Tag: Indigenous people

Archivists on the Issues: The Collector, Indigenous repatriation, and archival ethics

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.

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The fate of history in the balance: The Seattle Federal Records Center still under threat

Archivists on the Issues is a forum for archivists to discuss the issues we are facing today. The following is from Burkely Hermann, recent graduate of the University of Maryland – College Park’s graduate program in Library and Information Science, with a concentration in Archives and Digital Curation.

On February 16, John C. Coughenour, a Reagan-appointee and Senior Judge of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington, blocked the sale of the National Archives facility at Seattle, one of the Federal Records Centers (FRC) in the U.S. with a preliminary injunction. This ended the movement of records from the facility to FRCs in Missouri and California, many of which are “un-digitized records.” He called the situation a “public relations disaster” of the Public Buildings Reform Board (PBRB), the entity which proposed the sale, and said that the PBRB had “a stunning lack of appreciation of the issues” of indigenous people. While the attorney generals of Washington State and Oregon applauded the decision, as did indigenous people, genealogists, U.S. Senator Maria Cantwell, and others, the fight is not over. The Stranger said that history “requires defending in the present,” The Cut argued that the fate of the Seattle FRC “remains undecided,” and MyNorthwest noted there is “more potential trouble” in the future if noting about the facility changes going forward. On February 18, local Seattle leaders and the governor of Oregon both wrote President Biden, calling on him to stop the sale of the facility. Even with the injunction, it is short-lived, meaning that the facility remains under threat. As such, it is important to once again, as I noted in February and November of last year, to explain the negative impact the closure of this facility will have on those in the Pacific Northwest and in the U.S. as a whole.

Over the past year, there have been legal efforts to delay the closure. Kim Wyman, the Secretary of State of Washington State, began meeting with the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) and other stakeholders, in hopes of brokering a solution to keep the archival materials, which document “history across the Pacific Northwest” in the state of Washington. At the same time, Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson made filings in federal court, including the recent lawsuit which included almost 600 pages from indigenous peoples, individuals, and interested groups which attest to the value of the Seattle facility and materials which are held there. If the “nearly million” boxes of archival materials from the facility were moved to Missouri and California as planned, access to records about Asian American history would be made more difficult, as would records that relate to the “cultural preservation, history and treaty rights” of various indigenous nations in the Pacific Northwest. Moving the records to facilities in those states would make them less publicly accessible, destroying one of the “wellsprings” from which the “collective memory” of the region and nation is formed, as argued in the case in the amicus brief by the Korematsu Center. A recent successful lawsuit filed by Ferguson in early January, joined by 29 indigenous groups, and historic community and preservation groups, to stop the relocation and sale of the Seattle FRC, explains the problem succinctly:

“This action shows a callous disregard for the people who have the greatest interest in being able to access these profoundly important records…The facility contains the DNA of our region. It provides public access to permanent records created by Federal agencies and courts in Alaska, Idaho, Oregon, and Washington…the National Archives at Seattle is the only property among those the PBRB recommended for sale that has profound importance to the region in which it is situated and is regularly used by members of the public…These irreplaceable archives are primarily un-digitized and do not exist elsewhere.”

The closure of the facility would violate NARA’s own principles to preserve and provide access to U.S. records and document U.S. history, especially those documents essential to U.S. government actions, rights of U.S. citizens, and any other records which “provide information of value to citizens.” It also runs afoul of NARA’s commitment to drive “openness, cultivate public participation” and strengthen U.S. democracy through “public access to high-value government records.” That same commitment states that NARA will lead the “archival and information professions to ensure archives thrive in a digital world.” That seems unlikely since only about 1% of the NARA’s record holdings are digitized and even less than 1% of presidential library records have been put online.

Furthermore, moving the records from Seattle to the FRCs in California, whether in Riverside or in San Francisco, and St. Louis, Missouri, would disregard the core values of archivists outlined by the Society of American Archivists. These core values state that archivists have a duty to foster greater access and use to records, maintain records which allow “contemporary and future entities” to seek accountability, serve as responsible “stewards for primary sources,” and root their “ethics of care that prioritizes sustainable practices and policies” when it comes to archival duties. The “boxes of information” within the Seattle FRC, highlighted by one local Seattle reporter, Matthew Smith, would be made less accessible if the records were moved elsewhere in the country. If the Seattle FRC is closed, it will be a sad day for archives, records, and preservation of U.S., indigenous, and community history.

Although the closure of the Seattle FRC has been halted by Judge Coughenour, this is only a temporary measure. In the short-term, you could contact the management team of NARA, especially chief archivist David Ferriero (david.ferriero@nara.gov), deputy chief archivist Debra Steidel Wall (debra.wall@nara.gov), and Chief Operating Officer William J. Bosanko (william.bosanko@nara.gov), and the PBRB at fastainfo@pbrb.gov, to express your opposition to the closure, while calling on President Biden to follow the judge’s decision and keep the facility open. In the long term, NARA needs increased funding and you can use the information put together by the Archival Researchers Association to contact your members of Congress to push for legislation which would increase the agency’s budget.

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Archivists on the Issues: Archives and the Rural-Urban Divide

Archivists on the Issues is a forum for archivists to discuss the issues we are facing today. The following post is from Bradley J. Wiles, a PhD student in Information Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, School of Information Studies. 

In recent years, the fate of rural American communities has been prominently featured in national press coverage and soul-searching public discourse about the United States’ changing social, economic, and demographic realities. Rural communities, we have often heard, have failed to adapt to the new global economy and suffer from irreversible brain drain; they are close-minded, cultural wastelands characterized by aging populations and despair-induced morbidity; the biggest incentive they offer to would-be transplants is cheap property and good but under sourced school systems. Urban and suburban communities, by contrast, are growing steadily and have been for decades. They possess in abundance the desirable quality-of-life amenities and economic opportunities that rural communities lack, and examples abound of renewal and persistence in large cities previously written off by critics of contemporary urban policy. The biggest losers in this comprehensive demographic and economic reshuffling appear to be remote agricultural communities. Although this narrative is generally supported by the available evidence, the factors driving rural decline are complicated and often the narrative fails to capture this complexity.

So much of the recent decline narrative about rural America is related to demographic and economic trends extending from the Farm Crisis of the 1980s. Numerous writings have detailed the collusion between government, food conglomerates, and the financial sector to push maximum production and corporate models of efficiency throughout the entire American agricultural system. Unfortunately, these efforts brought about a perfect storm of conditions that resulted in massive bankruptcies and property foreclosures, rural suicide levels higher than in the Great Depression of the 1930s, and the decimation of the family farm system that had been a cornerstone of rural life for over a century. Although the rural-to-urban population shift was well underway by the 1980s, this trend accelerated in all subsequent economic downturns and became virtually irreversible in the wake of the Great Recession. Similarly, rural poverty has equaled or exceeded that of urban areas for decades, and the recovery from the Great Recession has mostly bypassed rural communities, especially those in remote and sparsely populated areas. Recent reference statistics from the United States Department of Agriculture on rural recovery show that the urban-rural poverty gap has widened since the end of the recession, with employment in rural areas still not up to pre-recession levels and overall income growing at a much slower rate than non-rural locations. Additionally, the majority of remote agricultural and micropolitan areas have lost significant population since 2010, a reality that is increasingly both the cause and result of widespread economic woes.

Some recent analyses suggest that the rural population decline is a relative measure that is more reflective of the changing designations of areas and communities from rural to suburban or urban. Indeed, in some areas with remarkable geographical features or that are accessible to urban amenities, rural areas have experienced a net population growth. However, remote rural areas have experienced a near fatal combination of declining in-migration, increasing out-migration, and lower natural replacement levels related to resident fertility and aging. Lower fertility rates and higher average ages exacerbate resource-depleted remote rural areas that already have trouble attracting adequate health care services, funding public works, and providing other basic needs for its residents. Because of larger economic trends that afford more opportunities in cities and suburbs, young people who grow up in rural communities are less likely to move back once they have left. Those who never leave or who do return often find themselves in settings that are ill-prepared to nurture families, develop human capital, and take advantage of the experience and skills that these people bring to the community.

Despite the overarching demographic and socioeconomic trends, rural residents are generally optimistic about their lives and futures in their communities. According to recent surveys conducted by the Harvard Opinion Research Program, the majority of rural Americans hold negative views about their local economy and a large portion experience financial insecurity, but they also feel engaged in their communities and are hopeful that most issues can be corrected in the near future. The surveys identify a host of problems related to employment, housing, substance abuse, health care, and social isolation but respondents generally expressed appreciation for the safety and quality of life in their communities. Of course, the relative level of satisfaction likely has as much to do with the racial, cultural, and economic background of the survey’s respondents. The study reported more difficulties from members of racial or ethnic minority groups and people with disabilities living in these communities, including a significant discrepancy between how minorities and non-minorities view discrimination and general treatment of non-majority residents.

This blinkered view of rural America–both from its residents and from those observing at a distance–is likely what makes the real problems of decline seem so intractable. Certainly it contributes to the variance of the narrative based on where it is coming from. What emerges from countless books, reports, policy papers, articles, opinion pieces, and blog entries is subject to interpretation through a variety of political, social, and cultural filters. On the one hand, it is easy to believe that rural America is doomed, especially the really hard-hit areas that cannot seem to catch a break. On the other hand, there are many indications of resilience and a willingness of these communities to adjust, adapt, and fight on despite the odds. For many people, both urban and rural, geography is destiny and the ability to stay, leave, or return is largely a matter of relative means and privilege. The affective impact of the narrative often becomes one of cautionary wistfulness: what do we lose as a country when such a significant part of it is clearly threatened by trends we understand but appear to have no power to control?  How bad does it have to get before we muster the political will for substantive collective action to fix things? With few exceptions, the consensus around the narrative seems to be that rural America is worth saving, but there is little agreement about how this might be accomplished without further enabling the urbanization trends that harm remote rural areas in the first place.

Robert Wuthnow described how the rural experience manifests in a patchwork of moral communities throughout the country centered around education, faith, and work, and embodied in the disappearing rural institutions of the schoolhouse, church, and farmstead.[1] These moral communities are bound by common experience and values developed across generations, which helps them weather disruptions and adapt to change. However, the ability of communities to exist in the relative autonomy and independence of previous eras is rapidly disintegrating and many of the resulting changes are unwelcome. A recurring theme throughout rural American  history–in areas entirely settled by outsiders–is the resistance to newcomers. Although the demographic composition of rural communities varies throughout the United States, with the exception of Native American reservations and other anomalous communities, rural residents tend to be white and of European descent, with increasing numbers of people from Latin America settling into these areas on a temporary or permanent basis. This growing diversity in rural America represents one of the clearest links between the urban and rural cultural dichotomy, which, in combination with language and other cultural differences, engenders a potent strain of identity-based resentment among the majority population. Ugly and violent distortions of traditional white masculinity have been present for decades in rural America, but its recent outward activity is mostly relegated to the political fringes.

However, American history is full of examples of community identity being tied to and expressed through political activity, and as the real or perceived impact of decline advances, a more rigid political landscape across rural America appears to be developing. According to Jon Lauck, the 2016 election offered evidence of a growing rural identity or consciousness that seeks less to highlight issues important to its communities, than to cast themselves in opposition to the interests in Washington D.C., New York City, Hollywood, and other urban areas that have appeared to ignore their plight and assist their demise.[2] This seems to be driven by a last-stand mentality, a final striking out against the enemies of a way of life that was at one time the defining model of the American experiment. Thus, the decline narrative finds rural communities looking backward and preoccupied with capturing the essence, if not the substance, of lifeways that have passed. The prospect of actual annihilation increasingly overshadows the symbolic annihilation or misrepresentation that these communities have always experienced to some degree, if not to the exaggerated extent that some political opportunists claim. To many communities and their inhabitants, the current moment represents a historical tipping point, made more real by the ongoing upheaval of the COVID-19 pandemic, the overdue reckoning on racial justice, the possibility of a long recession, and the certainty of a contentious national election.

So what does this mean for archives and archivists? In researching her memoir of growing up poor in rural Kansas, Sarah Smarsh refers to the difficulty of locating adequate resources “to piece together a family history from the ill-documented chaos that poverty begets.”[3] Smarsh’s account spans the Farm Crisis years to present day and surfaces important issues around the lack of understanding of marginal communities that seem, on the surface, to be adequately represented in the public consciousness. However, the representation of the rural poor–regardless of what other intersectional identity categories they embody–in archives and other collecting institutions is equally problematic. Memory and cultural institutions have long documented agriculture, agribusiness, small towns, and rural life to some degree, but this tends to focus on official records and notable or powerful residents who are almost always men. As such, the stories of working poor, women, minority groups, immigrants, non-mainstream subcultures, and others lacking political, social, and economic capital are typically lost through neglect, hostility, or indifference. Anne Effland attributes this lack of historical understanding to the limited scope given to the domain of what we consider to be rural, which is undoubtedly reflected in the documentation of rural communities.[4] Certainly nowadays “rural” no longer equates strictly to “farming,” and it has not for some time now. Understanding the complex identities and issues associated with the decline of rural communities requires archival efforts that acknowledge the political, demographic, and socioeconomic variation in and among those communities.

But even with the archives profession turning more toward community focused approaches to research and practice, rural communities have been largely absent from the disciplinary literature. Searches for articles in all major archival studies publication databases turned up scant reportage on documenting rural communities, subjects, issues, or historical trends, even in the region-specific journals. This sentiment was captured in a panel session called “Documenting Flyover Land” for the Midwest Archives Conference annual meeting in 2018, which sought to highlight specific archival projects related to the rural Midwest. In the introduction to the session, panel chair Christina Hansen spoke about the urban bubble that even most Midwesterners live in suddenly bursting after the 2016 election results.[5] What was described by many pundits and politicos (and certainly many liberal-learning archivists) as the horrific outcome of resentment-based politics only partially reflected the reality; it also signalled something deeper about rural America and its desire to make its voice heard. It should also have signaled to archivists that the call for a truly representative record and profession is disingenuous if the rural perspective continues to be pushed aside in our work and discussions. The response from archivists is yet to be determined.

Fostering a sense of place, representation, and belonging may not be enough to reverse decades of unfavorable trends, but memory institutions have a distinct role to play in how rural communities conceive of themselves in various regional, national, and global contexts. As such, these institutions have an opportunity to exert an affective and intellectual influence on their communities, grounded in shared history and experience, as its members look toward their uncertain individual and collective futures. By helping communities understand, document, and celebrate their past, archives and other memory institutions can serve as change agents that provide reassurance of a community’s role in its own destiny. By providing an outlet to and for information, education, and culture they can help these communities articulate their stories and values, and help ease the transition to different modes of living. And another big transition is already underway, whether or not anyone involved is ready.

[1] Wuthnow, R. (2018). The left behind: Decline and rage in rural America. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press.

[2] Lauck, J. K. (2017). Trump and the Midwest: The 2016 presidential election and the avenues of Midwestern historiography. Studies In Midwestern History, 3(1), 1-24.

[3] Smarsh, S. (2018). Heartland: A memoir of working hard and being broke in the richest country on earth. New York: Scribner.

[4] Effland, A. B. W. (2000). When rural does not equal agricultural. Agricultural History, 74(2), 489-501.

[5] Hansen, C., Anderson, M., Beckey, J., Chumachenko, V., & Dunn, R. (2018, March). Documenting flyover land. In C. Hansen (Chair), Blurring boundaries, crossing lines: The 2018 Midwest Archives Conference annual meeting. Panel session conducted at the meeting of the Midwest Archives Conference, Chicago, Illinois.

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ICYMI: Society of California Archivists Annual General Meeting

Our ICYMI series provide summaries of presentations, publications, webinars, and other educational opportunities that are of interest to I&A members. 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. The following is from Rachel Mandell, I&A’s past-chair and Metadata Librarian at the USC Digital Library.

queen-mary_02

 

Last month I attended the Society of California Archivists Annual General Meeting, which was held in Long Beach, California from April 24-27, 2019. I found much of the program to be of interest to our Issues & Advocacy members as many of the presentations and events were focused on inclusivity and diversity. The reception for the event was held on the Queen Mary ocean liner, which was fun for archivists and ghosts alike.

        One of the highlights of the conference was Michelle Caswell’s plenary discussing a feminist standpoint appraisal of archival materials. She argued that instead of continuing to allow historically dominant perspectives of what should, and should not, be considered of significant archival value, we ought to adopt a new way of appraising archival materials. The historically dominant perspective– which favors white, English-speaking, straight, men—continues to dominate when archivists from oppressed communities are left out of appraisal discussions and policies. What is even more likely than archivists from the underrepresented or oppressed perspectives being left out of the conversation, is archivists’ attempt to achieve a “value neutral” view of archival materials. Professor Caswell completely dismantles this belief that neutrality can be achieved and adds that this goal of neutrality in fact reinforces the current, oppressive structure.  Boom! I am so inspired to read forthcoming publications and eventually put into practice a new set of questions that we need to ask ourselves when conducting archival appraisal.

        Another exciting event that I want to highlight was the Labor Brown Bag lunch! In the last year, Issues and Advocacy has been very focused on labor issues faced by archivists. SCA is also joining the conversation! This brown bag lunch was an informal discussion and brainstorming session about forming a new SCA working group to monitor and address ongoing labor issues.

        Other talks related to inclusivity and diversity included:

“Building Belonging: Strategies for Diverse and Inclusive Collection Development, Inreach, Outreach, and Instruction”     
Zayda Delgao, Sonoma County Library
Robin M. Katz, University of California, Riverside
Craig Simpson, Son Jose State University

“Putting it Out There: Engaging Communities and Enhancing Access to LGBT Collections”

“Campfire: Practicing Inclusive Archival Description”
Noah Geraci, University of California, Riverside
Cyndi Shein, University of Nevada, Las Vegas

“Empowering Indigenous Communities through Inclusion”
Kelsey Martin
Stefani Baldivia, California State University, Chico
Celestina Castillo, Occidental College
Lylliam Posadas

“No Reprocessing Without Representation! Discovering Hidden Narratives During Routine Work”
Linh Gavin Do, Go For Broke National Education Center
Jamie Henricks, Japanese American National Museum
Lauren Longwell, Loyola Marymount University
Kate Wilson, Saint Mary’s College of California

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News Highlights: 2018 June

The I&A News Monitoring Research Team has compiled this list of recent news stories relating to archives, archivists, archival issues, and archival representations. This list was curated by SAA Issues & Advocacy News Monitoring Team, which includes Dana Bronson, Rachel Cohen, Samantha Cross, Shaun Hayes, and Beth Nevarez; it is managed by Steve Duckworth. More links and information are available in this month’s Google doc.

Acquisition, Preservation, & Access

Archival Finds & Stories

Digital Archives, Technology, & the Web

Exhibits & Museums

Human & Civil Rights, Equality, & Health

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News Monitoring Team: Indian Schools and Historical Othering

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

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News Highlights: 2018 May

The I&A News Monitoring Research Team has compiled this list of recent news stories relating to archives, archivists, archival issues, and archival representations. This list was curated by SAA Issues & Advocacy News Monitoring Team, which includes Dana Bronson, Rachel Cohen, Samantha Cross, Shaun Hayes, and Beth Nevarez; it is managed by Steve Duckworth. More links and information are available in this month’s Google doc.

 

Acquisition, Preservation, & Access

Archival Finds & Stories

Exhibits & Museums

Human & Civil Rights, Equality, & Health

Security & Privacy

The Profession

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News Highlights 2018 February

The I&A News Monitoring Research Team has compiled this list of recent news stories regarding topics of relevance to archives and archivists. This list was curated by SAA Issues & Advocacy News Monitoring Team, which includes Dana Bronson, Rachel Cohen, Samantha Cross, Shaun Hayes, Ryan Leimkuehler, Beth Nevarez, and Chloé Pascual; it is managed by Steve Duckworth.

View the full list of news stories online.

Acquisition, Preservation, & Access

  1. Sir Isaac Newton’s groundbreaking papers to become UNESCO heritage, https://www.zmescience.com/science/physics/isaac-newton-unesco-heritage-01122017/
  2. Trump Officials Want to Charge More Money to Access Public Records—Despite Fewer Requests, https://gizmodo.com/trump-officials-want-to-charge-more-money-to-access-pub-1822974323
  3. UC Berkeley Uses Optical Scanning to Recover Indigenous Voices from Wax Cylinders, https://hyperallergic.com/397995/wax-cylinder-optical-scanning-uc-berkeley/

Archival Finds & Stories

  1. George Washington’s hair found inside New York library book, https://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2018/02/15/George-Washingtons-hair-found-inside-New-York-library-book/4491518717744/
  2. In Switzerland, dismay as papers on secret Cold War army vanish, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-swiss-paramilitary/in-switzerland-dismay-as-papers-on-secret-cold-war-army-vanish-idUSKBN1FR1OQ
  3. Oldest ‘tattoo art’ discovered on Ancient Egyptian mummies, https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/02/health/egyptian-mummy-tattoos-duplicate-2/index.html

Climate & Emergency Preparedness

  1. Vermont Agency Denies Environmentalists Access to Runoff Rules Draft, https://www.sevendaysvt.com/OffMessage/archives/2018/02/13/vermont-agency-denies-environmentalists-access-to-runoff-rules-draft

Digital Archives, Technology, & the Web

  1. How Google Has Quietly Revolutionized Document Editing, https://slate.com/technology/2018/02/google-docs-have-quietly-revolutionized-document-editing.html

Exhibits & Museums

  1. ‘Access+Ability’ exhibit showcases designs for, and by, those with disabilities, https://www.cnn.com/2018/02/21/health/disability-design-cooper-hewitt-new-york/index.html
  2. ‘Blank Panther’ raises difficult questions in museum community, http://www.baltimoresun.com/entertainment/movies/bs-fe-black-panther-museums-20180227-story.html

Human & Civil Rights, Equality, & Health

  1. 10 lesser-known Black History Month sites across America, https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/black-history-month-sites-america/index.html
  2. One Syrian’s brave moment, https://www.cnn.com/videos/tv/2018/02/03/one-syrians-brave-moment.cnn
  3. Polish minister backs call for ‘Polocaust’ museum, https://www.cnn.com/2018/02/21/europe/poland-minister-backs-polocaust-museum-intl/index.html
  4. Rewriting Canada’s Memory Banks: Archivists ‘Decolonize’ Collections, http://nationalpost.com/pmn/news-pmn/canada-news-pmn/rewriting-canadas-memory-banks-archivists-decolonize-collections

Security & Privacy

  1. Lost and found: Incredible works discovered, https://www.cnn.com/style/gallery/lost-and-found-art-gallery/index.html
  2. Stolen work by famed painter Degas found in bus, https://www.cnn.com/2018/02/23/world/stolen-degas-painting-found-bus-intl/index.html
  3. Man Accused of Breaking Off Terra-Cotta Warrior’s Thumb for Souvenir, https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/michael-rohana-terra-cotta-warrior-thumb_us_5a8b2fd9e4b0117adf70ea06
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News Highlights, 2018 January

The I&A News Monitoring Research Team has compiled this list of recent news stories regarding topics of relevance to archives and archivists. View the full list of news stories online.

Acquisition, Preservation, & Access

  1. “Former Defense Secretary Rumsfeld Thought War on Terror Would Be Easily Won” (FOIA and the National Security Archive)
    https://www.npr.org/2018/01/30/581930133/former-defense-secretary-rumsfeld-thought-war-on-terror-would-be-easily-won
  2. “Inside the Battle for Arthur Miller’s Archive”
    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/09/arts/arthur-miller-archive-ransom-center.html
  3. “White House intends to destroy data from voter fraud commission”
    https://www.cnn.com/2018/01/10/politics/voter-fraud-commission-data/index.html
  4. “How a Library Handles a Rare and Deadly Book of Wallpaper Samples”
    https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/shadows-from-the-walls-of-death-book

Archival Finds & Stories

  1. “They spoke out against immigrants. So she unearthed their own immigrant ancestors”
    https://www.cnn.com/2018/01/24/us/immigration-resistance-genealogy-jennifer-mendelsohn-trnd/index.html
  2. “The Forgotten History of Black Women Protesting Sexual Assault”
    https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/the-forgotten-history-of-black-women-protesting-sexual_us_5a4e29dee4b0d86c803c7c42

Digital Archives, Technology, & the Web

  1. “Saving Gawker and Alt-Weeklies from Deletion.”
    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/01/business/media/gawker-archives-press-freedom.html
  2. “Google App Goes Viral Making an Art Out of Matching Faces to Paintings”
    https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/01/15/578151195/google-app-goes-viral-making-an-art-out-of-matching-faces-to-paintings

Exhibits & Museums

  1. “A Diary from a Gulag Meets Evil with Lightness”
    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/03/arts/design/gulag-museum-moscow-diary.html
  2. “Haslla Art World: Part museum, part hotel”
    https://www.cnn.com/videos/travel/2018/01/31/haslla-art-world-gangwon-south-korea.cnn
  3. “Super Bowl tourists will see Holocaust photo exhibit at Minneapolis airport”
    https://forward.com/news/breaking-news/392996/super-bowl-tourists-will-see-holocaust-photo-exhibit-at-minneapolis-airport/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Main

Human & Civil Rights, Equality, & Health

  1. “How to Save the Memories of the Egyptian Revolution”
    https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/01/an-internet-archive-rekindles-the-egyptian-revolutions-spirit/551489/
  2. “‘There Are Higher Laws’: Inside the Archives of an Illegal Abortion Network”
    https://splinternews.com/there-are-higher-laws-inside-the-archives-of-an-illega-1822280179
  3. “Archives chronicle decades of Baha’i persecution in Iran”
    http://www.newscenter1.tv/story/37305919/archives-chronicle-decades-of-bahai-persecution-in-iran
  4. “‘They’ve been invisible’: Seattle professor studies role of black grandmothers in society”
    https://www.seattletimes.com/life/lifestyle/theyve-been-invisible-seattle-professor-studies-role-of-black-grandmothers-in-society/
  5. Trump Administration Skews Terror Data to Justify Anti-Muslim Travel Ban
    https://theintercept.com/2018/01/16/trump-administration-skews-terror-data-to-justify-anti-muslim-travel-ban/
  6. “The Troubling Origins of the Skeletons in a New York Museum” (Thousands of Herero people died in a genocide. Why are Herero skulls in the American Museum of Natural History?)
    https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-troubling-origins-of-the-skeletons-in-a-new-york-museum
  7. “‘Solicitor-client privilege’ keeping 98-year-old document on sick First Nations children under wraps”
    http://www.cbc.ca/news/indigenous/archives-secret-document-indigenous-children-removal-hospital-1.4513267

Security & Privacy

  1. “The Art of Crime”
    https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/the-art-of-crime_us_5a5e7a28e4b0c40b3e59752e
  2. “Historian Pleads Guilty to Theft of Government Records from the National Archives”
    http://historynewsnetwork.org/article/167977

The Profession

  1. “Curating Band-Aids, Both Modern and Vintage”
    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/19/jobs/curating-band-aids-modern-vintage.html
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ICYMI: Archives Association of Ontario Annual Meeting 2017

Our ICYMI series provide summaries of presentations, publications, webinars, and other educational opportunities that are of interest to I&A members. 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. The following is from Sara Janes, University Archivist for Lakehead University, Ontario.

The 2017 conference of the Archives Association of Ontario was held on the University of Toronto Campus, April 26-28. The theme, “Come Together: Meaningful Collaboration in a Connected World,” felt relevant to the participants as we discussed ways to work with each other and with the public to better support archives and communities across the province.

Focus on decolonization and Indigenous issues

Decolonization and indigenous issues were a significant theme, particularly as archives are beginning to respond to the Calls to Action of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) and are engaging with Canada 150 celebrations. In one plenary session, Michael Etherington, of the Native Canadian Centre of Toronto, spoke about those calls to action, and the frequent disconnect between colonial institutions and Indigenous people and communities; in the other, Raymond Frogner, Director of Archives at University of Manitoba’s National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation, spoke about the impact of Indigenous thinkers such as George Hunt on archival theory and practices.

Responses to the TRC, engaging with Canada’s colonial past and present, and social justice issues were well represented throughout the conference, and these themes were often tied in with discussions around acquisition, archival management, and digital outreach, as well as working groups formed within various organizations.

Focus on collaboration and partnerships

Other presentations highlighted collaboration and cooperation between institutions. Papers touched on: collaboration for acquisition and collection development, appraisal of government records, sharing resources for digital preservation, teaching courses using archival material, online outreach and collaborative exhibits, and the work of student and young professional organizations. Overall, the program was excellent, and attendees found it difficult to choose between sessions.

Talks were also held on the past, present, and future of the Archives Association of Ontario, giving members a chance to learn more about how this organization has been shaped over the years and its plans for the future. In particular, this included a report on the first year of the Provincial Acquisition Strategy, and feedback on how to continue building cooperation between archival institutions in the province.

Other highlights

The formal side of the conference was supported by a variety of other opportunities for socializing, networking, and learning. Four archives tours were held: to the Arts and Letters Club of Toronto, the Canadian Lesbian and Gay Archives, the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library and University of Toronto Archives, and the John M. Kelly Library Conservation Studio. The opening reception was held at the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, and attendees had many opportunities to catch up with each other during breaks and at pub nights.

The Banquet, held at Hart House, celebrated 20 years of the Archives and Records Management program at the University of Toronto iSchool. The Awards Lunch was held at at the Faculty Club, and honoured Suzanne Dubeau, Nick Ruest, the Hudson’s Bay Company, and the Hastings County Historical Society.

Many of the conference presentations have been posted online, and a Storify is also available.

 

Sara Janes is University Archivist for Lakehead University. She has an MLIS from McGill University, and has worked in archives and records management for ten years, with a focus on digital records issues, outreach, and education.

 

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