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Librarianship.ca > Events > Community Connections: Plural Provenance Theory & the Role of Archives and Records in Indigenous Community-led Research

Community Connections: Plural Provenance Theory & the Role of Archives and Records in Indigenous Community-led Research

Date

March 15, 2023 13:00 - 14:00

Location

Online

Details

Website: https://www.dal.ca/faculty/management/school-of-information-management/news-events/antiracism-and-decolonization-in-archival-studies-open-classroom-series.html

It is no longer a secret or revelation in the wider archival community that western or colonial archives and records played a role in the colonization of Indigenous peoples around the globe. The process of reconciling this fact has been handled differently by archives in various regions, and for the most part has been a tentative and slow process in fear of not engaging the right way or making a misstep in connecting with the Indigenous communities and peoples represented in their holdings. In May of 2021, this tentativeness changed forever. When the 215 potential gravesites of children were identified by Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc at the Kamloops Residential School site, the urgency for archives and records to build meaningful relationships with Indigenous communities was sent into overdrive. In the months that followed, dozens of communities began to research unmarked burial sites across Canada, requiring access to millions of government and church records held by countless repositories. This guest lecture will start by looking at how archival and records management theory and practice can help make connections based on a plural provenance model to assist in addressing inequalities in the arrangement, description, and access of archival materials and records related to Indigenous peoples. It will then discuss key areas where archives and records can play a role in assisting community-led research initiatives in terms of records management, stewarding community archives, capacity building, and including Indigenous perspectives into archival acquisition policies and mandates.

Biography: Jesse Boiteau is Head of Archives at the National Centre for Truth & Reconciliation (NCTR) and is a member of the Métis Nation. He completed his Masters in Archival Studies at the University of Manitoba, focusing on the intersections between Western archival theory and practice, and Indigenous notions of archives and memory to shed light on how the NCTR can accommodate and blend multiple viewpoints in its processes. Jesse works within a close archives team to process the records collected by the Truth & Reconciliation Commission in Canada, make new collections available online, and respond to access requests from Residential School Survivors. He is also continually researching ways to leverage new technologies to honour the experiences and truths of Survivors through innovative and participatory archival practices.

Readings:

The open classrooms are hosted at the University of Manitoba’s History Department, sponsored by Dalhousie’s School of Information Management and CUNY’s Archival Technologies Lab, and supported in part by funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. They are taking place as part of graduate courses taught by Dr. Jamila Ghaddar, which are: HIST7372 History of Archiving & Archival Records (Fall 2022) at the University of Manitoba’s History Department, and INFO6370 Records Management (Winter 2023) at Dalhousie University’s School of Information Management.