ABORIGINAL ARCHIVES: A NEW CHALLENGE

an email message from Terry Cook, National Archives of Canada

The Report of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples (RCAP) has identified in several places archival and record management issues relating to records received or created by Aboriginal peoples. These issues require professional intervention and support. This is a collective challenge to the Canadian archival community, which if met could be inspiring and satisfying. Action is now underway and your participation is important and needed. This article suggests how and why.

First Nations have been governing and funding themselves for certain functions previously carried out by the Department of Indian and Northern Affairs, or by church and other charitable organizations, and sometimes by other levels of government. After two or three decades of such self-governing activity, records are piling up in First Nations offices, if they have not already been destroyed. Most First Nations do not now have the human and financial resources for effective records management programmes to administer and dispose of their current records, let alone for archival or heritage facilities for long-term preservation of valuable non-current records.

As part of this process of self-government, under the official federal policy of encouraging First Nations to take over functions from federal agencies (Indian and Northern Affairs, Health Canada, and others), the prospect of devolving many federal records to Aboriginal control is very real. A balance will need to be struck between, on the one hand, the continuing need for federal accountability through the records of its past actions for generations to come and the wide interests of non-Aboriginal researchers with, on the other hand, First Nations' requirements for the same records to carry out self-government and their sense of ownership and privacy of those records.

The obvious solution of copying all the affected records is really no solution at all in the hard times of the downsizing 1990's; there is not the money available as was the case in the early 1970's for massive microfilming. Similar situations may well exist for some church or other private sector records that will be shared with Aboriginal communities. While these records -- either federal or church records devolved to First Nations or records created by Aboriginal Peoples -- would obviously be the property of the First Nations, the records relate to activities previously thought to be of archival or long-term operational significance when under federal or church jurisdiction.

Quite aside from these issues of shared records and shared legacies, Aboriginal communities and people have long created and maintained their own records: photographs, private and family papers, oral history, artwork, film and video, sound recordings of voice and music, and business records, as well as official local community, school, or association records, on every kind of medium. Sometimes this rich group of records is well housed and cared for in Aboriginal archives, heritage centres, Tribal Offices, even schools, but too often this kind of archival infrastructure does not yet exist. The records thus remain scattered, undescribed, unprotected, and thus threatened with loss. These voices, images, and words must be located, organized, managed, and where appropriate placed in Aboriginal archives before it is too late.

To begin to meet these challenges identified by RCAP, a special half-day meeting was held on 4 June 1997 during the annual Association of Canadian Archivists (ACA) conference in Ottawa. The results of the meeting, which was designed primarily to listen and to explore issues, rather than to come to hard conclusions for immediate action, were these four steps in terms of immediate action:

1. There is a recognition, consistent with the RCAP findings, by the Canadian archival community that it should address the lack of archives and records management programmes available in Aboriginal communities, and therefore that a Special Interest Section on Aboriginal Archives (SISAA) of the ACA should be formed to deal with this issue directly, as well as indirectly through recommendations to the ACA Board of Directors and other ACA committees;

2. That SISAA membership should be broadly based, with Aboriginal, archivist, and records management involvement, in its steering committee and its membership; that its membership not be restricted to ACA members, recognizing regional and other realities; and that its secretariat should reside for the initial period within the National Archives of Canada for its sponsorship of copying and mailing expenses;

3. That SISAA spend its first year broadening its base of interest and support from the 27 attendees in Ottawa to the broader national and regional dimensions of Aboriginal and archival networks by diffusing as widely as possible news of the meeting and the initiative it represents, and especially by incorporating YOUR input; and

4. That SISAA focus in the first year on building membership and communications infrastructures, on identifying issues in more detail than was possible in the Ottawa meeting, and on creating a strategic plan of priority action goals to start implementing in the second year, through SISAA itself, other ACA committees and programmes, or through wider partners as noted earlier.

What can you do right now:

1. Obtain and read the minutes and tabled documents of the Ottawa meeting;

2. Offer by October 31 your ideas, suggestions, comments, solutions, or criticisms to add to the list compiled in Ottawa or suggest priorities and directions and emphases (our goal is to be as inclusive as possible);

3. Express an interest anytime in being a member of SISAA and working on one or more of its four main targeted areas: lobbying and advocacy including funding; communications, publications, and sharing information; training, education, and internships; and partnerships across disciplines and communities; and

4. Advise us of other people who should be contacted who might be interested in being members of SISAA.

Aboriginal-white relations have been mixed in positive and negative measure in Canada's past, where romance, racism, and reality have often collided. One generally positive aspect of that relationship has been the archival record and the work of archivists. Existing as a kind of honest broker between the interests of Aboriginal and mainstream society, archivists have appraised, acquired, described, preserved, and made available a rich legacy of the Indian, Metis, and Inuit past. This preserved legacy has been an essential component of the Aboriginal cultural renaissance and assertion of rights of the past quarter century. If the Canadian archival community can now rise successfully to met the many challenges outlined above, it will continue to contribute significantly to the Aboriginal peoples' future by facilitating a firm grounding in the records of the past. There are few better ideals to which Canadian archivists could commit themselves for the new century. Please help make it a reality.