Decolonizing Archives: Working at the Intersection of Tribal and Digital Collections
Siobhan Senier, Professor of English and Coordinator of the Women’s Studies Program, University of New Hampshire
There is a great deal of discussion these days about “digital repatriation”–the effort by museums, libraries and archives to “return” electronic copies of Indigenous materials to the source communities that created them. But tribal nations do have archives of their own. What happens when they want to digitize these materials? For whom are they creating electronic collections? In what forms and with what kinds of access? What kinds of support do they need (or want) from non-tribal partners? In this talk Senier will discuss the growth of dawnlandvoices.org–an electronic archive of writing by Indigenous people from New England. University students, faculty and librarians have worked with local Indigenous communities to scan, upload, and curate historic materials that are often not found in major collecting institutions.
