Reparative Description for Truth and Reconciliation: Devil is in the Dietz-tails
Tuesday May 13, 2025
From 2:00pm to 2:30pm
The province of Saskatchewan is home to 75 First Nations, covered by multiple treaties, and is the Homeland of the Métis. The University of Saskatchewan (USask) operates on Treaty 6 Territory and the University Archives and Special Collections (UASC) holds a significant volume of archival materials about Indigenous Peoples.
USask’s Indigenous collections and their relevant online access points feature multiple accessibility and discoverability problems for our target users; the Indigenous communities who are involved in, access, and are the subjects of these materials. The long history of USask’s Indigenous collections means that there is incredible potential for reparative description work. In particular, there are materials wherein the Indigenous communities were unaware that they were being documented or that these materials would be donated to an archive and retained. Without proper metadata to restrict their access, these materials violate the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada’s Calls to Action, specifically the Reconciliation Framework created by the Association of Canadian Archivists as a response. Though reparative description has been attempted in the past, it was not completed. With the hiring of an Indigenous Archivist, Sadie Anderson, and Metadata Librarian, Jessica Ye, the work has been renewed in collaboration with the rest of the USask University Library.
Our presentation will outline our action plan for our Indigenous collections and demonstrate how, in some cases, making a collection more accessible and inclusive requires restricting access.
