Today’s post comes from Alexis Bhagat, a student at SUNY University of Albany, currently studying for a Master of Science in Information Science, with a concentration in Archives & Records Management. If you would like to write a guest post, please use the guidelines here. It has been edited for brevity and length before publication on the I&A Blog by the current blog coordinator, Burkely Hermann.
Promotional image for symposium discussed in this post. The Artwork: “Change Our Worlds” by Shyama Kuver in collaboration with The People’s Paper Co-op, which was created for the 2023 Black Mama’s Bail Out
During Brown University’s announcement of their acquisition of the papers of the celebrated, and long-incarcerated, writer Mumia Abu-Jamal, Amanda E. Strauss, director of the John Hay Library, remarked that “the carceral system touches millions of Americans’ lives, yet the historical archive has a scarcity of stories of incarcerated people.” This glaring absence of incarcerated voices in the historical record is precisely what the Hay Library seeks to address with their groundbreaking collecting initiative, Voices of Mass Incarceration in the United States. This initiative is aimed at providing researchers with first-person accounts from individuals who have endured the harsh realities of prisons and jails in the era of mass incarceration.
At the heart of this new initiative are the Mumia Abu-Jamal papers. There are “more than 60 boxes of letters, notebooks, manuscripts, pamphlets, personal artifacts, books, and other items.” These invaluable documents, previously in the custody of historian Johanna Fernandez, will be made available to researchers starting September 27, 2023, when the John Hay Library at Brown University officially unveils this collection. The finding aid is currently accessible online through the RIAMCO online inventory, allowing scholars and the public to explore its contents.
To celebrate the inauguration of this vital collection, the Hay Library has organized an exhibition that will span the Brown University campus. The exhibition will be complemented by a three-day symposium that will bring together over two dozen artists and experts, each offering unique perspectives on the multifaceted impacts of mass incarceration, from its effects on health and policing to issues of gender and racial justice. Together, the symposium and exhibition are designed to shed light on the daily realities of incarceration. They offer a catalyst for a broader discussion on American history and culture, as seen through the material records of one man. Thus, the exhibition and symposium both exemplify the power of archives to illuminate history while also exemplifying a historic flaw of the archives profession in collecting the papers of prominent individuals.
Mumia Abu-Jamal occupies a singular place in American history. He is a rallying point for a global movement advocating for his amnesty, the object of organized outrage from the Fraternal Order of Police and their supporters. Given his status, and the controversies around his case, it’s undeniable that Mumia Abu-Jamal is a “prominent individual” whose papers would be coveted by any repository in the United States. The Voices of Mass Incarceration project aims to move beyond collecting the papers of prominent individuals and to collect the papers of incarcerated individuals more broadly. Last year, Mary Murphy of the Hay Library said that her team has identified a mere 25 archival holdings in American libraries related to first-person experiences of incarcerated individuals. The Voices of Mass Incarceration project aims to address this archival silence. I am curious if Murphy has reassessed her statement over the past year. Is the silence of the voices of incarcerated individuals primarily a problem of acquisition? Or is it also not a problem of retrieval?
Consider, for instance, other ways to search: The first newspaper published within a prison by an incarcerated person was “Forlorn Hope,” released in 1800 by William Keteltas (1765–1812) while he was in a New York City debtor’s prison. This occurred two decades before the first surge in American prison construction from 1816 to 1825. There are no “Keteltas Papers” in American repositories, but correspondence between William Keteltas and other individuals can be found in various archives. This includes letters to Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and John Adams, from 1801 to 1812, found on the National Archives’ Founders Online website.
By using different frameworks to search, users can uncover writings and artwork created behind bars, which is scattered throughout America’s archives. In this respect, the curation of a digital collection, by the Beinecke Library in 2020, is an exemplary project. It features writings and artwork by incarcerated individuals drawn from the library’s extensive holdings. The collection includes notable pieces such as Austin Reed’s memoir manuscript, poems by Ethridge Knight and Leonard Peltier, and periodicals like “The Shadow” monthly, produced by Oregon prisoners, and “The Angolite,” produced by inmates at Louisiana’s Angola State Penitentiary.
In conclusion, the Voices of Mass Incarceration project, anchored by the Mumia Abu-Jamal papers, represents a pivotal moment in archival collections. It not only seeks to bridge the historical gap by bringing forth the narratives of those incarcerated but also underscores the urgency of acknowledging and addressing the myriad challenges faced by millions of prisoners in America. This initiative serves as a powerful testament to the transformative potential of archives, revealing both the past and present contradictions within the Mumia Abu-Jamal papers and offering a promising path toward a more inclusive historical record.
Archivists on the Issues is a forum for archivists to discuss the issues we are facing today. Today’s post comes from Burkely Hermann, Metadata Librarian for the National Security Archive and current I&A Blog Coordinator. There will be spoilers for The Owl House Season 3.
Camila, Gus, Hunter, Willow, and Amity stand in so-called “archives” in the series finale of The Owl House “Watching and Dreaming”, with those around them as those possessed by The Collector.
Earlier this year, I was intrigued when protagonists of the acclaimed (and recently-ended) young adult animated series, The Owl House, talked about saving their friends from The Collector, a mysterious antagonist who takes over the Boiling Isles and treats everyone he touches as his toys. The Collector keeps people/beings in a huge castle called “The Archive” or “The Archive House” which is shaped like a giant crescent moon, floats in the air, and looks a bit like a tiara, making me think of Sailor Moon. While this castle is not equivalent of an archives in reality, the actions of The Collector, who appears childlike on the surface, but is actually heartless, cruel, and casually indifferent, connect to the issue of ethical collection by archival institutions in the real world. As Holly Rose McGee, a new I&A Steering Committee member, noted in her Steering Share back in January, it is important to ask the questions: “what are we documenting and why? Who is the author of this history? What voices are silenced by it? How do we ensure that all aspects are represented, especially to people of the future, who will be in a different context? What will they want to know about us?” Those questions, and others, are related to the ongoing issue of ethical archival practices, particularly when on the issue of institutions retaining human remains and repatriating artifacts from Indigenous cultures.
In early January, ProPublica began The Repatriation Project which lists museums and other institutions in the U.S. which hold remains of over 100,000 Indigenous people and hundreds of funerary objects, despite the fact this violates the 1990 law, Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), which says these remains and artifacts need to be returned to tribes in an expeditious manner. The database created by ProPublica specifically notes human remains held by 600 federally-funded institutions, including those held by the Mississippi and Alabama state archives. [1] As ProPublica notes, these institutions face “little to no consequences” for violating NAGPRA, since they often claim that the human remains they hold are “culturally unidentifiable”, meaning that a federally recognized tribe isn’t affiliated with them.
These human remains of Indigenous people ended up in hands of these institutions as a result of archaeologists and museum collectors looting Indigenous graves, homes, and religious places, along with government and military officials that harvested remains. Despite the fact NAGRA was passed in 1990, institutions have worked to thwart the law in whatever way possible, with estimates that repatriation of such remains, and artifacts, will take at “least another 70 years to complete” at its current pace. Even so, current leaders in museums and tribes stated their optimism that new archaeologists, museum and institutional leaders, will want to “better comply with the law”, which is being relatively optimistic. This is coupled by a proposed regulation in October 2022 by the Secretary of Interior to remove the “culturally unidentifiable” designation for human remains, and other changes.
The archives field does not have a good history on this topic. In fact, the Society of American Archivists, the premier professional association of archivists, demurred in supporting the Protocols for Native American Archival Materials, aimed at guiding archives and libraries in “culturally responsive care of Native American archival materials and…culturally appropriate service to communities,” despite pressure to do so from the SAA’s Native American Archives Section. The Protocols, proposed in 2006, were endorsed by many Indigenous groups and professional associations. [2] In a dramatic statement in August 2018, the SAA admitted that the reason the Protocols were not endorsed was because of lingering prejudices:
On August 13, 2018, the SAA Council endorsed Protocols for Native American Archival Materials as an external standard of the organization…During the past 12 years, many archivists, including and especially members of SAA’s Native American Archives Section, have continued to champion the Protocols, to encourage their use, and to create tools open to all archivists and cultural heritage professionals. The SAA Council commends these individuals…When presented with the Protocols in 2008, the SAA Council declined to endorse them…Many of the original criticisms of the Protocols were based in the language of cultural insensitivity and white supremacy. After this period of member feedback, the Council again declined to endorse the Protocols in 2012. The SAA Council acknowledges that endorsement of these Protocols is long overdue. We regret and apologize that SAA did not take action to endorse the Protocols sooner and engage in more appropriate discussion.
This is not unique to the SAA. As Liz Woolcott and Anna Neatrour stated in August 2016 on this very blog, many cataloging elements in the Library of Congress Subject Headings, and similar other classification schemes, are Eurocentric and “do not recognize many Native American tribal designations, languages, or customs”. This was reinforced by the long history of Indigenous dispossession in the U.S., and other similar societies with colonial pasts, and the current reality of those living on reservations, created following genocidal actions which pushed Indigenous people in the U.S. to the margins of society.
There have been some efforts to engage in restitution, with archival records and cultural history used to return “remains, artifacts, memory, and culture to people who have been wronged…and perhaps even provide some healing to the wronged” as then I&A Steering Committee member Steve Duckworth stated in June 2018. In addition, some archivists, like Raymond Frogner, Director of Archives at University of Manitoba’s National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation, have spoken about the “impact of Indigenous thinkers” such as George Hunt on archival theory and practices, at the Archives Association of Ontario conference in May 2017. There were discussions about digital outreach, acquisition, and archival management which interlinked with talk about the colonial past and present of Canada and social justice issues. Such actions by these archivists, and others, are in-line with SAA ethical guidelines, which state that archivists should strive to “respect the diversity found in humanity and advocate for archival collections to reflect that rich complexity.”
Otherwise, other archivists have worked to decolonize their collections or recover Indigenous voices within their vast collections, or proposed ways to empower Indigenous communities through inclusion. In fact, when I wrote about the proposed closure of the Federal Records Center in the Seattle Area, I noted that Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson made filings in federal court, including “almost 600 pages from indigenous peoples…which attest to the value of the Seattle facility and materials which are held there.” Even so, as Jarrett M. Drake noted, no legislation similar to NAGPRA “governs the transfer of materials to descendants of enslaved Africans,” meaning that institutions can keep such remains and artifacts indefinitely. [3] More recently, a present candidate for the SAA Council, Ryan S. Flahive, said that he supports “proactive repatriation of cultural patrimony” to their original communities. He further argued that the SAA should urge predominantly White institutions (PWI) should “reappraise holdings for potential voluntary repatriation”, a stance supported by the Native American Archives Section and the Archival Repatriation Committee.
With this, I am reminded by the line in the 2001 film Atlantis: The Lost Empire by self-defined adventure capitalist Lyle Tiberius Rourke (voiced by James Garner), commander of a group of mercenaries who come to steal a crystal which gives Atlantis, and its people, a life force. He defends his actions to the film’s hero, Milo James Thatch (voiced by Michael J. Fox), a cartographer and linguist cast aside by the Smithsonian Institution for his supposed “hairbrained idea”. Rourke infamously declares that “academics, you never want to get your hands dirty. If you gave back every stolen artifact from a museum, you’d be left with an empty building”. He follows this up by boasting that stealing the crystal would provide a “necessary service to the archaeological community”. Apart from drawing possible parallels to a museum heist scene in Black Panther, with similar themes about stolen artifacts, what Rourke talks about relates more to the interconnectedness of stolen artifacts and the lack of repatriation. Archivists and others in GLAM institutions should not try and become Indiana Jones, taking valuable artifacts and “returning” them to a museum, as they should remain in their places of origin instead.
Coming back to The Owl House, in the final episode, Luz’s friends are “collected”, captured, and manipulated by the Collector, stepping Luz and her friends from their attempt to save Eda and King from the so-called archives. As the episode goes on, it is revealed that archivists were scared of the power of the baby Titans, so the Collector was left alone, and ultimately the Collector becomes their ally-of-convenience. In the end, everyone is safely released from the archives by The Collector, reuniting with their families or anyone who is waiting for them, and everyone gets their happy ending of sorts.The release of people (and beings) from the control of The Collector has some parallels to institutions repatriating their artifacts to their original owners and the Diamonds in Steven Universe dismantling their empires. Neither of these characters is forgiven, but has engage in some penance for their misdeeds instead.
Just as the “collections” of The Collector were returned in The Owl House, allowing them to live out happy lives, repatriation of the thousands Indigenous artifacts and human remains held by renowned institutions should be a top priority, as should be efforts to strengthen NAGPRA so that any institution which does not comply with the law’s terms is penalized with severity.
Notes
[1] The page notes over 9,000 human remains held by University of California, Berkeley, over 6,100 human remains held by Harvard University, over 1,800 human remains held by the American Museum of Natural History, over 2,900 human remains held by the U.S. Department of the Interior, over 7,500 human remains held by the Illinois State Museum, and over 3,500 human remains held by the Tennessee Valley Authority, to name a few institutions.
[2] This page lists the following organizations: American Association for State and Local History, First Archivist Circle, Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs, Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs Resource Centre, Native American Archives Section [SAA], Association of Tribal Archives, Libraries, and Museums, Association of College and Research Libraries, Society of Southwest Archivists, and Cline Library [Northern Arizona University].
[3] Drake, Jarrett Martin (2021). “Blood at the Root,” Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies, Vol. 8, p. 12.
Archivists on the Issues is a forum for archivists to discuss the issues we are facing today. Today’s post comes from Burkely Hermann, Metadata Librarian for the National Security Archive and current I&A Blog Coordinator. There will be spoilers for Kiff and other animated series he will be discussing in this post.
Kiff and Barry are shown the so-called “archive” by Mr. Glarbin in episode 3b of Kiff. which is stereotypically portrayed here as disorganized stack of boxes with no order or organization, which does not reflect reality of archives.
In a recently-aired episode of Kiff, an animated musical comedy series, entitled “Career Fair”, the two protagonists, Barry Buns and Kiff Chatterley (voiced by H. Michael Croner and Kimiko Glenn respectfully), are given a summer job at Table Town’s city hall. They find it boring, believing they are just “pencil-pushers”. In order to achieve quicker results, they cut corners and shred the necessary forms in order to cut through the red tape, completing tasks to help those in the Table Town, such as installing a traffic light and marrying a couple. At the end of their first day, their boss, Glarbin Gloobin (voiced by Steve Little), city manager of Table Town, tells them they are “so good” at filing paperwork that all the forms they “completed” will be filed the next day in the “archive”. The latter is stereotypically portrayed as a somewhat disorganized stack of boxes in another room, which Gloobin describes as “beautiful”. After he leaves for the day, Kiff and Barry try and cover their tracks, deciding, without much thought, to shred every box and piece of paper in the archive with the shredder, resulting in massive record destruction, including vital records, like the town constitution. Eventually, Kiff comes to her senses, realizes they did a bad thing, but instead of confessing, she, and Barry, lie, statig they were robbed. Predictably, this does not work as the shredder explodes, and Gloobin realizes they shredded all the documents. As the episode comes to close, the townspeople thank Kiff and Barry, while Kiff says that city hall is about helping people, instead of “mindless” paperwork, the former employees (who had quit their jobs) come back to work, and the shredded paper continues to rein down like confetti.
Unfortunately, the episode has a bad lesson: repercussions for Kiff and Barry are slim, apart from Gloobin firing them, as there is no accountability for their mass destruction of the city’s paper records. Furthermore, those at city hall clean-up their mess, having the time-consuming job of piecing together the shredded papers, which has become confetti. As a result, the episode’s plot necessitates a focus on the value of preservation, record management, current practices, history of record destruction, and other pop culture depictions which are diametrically opposed to what is shown in Kiff.
Records management in archives, and other institutions, often involves identification, storage, retrieval, and circulation of records. This also necessitates record disposal, defined as records transfer, primarily of noncurrent records, to their final location at an archives or resulting in destruction. It is usually determined on a records retention schedule. Disposal contrasts with record destruction, which the Society of American Archivists (SAA)’ Dictionary of Archives Terminology defines as a disposal process which “results in the obliteration of records.” Kiff and Barry did not follow any process, meaning there was no maceration, but shredding, pain and simple, a form of destruction without abandon. Furthermore, shredding, apart from limits to what can be destroyed and maintenance of secure records storage, has the additional issue of creating paper which cannot be “easily recycled”. Preserving records is important, especially in legal cases. Some even discourage do-it-yourself document shredding. [1]
Historically, shredding of documents has been criticized, especially during ongoing litigation, including accusations of shredding by organizations which push for stronger records retention, like the ACLU, or by elections officials, accused of destroying ballots. Some politicians have even used shredders in order to illustrate their desire to “destroy” a policy of their political opponents. [2] One historical example that sticks out is explained within A People’s History of American Empire: Iranian women piecing together documents shredded by U.S. Embassy employees, prior to Iranian take-over of the embassy in Tehran in November 1979. The takeover began the Iran hostage crisis. The documents found in the embassy revealed information about U.S. foreign policy of supporting the repressive Shah, and published by the Iranian government in 77 volumes entitled Documents from the U.S. Espionage Den. [3]
There have also been some recent examples. For instance, in October 2022, the U.S. Army noted, in a now-deleted post, the destruction of over 19,000 boxes of “expired records…at relatively no cost” in Kasierslautern, Germany, with the records changed into toilet paper. In addition, in April 2022, the OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration) admitted to shredding documents in a coal ash legal case. Advocates, like Tom Blanton of the National Security Archive, have argued that the administration of the former president, who has been called a “paper-shredding present”, had a major problem with record preservation. In Blanton’s view, it went beyond improper shredding, with a “deliberate failure” to create necessary records.
Previously, in 2008, Treasury Department officials shredded FOIA requests improperly (while delaying those same requests), the Bush Administration shredded hard drives in the early 2000s, and thousands of United Nations documents, including those about the Oil-for-Food programme in Iraq, were shredded. Other notable examples include destruction of evidence by the Union Bank of Switzerland showing the company owned stolen property once owned by Jews during the Holocaust, and reported “shredding parties” during the Iran-Contra scandal. [4] The latter included “stacks of memoranda and messages” destroyed by Oliver North as part of the cover-up during the scandal. At present, many municipalities host and/or support paper shredding events for their residents.
Kiff is not alone in having characters engage in record destruction. Hermes Conrad, the resident bureaucrat in Futurama for the Planet Express crew, did so in the Season Six episode “Lethal Inspection”, burning his own former employee file. Hera programmed data destruction in an episode of Star Wars Rebels, “Double Agent Droid,” to prevent the “wrong” people from getting the data (the Empire). In the comics, Jocasta Nu, the stereotypical archivist in Attack of the Clones, purged the files of the Jedi temple archives/library, to prevent the Empire from getting their hands on the records. At the same time, destruction was only implied infamously in Attack of the Clones, requested by Marceline the Vampire Queen in an episode of Adventure Time (it never transpired), and in an episode of TheCrown, it is noted that the German Nazis destroyed many of their records so people wouldn’t be unaware of their misdeeds.
This differs from R2-D2 in the Star Wars franchise who is an unintentional archivist of sorts, as he is never memory wiped. As a result, he remembers all the events through the entire series, which he witnessed, despite the fact he was destroyed at least once. Kiff is diametrically opposed to the emphasis on records preservation in Hilda. Alfur repeatedly explains the value of rules, regulations, and proper filing. Perhaps he would sing the bureaucrat song along with Hermes, who mainly follows the book, apart from record destruction in “Lethal Inspection”. Coming back to Kiff, neither Kiff nor Barry are following the SAA’s core values which encourage expansion of access and usage opportunities for records, promotion of transparency, mitigation of harm, implementing environmentally sustainable techniques for preserving records, and other suggestions. These values further state that archival materials should provide “digital and physical surrogates for human memory”, something which Kiff and Barry blatantly ignored and stamped upon.
Kiff glosses over one of the worst results of document shredding: it is said to be one of the “most effective ways” to protect businesses, individuals, or other organizations by extension, from “its extremely negative effects”. Even so, the episode may have roots in historical reality. The series was created by Lucy Heavens and Nic Smal, who grew up in Cape Town, South Africa. The episode could be referencing burning of tens of thousands of books by the apartheid government in South Africa from 1955 to 1971 in Iscor furnaces, and further shredding, and burning, of “hundreds of archival documents and public records” in the same furnaces in the early 1990s. [5] As the Truth and Reconciliation Commission put it in Volume 1 of their report, the story of apartheid is, “amongst other things, the story of the systematic elimination of thousands of voices that should have been part of the nation’s memory”, which included censorship, banning, confiscation, and other actions.
Even if the episode is based on the the above-mentioned historical reality, the fact that Kiff and Barry are barely punished, with few consequences for their actions, does not send a positive message about the value of record preservation. Furthermore, the stereotype of a dusty, dirty, and unorganized archive is perpetrated, something which harms the profession, its institutions, and archivists themselves. Neither is the value of retention, i.e. the specific amount of time a record is kept, emphasized, since Kiff nor Barry follow any guidance on how to properly shred documents. Hopefully, future series, animated or not, emphasize the vitality of preserving and retaining records instead of what is depicted in Kiff.
1) What was your first experience working with archives?
Growing up in my house, with all of my mom’s research files and genealogy documents! Professionally, though, I first got the spark for archives while I was working as a Production Designer’s image researcher on movies in Hollywood. I spent a lot of time with image files in Los Angeles Public Library, which gave me a window into the concept of Visual Resource Collections. But a turning-point magic moment arrived during a visit to the Santa Anita Racetrack archives while working on the film Seabiscuit. They showed me the original ticket you would buy if you were betting on Seabiscuit to win in 1937, and I felt like I was holding pure gold. Shortly after that experience, my old college friend, with whom I’d worked at the music library for workstudy in college, contacted me and started urging me to go back to school for an MLIS. She insisted that we both needed to join this exciting and growing profession in 2006. And she was right!
2) What is an archival issue that means a lot to you?
There are so many! I think the most important, and one of the first “archivist” thoughts I had before I knew I would end up as one, is that archives and all forms of information (even antelopes, if there are any Briet fans out there) document our existence to the future, even when it is compromised today. In Suzan-Lori Parks’s play The Death of the LastBlack Man in the Whole Entire World, one of the characters repeats variations on a theme throughout the play that touched me deeply. Paraphrased, the character Yes and Greens Black-Eyed Peas Cornbread tells others to write anything important down and put it under a rock, so in the future, they will know we were here, even though they try to make us invisible now. And they will not know who they are unless they know they came from us. [1] When I studied the play as a theater student in college, this concept stung me, and I found my mind wandering back to it again and again, like it was some blaring truth that I needed to follow. Decades later when I went back to school for library and information studies, those words returned to me as an “aha moment” wherein I realized all that I had learned and done in the past was leading me to this profession, where I could be a part of the process to document and preserve the past and the present for the future, whomever and whatever that may be. It always spurs me to ask the questions what are we documenting and why? Who is the author of this history? What voices are silenced by it? How do we ensure that all aspects are represented, especially to people of the future, who will be in a different context? What will they want to know about us?
3) What do you hope to gain by being on the I&A Steering Committee?
I hope to give something back to the profession and to learn to step into the mindset of mid-level professional. Being an archivist is a second career for me, so I’m really passionate about it. I gained immense insight and confidence from my mentors, and I’d like to be part of that next level of professional where I can help be a resource of information, advocacy, and guidance. Our profession is endangered by ignorance of the general public as to what we do and who we are. I’d like to help make “archivist” as much of a household word as “librarian” and to help define the profession away from what Gmail does with your old messages.
4) What can we find you doing outside of the archival profession?
I am always up for a hike and I go crazy for classic cars, so Southern California is a great place for me to live! But I spend the majority of my free time gardening, knitting, crocheting, or doing vintage crossword puzzles. My latest personal craze is making miniature afghan blankets that can either be a dust cover for your turntable or a cozy bed for a cat. I love playing with color and physical crafts, especially now that most of my days are spent with digital spreadsheets!
Notes
[1] Suzan Lori-Parks, “The Death of the Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World,” in The Bedford Introduction to Drama, Third Edition, ed. Lee A. Jacobus (Boston: Bedford Books, a division of St. Martin’s Press, 1997), 1592.
The News Monitoring Research Team works on archives and archivists issues in the news. This post, part of our Research Post series, was written by Steering Committee member and team coordinator Steve Duckworth.
For our last official News Monitoring Team post of the season, I thought I would step out of my role as the Coordinator of the News Team and talk a bit about something from a story that popped up last month. The article, turned up by one of the News Team members, focuses on the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, an “Indian” boarding school in Carlisle, PA that operated from 1879 to 1918.
This struck a chord with me as issues around America’s indigenous peoples and archives and cultural artifacts have been on my mind frequently in my career, ever since my first full-time position with the National Park Service in Alaska and lasting through to today as I work in the Pacific Northwest and hear about projects and programs around the historical mistreatment of these communities (not to mention the similar information coming from Canada). But I had also just read Kate Theimer’s recent post on the Carlisle Indian School and the text of her talk, “Archiving Against the Apocalypse,” for the Canadian-American Archives Conference. I also spent a good chunk of my life living in Philadelphia and Allentown, PA, so a confluence of things held this story in my mind.
While curating an exhibit on public health in the early 20th century last year, I stumbled upon the theory of eugenics, which I’ll admit I hadn’t really ever heard of (and I’ve spent a lot of my life in school). Turns out the U.S., during the later parts of the 1800s and early parts of the 1900s, was really into the idea of creating a purer race of people. Sound familiar? Yeah, American eugenics actually inspired Hitler and that whole Nazi race-purifying thing. Doctors, government workers, and regular Joes alike were all into the idea of weeding out “defective” and “undesirable” traits through controlling who got to reproduce through court-ordered sterilization and segregation, and with “child guidance” clinics that remind me of more recent gay conversion institutions. This didn’t end all that long ago; Oregon’s eugenics board lasted until 1983, having carried out its last sterilization in 1981.
Indian schools were a slightly earlier version of population control. White, European-Americans of the 1800s wanted to assimilate indigenous people into their culture. They thought if they removed youths from their families, language, culture, and traditions, and trained and educated them in European style, they could eventually breed out the “savage” aspects of their people. It was a way of exterminating the indigenous people of their new country that was considered more civil and socially acceptable than all out murder or war. Though, as you can see from recent reports, beatings, illness, and death were all common outcomes for these students.
The Carlisle school was America’s first, off-reservation boarding school, but it wasn’t the last. Twenty six boarding schools were established across the country, along with hundreds of private religious schools. Over 10,000 children attended the Carlisle school alone, with estimates of over 100,000 children total throughout the system. Canada’s similar system, the Residential Schools, lasted into the 1970s and had over 150,000 “students.” (Canada’s system was also more heavily documented and the government has been a lot more public about speaking out about it, most likely due to the unprecedented class-action lawsuit survivors brought against the government.)
So, first eugenics got stuck in my mind, and now I keep learning about more and more ways in which atrocious acts have been committed, for this reason or that (have you listened to the Seeing White podcast series?), which all really boil down to othering certain groups to keep the white people on top – assimilation, cleansing, separation, racial purity, etc. And I think, damn, we humans are really horrible (this, itself, is not really a revelation for me, but more of an expansion).
But humans can also manage to do some good here and there. So, and here I relate it back to archives, it’s painful to learn of this history, but it’s refreshing (in a way) to read stories of how archival records and cultural history are being used to return remains, artifacts, memory, and culture to people who have been wronged by our country (and others) – and perhaps even provide some healing to the wronged. These acts of restitution provide some concrete examples that can be used to influence archival ethics and practices today and perhaps encourage people to look up and out from their lives and small worlds, to see far afield and take in the big picture of all of us on this planet and what we’re doing to each other.
My goal here isn’t so much to bring about change through this short post, but more to add another voice to the education on happenings such as this and to help make connections between what we do in our daily work that could potentially have a huge benefit. Also I want to urge people with these types of historical records (or even more contemporary records), to not hide from the past. Face it and work to better the future.
Resources and additional information
Listed chronologically, starting with the most recent
2018 June 4 “I’ve vowed to finish writing this book by the end of the summer-The Carlisle Indian School: A Photographic History” http://archivesnext.com/?p=4535
Steering Shares are an opportunity to find out more about the I&A Steering Committee. This kick-off post comes from I&A Vice Chair/Chair Elect Courtney Dean, a Project Archivist at the University of California at Los Angeles Library Special Collections.
I&A Vice Chair Courtney Dean
1. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE THING ABOUT YOUR JOB OR THE ARCHIVES PROFESSION?
In my current position at UCLA Library Special Collections, I oversee the day-to-day operations of the Center for Primary Research and Training (CFPRT), an innovative program which pairs graduate students from across campus with special collections projects in their field of expertise. I give the CFPRT scholars a crash course on archival theory, and train them in arrangement, description, and preservation best practices. Often times it’s the first interaction they’ve had with primary sources, and it’s thrilling to watch them realize their projects and hear how their experience in Special Collections directly affects their own research. Aside from the students, I love the strong community of practice among the archivists I work with. We hold informal study groups to expand our skillsets in things like RDA, XML, and born-digital archives. It’s exciting to be constantly learning and surrounded by such smart and passionate colleagues. Finally (last thing!) I’m inspired by the meaningful conversations about issues like transparency, ethics, and privilege that are happening within my unit.
2. WHAT MADE YOU WANT TO JOIN THE I&A STEERING COMMITTEE?
I’m heavily involved in a local professional organization in Los Angeles, the Los Angeles Archivists Collective (LAAC), which I co-founded with some friends of mine a few years ago, and I really enjoy directly interacting with local archivists, archives, and communities. After the recent presidential election though, I felt like I wanted to step up and do more in terms of national advocacy for things like IMLS, NEH, and NEA funding, and raising awareness about the importance of archives in general. I’ve also long admired I&A efforts to spotlight issues like neutrality, climate and environmental data, and #ArchivesSoWhite, which was another big motivating factor for my involvement. I served on one of the News Monitoring teams last year, but this is my first year on the Steering Committee.
3. WHAT IS AN ARCHIVAL ISSUE THAT MEANS A LOT TO YOU?
There are so many issues! As Rachel mentioned, a focus on digital preservation is absolutely essential. Not only does inaction put our existing collections at risk, but bigger issues of government accountability and an inclusive historical record are at stake. I come from a community-oriented service background (in my prior career I worked in community mental health) so issues of accessibility, inclusiveness, and historical silences are also of utmost importance to me. I’m heartened that the profession is finally beginning to acknowledge systemic oppressions and the implications for our collections, access and use, scholarship, collective memory, and the makeup of the field itself. Of course we still have a long, long way to go! Lastly, an issue near and dear to me is the (over)reliance on temp workers in our field. I’ll save that for another post though!
Archivists on the Issues is a forum for archivists to discuss the issues we are facing today. Today’s post comes from Samantha “Sam” Cross, the Assistant Archivist for CallisonRTKL.
If you have an issue you would like to write about for this blog series or a previous post that you would like to respond to, please email archivesissues@gmail.com. Please note that opinions expressed in Archivists on the Issues posts do not indicate an official stance of SAA or the Issues and Advocacy Section.
What I’m proposing isn’t that all podcasts are oral histories, but that podcasts should be considered another avenue of the oral history tradition. Oral histories, as a medium of historical study, have been a boon to historians, researchers, and archivists given the information they provide. Through the recounting of people who have actually lived through and experienced specific events or eras in history, we’ve been better able to flesh out the socio-economic and political nature of lives led that might have been forgotten – unintentionally or otherwise – by the written record.
In the past, however, oral histories were limited by the technology available. Having the right equipment with which to record required money and, unless you worked for a university with a large staff, transcription was a time consuming affair. On the user end, access to tapes and/or transcripts were dictated by institutional policy, which presented its own ethical problems when dealing with marginalized communities.
Technological advancements seem to be, in some cases, the great equalizer. Recording devices with good sound quality are relatively cheap, though most smart phones provide free downloadable apps for recording as well. Editing and transcription software is free to download on the internet and accessibility to audio, video, and transcripts have increased as more collections become digitized. The line between oral historian and podcast host is about as blurred as it can be. So what prevents us from accepting podcasts as a means of doing oral history? Well, I suppose we need to look at what podcasts are and how they’ve carved out their own niche in popular culture.
Podcasts, as a medium, evolved from the soundbite driven interviews of radio and television, but as the technology has improved podcasts have grown into a far more dynamic, narrative driven medium. Part of that narrative includes extensive and, in some cases, intimate interviews with celebrities or well-known public figures. These interviews then provide first-hand accounts of different eras of history and industries such as comedy, Hollywood, and politics. There are literally hundreds of podcasts available to download on iTunes, Soundcloud, Stitcher, etc, and very little stands in the way of participation. If you have a smartphone and a decent wifi signal, then a podcast you can record.
Perhaps that’s where the hesitancy lies, in the ubiquity of podcasts. There’s an overwhelming amount of data and hours of audio to sift through, but can we rely anymore on the hosts or panelists of these programs than we do on actual oral historians? With oral histories, at least there’s a purpose behind it that veils itself in attempting to add supplemental information to the current documented record. Podcasts are entertainment. They’re superfluous and disposable when compared to the weighty task of recording and transcribing the words of active agents who lived through events that shaped our society. And yet, some podcasts inadvertently accomplish the same goal even if that was never their original intent.
I’ve been a long time listener of the WTF with Marc Maron podcast. Granted, when Maron started his show, he didn’t know or anticipate what podcasts would become or where he would land with his listeners, but his transition from enraged comic to engaged interviewer was what got me thinking about the idea of podcasts as oral histories. Specifically episodes 358 and 359 when Maron talked with Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner, respectively. The comedic landscape as we know it began with Brooks and Reiner’s generation and the two are forever linked with the late Sid Caesar and his comedic force of nature. They are also the products of a bygone era of vaudeville and Catskill comedy. And while I understand the showmanship behind interviews for public consumption, the intimacy of a long form conversation shouldn’t be overlooked.
Have Brooks and Reiner provided similar answers to questions over their long history of giving interviews? Yes, but the context of those interviews, which theorists love to extol, are predicated on previous soundbyte driven formats. An appearance on a late night show or an interview in a magazine facilitates short, almost concise answers, which become practiced over time. But when the format expands and the limitations are loosened the results become a completely different animal. There’s also the matter of the host or interviewer’s intention. Again, it adds to the context of the piece. Maron’s goal, ultimately, is to understand the people who visit him in his garage/studio. Citing his own journey of self-awareness, his aim is to talk about what brought the interviewee to the moment of conversation. He tries to go deeper with his guests, sussing out who they are, where they come from, and the environment that shaped them. No audience, no real time constraints, just Maron and whoever’s on the other side of the mic. Historical value may not have been the primary goal, but as a byproduct it’s just as useful.
Podcasts, then, through the archival lens have tremendous potential to act as another form of supplemental material as well as a means by which our own passions might bear fruit. Kate Brenner recounts her revelation regarding the potential of podcasts as tools of oral history while listening to an analysis of an episode of Radiolab:
The episode analyzed a Radiolab episode that I’d heard before, and really enjoyed because it used oral histories. Ostensibly, the point of this episode was that the producer of the piece on German POW camps in Iowa had to learn everything about the subject and then figure out how to whittle it down to a coherent podcast.
But that’s not what I heard.
I heard the story of a woman who was passionate about a subject, did all the research, and made an impeccable case as to why it should be made into a podcast. The dramatic climax of her narrative is getting rejected for the podcast, until she’s in line at security about to fly somewhere and gets a call from Radiolab. They want her to come in immediately to talk about her idea. She ditches her flight and goes to work on her episode.
Podcasts are not oral histories in the sense that hosts or production teams have a clear intention to create them. Instead, podcasts are conversations that provide just as much, if not more, supplemental information that historians and archivists alike can find value. Podcasts don’t have to carry the weight of academia nor do they require permission to be accessed. They are free (mostly) to be consumed but that doesn’t mean they are lacking in the necessary information or context needed to flesh out the historical record. If anything, the more podcasts that are made, the more potential we may have to find voices that might have been lost.
Steering Shares are an opportunity to find out more about the I&A Steering Committee. This end-of-the-year post is from Steering Committee member Alison Stankrauff, Archivist and Associate Librarian at Indiana University South Bend.
What is an example of an elevator pitch you have used concerning your own archives and who was the audience?
I have asked people in the greater South Bend community (known as “Michiana” as we’re so close to the state of Michigan) for materials for our Civil Rights Heritage Center (CRHC) Collections. The CRHC is a university-city partnership with its mission statement detailed as this:
The Civil Rights Heritage Center (CRHC) at Indiana University, South Bend, is committed to the advancement of civil rights and social justice research, education, and outreach, especially in the Michiana region. It fosters empirical and analytical research, sponsors student inquiry and activities and convenes faculty, visiting scholars, policy advocates and others to examine and discuss issues of importance to racial and ethnic minorities, to the poor, gays and lesbians, and to other potential beneficiaries of civil rights advances. The CRHC’s programming work focuses on civil rights education, economic justice, and voting rights.
In the area of research, the CRHC is committed to detailing and documenting the local civil rights history of Northern Indiana, and Michiana, as part of the larger national narrative of Civil Rights Activism among African-Americans, Mexican Americans, and other groups.
I have asked people at CRHC events know that I want their records. I’ve told them that their stories – the stories of the marginalized: the area’s stories of the African American, Latinx, and LGBTQ communities – won’t get told without their voices joining to the chorus.
Give an example of a controversial item or collection piece from your archive (or previous position) and how you dealt with the situation.
We hold the collections of all of our Chancellors of our campus. In our campus hierarchy the Chancellor serves as the head of our campus. Our second Chancellor, who served from 1988 to 1995, was indicted with multiple cases of sexual harassment by several women on campus, workers at several levels. The cases came to the fore in the final years of his tenure. He was, by the end of the court cases, deposed from IU South Bend. Not the way that you want your campus to get in national news! Our collection for this Chancellor hold sensitive communications surrounding the sexual harassment cases.
Through the years I’ve had people asking for the collection for research. As a public university with public collections, they are indeed open for research. That being said, when I get requests to use this collection, I have a conversation – an “interview” if you will – to further ascertain what the researcher/requestor wants to do with the content. I make sure that they have access to its materials accordingly.
What do you think archivists should be focusing on in the future? Where do you see the future of archives?
It’s difficult to choose just one thing for us archivists to focus on! One main thing to me is just how critical it is to make sure that we’re collecting content from marginalized people. Women, African Americans, Latinx, LGBTQ people – just to name a few communities – have had our stories not collected. Our histories and stories can get lost through time. So it’s critical that we sew the gaps in the cloth as we go along. Archivists can make sure that the full representation of our community – with all its “sub” communities – is collected, preserved, documented. So ultimately we can make it accessible.
I want to see more great partnerships between communities, repositories, and associated institutions happen. There are so many different ways that we can as archivists tell the full and complete and fully representative story of history.
I&A Research Teams are groups of dedicated volunteers who monitor breaking news and delve into ongoing topics affecting archives and the archival profession. Under the leadership of the I&A Steering Committee, the Research Teams compile their findings into Research Posts. Each post offers a summary and coverage of an issue. This post, part one of a two-part series, comes from the General News Media Research Team, which monitors the news for issues affecting archivists and archives.
Please be aware that the sources cited have not been vetted and do not indicate an official stance of SAA or the Issues and Advocacy Section.
Protest materials have long found their way into archival repositories, and collecting initiatives such as the gathering of signs from January’s Women’s March are not unsurprising in our currently volatile political climate. While still fraught with their own set of ethical considerations, as was evidenced by Occupy Wall Street archive custody concerns, traditional protest ephemera does not harbor the explicit privacy and legal consequences that have arisen as a result of the increasing online presence of protest movements.
The internet is a richly generative arena where movements are born and developed, either with or without a coincident physical presence. The way it is mobilized for protests can vary–from coordinating and publicizing traditional actions, to communication and information sharing, community building, fundraising, and movement organizing. Its rapid and reactive nature means that the parameters of a movement can be constantly adjusted and redefined, often across social media networks. Social media content by design yields much more information about its creators and can therefore be harvested and analyzed differently than traditional material, and due to its increasing ubiquity, it warrants new conversations where traditional legal and social notions of the public and private domain may no longer be adequate. As the volume and variety of this content grows on an unprecedented scale, so, too, do the tools and methods by which it is subjected to scrutiny.
Curt Ellis, “Woman holds up her fist ,” Preserve the Baltimore Uprising: Your Stories. Your Pictures. Your Stuff. Your History., accessed March 15, 2017.
Legal consequences and privacy issues
In response to this ever-growing body of online material, archivists and archival institutions have been initiating and developing best practices for web archiving projects. Web archiving and data harvesting provide opportunities to study metadata as well as content, in order to better understand the context of creation. For example, researchers may be interested in studying tweets across time, by geographic origin, or as part of a larger network of contacts.
This information is also of interest to law enforcement agencies, some of which have partnered with companies that sell tools for tracking and monitoring social media content culled from Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and other social media companies that offer programs which allow app makers to create third-party tools. One such company, Geofeedia, counts more than 500 such clients and has advertised services that were used by officials in Baltimore to monitor and respond to the protests that followed Freddie Gray’s death in police custody in April 2015. Using such tools, Baltimore County Police Department’s Criminal Intelligence Unit was able to discover and arrest protesters with outstanding warrants by collecting and filtering social media photos through facial recognition software, a practice that has been shown to have serious technical flaws and to disproportionately affect people of color. Such tools are also used to assemble dossiers on targeted individuals as part of a strategy of long-term surveillance, as evidenced in the Cook County Sheriff’s Office records.
Use of social networks by third parties and law enforcement agencies has been met with opposition by many, including activists and the American Civil Liberties Union. Companies including Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram cut ties with Geofeedia last year, according to the Washington Post, and on March 13, Facebook announced that police departments cannot use data to “provide tools that are used for surveillance,” a move that some consider a first step in curbing the online surveillance and targeting of activists and people of color.
Given this context, it is important for archivists to be aware of the potential ramifications of collecting contemporary protest material. For example, lawmakers in several states have recently introduced legislation that would target and criminalize protests, in some cases creating or greatly stiffening existing penalties and in others going so far as to give drivers legal license to hit protesters blocking traffic. Regardless of whether or not such pieces of legislation are passed, their existence is a testament to a political atmosphere that is fraught with serious issues for people who exercise their right to protest. As protest and movement organizing moves to an online and increasingly public sphere, the potential reach of such legislation, in conjunction with increased surveillance and data collection, could expand significantly.
Archivists should also be cognizant that many communities have complicated histories with the legal apparatus of this country. Different movements stem from different contexts, and as such the needs and aims of communities may differ with regards to visibility and their own safety. For the indigenous communities at Standing Rock, for example, the violent response of law enforcement towards protesters is the latest in a long history of dispossession.
Communities of color also often find themselves at the convergence of government surveillance and the rhetoric of legality. Some police departments, which respond to and monitor protests, have formed partnerships with the FBI, DEA, and federal immigration agencies such as ICE. These task forces facilitate information exchange between local officers and federal agencies through data-sharing agreements that provide reciprocal access to local and federal databases. Such partnerships have serious consequences for the activity of targeted communities, whether they are Muslim communities that are subject to surveillance by Joint Terrorism Task Forces, or undocumented and immigrant communities that are fearful of local officers deputized as ICE agents.
Archivists can navigate these concerns through the appraisal and reappraisal of their roles and documentation strategies, and by opening dialogues about consent. One model for ethical collecting could be the solicitation of community materials via online digital platforms. In A People’s Archive of Police Violence in Cleveland, for example, professional archivists worked in conjunction with community members to develop “a safe and secure space to share any testimony, documents, or accounts that narrate or reflect on encounters or effects of police violence in their lives and communities.” In other words, members of the community self-select what to contribute, while professional archivists serve to make that material accessible.
Harvesting does not need to be inherently problematic, however. In fact, ethical concerns can inform the development of technologies themselves. DocNow, a collaborative project between the University of Maryland, University of California at Riverside, and Washington University in St. Louis, has created a suite of tools for working with Twitter data related to Black Lives Matter and other social justice actions. As part of their mission they explicitly affirm, “a strong commitment to prioritizing ethical practices when working with social media content, especially in terms of collection and long-term preservation. This commitment extends to Twitter’s notion of honoring user intent and the rights of content creators.”
A recent American History Association article by Kritika Agarwal further acknowledges technology’s potential to dismantle problematic archival constraints and to “rectify injustices associated with historic collection and archiving practices.” The article cites collaborative content management system Murkutu, which allows indigenous communities to limit access in accordance with community practice, as another example of a digital tool that places ethics at the forefront.
Issues of narrative and interpretation
In any collecting effort, archivists must consider whose stories are being preserved and why. As has been pointed out previously here, historically repositories tended to focus on rehashing, and thus elevating, hegemonic narratives. While now there is a greater acknowledgement of the power in appraisal, description, and access decisions made by archivists, and the position of privilege these often come from, issues of representation still persist.
A recent thread on the Women Archivists Section listserv spoke to issues of counter-narrative in the Women’s March on Washington Archives Project, specifically concerns over actively trying to document voices of women who chose not to participate, and the tension between respecting “intentional archival silence” and including a variety of voices in oral histories and other event documentation (Danielle Russell, e-mail message, February 15, 2017). However, narratives and collections no longer need to be limited by traditional single repository/project models. As WArS co-chair Stacie Williams pointed out, “Let’s not assume that they don’t want to be a part of the larger narrative happening here, however well-meaning our intent as archivists; they may have their own ideas for how they want to be represented.” (e-mail message, February 15, 2017)
While digital collecting brings with it a host of new challenges such as security and privacy, it also carries the potential to create tools and projects that possess community-centric values. These are not mutually exclusive imperatives. As Jarrett Drake stated in his #ArchivesForBlackLives talk, “We have an opportunity before us to transform archive-making, history-making, and memory-making into processes that are radically inclusive and accountable to the people most directly impacted by state violence.” Now more than ever, archivists need to consider the ethical ramifications of our work.
A list of tools and related bibliography will be in the next post.
This post is courtesy of the General News Media Research Team, and in particular Courtney Dean and Lori Dedeyan. The General News Media Team is: Courtney Dean, Lori Dedeyan, Audrey Lengel, Sean McConnell, and Daria Labinsky, team leader.
If you are aware of an issue that might benefit from a Research Post, please get in touch with us: archivesissues@gmail.com.
Steering Sharesare an opportunity to find out more about the I&A Steering Committee. This post is from Daria Labinsky, an archivist at the National Archives in St. Louis, who works primarily with 20thcentury military personal data records. The Mid-Year Steering Share was developed to discuss projects currently active or recently completed, either personal or professional.
In my first Steering Share, I mentioned that one of my greatest concerns is the deliberate or accidental creation of archival silences by record creators and keepers. When I wrote that post, I did not foresee how relevant this concern would become. Tweets that may be federal records are being deleted, and White House staff may be using private email accounts and encryption/deletion software to conduct government business.
And it’s possible (probable?) that efforts to hide or destroy information concerning the operations and motives of the administration will only increase. As the group Concerned Archivists has pointed out in A Statement to the Archival Community, the president’s corporations destroyed emails in defiance of court orders before he was elected.
The Federal Records Act states, “Electronic messages created or received in a personal account meeting the definition of a Federal record must be forwarded to an official electronic messaging account within 20 days.” Likewise, the Presidential Records Act, states that the president, vice president, or member of their immediate staff may not create or send a presidential or vice presidential record using a non-official electronic message account unless they copy it to an official account or resend it via an official account within 20 days.
Some of the president’s tweets on his personal account, but not all, have been retweeted on @POTUS, the official account.
As for the deleted tweets, under 44 U.S. Code § 2209 the president could argue that they are personal records of “purely private or nonpublic character which do not relate to or have an effect upon the carrying out of the constitutional, statutory, or other official or ceremonial duties of the President.”
Shontavia Johnson, professor of intellectual property law at Drake University, offers a well written and thorough dissection of the relevant issues in “Donald Trump’s tweets are now presidential records.” She closes with, “To create a full digital picture of Trump’s presidency, we may have to rely on the screenshots from private citizens or others.” Entities such as Pro Publica, whose Politwoops is capturing deleted tweets to the best of its ability, and the Internet Archive, which launched the Trump Archive to collect televised material, are among those answering her call. While these wouldn’t be federal records covered under the laws pertaining to them, they are admirable attempts to keep history from vanishing.
There are also efforts under way by public officials to fight potential historical silences. Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) introduced a bill to strengthen federal records laws. Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), who co-chairs the Congressional Transparency Caucus, has emphasized the need to demand transparency from the presidential administration as well as from Congress. Sens. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) and Tom Carper (D-Del.) are investigating whether any laws were broken by administration staffers who were using the private email accounts.
It’s sad that any of this has to be dealt with in the first place, but it is refreshing that vigilance is not defined by party lines. The efforts of these and other people and organizations give me hope that we can turn the silence into noise.
The contents of this message are Daria’s personally and do not necessarily reflect any position of the Federal government or the National Archives and Records Administration.
Issues & Advocacy 