In addition to complementing images with biographical information about the individuals portrayed, their trajectories and links to others, the app allows the inclusion of details about the history of the photographs, from their origins and their arrival in the public, private or family archives where they are found to their current uses and reinterpretations. Reading the documents against the grain and (re)interpreting the photographs recovered from various archives, then digitised and made available to the indigenous communities, has promoted a reorientation of hegemonic narratives and the formulation of new questions about themselves and about inter-ethnic relations.
Within the legal and political framework of the rights of indigenous peoples, various communities and organisations are demanding that state and private institutions restitute objects belonging to their ancestors and human remains catalogued as part of the "collections" of museums and research institutes, as well as digital materials linked to their history which are in the public domain.
Such demands encourage reflection on the following issues, among others:
The power relations implicated in the creation of archives in colonial contexts of territorial dispossession, extermination, family and community dismemberment and assimilationist policies.
The rights of ownership and/or possession of objects, knowledge and images considered as 'universal digital heritage'
The continuity of different types of colonialism which limit their access to archives and repositories in the present.
