Research theme

Cultural preservation & engagement with AI

The history of land and its people is often spread across fragmented primary sources in varying formats. Modern AI can reduce the work to collect, structure, and synthesize historical and cultural source data.

Understanding the ecological and human history of a landscape is part of caring for it well. The lands where we work are the homeland of Indigenous peoples, including the Miwok, and were later reshaped by the Gold Rush and the waves of settlement, mining, and ranching that followed.

The records of that history are scattered and fragile. AI tools make it practical for a small team to transcribe documents, structure the information in them, and create rich, interconnected knowledge. Our work leverages modern AI tools to collect and process source data relevant to our project sites while providing repeatable approaches for other projects.

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Cultural preservation: AI for historical documents and oral histories

Researching and preserving the history of DeepForest's land from primary sources: homestead files, land patents and deeds, family records, mining-claim and water-right records, newspapers and, with consent, oral histories. AI helps transcribe and summarize; a person checks every claim against the original. We publish stories and sources, never locations.

San Domingo · Woodland Hilltop — Cultural preservation & engagement with AI