McKemmish, Gilliland communities of memory

• How to build archival systems and associated practices that operate and interoperate effectively worldwide, but respect and empower local and indigenous

• Societies institutionalize their collective archives according to their own evidence and memory paradigms. Paradigms influence: what is remembered/forgotten, preserved/destroyed, definition and form of archives, description, ownership, acces, reliability, authenticity, trustworthiness. Archives always political sites of contested memory and knowledge.

• Every recordkeeping technology has strengths and weaknesses
•  Communities of Memory: Ketelaar---collective identity is based on the elective process of memory...a given group recognises itself through its memory of a common past. This common past, sustained through time into the present, is what gives continuity, cohesion and coherence to a community.

• Building Global Frameworks for the Archives of the Future: globalization and the Internet has led to creation and adoption of model archival laws, international and national standards, suites of policies, strategies and guidelines, archival/records management software applications. (ISO records management and metadata standards, ISAD(G) etc)  Electronic recordkeeping and digital archiving has posed new challenges and opportunities.
  • Major research and development projects (Pittsburgh, UBC, InterPARES) have underpinned the above and are taught in archival education programs...noted however, that these frameworks/initiatives are almost exclusively mainstream and from Western Europe, North America and Australia.

• The Challenge: Respecting the Indigenous and the Local: Communities outside the mainstream have had little opportunity to participate in these developments. Their exclusion - differential power relationships at play between global, national, communal...lack of recognition or acknowledgement in western arch. science and practice the legitimacy of local/indigenous recordkeeping and memory practices.
  • emerging suites of best practices, guidelines, strategies, standards can contribute to quality archiving/recordkeeping worldwide, but they cater mostly to the mainstream - their development has taken little account of differing archival needs of diverse communities. Communities outside of the mainstream have not been part of global archival dialogues...
  • within western jurisdictions, little awareness that the needs, circumstances and semantics of diverse communities - indigenous groups, recent immigrant groups, marginalised population might call for augmentation or translation of archival paradigms encoded in best practices, strategies and guidelines.

• There is a need to develop archival systems that can represent multiple recordkeeping realities and to rethink definitions of "records" - inclusion of orality, literature, art, built landscape, dance, ceremonies etc...

• Responding to the Challenge: the issue is the challenge that different memory and evidence paradigms might pose to western archival science, and the implications of acknowledging communities as co-creators of records...which brings up who exercises control over access, disposal and preservation

• "incommensurable ontologies" has been used to characterize indigenous knowledge (local, unique to a particular community/culture) as separate from, even incompatible with western or scientific knowledge.
  • the article asks: How might archival systems recognize and address incommensurable ontologies of indigenous knowledge as transmitted through oral narratives and colonial knowledge as transmitted through written records?
  • reconceptualization of the archive: possible to see how archival knowledge can function as indigenous knowledge if used to support indigenous communities, particularly if it is interpreted - reconfigured - within the knowledge systems of those communities AND celebrate the ontological incommensurability of various knowledge systems and work towards making the two systems at least comprehensible and of equal value.
  • Harris to the rescue:...a liberation for the indigenous in being open to engagement with the dynamics of globalization; a liberation for the global in respecting the indigenous.

• Hurley (parallel provenance), Ketelaar and Bastian - have ideas about shared heritage and joint ownership

• Implications of and for Archival Education: How do we build professional expertise in communities without at the same time compromising the integrity of local and indigenous practices and knowledge systems, or ignoring or giving power to the most pressing needs of individual communities? How to provide space (within the western paradigm, for different ideas about what constitutes a record/authenticity/trust? Ideas:
  • where larger indigenous communities exist, potential for them to develop their own archival education training and resources (instead of immersing themselves/training in a western method)
  • ict has helped enrich and pluralise curricular and research activities across borders
  • distance education - but can be problematic due to the digital divide and also mentions differences in conceptualization/pedagogy - if there has not been a formal archival infrastructure in the community, is the community in the position to identify and articulate to the instructor what kind of education they wish to receive?

• Lists features of educational programs sensitive to local and indigenous needs (good ideas)
  • and, very importantly - not to stop at just thinking abut how to educate professional archivists in local/indigenous communities but to ensure that what is learned from these communities is fed back into the mainstream archival milieu

• Offers ideas for archival research agendas (again, good ideas), and this research could feed into frameworks for the future archive:
  • management of records of multiple groups and individuals beyond the boundaries of the archive
  • represent multidimensional contexts of creation, capture, organization and pluralisation
  • provide multiple views of parallel recordkeeping universes
  • continuously weave relationships between records and related people, organizational structures, functions and activities - enabling multiple access paths to records and their meanings

• Authors acknowledge this is an ambitious agenda and framed within a particular worldview, which may be challenged or will evolve based on differing worldviews that emerge from research.
  • imperative for researchers to experiment with inclusive and innovative research designs that respect, empower and facilitate full and equal participation of the communities engaged in the research.
  • qualitative/ethnographic/archival ethnography would be good methods and research teams would definitely be made up of members of the logal/indigenous community who would have input to all aspects of the research design, collection, analysis and dissemination.