Paper short abstract:

This paper discusses the relational obligations that arise in considering the agency or sovereignty of documents relvetnt to or from Indigenous Nations.

Paper long abstract:

Responding to challenges, pitfalls, and opportunities experienced working on the Franz Boas Papers: Documentary Edition, this paper will discuss collaborative approaches among Indigenous communities, mainstream institutions/researchers, and Indigenous scholars working with historical and anthropological archival documents. This is a response to critical issues that inform and impact the work of archivists, anthropologists, curators, public historians, and digital humanities scholars engaged in documentary editing projects involving multinational institutions and diverse stakeholders. In doing so, this paper focuses on the obligations that arise altogether from several key issues: (1) Cultural sensitivities and cross cultural respect concerning archival resources. (2) The ongoing challenge of accessibility, including ways in which archival documents, images and ephemera can be made more accessible to and useful for Indigenous communities and organizations at each stage of project development. (3) Implications for cataloguing, categorizing and metatagging digitized and born-digital archival resources when using anthropological and Indigenous frameworks. (4) Collaborative research models of other archival projects that work with First Nations communities to draw out relevant narratives found in archival documents. (5) Archival afterlife - questions for documentary editors concerning longevity, digital preservation and re-purposing resources. (6) Positionality and the relational politics of documentary editing. In addressing the obligations to Indigenous documents vis a vis their 'home' communities or Nations, I envisage the possibilities for shifts, innovations and adaptations in response to the mutual challenges of documentary editing and Indigenous research that stem from the documents themselves as agents of sovereignty.