Integrating Equity and Reconciliation Work into Archival Descriptive Practice at the University of Waterloo

Abstract

Despite sustained calls for a critical review of harmful content within archival descriptive records, there remains much to be explored by way of implications for Canadian academic archives. This article addresses the absence of Canadian archival practitioners in broader discussions about the revision and remediation of descriptive records by exploring how staff in Special Collections & Archives at the University of Waterloo Library are working to integrate equityand reconciliation-informed thinking into the department’s archival practice by revising their approach to language in archival descriptions. Beginning with an overview of the department and the landscape in which it operates, this article provides a brief review of guidance available in the Rules for Archival Description. It then provides the rationale behind the recent changes to descriptive practice before exploring a series of examples of how and where this work is newly underway. The article concludes with a consideration of current identified challenges and the related work ahead.

Towards erasure studies: Excavating the material conditions of memory and forgetting

“…This means a kind of erasure that often works to correct or revise elements of text or data as an inherent part of producing them, for instance in changing the appearance of a word, paragraph or artwork in the course of its development. We argue that this type of erasure is not simply a matter of making-right, nor an act by which a former order may be re-erected, but rather something that is ‘productive’ – in the sense that it not only takes away but also adds something to the world, ultimately influencing relations of power (Foucault 1977; Brothman 1991, 81).…”

On ‘Holding the Process’: Paying Attention to the Relations Side of Donor Relations

“…However, contributions to archival scholarship by practitioner-researchers point out that how archivists decide to allocate time and other resources is to some extent at least a matter of prioritization; for example, invoking Antonina Lewis' concept of 'archival fragility', 46 Danielle Robichaud argues that 'by focusing on comfortably familiar neoliberal deflections like time and resources, archival fragility side-steps meaningful, action-oriented change'. 47 In other words, maintaining the status quo is a choice archivists make that allows them to avoid change; this choice, Robichaud shows, is often at the expense of justice and equity-oriented work. In a similar vein, David James Hudson notes how discourses of 'practicality' condone and/or endorse hegemonic racial politics and white supremacy 48 ; as he explains, 'our very expectations and assumptions about the practical character and value of our field subtly police the work we end up doing and supporting, the kind of questions we ask and conversations we have, [and…] our sense, more generally, of what useful and appropriate political interventions look like from the standpoint of our profession'.…”