that need more protection - physical objects or locations. And I restrict that information - not because I don't want the knowledge to get out, but because I respect that we don't have systems to protect those things yet and I don't want to lose them.

But knowledge should be free, should be shared, should be respected and cultivated.


  1. Have you considered consulting with these projects?

All the time! I'm always sharing these projects with my local government departments to let them know what I'm working on. I'd love to get these projects housed in a tribal department or somewhere that is more official for folks to access it.

But until those relationships are made, I'll keep them on my website to make sure folks can access them =)


And I have my business (www.TribalDataWorks.com) for anyone who is interested in working together!


  1. Why isn't this already being done by <insert department here>?

I think most of them would love to do this kind of work, but they are busy. There are a lot of priorities and fires to put out!


I'm lucky that I have a weird passion and interest in data - and history is just my latest obsession. But they don't HAVE to do it, I already started it. We don't have to wait for government agencies or groups to do the work, we can get it started.

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