Handling a community’s most precious contents is not as simple as taking, storing, labeling and cataloging them. Historical materials in web databases or held in archival repositories should be tended to with ethical standards and cultural considerations. Information specialist with a PhD in anthropology Javier Ruedas, and head of digital humanities and user engagement Veronica Rodriguez, are qualified experts who were the speakers at the Digital Indigenous Archives workshop, shedding light on this work.
Rudeas dives straight into the basics of archival work, such as data sovereignty and the importance of metadata. Both involve the ways people store and represent historical pieces of a culture.
He presents the reminiscence of the Shingwauk residential schools, which were developed into Algoma University, as a primary example. The native people — who attended and graduated from the university, and had ancestry that belonged to the residential schools — created a collaborative grassroots archive after realizing they had heritage items that should be stored and cataloged.
They formed the organization, Children of Shingwauk Alumni Association, and began to gather their items. The archive started in the 1980s and, over time,gained funding with the ability to start a web archive and hire professionals who could create what is now known as the Algoma University Archives and Special Collections.
For the native diaspora, the call for data sovereignty is dire. For years, indigenous communities have not determined the value of their heritage items. Rodriguez explains how, in indigenous communities that have more resources, there are more people involved in archival storage, and it becomes more representative.
“You would hope by now that in cultural institutions, libraries, museums and archives that they would have better awareness of the materials that they own and where they come from,” Rodriguez states. “Most major institutions do that, but I can see how it can still slip through the cracks of the person who’s hired to manage the archive because it’s not something that we emphasize.”
The indigenous grassroots collaboration archive of the Shingwauk residential schools provided trauma-informed metadata. This includes using accurate terms, indigenous language and context when labeling heritage items or redacting unwanted information from public access. Practices like these allow power to be returned to the community when releasing information to the public. Reconciliation efforts done across the U.S. give native people control over the archival of their heritage items and historical documents. This is achieved through collaborating to provide ample context to archives that capture a moment in history for that community.
“We live in a community that has a lot of indigenous communities around it, and it’s sort of empowering to know that across the world there’s been a very strong movement to help communities reclaim their histories, and that’s important,” Rodriguez proclaims.
After Ruedas elaborates, he pulls up the Algoma University Archives and Special Collections website and tours it for the students, showing the different elements in which the people of Shingwauk have organized and put together all of the items. They also explore other web-based archival platforms, such as the Great Lakes Research Alliance and the Plateau People’s Web Portal. Here, the use of metadata to identify heritage items is noticeably exceptional. Under each item, one can see its condition, where it originates, what facilities are currently holding them and paragraphs of descriptions and context.
“[It] digitally reunifies scattered items,” Rudeas states. He explains how some community-centered archives have a focus on the decolonization of language and challenging dominant narratives by “reclaiming the way these stories are told.”
Rodriguez finishes the seminar by unraveling the different protocols and legislation that go into the ethical storage of heritage items — things like the UN Declaration of Rights of Indigenous Peoples. This emphasizes the autonomy and support that indigenous groups need to protect and promote their advocacy and provide meaningful planning centered on community goals. She also provides some outlines and tools used to enact fair use of this information. Control, authority, responsibility and ethics are known as the CARE and fair principles for the betterment of storing indigenous information. Traditional Knowledge Labels are another initiative used to prioritize human and nature-centered language, providing consistency and control over the filing of heritage items and documents.
“And it’s sad because cataloging is being taken over by AI, and there are benefits to this, like you can get your books cataloged quickly, but when working in [indigenous] archives, it’s very sensitive,” Rodriguez confides. “I would like to see students from this area and this state go into cultural work. I think that they would be empowered by it.”
Rodriguez shares how she is planning to host more events like these in the future, and hopes that by talking about these tools and informing students, it will inspire them to look into community-based careers.
