It's the last episode of the year. In this bonus episode, I answer questions from you, the listener. The following are the submitted questions:
Q1: Can you talk a little bit about why it's important to document and preserve racist history & archival records?
Q2: Is there an extent to which archive-holding institutions need to do a better job of supporting archivists (e.g., mental health supports), and particularly BIPOC archivists, who may be working with these materials?
Q3: In your own training, were there courses that dealt with the topic of racist materials that helped to prepare you for the possibility of working with them?
Q4: Do these same principles apply to museum collections? I once worked at a museum that had a machine intended to do a job typically done by Chinese workers. The machine was called "The Iron Chink." Displaying it was obviously controversial. The museum took the stance that "We are not condoning this by exhibiting it. This is history."
Q5: Do you have colleagues at other archives in Canada who are also taking an anti-racist approach to the collections they work with? Do many archives have specific policies around working with explicitly racist materials?
Q6: As a Black researcher and academic, how do you explain the difficulty of searching for Black life in colonial archives to white archivists who don’t have that understanding?
Q7 How do you negotiate the place of Black researchers and Black Canadian history when the gatekeepers to memory are white settlers?
Archives for Black Lives in Philadelphia Anti-Racist Description Working Group. (2019). Anti-Racist Description Resources. https://archivesforblacklives.files.wordpress.com/2019/10/ardr_final.pdf
Archives of Ontario. Statement on Language and Description. http://www.archives.gov.on.ca/en/access/statement_language_description.aspx
Bashir Mohamed. (September 7, 2018).Calgary’s Unknown Civil Rights Champion. The Sprawl. https://www.sprawlcalgary.com/calgarys-unknown-civil-rights-hero
David Pilgrim (2005). Why I collect racist objects. Jim Crow Museum, Ferris State University. https://www.ferris.edu/HTMLS/news/jimcrow/collect.htm
Katie Sloan, Jennifer Vanderfluit and Jennifer Douglas. (2019). Not ‘Just My Problem to Handle’: Emerging Themes on Secondary Trauma and Archivists. Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies. 6 (20). https://elischolar.library.yale.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1090&context=jcas
Melissa J. Nelson. Work with me. https://melissajnelson.com/contact/
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