As we’ve discussed in class, archives are not neutral repositories of information; they are spaces where power continues to operate in subtle ways that often go unnoticed. Archives and museums can serve nations as tools that help construct national narratives, and nations shaped by colonialism therefore have colonialism embedded in their archival practices. As Kimberly Christen states in one of our readings, “Opening Archives: Respectful Repatriation,” “Archives have always been part of nation-making practices, and, as such, have often elided the needs of underrepresented groups.”
Indeed, in the context of U.S. history, indigenous people’s property has been “claimed” by settlers and the U.S. government and displayed as the property of the museum, archive, or government, erasing the perspective of Indigenous people and only leaving the perspective of those who, sometimes violently, essentially took their belongings. I keep thinking about the bag that belonged to an indigenous person, which had been put in the Civil War museum as a donation from Jefferson Davis’s wife. We don’t know the name of the person whom it belonged to, or even the tribe that they were a part of. All we know it that the bag came into the possession of Jefferson Davis, and that it was most likely taken from the person after they died in battle. It’s just incredibly dehumanizing to have something that was probably very personal to them robbed from them, stripped of cultural meaning, and displayed as a sort of “trophy” of Jefferson Davis’s. Not only that, but indigenous knowledge systems have been both devalued and demonized by some academics; As Christen states, Western concepts of knowledge involve a scholar seeking to “attain universal knowledge” within an agreed-upon “public domain.” (Christen 190) This sort of thinking has, unfortunately, led these academics to view indigenous knowledge systems as “oppressive”, as information is not always “open to the public” in the sense they may be used to.
I thought that the knowledge systems and collection development practices described in “Opening Archives” was a really effective and thoughtful response to this issue. When I first heard the phrase “digital repatriation”, I must admit that I was a little worried that it was a sort of replacement for more meaningful/impactful repatriation; essentially, “You can’t have physical control, but here’s digital control!” I was relieved to see that that is not what it is at all, and that it’s actually an incredibly collaborative process. I was really impressed with the Plateau Peoples’ Web Portal, both in concept and execution, and it really opened my mind to new concepts of “repatriation”. When thinking about the appropriation of indigenous property for educational purposes, I usually think only of the artifacts themselves, such as “Jefferson Davis’s” bag in the Civil War museum. However, I hadn’t really considered the issue of authorship, authority, and interpretation, and I really liked how those issues took center stage throughout this article. I especially liked part of the first point of the “Protocols for Native American Archival Materials”, stating that one of their core protocols was to “Make an effort to collect resources created by, rather than just about, Native Americans.” (Christen 195) This is one of those points that seems self-explanatory, but I feel like small decisions such as keeping the positionality of the author in mind when curating go so far to change perspective and voices of “authority” in the archives.
On the topic of authority, one of my favorite parts of the Plateau Peoples’ Web Portal was how multiple voices are there to interpret artifacts. As Christen states, this “allows for multiple levels of narration at the item level, allowing several ‘expert’ voices space…the Portal highlights the unique knowledge sets of Native peoples of the Plateau alongside scholars who have contributed to these collections.” (Christen 200-201) I personally think that there will probably unfortunately never be a “perfect” way of collaborating when it comes to the state/academy and indigenous archival materials because of the context in which this nation and its archives were formed. However, I think that projects like the Plateau Peoples’ Web Portal do a lot to push back against the silencing of indigenous voices in the academy by genuinely valuing indigenous knowledge and putting it on the same footing. I think the fact that it isn’t totally open for anyone to contribute is a really good one, and in fact makes the information included more legitimate; it’s one thing to say that indigenous knowledge is valued the same as institutional knowledge, but having real protocols for indigenous knowledge inclusion actually makes a difference. I really liked the feature where tribal administrators could edit institutional information without erasing it, especially when she explained the effect: “Whereas ‘records’ often seem official and irrefutable, they are malleable and susceptible to change over time. The current system highlights the dynamism of all knowledge, including metadata.” (Christen 201) Something we’ve been discussing a lot in my Race in Latin American History seminar is how indigenous cultures are often treated as static and unchanging despite the fact that they’ve been changing and evolving alongside every other culture since the beginning of colonialism. By prioritizing the inclusion of indigenous voices, the Plateau Peoples’ Web Portal is able to show the complexity of different tribal cultures, as well as change over time.