Kayla Lar-Son, Indigenous Programs & Services Librarian, X̱wi7x̱wa Library (UBC)

LIS institutions have long been the stewards of Indigenous cultural materials including Indigenous stories, Knowledges and Indigenous research that may or may not have been ethically conducted. But are libraries actually the best stewards for these collections? In this talk we will explore the concept of Indigenous Data Sovereignty and how it relates to libraries, as well as discover ways in which libraries can work with Indigenous communities to evaluate our own institutional priorities and procedures to develop culturally appropriate data protocols, and repatriate digital and non-digital collections.

Kayla Lar-Son is Metis and Ukrainian settler and originally from Treaty Six territory. Currently she is the Indigenous Programs and Services Librarian for X̱wi7x̱wa Library at the University of British Columbia, and the Program Manager Librarian for the Indigitization program.

Sponsors: This speaker series has been generously sponsored by the Master of Information program and the Master of Information program at Dal’s School of Information Management. 

Lecture Resources:

• Maggie Walter, Raymond Lovett, Bobby Maher, Bhiamie Williamson, Jacob Prehn, Gawaian Bodkin-Andrews and Vanessa Lee (2021) Indigenous data sovereignty in the era of big data and open data. The Australian Journal of Social Issues 56(2):143-156

• Stephanie Russo Carroll, Ibrahim Garba, Oscar L. Figueroa-Rodríguez, Jarita Holbrook, Raymond Lovett, Simeon Materechera, Mark Parsons, Kay Raseroka, Desi Rodriguez-Lonebear, Robyn Rowe, Rodrigo Sara, Jennifer D. Walker, Jane Anderson and Maui Hudson (2020) The CARE principles for indigenous data governance. Data Science Journal 19(1):43

In post-TRC Canada, archives and archivists are beginning to acknowledge the role that archives have played in colonization and the urgent need to decolonize archival practices to accommodate the marginalized voices of those silenced by archival description and collection mandates. In the case of the archives at the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation (NCTR), these are the voices of the Residential School Survivors, their families, and their home communities. These voices have the power to fill gaps in historical narratives and disrupt the roars of colonialism present across the millions of records created by the government departments and religious entities that ran the schools for more than a century. That said, how do we transition from acknowledging our past role as protectors of colonialism’s documented “success” to successfully implementing decolonizing practices? Jesse Boiteau’s presentation explores how the deconstruction of colonial records and colonial “truth” can help us understand and describe the plurality of provenance in archives. It will also confront our understanding of archival authorities to offer a more balanced relationship between the creator(s) and the so-called subject(s) of records by centering the latter as active participants in archival descriptive practices. ​

Jesse Boiteau is the Senior Archivist at the National Centre for Truth and 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 TRC, 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.

Lecture Resources:

• Association of Canadian Archivist’s Response to the Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission Taskforce (2020) A reconciliation framework for Canadian archives.

• Jesse Boiteau (2017) “Introduction” and “Conclusion” in The National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation and the pursuit of archival decolonization, Thesis (University of Manitoba).

• Crystal Fraser & Zoe Todd (2015) Decolonial sensibilities: Indigenous research and engaging with archives in contemporary colonial Canada. L’internationale.

• First Archivist Circle (2007) Protocols for Native American Archival Material.

What can feminism(s) bring to the information fields? What have they already brought? How have scholars, educators and practitioners in the information fields drawn on feminist practices and theories to inform and deepen their work? This roundtable stages a conversation between scholars, practitioners and activists who are drawing on diverse feminist traditions and bodies of knowledge in order to intervene within libraries, archives, museums, digital domains and information system design. Here, a feminist lens is understood as one that not only focuses on oppression based on gender and sexuality, it is a framework that interrogates the “interlocking” nature of colonial, imperial, racial, ableist, and hetropariarchical systems of oppression (Razack 1998), all of which are foundational to the information fields.

• Dr. Rebecca Noone is a SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow at the Department of Information Studies, University College London, and recently a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Toronto's Faculty of Information. Situated in the areas of critical information studies and feminist media studies, her research focuses on the politics, discourses, and practices of locative media.  

• Mariam Karim is a PhD candidate at the Faculty of Information and a fellow at the a CDHI, University of Toronto. She is a course instructor at the department of visual studies where she recently taught a course on Visual culture and media infrastructures. She holds an M.A. in Cultural Studies & Critical Theory from McMaster University. She is currently in the process of writing her dissertation on 20th century Arab women's movements from the Middle East. Her dissertation is supported by the SSHRC doctoral fellowship

• Dr. Danielle Allard is an assistant professor at the School of Library and Information Studies, University of Alberta. Her research falls at the intersections of culture and community, information (its usages, representations, and institutions), and the role that information and information institutions might play in feminist, decolonizing, and anti-violence efforts. In partnership with Sex Professionals of Canada's Executive Director Amy Lebovitch and Dr. Shawna Ferris, her present SSHRC funded research (2018-2022) on the Sex Work Activist Histories Project (SWAHP) engages an exploration of sex work activism in Canada and the production of related histories, representations, and archives. In collaboration with Dr. Tami Oliphant and public librarian Angela Lieu, her most recent research draws from feminist anti-violence frameworks to examine patron-perpetrated sexual harassment in libraries.

• Carina (Islandia) Guzmán is a Doctoral Candidate at the Faculty of Information and the Bonham Centre for Sexual Diversity Studies. They have an Undergraduate degree in History and Master's in Geography from the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM). Under the co-supervisorship of Dr. T.L. Cowan and Dr. Jas Rault, in their dissertation, “Stor(y)ing Mi Desmadre: Trans-Feminist and Queer Community Archival Digital Custodial Praxes in Latin America,” they develop a speculative-pragmatic framework to study how lesbian and trans communities use histories of performance art and nightlife, improvised territories and the Latin American concept of memoria (counter-hegemonic historiographic text that emerges from silenced resistance movements) to activate archival and story-telling digital initiatives. They are furthermore a Connaught International Fellow, an Inaugural Dissertation Fellow at the Queer and Trans Research Lab and an Inaugural Doctoral Fellow at the Critical Digital Humanities Initiative, all at the University of Toronto.

Lecture Resources:

• Sherene Razack (2005) “How is white supremacy embodied? Sexualized racial violence at Abu Ghraib.” Canadian Journal of Women and the Law 17(2): 341-363. 

• Cait McKinney (2020) Introduction to information activism: A queer history of lesbian media technologies (Durham: Duke University Press), pp.1-30. 

• TL Cowan and Jasmine Rault (June 2020) (under review at Punctum Press) Heavy Processing, Digital Research Ethics Collaboratory: Part I – “Lesbian Processing”; Part II – “Central Processing Units”; Part III – “Risking IT”. [Currently available through Digital Research Ethics Collaboratory website.]

• Audra Simpson (2007) On ethnographic refusal: Indigeneity, ‘voice’ and colonial citizenship. Junctures: The Journal for Thematic Dialogue 9: 67-80.

This discussion will focus on the aftermath of developing and applying post-custodial metadata practices for transnational archival projects led by Latin American and United States based organizations and practitioners. As documented in the article, "Historical Metadata Debt: Confronting Colonial and Racist Legacies Through a Post-Custodial Metadata Praxis," Carbajal will address and explore project obstacles brought forth by the decisions of predecessors including decisions driven by cultural, ethical, and situational viewpoints as well as ongoing tension resulting from power, cultural, and geographical differences. Given the commitment to applying antiracist and anticolonial principles towards projects, work, and partnerships, Carbajal engages in difficult reflections on how partners made decisions, adjusted expectations, or created their own future hurdles in regards to metadata systems and descriptive practices of archival collections. Audience members will be encouraged to bring forth questions and ideas on how the work could have been addressed differently given the lessons brought forth in the article by Carbajal.

Itza A. Carbajal is a Ph.D student at the University of Washington School of Information focusing her research on children and their records. Previously, she worked as the Latin American Metadata Librarian at LLILAS Benson after having received a Master of Science in Information Studies with a focus on archival management and digital records at the University of Texas at Austin School of Information. Knowing firsthand the affective value of records, Carbajal is pursuing doctoral research that will engender ways for people, and in particular children, to grapple with and learn from some of their most painful memories encapsulated through their records. Research focus strives to use archives as a mechanism to confront these stories in order for children to recognize and utilize their memories for healing, personal development, and building community resilience.

Lecture Resources:

• Itza A. Carbajal (2021) Historical metadata debt: Confronting colonial and racist legacies through a post-custodial metadata praxis. [Special issue on Unsettling the Archives.] Across the Disciplines 18(1/2): 91-107.

• ALA (2021) ALA welcomes removal of offensive ‘Illegal aliens’ subject headings

• Tonia Sutherland and Alyssa Purcell (2021) A weapon and a tool: Decolonizing description and embracing redescription as liberatory archival praxis. The International Journal of Information, Diversity & Inclusion 5(1): 60-78.

In her ground-breaking article, “Whiteness as Property,” legal scholar Cheryl Harris has argued that, ‘racial identity and property are deeply interrelated concepts.’ Harris elaborates that, ‘whiteness and property share a common premise — a conceptual nucleus — of a right to exclude.’ (Harris, 1714) This talk extends this analogy to the racialized and imperial context shaping current archival provenance and custody debates surrounding the so-called ‘migrated archives’. Drawing from “The archival colour line: race, records and post-colonial custody,” Linebaugh will provide historical background to the ‘migrated archives’ dispute before commenting on how recordkeepers within the UK government have made flexible use of the ‘provenance’ concept in order to justify proprietary claims in the face of restitution demands by former colonies.

Riley Linebaugh (PhD) is a research associate at the Leibniz Institute for European History in Mainz, Germany. Her PhD, “Curating the Colonial Past: Britain’s ‘Migrated Archives’ and the Struggle for Kenya’s History,” analyzes the politics of the ownership, location and use of colonial archives in the Kenya-British case (1952-present day). Previously, she received her MA in Archives and Records Management from University College London. She has worked as an archivist in Uganda, England, and the U.S.

Lecture Resources:

• Riley Linebaugh and James Lowry (2021) The archival colour line: race, records and post-colonial custody. Archives and Records, doi: 10.1080/23257962.2021.1940898.

• James Lowry (2017) “Introduction: Displaced Archives” in James Lowry, ed., Displaced Archives (Routledge), 1-11.

• ACARM (2017) Migrated Archives: ACARM Position Paper. Adopted at the ACARM Annual General Meeting, Mexico City.

• United Nations’s Vienna Convention on Succession of States in Respect of State Property, Archives and Debts (1983)

• Alina Sajed (July 27, 2020) From the Third World to the Global South. E-International Relations.

This presentation provides a critical biography of Hilary Jenkinson with a focus on his 1912 publication, “The Records of the English African Companies,” his participation in the Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives section during WWII, and his 1948 memo on colonial archives. Using these three points, it situates Jenkinson as an imperial actor through the lenses of race, capital and empire and extends reflection on these contexts into the development of Anglo-archival practice.

Riley Linebaugh (PhD) is a research associate at the Leibniz Institute for European History in Mainz, Germany. Her PhD, “Curating the Colonial Past: Britain’s ‘Migrated Archives’ and the Struggle for Kenya’s History,” analyzes the politics of the ownership, location and use of colonial archives in the Kenya-British case (1952-present day). Previously, she received her MA in Archives and Records Management from University College London. She has worked as an archivist in Uganda, England, and the U.S."

Lecture Readings:

• Hilary Jenkinson (1922) A Manual of Archive Administration: Including the Problem of War Archives and Archive Making (Oxford: Clarendon Press), pp. 1-22.

• Hilary Jenkinson (1912) “The Records of the English African Companies.” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 6: 185-220.

• Walter Rodney (1970) “The Imperialist Partition of Africa.” Monthly Review 21(11): 103-114.

• Shannon Hodge, Sarah Nantel, and Chris Trainor (2022) “Remnants of Jenkinson: Observations on Settler Archival Theory in Canadian Archival Appraisal Discourse.” Archives & Records 43(2): 147-60.

• James Lowry and Verne Harris (2022) “Settler to Settler (Reading ‘Remnants of Jenkinson’).” Archives & Records 43(2): 161-163.

• Mpho Ngoepe (2022) “Reflections on ‘Remnants of Jenkinson: Observations on Settler Archival Theory in Canadian Archival Appraisal Discourse.’” Archives and records 43(2): 164-165.

• Greg Bak (2022) “Appraisal in Need of Re-Appraisal: Reflections on ‘Confronting Jenkinson’s Canon: Reimagining the ‘Destruction and Selection of Modern Archives” through the Auditor-General of South Africa’s Financial Audit Trail.’” Archives and records 43(2): 177-179.

Nationally, the Truth & Reconciliation Commission (TRC) called on Canadian archives, museums, and libraries to take up the challenge of decolonization, truth telling and national reconciliation. These calls reflect, among other things, the fact that the TRC had to take the Government of Canada to court multiple times over access to archives and records. The TRC’s successor body, the National Centre for Truth & Reconciliation, continues to face barriers to archival access to fulfill its vital mandate. Globally, similar archival challenges have been a feature of most truth and reconciliation initiatives from South Africa to Morocco. Similarly, contestations over archival access and ownership have been a feature of the relationship between European countries and their former colonies in Africa and Asia because records displaced to Europe in the context of Third World political decolonization in the mid-20th century have rarely been repatriated. How to imagine a future in which such archival legacies of colonialism are redressed? We explores this question with renowned personalities and leading experts, Dr. Ellen Namhila (Pro-Vice Chancellor, University of Namibia), Dr. Nathan Mnjama (Professor, Department of Library & Information Studies, University of Botswana), and Dr. James Lowry (Assistant Professor at the Graduate School of Library & Information Studies, CUNY). Co-hosted by CUNY’s Archival Technologies Lab and Dalhousie University’s School of Information Management, this event features cases from Namibia and Botswana, alongside consideration of the potential and limits of the Vienna Convention on the Succession of States with Respect to State Property, Archives & Debt (1983) to inform and help resolve disputed archival claims between now independent states and their former western colonial rulers.  

• Ellen Ndeshi Namhila was born at Ondobe village in northern Namibia in 1963, and went into exile when she was twelve years old. She got her education in Namibia, Angola, Zambia, The Gambia, and Finland, obtaining an M.SSc. in Library and Information Science at the University of Tampere, Finland. She has worked as a researcher and librarian at the Multidisciplinary Research Centre; as a Deputy Director: Research, Information and Library Services at the Namibian Parliament; Director of Namibia Library and Archives Service in the Ministry of Education; University Librarian at the University of Namibia; and currently the Pro-ViceChancellor: Administration and Finance at the University of Namibia. Ellen is author of: The Price of Freedom, her autobiography (1997); Kahumba Kandola - Man and Myth: the Biography of a Barefoot Soldier (2005); Tears of Courage: Five Mothers Five Stories One Victory (2009); Mukwahepo: Woman, Soldier, Mother (2013); Native estates: records of mobility across colonial boundaries (2017); and “Little research value”: African estate records and colonial gaps in a post-colonial national archive (2017). She received her PhD degree at the University of Tampere, Finland in 2015.

• Nathan Mnjama is a Professor in the Department of Library and Information Studies, University of Botswana with specialization in Archives and Records Management. His PhD was on Railway Records: Their Management and Exploitation in Kenya. Prof Mnjama has worked as an archivist and records manager at the Kenya National Archives and was responsible for the location and copying of Kenyan archives from the UK between 1980 and 1985. He has considerable experience in teaching and delivery of archives and records management programmes having lectured at the School of Information Sciences, Moi University Kenya, and since 1996 at the Department of Library and Information Studies University of Botswana where he has been instrumental in the design of archives and records management programmes. Prof. Mnjama is a well-known speaker and presenter in archives and records management forums in East and Southern Africa, and he has published extensively in the field of archives and records management in Africa. Prof. Mnjama has participated in several records management initiatives organized by the International Records Management Trust aimed at improving archives and records keeping practices in Africa.

• James Lowry is founder and director of the Archival Technologies Lab, and Assistant Professor at the Graduate School of Library and Information Studies, Queens College, City University of New York. He is an Honorary Research Fellow and former co-director of the Liverpool University Centre for Archive Studies, where he taught following a ten year career in archives and records management. As a practitioner, he worked in Australia, Europe, Africa and the Caribbean, including projects for international organisations such as the African Union and the International Criminal Court. Dr. Lowry has a PhD from University College London and a Masters in Information Management from Curtin University. His research is concerned with official records, data and power, particularly in colonial, post-colonial and diasporic contexts. Through the Displacements and Diasporas project, he has worked to foster international dialogue around displaced archives. In his work on open government and open data, he has introduced record-keeping principles and techniques into open government policy and data curation to help address information asymmetry. His interest in the history of archival thinking led to the formation of the Archival Discourses research network. He is also co-PI on the Refugee Rights in Records project. His recent publications include Displaced Archives, an edited volume published in 2017, and he is series editor of the Routledge Studies in Archives series.

Lecture Readings:

• United Nations (1983) Vienna Convention on Succession of States in Respect of State Property, Archives and Debts (Read: “Preamble” on p. 2 + Part III (pp. 8-13))

• Ellen Ndeshi Namhila (2004) "Filling the gaps in the archival record of the Namibian struggle for independence." IFLA Journal 30 (3): 224-230.

• Ellen Ndeshi Namhila (2015) "Archives of Anti-Colonial Resistance and the Liberation Struggle (AACRLS): An Integrated Programme to Fill the Colonial Gaps in the Archival Record of Namibia." Journal for Studies in Humanities and Social Sciences: 168-178.

• Nathan Mnjama (2016) “Migrated Archives: The African Perspectives.” Journal of the South African Society of Archivists 48: 45-54.

• Browse: ACARM (2017) Migrated Archives: ACARM Position Paper. Adopted at the ACARM Annual General Meeting, Mexico City.

• Riley Linebaugh and James Lowry (2021) The archival colour line: race, records and post-colonial custody. Archives and Records 42(3): 284-303.

• J.J. Ghaddar (Fall 2022) “Provenance in Place: Crafting the Vienna Convention for Global Decolonization and Archival Repatriation,” in James Lowry (ed.) Disputed Archival Heritage, Volume II (New York: Routledge).

This session examines a variety of principles-based guiding documents, drawing out how archives and archivists are being directly and indirectly tasked with changes to their practices in order to become more responsive and accountable to Indigenous peoples and communities. In particular, the question of how to move from awareness and education initiatives toward action and accountability measures will be brought up and explored. It brings these archival documents and debates into conversation with the project based out of McMaster University, "The Challenge of Reconciliation: What We Can Learn from the Stories of the Hamilton Mountain Sanatorium and the Mohawk Institute Residential School.” This project will intervene in narrow understandings of reconciliation by turning to the stories of the Hamilton Mountain Sanatorium and the Mohawk Institute Residential School. What can these stories teach us about possibilities for a more substantive reckoning with the many promises of reconciliation? The project involves a significant amount of archival research and engagement, including the development of a lay summary of existing archival records relating to the Mohawk Institute and the Mountain Sanatorium.

• Vanessa Watts is Assistant Professor of Sociology and Indigenous Studies at McMaster University, where she also holds the Paul R. Macpherson Research Chair in Indigenous Studies. Her research examines Indigenist epistemological and ontological interventions on place-based, material knowledge production. Vanessa is particularly interested in Indigenous feminisms, sociology of knowledge, Indigenous governance, and other-than-human relations as forms of Indigenous ways of knowing. Dr. Watts was awarded a SSHRC Insight Development Grant for her project that interrogates over a century of representations of Indigenous peoples in sociology and political science. It will contribute to new knowledge in the field of Indigenous studies through an inductively generated concept map of Indigenous understandings of social beings. Dr. Watts was nominated for the YWCA Woman of Distinction in Community Leadership and was awarded McMaster’s President’s Award for Outstanding Contributions to Teaching and Learning in 2022. 

• Krystal Payne is a settler archivist living on Treaty One Territory (Winnipeg, MB), who grew up on unceded territory covered by the Treaties of Peace and Friendship (Hillsdale, NB). After spending many years working as a community health educator in sexual and mental health with a harm reduction and trauma-informed approach, Krystal now studies and works with archival records as a project archivist and researcher with the Kishaadigeh Collaborative Research Centre (University of Winnipeg) and as an incoming PhD student at the University of Manitoba. In these roles she tries her best to practice relationship-based archival work in the spirit of collaboration while imagining the archival possibilities that come with centring people and communities.

• Amber Dean is Professor of English and Cultural Studies at McMaster University. Her research focuses on public mourning, violence, and cultural memory, and contemplates what makes a life widely “grievable” in the context of contemporary, colonial Canada. She is also interested in how creative forms of cultural production (fiction, art, photography, film, performance) disrupt and reframe common-sense understandings of whose lives (and deaths) matter. Dr. Dean is the author of Remembering Vancouver’s Disappeared Women: Settler Colonialism and the Difficulty of Inheritance, and co-editor of Remembering Air India: The Art of Public Mourning, with Chandrima Chakraborty and Angela Failler. With Susanne Luhmann and Jennifer L. Johnson, she also co-edited Feminist Praxis Revisited: Critical Reflections on University-Community Engagement. Dr. Dean was named McMaster’s University Scholar in 2021, an award that supports her community- and student-engaged project on the Hamilton 2SLGBTQ+ archives. 

Lecture Readings:

• Browse: Ownership, Control, Access and Possession (OCAP™).

• United Nations, General Assembly (2007) Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People.

• Browse: Collaboratory for Indigenous Data Governance

• First Archivist Circle (2007) Protocols for Native American Archival Material.

• Truth and Reconciliation Commission (2015) “Calls to Action,” in Honouring the Truth, Reconciling for the Future: Executive Summary of the Final Report of the TRC (Winnipeg: TRC), pp. 319-337.

• ICA/NAA Indigenous Matters Summit (October 2019) The Adelaide Tandanya Declaration.

• Krystal Payne (2021) “Chapter Two: Guiding Documents for Archives and Archivists,” in Archival Harm Reduction: Utilizing Public Health Harm Reduction Concepts for Reconciliatory Power Shifts in Archives. Thesis (University of Manitoba), pp. 32-58.

• Association of Canadian Archivist’s Response to the Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission Taskforce (2020) A Reconciliation Framework for Canadian Archives (ACA).

• Association of Canadian Archivists’ Indigenous Archives Collective (2021) Indigenous Archives Collective Position Statement on the Right of Reply to Indigenous Knowledges and Information Held in Archives.

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.

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:

• Association of Canadian Archivist’s Response to the Report of the Truth & Reconciliation Commission Taskforce (2020) A reconciliation framework for Canadian archives.

• Browse: Ownership, Control, Access and Possession (OCAP™).

• United Nations, General Assembly (2007) Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People.

• International Council on Archives/NAA Indigenous Matters Summit (October 2019) The Adelaide Tandanya Declaration.

In the 1950s, the British colonial government launched a brutal counterinsurgency against the revolutionary Mau Mau movement in Kenya. In an effort to quash the anticolonial uprising, British colonialists imprisoned over 150,000 people without trial in detention camps where torture and murder were commonplace. In the early 1960s, as the British began their exit from empire in Kenya, they took with them the evidence of this brutality. Hundreds of thousands of archival documents detailing their atrocities were destroyed, and many more were stolen away to a secret archive in the United Kingdom. This paper addresses the question of archival losses and silences in the context of Mau Mau history. It uses case studies from fieldwork with Mau Mau veterans to look at how survivors, activists and academics have been able to find alternatives to state-run archives in the context of the destruction and theft of these sources. By exploring these non-traditional archives, I also link to wider questions of decolonial archiving and record-creation.

Rose Miyonga is a PhD candidate at the University of Warwick in the Department of History, where her research focuses on the making of histories and memories of the Mau Mau War in post-independence Kenya. Methodologically, this research draws on her interest in oral records and non-traditional archives in historical research, and particularly in African history. In current academic work, she deals with questions of archival silence, and of how to find narratives and sources that speak into the gap between government records and lived experience. As such, she is also engaged with participatory research methodologies and influenced by oral history practices that emanate from the African continent.

Readings:

• Rose Miyonga (Dec. 2021) Imagining Kenyan futures through Kenyan pasts. The Elephant 3.

• Chao Tayiana Maina and Max Pinckers (2020) Reimagining time, reconstructing space: visual approaches to Mau Mau history in Kenya. Trigger: Uncertainty, FOMU - Fotomuseum Antwerp.

In conversation with Rose Miyonga, this roundtable brings together trailblazing and innovative practitioners and scholars working to address the many gaps, silences and erasures in Kenyan archival memory and documentary heritage due to the history and legacies of British colonial rule and its brutal counterinsurgency practices in the country. With a focus on resistant and marginalized histories and perspectives, participants will share their experiences with a range of alternative approaches to address the archival gaps and silences, from crowdsourcing and “imagined records” to living archives and participatory documentary projects. Chao Tayiana Maina will speak about living archives -- how they are embodied in people, infrastructure and landscape, particularly in relation to the Mau Mau uprising and the ways in which this history influences present day ideas of nationhood in Kenya. Maureen Mumbia will discuss the Book Bunk's project that seeks to build a visual and audio archive from crowd sourced stories from the library community dubbed, “The Missing Bits” project. Max Pinckers will speak on Unhistories (2015-ongoing), a documentary project in collaboration with Kenyan Mau Mau war veterans and survivors of atrocities committed by British colonial rule in the 1950s that aims to (re)visualize the fight for independence from their personal perspectives. With most of the colonial archives deliberately destroyed, hidden or manipulated, Unhistories created new “imagined records” that fill in the missing gaps of historical archives.

• Chao Tayiana Maina is a Kenyan historian and digital heritage specialist that works at the intersection of digital humanities and public education. She uses digital technologies to unearth previously hidden or suppressed historical narratives, make these accessible to a wider audience and enable communities to engage with their cultural heritage.  She has a background in computer sciences with a specialization in digital heritage studies. Her work is not simply about presenting existing historical archives in a modern way. It is about using technology to excavate stories and center people that have previously been excluded from historical narratives. Using tools such as digital visualizations and oral history recordings, she believes that modern forms of historical presentation can subvert traditional hierarchies in order to make previously hidden forms of knowledge visible. Thus, her work to legitimize the formerly delegitimised narratives has a reparative power. She is the founder of African Digital Heritage, a co-founder of the Museum of British Colonialism and a co-founder of the Open Restitution Africa project.

• Maureen Mumbua works as the archives coordinator at Book Bunk - an organisation seeking to restore Kenya’s second oldest library. She leads the digitisation department in preserving the items held by the library as well as archiving Kenya’s more recent history in audio format. She was part of the ‘The Missing Bits’ project which sought to address the decentering of average black Kenyan narratives from Kenya’s recorded history.

• Rose Miyonga is a PhD candidate at the University of Warwick in the Department of History, where her research focuses on the making of histories and memories of the Mau Mau War in post-independence Kenya. Methodologically, this research draws on her interest in oral records and non-traditional archives in historical research, and particularly in African history. In current academic work, she deals with questions of archival silence, and of how to find narratives and sources that speak into the gap between government records and lived experience. As such, she is also engaged with participatory research methodologies and influenced by oral history practices that emanate from the African continent.

• Max Pinckers' work explores the critical, technological and ideological structures that surround the production and consumption of documentary images. Pinckers’ work draws on contemporary and historical debates, merging fact, fiction and imagination to reflect on the ways that the real is defined and represented. It treats documentary as a hybrid practice involving not just images, but objects, performance, texts, found footage and sculptural interventions that investigate the complex nature of perception. Collaboration is essential to Pinckers’ practice, creating a space for the exchange of ideas between himself and the people he works with, and for critical examination of his own position as a photographer. Ultimately, Pinckers’ self-reflexive work sets out to question both documentary discourse and artistic practice -- to create new modes of documentary that foreground the deceptive nature of images yet always emotionally and empathically engages with people and their stories. His work takes shape as self-published artist books and exhibition installations such as The Fourth Wall (2012), Will They Sing Like Raindrops or Leave Me Thirsty (2014), and Margins of Excess (2018). Pinckers is a Doctor in the Arts and guest lecturer at the School of Arts KASK & Conservatorium in Ghent, Belgium. He has received multiple international awards, such as the Edward Steichen Award Luxembourg 2015 and the Leica Oskar Barnack Award 2018. In 2015, he founded the independent publishing house Lyre Press and The School of Speculative Documentary in 2017. Pinckers is represented by Gallery Sofie Van de Velde in Antwerp and Tristan Lund in London."

Readings:

• Riley Linebaugh and James Lowry (2021). The archival colour line: race, records and post-colonial custody. Archives and Records.

• Rose Miyonga (Dec. 2021) Imagining Kenyan futures through Kenyan pasts. The Elephant 3.

• Chao Tayiana Maina and Max Pinckers (2020) Reimagining time, reconstructing space: visual approaches to Mau Mau history in Kenya. Trigger: Uncertainty, FOMU - Fotomuseum Antwerp.

We are thrilled to host this Transnational Roundtable, a conversation with generations of people who are or have participated in some form of anti-oppression organising during their time as students in information departments and iSchools. By bringing together both past and present cohorts of students, we will share the knowledge and skills, and hand over some of the histories of student organising in our field that are too often obscured by faculty appropriation of student-led work. Speaking with those involved with groups like the Diversity Working Group (DWG), the Association of Canadian Archivists’ BIPOC Forum, UofT’s Truth and Reconciliation Student Working Group, and beyond, this roundtable highlights the role of students in driving social change and shaping the information field. While talking about the initiatives that students have taken, it is also important to note the systems which often create challenges for student organising or look to detach student efforts from their initiators.

• Kristan Belanger is a proud member of Glooscap First Nation. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science as well as a Juris Doctor from Dalhousie University and is currently pursuing a Master of Information. Kristan is dedicated to promoting a holistic understanding of the interrelated fields of law, governance, and information; her research seeks to create an understanding of Indigenous law librarianship, while working alongside Mi’kmaw legal experts, Knowledge Keepers, and communities to build academic spaces for the study of Indigenous law. She also works as a research assistant at the Lnuwey Tplutaqan Wikuom (Mi’kmaw Law Lodge), where she explores how Indigenous knowledge, law, and legal information systems intersect.

• Tam Rayan is a PhD candidate in the School of Information and an Anti-Racist Digital Research Fellow at the University of Michigan. They received their MI in Information Studies and MA in Ethnomusicology from the University of Toronto. Their research is focused on deconstructing how colonialism operates through archival infrastructures as well as how to build transformative archival representations of those in diaspora. Specifically, they are interested in how to better serve and represent the recordkeeping needs of Palestinians with unique intergenerational traumas, impacted by forced migration, displacement, and exile. Their research has been published in Across the Disciplines and Archival Science. They have a long history of student and professional organizing, as part of the University of Toronto Diversity Working Group, the SAA-Archivists and Archives of Colour Section, the AAO Safe Spaces for BIPOC Archivists, the ACA BIPOC Special Interest Section, Students Allied for Freedom and Equality (Students for Justice for Palestine, Ann Arbor chapter) and the TAHRIR Coalition.

• Stefanie Martin (she/her) is a community archivist born and raised in Quezon City, Philippines and is currently based in Toronto, Canada. She holds a BA in Sociology from the Toronto Metropolitan University and a Master of Information in Archives and Records Management from the University of Toronto. Since 2023, Stefanie has been the Project Archivist at The ArQuives: Canada’s LGBTQ+ Archives and was previously their Archives Assistant in 2018. In 2019, Stefanie interned at the Hamilton Public Library where she developed their 2SLGBQ+ community archives. She has also worked at non-profit and grassroots organizations serving Filipino youth, newcomers and migrant workers in the Greater Toronto Area and in Manitoba, Canada.

• Dr. Mariam Karim is a Global Postdoctoral Scholar at the Institute for Advanced Study in the Global South at Northwestern University in Qatar (#IAS_NUQ) where she is working on a digital archival project on Arab women’s media history. She completed her PhD at the University of Toronto's Faculty of Information (iSchool) and the Women and Gender Studies Institute (WGSI). She served as an inaugural graduate fellow at the Critical Digital Humanities Initiative and was the recipient of the Social Science and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) doctoral award. Her interests lie at the intersections of multilingual media, information, gender, political theory, translation, infrastructure, historical, archival, visual, and literary studies, and decolonization.

• Oy Lein Harrison or, Jace, is a Chinese, and Jamaican researcher/Knowledge professional. Her maternal grandparents emigrated to Tkaranto from Guangzhou (广州), China. And, her father was a social worker, and carpenter, who emigrated from St. Andrew, Jamaica in the eighties. Oy Lein has engaged in, and led, various race-based research projects at organizations like the Indigenous Innovation Initiative, the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute, the University of Toronto Libraries, and the Federation of Black Canadians. These studies ranged in scope from Indigenous Knowledge rights to Black health. She earned her Master of Information in Critical Information Policy Studies as well as her Hons BA in Comms, Culture & Info Tech; Professional Writing; and English Literature, from the University of Toronto. In addition, she holds a Diploma in Digital Communications from Sheridan College and certification in Canadian Copyright Law. She is a trained librarian and continues to help communities access the Knowledge they’re looking for. She currently resides in Tkaranto, on Dish with One Spoon Treaty territory (Treaty 13).

• Kate Anderson graduated from Dalhousie University with a Juris Doctorate and a Master of Information in the spring of 2024. Currently, Kate is an articling student at Woodward & Company Lawyers in Victoria, BC. During her degree, Kate worked as the Library Intern, Reference Assistant, and Circulation Assistant at the Sir James Dunn Law Library. As a part of INFO 6850, Knowledge Justice, Kate completed a report that evaluated and critiqued how the Department of Information Science covered equity, diversity, inclusion, accessibility, and decolonization in the core courses of the MI program. Kate is Red River Métis and a proud citizen of the Métis Nation within Alberta.

• Carolyn Smith is a second-year graduate student pursuing her Master of Information (MI) at Dalhousie University with the completion of the programs Archives Certificate. She holds a BA in History with a minor in English from Vancouver Island University. Following her undergraduate degree Carolyn started her professional career working for qathet Museum & Archives, a regional community-led organization within the Coast Salish territories of BC. Her work inspired her to further her career within the archival and information field leading her to Dalhousie’s MI program where she has been able to learn from professionals and scholars within the archival field. Carolyn is a current recipient of the Social Science and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Masters Award with her thesis focusing on the charting of Indigenous sovereignty within Canadian archives. Her interests lie within the areas of archives, records management, community-based practice, decolonization, memory and identity, and policy development.

• Pax Romana is a second year MI candidate with a background in film and antiracist education. He's pursuing his masters in hopes of working in public libraries and building a queer community archive. He's interested in researching digital community organizing in the Covid era and whisper networks. He's currently researching queer grief processes and queer internet behavior. He's an Indigiqueer brother, cousin, and friend.

• Megan Sue-Chue-Lam is a second-generation Chinese-Canadian arts administrator based in Toronto. She holds a BAH and BEd from Queen's University, as well as a Master of Museum Studies from the University of Toronto, where she co-founded Museum Professionals of Colour (MPOC) in 2019. MPOC is a student group that aims to build a network of BIPOC folks who wish to share resources and experiences within the cultural sector. Megan has worked in the public and non-profit spheres, and has been managing the prints and drawings department at Dorset Fine Arts (a division of the West Baffin Co-operative) since 2022.

• Dawn Walker is a researcher and designer interested in how computing intersects with just transitions, based on the unceded territories of the hən̓q̓əmin̓əm̓ and Sḵwx̱wú7mesh sníchim speaking peoples. She works as a Service Designer for the Ministry of Environment and Parks, Government of BC and received her PhD in Information Studies (2022) from the University of Toronto. Since 2017, Dawn has co-organized Our Networks, a conference about the past, present, and future of building our own network infrastructures hosted in Toronto and Vancouver.

• Rebecca Noone is a Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in Digital Media and Information Studies in the School of Humanities, at the University of Glasgow. Noone researches the interplay between everyday experiences of using digital media with the popular discourses and fantasies that animate contemporary digital culture. For the past ten years, she has studied discourses, practices, and politics of locative media such as digital mapping platforms, and have done so in my faculty role at the University of Glasgow, my postdoctoral research at UCL, and my PhD research at the University of Toronto, as well as part of my artistic practice.

This Global Roundtable examines a variety of principles-based guiding documents, drawing out how archivists and records managers are being directly and indirectly tasked with changes to their practices in order to become more responsive and accountable to Indigenous peoples and communities. In particular, the question of how to move from awareness and education initiatives toward action and accountability measures will be brought up and explored. This session brings archival documents/protocols and debates into conversation with contemporary projects and initiatives at various institutions and sites in the country.  We are honoured to host a Global Roundtable featuring Indigenous speakers from across nations and settler jurisdictions to discuss this vital topic, as follows:

• Dr. Kirsten Thorpe and Dr. Lauren Booker: The International Indigenous Data Sovereignty movement empowers Indigenous peoples to assert ownership and control over data, enabling them to inform self-determined priorities and goals. In alignment with this, the International Council on Archives Tandanya-Adelaide Declaration calls for the recognition of Indigenous peoples' rights to control their archives, advocating for a radical transformation of archival practices. Recognising the vital importance of archives for truth-telling, justice-seeking, and healing. Speakers Lauren Booker (Garigal) and Kirsten Thorpe (Worimi) will share examples of research and projects underway in Australia that emphasise Indigenous-led archival methods and approaches. They will explore opportunities for institutional archives to enhance the care and management of records, supporting Indigenous well-being and the development of Indigenous Living Archives on Country.

• Kayla Lar-Son: Archives have long been the stewards of Indigenous cultural materials including Indigenous Stories and Knowledges. Many of these items have been collected without obtaining appropriate permissions from communities, and the ways in which we steward these items follows western archival practices, which do not consider the importance of cultural protocols. This conversation will explore the concept of Indigenous Data/Knowledge Sovereignty and how it relates to archives.

• Raymond Frogner: My talk will discuss the implications of the Tandanya for the NCTR which has, through the Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, cited the UNDRIP as a “template for reconciliation.” Through its policies, grant proposals, and projects, the NCTR has worked to create a “decolonizing archives” informed with the advice of Indigenous Knowledge Keepers and Elders, but also following the principles set out in the UNDRIP and placed in an archival context through the Tandanya.

Speaker Bios:

• Dr Kirsten Thorpe (Worimi, Port Stephens), Associate Professor, is a Chancellor's Indigenous Research Fellow at Jumbunna Institute for Indigenous Education & Research, University of Technology Sydney. Kirsten leads the Indigenous Archives and Data Stewardship Hub, which advocates for Indigenous rights in archives and data, and develops research and engagement in relation to refiguring libraries and archives to support the culturally appropriate ownership, management and ongoing preservation of Indigenous knowledges. Kirsten has broad interests in research and engagement with Indigenous protocols and decolonising practices in the library and archive fields, and the broader GLAM (Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums) sector. Kirsten advocates for the 'right of reply' to records, and capacity building and support for the development of Living Indigenous Archives on Country. Kirsten is an invited member of the International Council on Archives Expert Group on Indigenous Matters, a co-founder of the Indigenous Archives Collective, and an elected member of the International Federation of Libraries (IFLA) Indigenous Matters Section (2023-2027). In 2023, Kirsten was appointed as a member of the National Archives of Australia Advisory Council, for a three-year term. In 2024, Kirsten joined the Maiam nayri Wingara Indigenous Data Sovereignty Collective as an Executive Member to progress conversations about Indigenous data rights in GLAM.

• Dr. Lauren Booker (Garigal) is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Indigenous Archives and Data Stewardship Hub at Jumbunna Institute for Indigenous Education & Research, University of Technology Sydney (UTS). Lauren has worked across the museums and archives sector on projects supporting First Nations communities and organisations to access their cultural and intellectual property held in collecting institutions. This includes working in consultation with the public library network regarding language documentation identification and the use of manuscripts in language revitalisation. Her work also focuses on planning and facilitating the digitisation of cultural heritage and photographic collections, and the organisation of digital community archives that meet community priorities. Lauren's PhD research 'Hair Samples as Ancestors and Futures of Community-led Collection Care' (2024) investigated how in the settler-colonial project of Australia the racialised sampling of hair from First Nations peoples during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, materialised racial fictions of hair hierarchy, driven by global imperial and colonial agendas. Lauren works in support of the Right to Know and the Right of Reply in archives, repatriation and increased institutional transparency and ethical practice across the GLAM sector. Lauren is also a member of the Indigenous Archives Collective.

• Raymond Frogner has an MA from the University of Victoria and an MAS degree from the University of British Columbia. He is the Head of Archives and Director of Research for the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation. His publications have twice won the Kaye Lamb Prize and the Alan D. Ridge Award of Merit. He is a recent Fellow of the ACA. In 2018, he became Co-chair of the ICA Special Committee on Indigenous Matters. He was principal author of “Tandanya/The Adelaide Declaration”, the official ICA Declaration on archives and Indigenous rights. He continues to write on matters of Indigenous identity and archives.

• Kayla Lar-Son is a citizen of the Metis Nation of Alberta, with mix Ukrainian heritage, and is originally from Tofield, Alberta. She holds a BA in Native Studies and MLIS from the University of Alberta. Kayla is the current Acting Head of the Xwi7xwa Library, and Indigenous Programs and Services Librarian.

Speaker titles, abstracts and bios are as follows:

Dr. Stanley Griffith, Our Records, Our Memory: Towards Another Phase in the Decolonization of Caribbean Archival Memory 

• Colonialism, with its inherent inequities and inequalities, have imposed and impacted on the constructs and praxis of memory and recordkeeping in the Caribbean.  Writing in 2015, I argued that “The archival/recordkeeping sphere may be the last bastion of colonialism in the region that is yet to experience the social and political changes that the English-speaking Caribbean societies have undergone for the last fifty years”. (Griffin, MSc, Unpublished). Non-textual forms and practices of documentation, with its requisite cultural systems of retention and preservation have been negatively impacted by the imposition of textual forms, practices and recordkeeping systems.  Nevertheless, records, both colonial and cultural, have served as vital evidences of oppression and resistance in the continued struggle for black liberation and reparations.In this short talk, I wish to consider the next phase/s required for liberating Caribbean archival memory, and in so doing, offer the archives and memory as tools of black liberatory activism and evidence for reparations.  Using Hawaiian attorney and independence activist Poka Laenui’s five (5) stages of decolonization, based on the experiences of Hawaii, I hope to explore this question of liberating archival memory and showing how this act can advance the cause of Black liberation and reparations. 

Sony Prosper, Repatriation and Return: Radio Haiti Archive Case Study 

• This presentation keeps track of ongoing dissertation work around how various groups view the repatriation and return of the Radio Haiti Archive, which the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Duke University currently houses. I particularly focus on the role the Haitian diaspora plays in repatriation and return efforts, suggesting that a full understanding of archival repatriation is incomplete without examining the role diasporic communities play in such efforts. More specifically, in the case of the Radio Haiti Archive, I suggest that returning the archive to the places Haitians occupy both in Haiti and the diaspora bestows the self-determination that comes with stewarding their archives for producing knowledge (e.g., crafting narratives of their history) and other larger purposes (e.g., ensuring cultural memory, self-representation, collective memory and identity, articulating a more democratic and liberated Haitian present and future). In this presentation, I will track the concepts emerging from the literature on archival repatriation and describe two interlocking bodies of theoretically informed scholarship: critical archival studies and anti-colonial archivy that serve as theoretical lenses to help frame the research and through which to examine archival repatriation and return.

Dr. Edwina Ashie-Nikoi, Archival Activism and Community Archives: Paths to a Decolonial African Archive? 

• Born in the twilight of colonialism, conventional archival practice on the African continent was greatly influenced by the concerns of the colonialist machinery which thought little of the peoples and cultures around them. This legacy did not bode well for sub-Saharan Africa’s archival institutions which continue to largely sideline the populace’s cultural, historical, technological and scientific experiences and knowledge recorded in alternative archival registers. Thus, as Francis Garaba (2021) notes, African archival repositories contain an “over-documentation” of colonial records. The extant situation is clearly one in which there are archival frameworks operative in most African archives that (in)directly marginalise African cultural contexts and modes of recording. The question arises: how can this documentary impasse be remedied? Using Garaba’s (2021) charge to Africanise the continent’s archives as a departure point, I will briefly present my thoughts on how archival activism and community archives, two concepts not usually considered in the African context, might achieve this. In particular, I will argue that beyond consciously archiving for legal, social and political justice, there is crucial archival activism that African archivists must engage in to liberate, so to speak, the various contours of African archival and heritage practices. Committing to such documentary redress as an inclusive archival praxis is a critical step towards decolonizing the African archive and recasting the continent’s populations from colonial records’ “passive bystanders of history” to human beings with agency. 

Rose Miyonga, Archiving the Mau Mau War in Kenya: Challenges and Opportunities

• In the 1960s, as Kenya was entering the period of decolonisation, archival evidence of torture and brutality was systematically stolen and destroyed by the British colonialists at independence, leaving survivors, activists and historians within Kenya with no access to documentary evidence of this painful past. This presentation explores the possibilities of archiving the Mau Mau war in the face of these archival erasures. Drawing on research with Mau Mau veterans in central Kenya, I look to oral histories and grassroots archiving practices, highlighting the decolonial archival practices and tools that can be used as a way of speaking to and against the grain of the decimated colonial archive. I also raise questions of provenance, custodianship, and responsibility. This is emergent work that responds to the all too real threats facing Mau Mau survivors, researchers and archivists today, and connects to a larger movement for archival justice across the Global South. The paper reinterprets these challenges to the archiving of Mau Mau histories as opportunities, questioning who is centred in decolonial archival practices, and how can we find the voices of the marginalised within institutionalised archives, and imagining possibilities for archival liberation in Kenya and across the Global South. 

Biographies:

Stanley H. Griffin, Stanley H. Griffin (he/him) holds a BA (Hons.) in History, and a PhD in Cultural Studies (with High Commendation), from the Cave Hill Campus, University of the West Indies, Barbados, and an MSc in Archives and Records Management (Int’l), University of Dundee, Scotland.  Stanley is Senior Lecturer in Archival and Information Studies and coordinates the Graduate Programme in Archives and Records Management in the Department of Library and Information Studies, UWI Mona Campus. Stanley served as Deputy Dean for Undergraduate Matters in the Faculty of Humanities & Education and is now Head of the Department of Library and Information Studies (2024-2025). Stanley thinks and writes (mostly) about Caribbean archives and records, culture, history and heritage. 

• Rose Miyonga is a PhD candidate at the University of Warwick. Her thesis looks at the making of histories and memories of the Mau Mau War in post-independence Kenya. Her current research is concerned with questions of archival silence, and sources that speak into the gap between government records and lived experience using participatory research methodologies, non-traditional archives, and oral histories. She holds a Masters in Race and Resistance from the University of Leeds, and is a member of the Archives and Digital Media Lab. 

• Dr. Edwina D Ashie-Nikoi, PhD, is Lecturer in the Department of Information Studies, University of Ghana and affiliated with UG’s Institute of African Studies. With a background in African Diaspora history, she is interested in how culture and history are traditionally remembered, documented and represented in African/diasporan cultural systems. Broad areas of interest include Black archival traditions and memory work, decolonizing archival knowledge and practice, and “alternate archives” in Africa and its diaspora. Current projects consider archival silence, archival activism and community archives in the African context and undertake pan-African interrogations of the Archive. Edwina holds a BA (Spelman College) and PhD (New York University) in History and a MA in Information Studies (University of Ghana). 

• Sony Prosper is a PhD student at the University of Michigan School of Information in the United States of America. His research has concerned archival return and repatriation, how members and volunteers of community and grassroots archives conceptualize records, and how their conceptualizations inform archival programs and practices. He has published in several venues, including The Black Scholar, The American Archivist, and Information & Culture. He holds a master’s in library and information science with a concentration in archives management from Simmons University (formerly known as Simmons College). 

The recent ceasefire is an achievement of the steadfastness and resilience of the Palestinian people. While deserving of celebration, it does not undo the devastation and erasure suffered by Palestinians. In the vein of ongoing work for total liberation, the Archives & Digital Media Lab is honoured to host a roundtable featuring library professionals in Palestine and Lebanon engaged in vital work preserving and protecting local cultural heritage and knowledge. The roundtable features Rula Shahwan from Palestine, and Basma Chebani and Ghada Dimashk from Lebanon. It is co-convened by Kelsey Morgan and Dr. Jamila J. Ghaddar. Endorsed by Dalhousie’s ACA Student Chapter, Dalhousie’s Master of Information Student Association, and the Middle East Librarians Association’s ARMTAG, the roundtable explores how standardized cataloguing vocabularies, such as Library of Congress Subject Headings and the Dewey Decimal system, consistently reinforce imperialistic narratives (Kuntz, 2023), silencing cultural narratives of marginalized communities and peoples. Nowhere is such silencing more apparent than in the case of Palestine. In the midst of relentless blocking and silencing of initiatives to combat Israeli damage to, and appropriation of, Palestinian cultural heritage, speakers will discuss their work at libraries at the Arab American University in Ramallah, American University of Beirut, and the Lebanese National Library, as well as through professional associations like the Lebanese Library Association and Middle East Librarians Association. They will share their experiences working with terms and metadata on Palestine, Lebanon, and the Arab region, including experiences with cataloguing, promoting access and discovery, and advocating for better practices. This roundtable will bring attention to the important work these professionals are doing, as well as offer inspiration and wisdom to those wanting to engage with the work of preserving Palestinian cultural heritage. 

• Rula Shahwan currently serves as the Director of the Library and Visual Archive Department at the Arab American University. She is a Ph.D. candidate at Goethe University – Frankfurt,  her thesis focus is on fragmented memory, particularly on the looting, destruction, and loss under Israeli Settler Colonialism. She is also a specialist in Palestinian cinema studies. Shahwan’s career began at the Palestinian Ministry of Culture, where she led the Cinema Archive Department. She later transitioned to the Palestinian Broadcasting Corporation as the Head of the Visual Archive Unit, where she successfully restored portions of the lost archive and oversaw digitization initiatives. Her M.A. in Conflict Resolution included a thesis titled, The Power of Visual Archive, Collective Memory, and National Identity.

• Basma Chebani: Associate University Librarian for Cataloging and Metadata Services, American University of Beirut Libraries, has had long experience in implementing library systems and automating the library catalog, beginning with the MARC 21 format, introducing RDA, and adapting the Dublin core format for the libraries’ digital collections. Basma is involved in most digitization projects at the University Libraries: Arabic Collections Online, from 2012; Building up the Palestinian Oral History Thesaurus (POHA), from 2014; and Al Adab Magazine Archives, 2014-2017.

• Ghada Dimashk is an experienced archivist and metadata librarian specializing in Middle Eastern heritage, with a focus on preserving cultural narratives of Lebanon and Palestine. At the Palestine Land Studies Center at the American University of Beirut, Ghada has led initiatives to develop a precise cataloging and archival system, creating structured policies and a specialized list of subject headings focused on the Palestinian case. Since October 2023, she has led a project in collaboration with the Archives & Digital Media Lab (ADML) to archive social media and webpages as part of documenting the Gaza genocide and War on Lebanon. This initiative is now recognized as the first in the Arab world, and globally, to document an ongoing war on social media platforms. Ghada is an Archival & Library Fellow at the ADML; Co-Chair of the Middle East Librarians Association’s Archival Arrangement and Description in Arabic  Subgroup (ARMTAG); and a member of the organizing committee of the Archive & Heritage for Palestine Seminar Series. From 2009 to 2023, Ghada was the Librarian at the Lebanese National Library. She holds a master's degree in Library & Information Science from the Lebanese University, where she completed a thesis project mapping the Lebanese LAM sector, and developing a pilot online portal to increase accessibility and preservation efforts.

• Kelsey Morgan is a dedicated researcher and current Master of Information student at Dalhousie University. Having completed the International Baccalaureate program in Qatar, she pursued a bachelor’s degree in English and History from the Memorial University of Newfoundland. Kelsey then earned a Master of Arts in English from Dalhousie University. Her research focus is on decolonizing library practices, particularly through the interrogation of cataloging language. Her current thesis work critically examines the language used to catalog materials relating to Arabic self-determination, with the goal of suggesting a more collaborative method of cataloging.

• Dr. Jamila J. Ghaddar is a Lebanese feminist, archivist, historian, and educator. She is Assistant Professor in Archives & Information Studies at the Media Studies Department at the University of Amsterdam, and Founding Director of the Archives & Digital Media Lab. She is Chair of the Middle East Librarians Association’s Archives & Records Management Training & Advocacy Group; co-convenor of Documentary Nakba: A Reading Group for Archival Liberation in & beyond Palestine; and co-host of Archives & Heritage in Palestine.