At the fourth annual Santa Clara Powwow on May 4, the Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) Lab at Santa Clara held the public launch of the Thámien Ohlone augmented reality tour. The event was held on the St. Ignatian lawn on campus to celebrate the Native Americans who have been caretakers of the land for thousands of years.

The project was a joint effort between professors in various academic fields including Kai Lukoff from the computer science and engineering department, Amy Lueck from the English department and Professor Lee Panich from the anthropology department. These professors from Santa Clara received the 2023 Whitham Family Collaborative Scholarship Award for their interdisciplinary research project. With the $30,000 award, the team developed the augmented reality (AR) tour of campus.

“As students that, everyday, sleep across the many dorms on campus, eat at Benson and study in the classrooms, it is very important for us to know about the history of this campus and ongoing efforts and struggles of the aboriginal peoples who’ve been taking care of this land since time immemorial,” said senior Cinthya Jauregui, Masters in engineering management and project lead for the AR tour.

By holding up their phones, visitors can interact with 20 different location stops on campus, virtually popping up traditional items, life-sized dwellings and the tribal flag atop a flagpole.

“The application will be accessible all year round. We will be placing the link to the virtual tour on our HCI website,” said Sarah Hazel ‘25, HCI lab research assistant for the AR Tour. “We are also in the process of collaborating with different organizations on campus—for example, the De Saisset museum—to have the QR code displayed in different areas on campus. Our hope is to one day have the QR codes displayed at every physical stop on the tour.”

The Thámien Ohlone AR tour showcases the rich history, contemporary life and future aspirations of the Muwekma community.

“Especially at Santa Clara, where there are little to no visible markers around our campus, it’s even more important for those in our community to make these hidden stories visible by learning about them through experiencing our tour and talking about them with others,” said Jauregui. “I’m hopeful the tour and our efforts as a community will lead to a campus that can physically and socially recognize not just the Ohlone’s past, but also present and future.”

This tour has the ability to reach the campus population, the tribal community, and other visitors who are exploring the university.

“As Dr. Amy Lueck discusses in her research, I think it’s about the public remembrance of the Muwekma Ohlone tribe,” Jauregui said. “We—as students, staff, visitors—of this campus can become more than just passive consumers of a history told to us, but rather active participants in how we publicly remember, honor and share these stories with each other.”