v. (also decolonise)to collaborate with Indigenous peoples to implement greater Indigenous control over records, to provide a voice to those peoples through records, and to recontextualize the records and institutions created and interpreted by settler populationsWareham 2001, 27The cultural dimension of colonization is reflected in the alienation of knowledge and culture, along with land, forests, fisheries, and other physical property. The call from indigenous people to “decolonize” archival institutions, in order to reconnect indigenous peoples with their documentary heritage, is a response to this legacy. Evolving New Zealand organizational practice is a response to this call.McKemmish, Faulkhead, and Russell 2011, 211Australia’s mainstream discourse and collective memory relating to Indigenous Australia have largely been built on the actions of a violent past, utilizing systems of remembering and forgetting that have supported a negative construction of Indigeneity within that collective memory. There is a pressing need for Australia’s collective knowledge spaces to be reconfigured to be representative of all cultural voices, but as a whole Australia is not yet at a place to recognize all that reconciliation can achieve, let alone share the spaces and decolonize them for the benefit of all.Gordon 2014, 7Even though archives have become important sources for revealing the historical injustices inflicted upon Indigenous populations by colonizers, as well as important sources for memory-work carried out by Indigenous peoples and other marginalized communities, archivists working to decolonize archival discourses and the work of archiving continue to work to displace the written bias that valorizes archival records in bringing about justice and remembering the past.Christen 2015, 3What these scholars and practitioners show is that incorporating Indigenous knowledge systems into library and archive practices will not just enhance relationships and create access to records, but more importantly, it has the potential to decolonize archival practices and modes of access.Association of Canadian Archivists 2017a, 187Passionate and persuasive, the article starts an important conversation about the many ways national settler archival repositories represent and uphold Canada’s colonialist endeavours. The concept of “haunting” provides a metaphor that allows us to see that placating the ghosts must not be the goal; to decolonize archives and begin to respond meaningfully to the demands of reconciliation, settler archivists need to accept a prolonged, uncomfortable co-existence with the “spectre” as we rethink the power structures of archives from the ground up.”n. decolonizing (also decolonising)carrying out a process to decolonize records and archivesUpward, McKemmish, and Reed 2011, 210What would “decolonizing” archival functionality and professional recordkeeping practice involve? Among other things, the findings of the Trust and Technology and related projects suggest challenging the linked dichotomies of orality-literacy, myth-history, savagery-civilization, and tradition-modernity that the archive tends to embody, undermining the consequent positioning of Indigenous voices and narratives as inferior, and pluralizing archival functionality and professional recordkeeping practice, continuum-style, to support the co-existence and interaction of multiple, diverse evidence paradigms and knowledge systems.Gordon 2014, 4–5Decolonizing the written archives requires displacing settler investments in written records, reading written records against the “written” grain, valorizing Indigenous modes of remembering, and recognizing the authority of Aboriginal remembrancers.O’Neal 2015, 2These specific contributions provide a lens through which to examine both the national and regional activism that have contributed significantly to the larger goal of decolonizing Native American archives, which applies and builds upon the methodological framework presented by Linda Tuhiwai Smith regarding decolonizing research, by replacing Western ways of managing tribal archives with those rooted in the indigenous epistemological traditional ways of knowing and stewarding collections.Hall and Love 2020, 65An important part of decolonising archival practice in this county [New Zealand] is ensuring that the correct—and correctly sourced—contextual information sits on record.n. decolonization (also decolonisation)the act of carrying out a process to decolonize records and archivesWareham 2001, 34These can be presented on a spectrum from reconnecting Maori with cultural information held in written records, to Maori reclaiming control over management of these resources, to calls for records’ repatriation to their cultural owners. Perhaps this mirrors patterns indicated for decolonization and empowerment of indigenous peoples, from “survival, to recovery, development and self-determination.”Galloway 2006, 80, fn. 2On a wider scale, Michael Kammen’s Mystic Chords of Memory: The Transformation of Tradition in American Culture (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1991) places the emergence of archives and other institutions of memory in the context of the construction and modification of an “American” identity from colonial times to 1990. More recently, in the context of decolonization historiography, there has been a vigorous discussion among historians of especially the British Empire about the constraints and constructed nature of archives and archival collections: see Antionette Burton, ed., Archive Stories (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2005). The strongest current thread of critical evaluations of archives comes from those whose stories have been systematically excluded or expunged from them.AERI 2011, 82–83Indigenous research methodologies include the community and community members as research partners rather than research subjects; use participatory research models that engage community partners in planning, designing, and implementing all aspects of the research; adhere to the view that the premise and intention enshrined in academic research ethics of doing no harm, physical or emotional, to research subjects can best be realized by engaging them as partners in the research; and aim to produce outcomes that directly benefit the community as well as the academic research partners. Such community involvement in research is a form of decolonization.Gilliland and McKemmish 2012, 112Project aims are driven by a recognition of the importance of preserving Indigenous community narratives of language and culture as part of Sustainable Living Archives controlled by the community, coexisting and connecting with the records of colonial and post-colonial governments, religious and cultural institutions, and anthropologists. In this regard, one of the main aims of the research is to enable Indigenous community Elders and members to become commentators on and interpreters of their own culture through their interaction with a living archive of community narratives, thus contributing to the decolonisation of the archive.Gordon 2014, 132Decolonization cannot be about making people feel good without also changing the material and discursive structures of settler nationalism through which emotions circulate.O’Neal 2015, 9Accordingly, during the restoration era, in a quest to assert and reclaim their sovereignty, tribal community activists and leaders sought to gather federal records that documented Native American history. Since the federal government’s establishment and collection of these archival records is considered part of colonialism, the act of Native Americans gathering and repurposing these records for their benefit is indeed an act of decolonization.Association of Canadian Archivists 2017b, 199The Association of Canadian Archivists invites you to attend the 43rd Annual Conference “Truths, Trust and Technology,” June 6th to 9th, 2018 in Edmonton, Alberta. Archivists from far and wide will engage with the theme truths, trust and technology. The truth—whatever that is—is messy these days. In the “post-truth” era, lies can seem more convincing than facts, and in an era of discourse on decolonization, Canadians are reflecting on new truths about historical facts.Canadian Press 2018Reconciliation is rewriting Canada’s memory banks as archivists across the country work to make their collections more open to and sensitive towards Indigenous people. ¶ Library and Archives Canada is leading the way with a $12-million project to hire Aboriginal archivists to work in First Nations communities and to give more control over materials gathered there to the people who created them. ¶ “Decolonization” is a hot topic among those charged with storing, organizing and making accessible the country’s historical record.DIIS 2024And the relationship between sovereignty and historiography is visible in most capitals: the state archives are often placed in close proximity to government and parliamentary buildings. Questions of archival ownership and custody, and indeed what exactly comprises an “archive”, are thus integral to the project of decolonisation.
