HIS 370-01 Archiving Dispossession

An Archive… (With a Capital A!) “is an organization dedicated to preserving the documentary heritage of a particular group: a city, a province or state, a business, a university, or a community.” - The Society of American Archivists definition

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special collection

n. “a cohesive collection of noncirculating research materials held together by provenance or by a thematic focus"…, - usually within a larger institution or library.

Characteristics of Archives & Special Collections

Contain both published and unpublished material that is often one of a kind or unique and can be of any material.

Items do not circulate.

Material can vary widely, with examples including manuscripts, drawings, diaries, ephemeral, photographs, moving image, computers and software programming.

"Blood Memory": Native American Storytelling and the Oral Tradition | N. Scott Momaday

Mainstream archival practice posits that “archival institutions develop naturally as cultures develop a written from an oral tradition and adopt the practice of recording information by writing on a receptive material. They originate from:

• the need of rulers and governments to operate efficiently supported by appropriate administrative infrastructure;
• a realization of the value of archive as encapsulating precedent and recording rights; and
• an appreciation of archives as cultural artifacts and as an expression and reflection of nationhood.”

This model traces archives on clay tablets to the Sumerians in present day Iraq in the 9^th millennium BCE, others cite ancient Greece in the 5^th century BCE in the “Metroon” a temple next to the court house in Athens, then the Romans – Emperor Justinian ordered the creation of public buildings for safe storage of memory and faith in the Byzantine government in the 6^th century, through to the medieval monasteries and European courts of kings, with their archives, - demonstrating power and legitimacy.

C. Williams 2006 p. 21

However, this narrow view of archives with an emphasis on written word, ignores the fact that there have always been oral histories, embodied archives, less tangible collected knowledge passed down from generation to generation. Around the world this is seen, from pre-colonial India and Ireland (who had the Seanchaí), similarly oral history is central in Native American culture, and when enslaved Africans were brought to the United States, they brought with them a vast oral tradition dependent on their place of origin. As institutional archives did not deem this knowledge stored and disseminated in unconventional ways, as important, much of this history has been lost.