Greg Bak is an associate professor of archival studies at the University of Manitoba in the Department of History. His research and teaching focus on archival decolonization, digital archives, and the histories of digital cultures.
Kenton Storey is an independent scholar at Storey Historical Research. He completed a PhD in comparative history at the University of Otago, New Zealand in 2012 and then held a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Manitoba in 2013-14. Since 2015, he has worked in the field of Indigenous history, researching and writing about land claims, treaty rights, and the Department of Indian Affairs. You can read their article in the Journal of the Canadian Historical Association / Revue de la Société historique du Canada, vol. 34, no. 1 (2024) by clicking here.
Kenton Storey (left) and Greg Back (right)
In what ways can archives contribute to both the perpetuation of colonial narratives and the dismantling of colonial frameworks?
Greg: Archives are an infrastructure of memory, and they can be used in many different ways. Over the last twenty years, the field of archival studies has shifted strongly towards the theory and practice of community archives. In this, communities take the lead in determining how their archives are created, managed and used.
While these ideas have been present for decades within community archives, more recently they have been extended into other archives through participatory archiving. Historically, archival institutions have been more closely associated with structures of government. During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries government archiving was the predominant archival paradigm. Given what we know of the Canadian government’s efforts to eliminate Indigenous cultures and peoples during this time, it’s unsurprising that government archives should be rife with records that report on “progress” towards this end, including records of government programs like the residential school system. Today all kinds of Canadian archives are committed to archival decolonization and reconciliation, as directed by Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and as expressed in the Canadian archival community’s Reconciliation Framework. As they proceed in this work, they need to pay attention to the affective, emotional, personal and familial impacts of archives of colonialism. Archivists currently are thinking and writing about questions such as how to safely document trauma. How does trauma affect memory and history? How do we facilitate archival research that is sensitive to the needs of Survivors, Intergenerational Survivors, their families and communities?
Historians Crystal Gail Fraser and Mary Jane Logan McCallum are among those who have called for archives to proceed carefully with decolonization, out of concern that archives not suppress or obscure racist and colonial records, which allow non-Indigenous settlers to understand the extent of the oppression of Indigenous communities by settler governments. Archives have at least two really important roles to play in dismantling colonial frameworks. The first is to document the truth of what happened under settler colonial governments, in the interest of historical accountability. Equally, archives must reinvent themselves as memory infrastructure for our own times. This work is happening now, through participatory and community archives theory and practice. The National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation, guided by its Survivor’s Circle, prioritizing the needs of Survivors and community researchers, is a good example of a community archives showing mainstream archives how to move forward.
Can you expand more on how institutional violence manifest itself in the RG10 archival materials?
Kent: My work as a self-employed historian often involves the review of large collections of RG10 records, usually for the purpose of finding information relating to specific events which are the subject of active litigation. As I read through RG10 correspondence records, I often encounter deeply disturbing examples of the Department of Indian Affairs’ efforts to destroy or undermine Indigenous cultures and spiritualities. It will surprise no one with experience working with RG10 files that I have encountered records relating to the DIA’s cover up of sexual abuse at an Indian Residential School in British Columbia or the prolific use of physical punishments against children at an Indian Residential School in Alberta. The matter of fact discussion of egregious crimes such as these within the historical records tells us a great deal about the inhumane conditions experienced by Indigenous children.
Sometimes, though, the most disturbing RG10 records are the most mundane. If you review almost any Prairie First Nation’s annuity records from the early 1870s to the early decades of the twentieth century, you will bear witness to the slow demographic decline of a community year over year via the untimely death of young children and elders from a combination of malnutrition and epidemic diseases. The often-unnamed women and children cry out to us in these records. So, for me, it is the pervasiveness of the institutional violence within RG10 records which is their most disturbing aspect.
Cover of Treaty # 1 – A.M. Muckle, Indian Agent. Photograph by David Cuthbert
How does the concept of archival power influence the role of archivists in managing colonial records/RG10, and what responsibilities does this entail?
Greg: Archival power is the power to shape history. Archival provenance is misunderstood when it is assigned only to the person who clicked the camera shutter, dipped their pen in the inkwell or tapped the keyboard. Many people are involved in the creation of records – which at the very least must include not only the literal record creator, but also the subject of records creation – as well as the filing of records into recordkeeping systems and, eventually, their transfer to the archives, where archivists then conduct rounds of appraisal, arrangement and description. Archivists are active agents in the transformation of a bunch of paper and photographs into an archive that is then served up to historical, legal and community researchers.
The TRC Final Report emphasized that archives play an important role in the national narrative. Ideas of homeland, belonging and community are influenced by what records are appraised for their enduring national value. These records are then made available for research; ultimately, their meanings and values find their way into national histories and identities.
Archival power has been used to censor and oppress. This is evident by looking at how settler colonial governments in Canada have used records and archives to surveil and control Indigenous communities and nations over the last 150 years. We see archival power being wielded to our south right now, with the Trump administration’s recent firing of the US National Archivist. Archival theorist Helen Samuels pithily expressed the key point in her influential 1986 article, quoting Orwell’s 1984 to ask “Who Controls the Past.”
How archivists use archival power has varied greatly over time and place. Bill Russell has recently described how one government recordkeeper in the 1930s and 1940s used his institutional and personal authority to preserve records of the settler government’s intended total assimilation of Indigenous peoples, as a way to “honour” this work. In our paper, we describe how, in the 1970s, senior managers at the national archives committed substantial resources to microfilming Indian Affairs records specifically so that they could be made available to Indigenous researchers across the country, to advance claims against the Canadian government, driven by Indigenous activism. Today, Library and Archives Canada oversees a range of Indigenous Documentary Heritage Initiatives, including by building capacity within Indigenous communities to preserve their own heritage, independent of any settler archives.
What does an Indigenous-led community-managed RG10 mean for the writing of Canada’s colonial history?
Kent: As a settler historian, I believe it is for Indigenous scholars and elders to choose how RG10 should be managed in the future. As our article emphasizes, “The future of RG10 must be determined by the Indigenous Peoples whose lives, ancestors, and communities are at stake in these records.” In this context, I am excited about several opportunities. First, there is an opportunity for LAC to make substantial new investments into the reorganization of RG10 according to the system currently being developed by the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation. The reordering of RG10 has the potential to make these records more accessible which is extremely important. Second, the establishment of a council of Indigenous representatives with the power to set LAC’s agenda for the administration of the RG10 collection is vital. Third, I think that more university graduate programs should consider establishing research initiatives with First Nations communities which would empower graduate students to engage in community-directed RG10 research. Speaking from experience, my most meaningful historical research has been accomplished in partnership with my Indigenous clients.
How can settler archivists collaborate with Indigenous communities to develop more equitable and ethical archival practices?
Greg: This is the exact question answered by the Canadian archival community’s Reconciliation Framework. In our paper we quote from the Framework as stating “Respecting First Nations, Inuit and Métis peoples’ intellectual sovereignty over the archival materials created by them or about them means … ensuring they have complete control over who has permission to access and use these materials.” The Reconciliation Framework provides guidance to Canadian archives in why, when and how to collaborate with Indigenous communities.
Have either of you read anything good recently?
Kenton: I’ve really enjoyed reading Daniel Coleman’s 2014 monograph Yardwork. A Biography of an Urban Place. In it Coleman ruminates on his experience of living and working in Hamilton, Ontario. Coleman is a Professor of Canadian Literature at McMaster University, and his deeply personal book is multi-disciplinary in its attention to local Indigenous history, environmental studies, and the impact of urban planning. I don’t remember at all how this book appeared on my bookshelf, but I’m really glad it did.
Greg: Over the winter break I read Real Ones by Katherina Vermette, which explores fallout from a pretendian controversy within a blended Indigenous and non-Indigenous family. We know from the news media that pretendians often are tripped up by records preserved in archives and family collections. Vermette’s novel turns away from the “gotcha” of archival sleuthing to the emotional impacts of pretendianism on the continuing relationships among Indigenous and non-Indigenous family members.