Archives, Recordkeeping and Social Justice [1 ed.] 147248388X, 9781472483881

Table of contents :
Cover
Half Title
Series Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Table of Contents
List of figures and tables
List of contributors
Series introduction
Acknowledgments
SECTION 1:
1. Introduction
2. Defining the relationship between archives and social justice
3. Methodologies for archival impact studies
SECTION 2: Preface to section 2: categorisations and patterns in the case studies
4. Archives, records, and land restitution in South Africa
5. “Hang onto these words”: Indigenous title and the social meanings of archival custody
6. “All I want to know is who I am”: archival justice for Australian care leavers
7. Justice for the 96!: the impact of archives in the fight for justice for the 96 victims of the Hillsborough disaster
8. Social justice and historical accountability in Latin America: access to the records of the truth commissions in Chile
9. Documenting the fight for the city: the impact of activist archives on anti-gentrification campaigns
10. Social justice struggles for rights, equality, and identity: the role of lesbian and gay archives
11. Social justice and hearing voices: co-constructing an archive of mental health recovery
12. Archives “act back”: re-configuring Palestinian archival constellations and visions of social justice
13. Conclusion
Index

Citation preview

Archives, Recordkeeping, and Social Justice

Archives, Recordkeeping, and Social Justice expands the burgeoning literature on archival social justice and impact. Illuminating how diverse factors shape the relationship between archives, recordkeeping systems, and recordkeepers, this book depicts struggles for different social justice objectives. Discussions and debates about social justice are playing out across many disciplines, fields of practice, societal sectors, and governments, and yet one dimension cross-cutting these actors and engagement spaces has remained unexplored: the role of recordkeeping and archiving. To clarify and elaborate this connection, this volume provides a rigorous account of the engagement of archives and records—and their keepers—in struggles for social justice. Drawing upon multidisciplinary praxis and scholarship, contributors to the volume examine social justice from historical and contemporary perspectives and promote impact methodologies that align with culturally responsive, democratic, Indigenous, and transformative assessment. Underscoring the multiplicity of transformative social justice impacts influenced by recordmaking, recordkeeping, and archiving, the book presents nine case studies from around the world that link the past to the present and offer pathways towards a more just future. Archives, Recordkeeping, and Social Justice will be an essential reading for researchers and students engaged in the study of archives, truth and reconciliation processes, social justice, and human rights. It should also be of great interest to archivists, records managers, and information professionals. David A. Wallace is Clinical Associate Professor at the School of Information, University of Michigan. He is editor of “Archives and the Ethics of Memory Construction” (Archival Science 2011); co-editor of Archives and the Public Good: Accountability and Records in Modern Society (Quorum 2002); and series technical editor for 12 volumes of the National Security Archive’s The Making of U.S. Policy series (1989–1992). Wendy M. Duff is a Professor and Dean of the Faculty of Information, University of Toronto. Her most recent research has focused on the emotional responses to archives. Recently, she has conducted impact studies of two different community

archives, the Ontario Jewish Archives and the Living Archives on Eugenics in Western Canada. Renée Saucier is an Archivist at the Archives of Ontario and a volunteer at The ArQuives: Canada’s LGBTQ2+ Archives. She has a graduate degree in information studies with a specialisation in archives and records management. Her paper “Medical Cartography in Ontario, 1890–1920” won the Association of Canadian Archivists’ Gordon Dodds Prize. Andrew Flinn is a Reader in Archival Studies and Oral History at University College London, a member of the UK Community Archives and Heritage Group and author of a number of papers relating to community-led and counter archives, including “Working with the past: making history of struggle part of the struggle” in Reflections on Knowledge, Learning and Social Movements (eds Aziz & Vally, 2018).

Routledge Studies in Archives Series Editor: James Lowry

Titles include Archives, Recordkeeping and Social Justice Edited by David A. Wallace, Wendy M. Duff, Renée Saucier, and Andrew Flinn

Archives, Recordkeeping, and Social Justice

Edited by David A. Wallace, Wendy M. Duff, Renée Saucier, and Andrew Flinn

First published 2020 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2020 selection and editorial matter David A. Wallace, Wendy M. Duff, Renée Saucier, and Andrew Flinn; individual chapters, the contributors The right of David A. Wallace, Wendy M. Duff, Renée Saucier, and Andrew Flinn to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Wallace, David A., 1961- editor. | Duff, Wendy M., editor. | Saucier, Renée, editor. | Flinn, Andrew, 1965- editor. Title: Archives, record-keeping and social justice / David A. Wallace, Wendy M. Duff, Renée Saucier, and Andrew Flinn. Description: New York : Routledge, 2020. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2019059749 (print) | LCCN 2019059750 (ebook) | ISBN 9781472483881 (hardback) | ISBN 9781315567846 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Archives--Social aspects. | Archives--Political aspects. | Archivists–Professional ethics. | Social justice. Classification: LCC CD971 .A74 2020 (print) | LCC CD971 (ebook) | DDC 027--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019059749 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019059750 ISBN: 978-1-472-48388-1 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-56784-6 (ebk) Typeset in Times New Roman by Integra Software Services Pvt. Ltd.

A half-century ago, US historian Howard Zinn (1922–2010) offered a prescient critique of archival praxis that has found increasing purchase within the field over the past decade and serves as both inspiration and intellectual cornerstone for this volume. Professional neutrality, he argued, was a dangerous myth that obscured that all archival work was political by its very nature. Claims of professional neutrality mask issues of power that “perpetuate the … status quo.” Zinn called for a “rebellion” of archivists against their traditional positioning in the hope that it would “humaniz[e]” the profession by rejecting systems of “social control” incompatible with a just society that promotes “human values of peace, equality, and justice.” We wholeheartedly agree with Zinn’s call for an archival praxis and scholarship that strives against domination, oppression, and injustice. (See: The Zinn Reader – Writings on Disobedience and Democracy, New York: Seven Stories Press, 2009. 555–561)

Contents

List of figures and tables List of contributors Series introduction Acknowledgments SECTION 1

1 Introduction

xi xii xix xx 1 3

RENÉE SAUCIER AND DAVID A. WALLACE

2 Defining the relationship between archives and social justice

22

DAVID A. WALLACE

3 Methodologies for archival impact studies

52

WENDY M. DUFF AND MICHELLE CASWELL

SECTION 2

Preface to section 2: categorisations and patterns in the case studies

71

BY RENÉE SAUCIER

4 Archives, records, and land restitution in South Africa

73

ANTHEA JOSIAS

5 “Hang onto these words”: Indigenous title and the social meanings of archival custody RAYMOND O. FROGNER

89

x

Contents

6 “All I want to know is who I am”: archival justice for Australian care leavers

105

JOANNE EVANS, FRANK GOLDING, CATE O’NEILL, AND RACHEL TROPEA

7 Justice for the 96!: the impact of archives in the fight for justice for the 96 victims of the Hillsborough disaster

127

ANDREW FLINN AND WENDY M. DUFF

8 Social justice and historical accountability in Latin America: access to the records of the truth commissions in Chile

149

JOEL A. BLANCO-RIVERA

9 Documenting the fight for the city: the impact of activist archives on anti-gentrification campaigns

169

SUSAN PELL

10 Social justice struggles for rights, equality, and identity: the role of lesbian and gay archives

183

REBECKA TAVES SHEFFIELD

11 Social justice and hearing voices: co-constructing an archive of mental health recovery

199

ANNA SEXTON, STUART BAKER-BROWN, PETER BULLIMORE, DOLLY SEN, AND ANDREW VOYCE

12 Archives “act back”: re-configuring Palestinian archival constellations and visions of social justice

223

BEVERLEY BUTLER

13 Conclusion

242

DAVID A. WALLACE, WENDY M. DUFF, AND ANDREW FLINN

Index

247

List of figures and tables

Figure 6.1 Senate Inquiry, Reports, Apology, and Find and Connect Program Timeline Table 2.1 Use of the term “social justice” in six English language archival journals Table 6.1 Mapping of Find and Connect Program to social justice values Table 6.2 Further actions for achieving archival justice for care leavers Table 8.1 Truth-seeking mechanisms

110 32 119 120 153

Contributors

Stuart Baker-Brown was diagnosed with schizophrenia in 1996. The condition was fully triggered in late 1991 after he visited Moscow and took part in marching against communist hardliners who attempted a military coup against the then soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. On his return to London he felt followed by the secret services and fell into a world of anxiety and fear. After many years of coping with the diagnosis of schizophrenia, he travelled to the Himalayas where he trekked and climbed to try and inspire and promote positive recovery from the condition. Stuart has won “industry awards” for his campaign work fighting stigma and discrimination towards severe mental illness. He has worked in the media over the years. This work has included live television, live and recorded radio at both local and national level, and national and local newspaper articles. He has recorded various “in house” documentaries about his life and work and has made speeches in Europe to medical audiences from around the world. In the past, Stuart has been involved with documentary photography, writing, and activism. He is “fully recovered” and works with vulnerable people trying to help them maintain the best quality of life they can. Joel A. Blanco-Rivera is Professor at the National School of Conservation, Restoration and Museography in Mexico City, where he teaches for the Master in Conservation of Documentary Heritage programme. He holds a PhD from the University of Pittsburgh and a Master of Science in Information from the University of Michigan. His research interests are archives and transitional justice in Latin America, archival education in Latin America and the Caribbean, and web and social media archiving. Together with Marisol Ramos and Irmarie Fraticelli-Rodríguez, he co-directs the #RickyRenuncia Documentation Project, which seeks to collect, preserve, and make accessible documents and materials about the July 2019 protests in Puerto Rico that led to the resignation of Governor Ricardo Rosselló. Peter Bullimore is Chair of the UK Paranoia Network. Pete heard his first voice aged seven, after suffering sexual abuse at the hands of a child minder. At first this voice was reassuring but as the abuse went on the voices

List of contributors

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increased in number, eventually turning sinister and aggressive. By his midtwenties, Pete had lost his business, his family, his home, everything. Pete spent more than a decade after that on heavy medication, but the voices never went away. He had to get out of the psychiatric system to recover. It was only when he came off the medication and met people who share his experience that he was able to stop being so afraid of the voices and actually start listening to them. He changed his relationship with his voices and worked through the meaning of his paranoia. Pete still hears voices all the time, and it is worse when he is tired or stressed. But he has rebuilt his life and has even been hearing a more positive voice recently, which dictated a children’s book to him. It has recently been published as “A Village Called Pumpkin.” Pete has also co-authored a book on Asking Questions about Childhood Trauma with Professor John Read and wrote the Maastricht Interview for Problematic Thoughts, Beliefs and Paranoia with Professor Marius Romme and Dr Sandra Escher. He now runs his own training and consultancy agency delivering training on hearing voices, childhood trauma, and paranoia internationally. He also currently teaches at ten Universities in the UK, and facilitates his own Maastricht Approach Centres. Beverley Butler is a Reader in Cultural Heritage, University College London (UCL) Institute of Archaeology. She is the Heritage and Wellbeing Lead at the UCL Centre for Critical Heritage Studies. She also directs the MA in Cultural Heritage Studies. Her key research interests are Critical Heritage perspectives; “Heritage Wellbeing”; Archive Studies, Cultural Memory; the transformative “Efficacies of Heritage,” particularly in contexts of marginalisation, displacement, conflict, illness, and extremis. Beverley has on-going long-term fieldwork research in the Middle East—notably in Egypt, Palestine, and Jordan. Outcomes include the monograph Return To Alexandria – An Ethnography of Cultural Heritage Revivalism and Museum Memory (Left Coast Press 2007). Her long-standing research collaboration with Dr Fatima Al-Nammari notably includes Dislocated Identities and ‘Non-places’ – Heritage, Place-making and Wellbeing in Refugee Camps (2011–ongoing). Recent publications include “‘We Palestinians Refugees’ – Heritage Rites and/as the Clothing of Bare Life: Reconfiguring Paradox, Obligation and Imperative in Palestinian Refugee Camps in Jordan,” Journal of Contemporary Archaeology 3-2 (2016):147–159 and “The Efficacies of Heritage – Syndromes, Magics and Possessional Acts,” Public Archaeology 15 Nos. 2–3 (May–August 2016): 113–135. Michelle Caswell, PhD, is an Associate Professor of Archival Studies in the Department of Information Studies at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), where she directs a team of students at UCLA’s Community Archives Lab (https://communityarchiveslab.ucla.edu/). In 2008, together with Samip Mallick, Caswell co-founded the South Asian American Digital Archive (http://www.saada.org), an online repository that documents and

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List of contributors

provides access to the stories of South Asian Americans. She is the author of the book Archiving the Unspeakable: Silence, Memory and the Photographic Record in Cambodia (University of Wisconsin Press, 2014), as well as more than 50 peer-reviewed articles. Wendy M. Duff is a Professor in and Dean of the Faculty of Information, University of Toronto. Her most recent research has focussed on the emotional responses to archives. Recently, she has conducted impact studies of two different community archives, the Ontario Jewish Archives and the Living Archives on Eugenics in Western Canada. She has also recently studied the impact of the lack of records on care-leavers in Scotland. Her previous research and publications focussed on the information-seeking behaviour of archival users, archival access, social justice, and the evaluation of archives. In 2016 she won the Ernest Posner Award for her co-authored paper, “New Uses for Old Records: A Rhizomatic Approach to Archival Access.” She has worked on numerous collaborative projects with academics and professional archivists, and served on committees of professional associations and advisory boards. Joanne Evans is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Information Technology, Monash University and coordinator of the Records Continuum Research Group. Through an ARC Future Fellowship, she has established the interdisciplinary Archives and the Rights of the Child Research Program to address the lifelong identity, memory, and accountability needs of childhood out of home care. This involves the exploration of participatory design and research strategies to develop dynamic evidence and memory management frameworks, processes, and systems supportive of multiple rights in records and recordkeeping. Andrew Flinn is a Reader in Archival Studies and Oral History in the Department of Information Studies at University College London (UCL). He is the Vice Chair of the UK Community Archives and Heritage Group and joint coordinator of the Archives Cluster in the joint University of Gothenburg/ UCL Centre for Critical Heritage Studies. Prior to UCL he studied at the University of Manchester (PhD, 1999) and worked at the People’s History Museum in Manchester and the British Museum. His research interests include community-based and participatory heritage practices, archival activism and social justice, oral history and participatory approaches to knowledge production aiming at social change and transformation (including the History Workshop and Dig Where You Stand movements). Relevant publications include “Working with the Past: Making History of Struggle Part of the Struggle” in Reflections on Knowledge, Learning and Social Movements (eds Aziz & Vally, 2018) and (with Anna Sexton) “Activist Participatory Communities in Archival Contexts: Theoretical Perspectives” in Participatory Archives Theory and Practice (eds Benoit & Eveleigh 2019).

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Raymond O. Frogner is the Head of Archives for the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation (NCTR). He holds a Master’s degree in Social History from the University of Victoria and in Archival Studies from the University of British Columbia. He was private records archivist for the University of Alberta where he taught a course in Indigenous peoples and archival records. He has also worked as a private records archivist for the Royal BC Museum where he wrote the RBCM’s archival response to the Truth and Reconciliation’s 94 Calls to Action. His portfolio at the RBCM included Indigenous culture and identity. Raymond’s publications have focussed on Indigenous knowledge and memory methodologies and the cognitive framework of colonial archives. His publications have twice won the national W. Kaye Lamb prize from the Association of Canadian Archivists and the Alan D. Ridge Award. He is Co-Chair of the International Council of Archives (ICA) Indigenous Matters Committee and co-author of ICA’s Adelaide Declaration on Indigenous Issues. He recently published “Qui sont ces enfants perdus!” (Archives. vol. 48, no. 2, 2019), a study of the NCTR’s Missing Children Project to create a memorial site and death register, documenting Indigenous children who were lost in the Canadian residential school system. Frank Golding is an Honorary Research Fellow and PhD candidate at Federation University Australia and a Life Member of the Care Leavers Australasia Network (CLAN), the national Care Leaver advocacy body. A social historian, Frank has contributed to formal inquiries dealing with the institutionalisation of children and to projects with the National Museum, the National Library of Australia, and the National summit on Rights in Recordkeeping. He has presented papers on child welfare in the UK, Ireland, Sweden, Italy, and Spain. He has written more than a dozen books, as well as book chapters and refereed journal articles. Anthea Josias is a Senior Researcher at the University of the Western Cape (UWC), South Africa. Working with the Centre for Humanities Research, the university’s Institutional Planning Office and other institutional partners, she has convened a series of symposia on the themes of ethics, privacy, trust, ownership, and digital archiving, aimed at solidifying the university’s commitment to sustainable long-term access to its archival collections. She has lectured in the field of archives, libraries, and information studies. She has contributed to many archival, research, exhibition, and publication projects such as A Ground of Struggle: Four Decades of Archival Activism in South Africa (Archival Platform, 2018), Rainbow Dreams: the Making of the Robben Island Museum (forthcoming), A Prisoner in the Garden: Opening Nelson Mandela’s Prison Archive (Nelson Mandela Foundation and Penguin Books, 2005), and the Madiba Legacy Series of comic books. Most of her work both as researcher and as an archival/heritage practitioner has focussed on documenting the memories and records of South Africa’s liberation struggle, including periods of employment at the Mayibuye Centre (UWC),

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Robben Island Museum, and the Nelson Mandela Foundation. She holds a PhD Information from the University of Michigan. Cate O’Neill, PhD, is the National Editor and Research Coordinator of the Find & Connect web resource project of the eScholarship Research Centre, The University of Melbourne. Before this, she was a post-doctoral research fellow in the School of Social Work working with the historical strand of the “Who Am I?” project. With an educational background in historical studies, Cate has also worked in archives, including at Public Record Office Victoria, where in 2005–2006 she was involved in a project aimed at improving access to records of the Stolen Generations. Cate regularly writes posts related to the Find & Connect web resource project for the project blog and has written several submissions to a number of inquiries including the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse (2012–2017) and the Victorian Inquiry into the handling of child abuse by religious and other organisations (2012–2013). Susan Pell is an Associate Professor of Communications at Richmond, The American International University in London, UK. Her work focusses on public discourse, social movements, community archives, and urban politics. She is currently researching gentrification archives and the formation of urban publics in Vancouver (Canada) and London (UK), investigating the relationship between knowledge production and possibilities for democratic participation. She has published in international journals, and her research has been presented at conferences in the UK and abroad. Renée Saucier has served as the inaugural Penny Rubinoff Fellow at the Ontario Jewish Archives Blankenstein Family Heritage Centre, and worked for the University of Toronto Libraries’ web archiving programme from 2017 to 2019. She has a graduate degree in information studies with a specialisation in archives and records management, and volunteers at The ArQuives: Canada’s LGBTQ2+ Archives. Her paper “Medical Cartography in Ontario, 1890-1920” won the national Gordon Dodds prize from the Association of Canadian Archivists. Her areas of interest include web and social media archiving and community archives. Dolly Sen: As a child, Dolly Sen was an alien in Star Wars’ The Empire Strikes Back. She knew then she would never know normal life. She is an award-winning writer, artist, performer, and filmmaker. She has had ten books published, and her blogs around art, madness, and humour have a huge international following. She has exhibited as an artist and performed internationally, and her films have been shown worldwide, including at the Barbican in London. Her public speaking around mental health has taken her to The World Health Organization in Geneva, Oxford University, The Barbican, Mayor of London, University of Westminster, Guys Hospital, The Probation Service, and over 100 charity, corporate, and statutory organisations.

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Anna Sexton undertook the development of the Archive of Mental Health Recovery Stories as part of her doctoral studies, alongside her co-participants Stuart Baker-Brown, Peter Bullimore, Dolly Sen, and Andrew Voyce. She has never been institutionalised within the mental health system, but she has had a significant experience of post-natal distress following the birth of her first child. She is now a Lecturer in Archives and Records Management in the Department of Information Studies at University College London (UCL). Her research interests are primarily focussed on participatory and trauma-informed approaches to archives and recordkeeping, particularly in the context of mental health and social care. Her wider research interests include the intersections between ethics, rights, and social justice across archives, recordkeeping, data management, and cultural heritage settings. Rebecka Taves Sheffield is an Archivist and Archival Educator based in Hamilton, Ontario. She has taught in graduate programmes at Simmons University and the University of Toronto. Presently, she is a senior policy advisor for the Archives of Ontario and works on digital recordkeeping strategies. Rebecka previously served as the Executive Director for The ArQuives, where she spent the better part of a decade learning as much as possible about Canada’s LGBTQ2+ histories. This work is the focus of her book, Documenting Rebellions: Four Lesbian and Gay Archives in Queer Times. She has studied sociology, gender studies, publishing, and archives. She completed her PhD in information studies and sexual diversity studies at the University of Toronto. Rachel Tropea is a Researcher and Archivist at the University of Melbourne eScholarship Research Centre. She was the National Program Manager of the Find & Connect web resource from its inception in 2011 until February 2016. From 2009 to 2011 she was a member of the “Who Am I?” project research team. In 2017 Rachel worked with University of Melbourne Archives staff to implement a new “trauma informed” programme and service. She is currently working on the “Return, Reconcile, Renew” project with First Nations people. Rachel is particularly interested in systems and practices that facilitate discovery, understanding, and access to information resources among a wide range of people. Andrew Voyce was born in 1951. After successful years at school, he developed psychosis at university and then descended into 20 years as an in-andout, revolving door psychiatric patient of the old asylum system. For Andrew, rescue came when Mrs Thatcher closed those places down—what an unusual person to thank for an act of social justice. During his recovery journey since then, he has obtained a Master’s degree, and has been engaged in a number of empowering activities. From being a pariah for him, the NHS has now brought service user involvement, recovery focussed practice, and peer support. So he has enjoyed the best of all those, and for three years he has

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worked as an expert by experience in the NHS with occasional work engagements elsewhere. Working with Anna Sexton on her PhD project inspired Andrew to compose articles for academic journals, and Andrew is currently writing his third piece, this one on recovery journeys. He can say that despite what life throws up at you, it is possible to end up in a happy place. David A. Wallace is Clinical Associate Professor at the School of Information, University of Michigan (UMSI). From 2015 to 2020, he has served as faculty lead for UMSI’s Global Information Engagement Program in Cape Town, South Africa. He is editor of Archives and the Ethics of Memory Construction (Archival Science 2011); co-editor of Archives and the Public Good: Accountability and Records in Modern Society (Quorum 2002); and series technical editor for 12 volumes of the National Security Archive’s The Making of U.S. Policy series (Chadwyck-Healey 1989–1992). He has published and presented in a wide range of professional forums, examining, in part: recordkeeping and accountability; live music archiving; archiving and the shaping of the present and the past; archival social justice; freedom of information; government secrecy; professional ethics; electronic records management; and graduate archival education. Substantial consultations include the South African History Archive’s Freedom of Information Programme (2002–2005); Stories For Hope, an intergenerational storytelling project in Rwanda (2009–2014); and records management and archiving for The Kresge Foundation (2014–present).

Series introduction Series editor: James Lowry

Routledge Studies in Archives publishes new research in archival studies. Recognising the imperative for archival work in support of memory, identity construction, social justice, accountability, legal rights and historical understanding, the series extends the disciplinary boundaries of archival studies. The works in this series illustrate how archival studies intersects with the concerns and methods of, and is increasingly intellectually in conversation with, other fields. Bringing together scholarship from diverse academic and cultural traditions and presenting the work of emerging and established scholars side by side, the series promotes the exploration of the intellectual history of archival science, the internationalisation of archival discourse and the building of new archival theory. It sees the archival in personal, economic and political activity, historically and digitally situated cultures, subcultures and movements, technical and socio-technical systems, technological and infrastructural developments and in many other places. Archival studies brings an historical perspective and unique expertise in records creation, management and sustainability to questions, problems and data challenges that lie at the heart of our knowledge about and ability to tackle some of the most difficult dilemmas facing the world today, such as climate change, mass migration, and disinformation. Routledge Studies in Archives is a platform for this work.

Acknowledgments

The editors gratefully acknowledge the case study authors for taking the time and effort to share their knowledge and work. They also offer their appreciation to all the peer reviewers for their many valuable comments and suggestions. Their expertise and insights have greatly helped us in our editorial decisions. Finally, we thank the publisher liaisons, Heidi Lowther, Ella Halstead, and Sunantha Ramamoorthy, for their support and assistance across the process of producing this volume, and our indexer, Noeline Bridge.

Section 1

Chapter 1

Introduction Renée Saucier and David A. Wallace

Introduction This volume builds on the burgeoning literature on archival social justice and impact and presents a series of commissioned case studies drawn from across the world. These studies explore engagement by a range of actors interfacing with archiving and recordkeeping activities and not just those who are professionally or occupationally responsible for records and archives. These cases examine how the range of involved actors have aided and hindered social justice outcomes. Section 1 of this volume presents the rationale, context, and foundation for the case studies. This chapter outlines the volume, introduces archival social justice, describes the origins and responses to this research, defines key terms, and presents synopses of the case studies with attention to the range of archival social justice impacts uncovered by their contributors. In Chapter 2, David A. Wallace examines social justice from historical and contemporary perspectives. He frames and defines social justice expansively through inter- and multidisciplinary, historical, and contemporary perspectives. He further charts the rise of social justice in the archival literature and examines debates over archival ethics and the adoption of a social justice mandate. In Chapter 3, Wendy M. Duff and Michelle Caswell survey research on archival impact, highlighting critical responses to the methods used in many impact studies and promoting those that align with culturally responsive, democratic, Indigenous, and transformative impact measures. These new methods and frameworks for studying impact both echo and address longstanding criticisms of impact studies. Section 2 of this volume presents eight case studies from our contributors, prefaced by a succinct analysis of their interconnections. All of these case studies are contemporary, describing issues that have their roots in both the distant and recent past but which continue to resonate as current ongoing struggles. The complex dynamics of the relationship between archives and social justice and injustice evident in these cases underscores that archives are not “about” or “for” the past but indeed exist in the “thin veil of the present” and

4

Renée Saucier and David A. Wallace

for the future. The present day interactions with recordmaking, recordkeeping, and archiving from the past strive to provide pathways towards alternative and more just futures. Several of the cases evidence extended temporal horizons, where the impact of activism may be seen only long-after original events, and often involving changes in governing regimes. In many of the cases, social justice is pursued in and for the present and for generations to come, while in others social justice is sought for those who are no longer living as a form of acknowledgement and recognition of the injustices they endured. In most, the struggle for social justice is a struggle to amend or shatter dominant narratives that reinforce and mask past and present injustices by supporting campaigns for legal and restorative justice. These case studies are followed by a concluding chapter summarising key findings from across the cases and reinforcing the transformative social justice effects of recordmaking, recordkeeping, and archiving.

Archival social justice Struggles for social justice have long determined the life and death of countless individuals. These struggles have served as inspiration for transcendence, instruments for social change, and lenses to evaluate behaviours of institutions and governments. A fundamental challenge to researching and promoting social justice is that it connotes a diversity of meanings and can be applied to a wide range of tangible and abstract settings. It has been opportunistically touted across the social and political spectrum, to “rationalize the status quo, promote modest reforms, and justify revolutionary, even violent action” (Reisch 2014a, p. 1, 2014b, pp. 9–10). A “cynical view” sees it as malleable and primarily shaped by existing structures of power that reinforce systems of exploitation, while an “ethical view” regards it as aspirational, prescriptive, and transferrable across different contexts (Cordourier-Real 2010, pp. 1–3). Understandings of justice and injustice suggest these as well as other views. These are historically bound to and reflect contextually specific and unique sites of conflict while also promotable as universal signposts towards self-determination and greater equality and fairness. Sen’s (2009) valuable analysis seeks to understand justice not from abstract unachievable philosophical ideals rendered through regulated institutions constituted by reason alone—a norm in political philosophy—but rather by evaluating the actual behaviours of the individuals and processes functioning within institutional systems in order to assess (“diagnose”) how they enhance or abate injustice. Recordmaking (what gets recorded, by whom, how, for what purpose, and under what circumstance), recordkeeping (how what gets recorded is maintained, controlled, used, and deleted), and archiving (what is selected and excluded as having enduring value and how selected records are accessioned, described, preserved, made accessible, and used, and how archives as heritage and memory institutions are created, change, and sustained across time) are vital active sites of social justice and injustice. Through their social and legal

Introduction

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authority, records and archives constitute and reflect the societal contexts within which they operate and do so both subtly and bluntly by how they mediate social relationships, influence understanding of the knowable past, and contribute to or suppress contemporary struggles for justice. Their effects are multiple and produce different outcomes for different actors across time. The archival–social justice nexus intersects in part on how the past in all of its permutations can be understood, shaped, and mobilised to inform and change the present and the future towards the arc of social justice, and in part on creating and supporting new documentation initiatives for contemporary social justice struggles and movements. One empirical analysis on the relationship between archives and social justice found four compelling intersections: (1) archives provide to the present evidence of multiple viewpoints of past injustices, from direct perpetrators and passive observers, to understand and corroborate unjust acts; (2) archives substantiate that earlier social norms that legitimated historical injustices have shifted across the passage of time, such as in regards to race, gender, ethnicity, class, and state-based violence; (3) archives demonstrate that antecedent institutional collecting practices were biased and prejudiced, as evidenced by their silences and exclusions; and (4) archives permit intergenerational transmission of eyewitness experiences with injustice (Opotow and Belmonte 2016, p. 447). A contemporaneous review of archival scholarship found that social justice was “most apparent” in discussions on the “inclusion of underrepresented and marginalized sectors of society; reinterpretation and expansion of archival concepts; development of community archives; rethinking archival education and training; and efforts to document human rights violations” (Punzalan and Caswell 2016, p. 27). Understanding social justice and injustice from an archival perspective connects to a range of widely recognised forms of justice, such as procedural, distributive, exclusionary and inclusionary, retributive, restorative and reparative, and historical, each of which exhibit different characteristics, sites of application, and purposes. Individual cases are not always restricted to a single form of justice and can reveal connections to multiple forms simultaneously. While pulling apart the different strands of justice is no simple exercise, on one level archives implicate social justice to the extent that they reflect systems of domination and oppression that prejudicially further the interests of some at the expense of others in the distribution of material goods, social benefits, rights, protections, and opportunities. Procedural justice, which centres on the administrative fairness and equity of processes and the distribution of resources, can demonstrate how information and document intensive processes can support just or unjust outcomes such as through freedom of information and declassification mechanisms. Distributive as well as inclusionary and exclusionary justice, which deals with the perceptions of evenhandedness of the guiding rules that govern the distribution of resources and how they are actually distributed, can be related to whether public archives’ claims of equitable and impartial access and unbiased documentation efforts withstand

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scrutiny. Retributive, restorative and reparative justice all deal with the ability of a society, its institutions, and its communities to redress historical injustices either formally through punishment, restitution, and compensation or more informally through gestures of acknowledgement, commemoration, forgiveness, and apology. There exists wide evidence of archives being used and even created to support such endeavours through trials, tribunals, truth commissions, and transitional justice exercises. These efforts are deeply dependent on memory and documentary collections to create and sustain new shared narratives and accounts corroborating prior injustices. These processes also help fulfil “right to know,” “right to justice,” “right to reparation,” and “guarantee to non-recurrence” principles that guard against impunity before the law and unjust historical revisionism and denialism (Sisson 2010, p. 13; Cohen 2016, pp. 257–262, 267, 270; Opotow and Belmonte 2016, pp. 443–453; Sabbagh and Schmitt 2016, pp. 6–7; Vermunt and Steensma 2016, pp. 221, 229–230). In combination, these all relate to a form of justice that has been termed “informational justice,” of which recordmaking, recordkeeping, and archiving exist as a subset (Mathiesen 2015). Archival social justice obliges archives and archivists to proactively enable broader participation in assembling, accessing, and mobilising the archive, be mindful of exclusions and absences resulting from faintly perceptible to forthrightly candid ideological biases that manifest injustice, consider how silences that mute injustice can be remedied, contribute to processes of historical clarification, restitution and reparation, and support efforts to combat contemporary injustice (Duff et al. 2013, pp. 319, 329–330). Following Kuehn on environmental justice (2014, p. 332) and hooks’ (2002) observations of “the interlocking systems of domination that define our reality”—namely, “imperialist white supremacist capitalist patriarchy”—archival social justice is not an isolated and insular issue of archives alone; rather, records, archives, recordkeepers, and recordkeeping are all systemically connected to a wide range of historical and contemporary social justice- and injustice-related issues and actors. A preliminary list drawn from concrete cases includes colonialism, decolonisation, genocide, slavery, racism, civil rights, Indigenous sovereignty, discrimination based on gender and sexuality, discriminatory real estate practices, broken treaties, forced removals, human experimentation, eugenics and sterilisation, environmental toxicity, militarism and war, torture, extrajudicial killing, state surveillance, privacy and civil liberties, child abuse, sexual exploitation, school segregation and desegregation, food safety, worker safety, immigration and migration, psychological well-being, and individual and community health and safety. These issues manifest as archival social justice struggles as records and archives both constitute and enact related injustices but also are central to justice-seeking efforts to surface, bear witness, resist, and seek acknowledgement and redress to overcome and mitigate silencing, invisibility, misrepresentation, appropriation, trauma, and human rights violations. The forms of social justice in relation to archives primarily deal directly with the concept of historical justice as a mechanism to overcome historical injustice, exploitation and the denial of legal, political, and cultural rights.

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Despite efforts worldwide on this challenge (Nelson Mandela Foundation Undated; Nelson Mandela Foundation and the Global Leadership Academy 2014), there remains questions as to what obligations exist upon those in the present for acknowledging historical injustices for which they bear no direct complicity but whom inherit the knowledge and the benefits resulting from injustice. One study of “descendants of offenders…among citizens of European countries involved in colonization and twentieth-century genocides” found little appetite for “strong and explicit self-criticism for injustices committed in the recent past, and only slightly more for those committed in the distant past” (Cohen 2016, p. 269, reporting findings of Leach, Bou Zeineddine, and CehajiClancy 2013). Despite such realities, which are no doubt extendable beyond Europe, powerful arguments have been made on acknowledging historical injustice as a moral and ethical responsibility even for those with no direct culpability (Thompson 2002; Booth 2006; Blustein 2008; Bergin and Rupprecht 2016). Young’s (2013, pp. 96, 105–113, 184–185) “social connection model of responsibility” to confront historical injustices that endure beyond direct perpetrators links them to the present as inherited structural injustice. Looking backwards into the past sheds light on how injustice was produced through social structural mechanisms (“actions, practices, and policies”) that continue to the present. The objective of this model is not to assign individual guilt in the traditional sense, as often there is no one alive with direct guilt, but rather to assume a present and future-oriented responsibility to change and transform “institutions and processes so that their outcomes will be less unjust.” The necessary corrective measures can only be achieved through contesting assumed norms and collective will and action to compel change to structural historically based injustices. This model connects to current archival work as the records profession continues to grapple with and more fully understand its own histories of biased and partial collecting that continue to reify and legitimise contemporary injustices (Brundage 2005; Josias 2013; Poole 2014; Yaco et al. 2015). As provocated by the Mandela Dialogues on Memory Work, “[r]emembering the past is not simply healing and restorative but also painful and divisive” and asks if “memory work need[s] to be subversive to master narratives in order to promote and achieve social justice?” (Nelson Mandela Foundation and the Global Leadership Academy 2014) Recordmaking, recordkeeping, and archiving demonstrate explicit connections to social justice and injustice far beyond well-worn platitudes and rhetorical aspirations of professional self-representation. As will be charted in the chapters that follow, this is well reflected in the recent and dramatically expanding published literature and evidences an eagerness to examine and understand how historical and contemporary practices elide historical injustices and to undertake corrective measures per the social connection model of responsibility. Many contemporary authors in the profession encourage archival advocacy and mobilisation for a range of social justice issues, such as civil, housing, LGBTQ+, and Indigenous rights. There are also calls for professional

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self-reflection on workplace and diversity issues, as well as re-consideration of a range of standard practices such as collection building, appraisal, description, and reference. Development of more self-aware participatory approaches with various users and groups who are documented in archival institutions are further highlighted. Some authors become embedded with users and their activist social justice reasons for mobilising archives. There are appeals for more nuanced awareness of archival relationships to government accountability, societal trust, and power, and how “good recordkeeping” is often an essential component to enacting social injustice. Others examine the politics within collective memory and memorialisation and the need to be attuned to and foreground marginalisation in the archival record, in essence advocating a social justice approach to memory building. Community archiving is a particularly strong locus for social justice archiving. Finally, there is advocacy for archival activism and social justice approaches for professional ethics and practice, including acknowledgment of the shortcomings of earlier generations of archivists. A continuing challenge amongst the recent proliferation of archival social justice advocacy literature is better understanding the range of impacts of these efforts. What differences have these efforts made? What changes have resulted and what change might result from archival social justice activism?

Archival social justice impact: origins In 2013, three of the editors along with Karen Suurtamm developed a framework for understanding social justice impacts of archives (Duff et al. 2013). It proposed that efforts to identify and assess archival social justice impacts should recognise and take into consideration the following six factors: (1) Social justice is a complex term with many dimensions and manifestations. (2) Social justice is ultimately social and can be experienced and understood at individual and collective levels. (3) The impacts of archives on social justice may not be immediately apparent, and the magnitude of the impact may change (grow or diminish) with the passage of time. (4) Social justice impacts are not binary (e.g. positive or negative, present or absent, personal or collective). Impacts exist along continua, and frameworks and scales for understanding these impacts should be multidimensional and interactive. (5) Social justice outcomes can vary for protagonists in the same case as these actors are often in conflict with one another and seek dissimilar results. In some circumstances, archivists may find themselves in roles that limit socially just outcomes. (6) The impacts of social justice actions and an archival approach to social justice may be observed at micro-, meso-, and macro-levels of social aggregation (Duff et al. 2013, p. 339).

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As a precursor to this framework, we defined an understanding of social justice and then offered a definition of an archival social justice approach (updated and described below in the next section). We found at this point that, while there was much of relevance in the archival literature on social justice, there were few efforts to clearly define it or illuminate specific social justice impacts resulting from recordmaking, recordkeeping, and archiving. We suggested that it would be useful for archivists, activists, and researchers operating with documentation or recordkeeping approaches to identify and better understand the ways records and archives and those mobilising them have an impact on specific social justice aspirations and objectives. As part of this process, we proposed the need to formally articulate “the locations, the dimensions and the types of social justice impacts” that archives and records can have (Duff et al. 2013, p. 338). In so doing, we suggested, investigations should seek to determine whether the existence, use, or activation of archives is a primary reason for an impact and/or if the use of the archives is a component of a series of actions that has an impact on social justice. Finally, as well as identifying ways recordmaking, recordkeeping, and archiving have an impact, we advised that archivists should also consider and understand the scale or the magnitude and the temporal dimensions of any impact. Our 2013 article called for the articulation of the dimensions of social justice impact based on studies that utilise qualitative data collection methods. The proposed dimensions were illustrated by narratives that examined why the action was undertaken; by whom; when; where; the role(s) played by records and archives as well as by recordkeepers and archivists; and impacts. The resulting narratives would incorporate the degree of the impact (e.g. a negligible, minor effect on a limited number of people and/or an effect that was substantial or profound with far-reaching effects); the temporariness and/or permanence of the impact and whether it could be reversed; and the dynamic nature of the impact(s) for differently affected individuals and groups, especially across the passage of time. Since its publication in Archival Science in 2013, Duff et al. has been cited widely within and beyond English-language scholarship and the fields of archives, libraries, and information studies. As of March 2020, it had been cited by approximately 90 scholarly works; about two thirds of citing works are authored by archival scholars, over a dozen from LIS, and another dozen by writers working across and between disciplines. The article has become a staple among literature reviews of archives and social justice and one-third of the citing works refer to the article in the course of reviewing the state of praxis and scholarship on the topic. In those citing works that engage more substantively with the article, scholars draw on and employ the definition and conceptualisation of “social justice” it offered. The fact that so many citing works focus on the article’s definitional and conceptual work suggests its usefulness to those grappling with the complex and multifaceted terrain encompassed by “social justice.”

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While many of the citing works touch on and take note of the development of the model, most attention is given to the article’s central contention: the importance and feasibility of assessing impact. In the initial phase of this project, there was some push back against the notion that social justice impact could or should be measured and, in particular, quantified. For this volume, we have explicitly shifted away from measurement “scales” and have redoubled our emphasis on the qualitative narrative approach. This approach better allows for nuance, complexity, and a dynamic range of impacts. There was also some initial hesitance in the field to use impact terminology due to its associations with neoliberal and managerial agendas of measurement and control. This association, whilst undoubtedly partially true, does not invalidate the necessity of the use of impact to better understand change in relation to human agency and action. The utilities of impact frameworks are now more widely accepted and valued as a meaningful way to assess change. Six years since the appearance of Duff et al., one can clearly see that there is research that builds on and critically engages the concept of trying to understand impact (Caswell, Cifor, and Ramirez 2016; Cifor 2016; Marsh et al. 2016; Caswell et al. 2017; Cifor and Lee 2017; Punzalan, Marsh, and Cools 2017). For example, Wisser and Blanco-Rivera have posed the challenging and important question of how such a framework might be used to assess “the impact of the disposition of surveillance files from former repressive regimes on society” (2016, p. 144). Additionally, beyond the archival field, there exists deep practice and reflection on the qualitative understanding and “measuring” of impact in a variety of relevant social, political, and informational areas of lived experience. Hence, rather than suggesting a model which others might directly adopt and apply, we now regard the model proposed in 2013 as a productive lens and tool for this volume to survey the growing discussions of social justice and archives, and as a way to understand how this landscape has shifted.

Constructing new narratives of archival social justice impact To frame and illuminate both the objectives of this volume and the cases that follow, and building on the work initiated with Duff et al. (2013), we offer the following definitions to frame our key terminology: Social justice. The vision that every human being is of equal and incalculable value, entitled to shared standards of freedom, equality, and respect. These standards also apply to broader social aggregations such as communities and cultural groups. Violations of these standards must be acknowledged and confronted. This requires attention to and action against inequalities of power and how they manifest in institutional arrangements and systemic domination and oppression that prejudicially further the interests of some at the expense of others in the distribution of material goods, social benefits, rights, protections, and opportunities.

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Archival social justice. The activation and mobilisation of records and archives through processes of recordmaking, recordkeeping, and archiving to serve social justice outcomes and counter injustice. Impact. To have an effect or to cause a change on an individual, community, or society. Archival social justice impact. The effect or change on an individual, community, or society in regards to social justice which results from records and the processes of creating, keeping, and activating of records. The chapters in Section 2 of this volume present a set of cases to reflect against an elaboration of the 2013 framework we suggested in the original article. We propose that the multiple dimensions of the social justice impacts of archives, records, and archival practices are best described through a thick description narrative approach. This approach explicates impact(s) via a series of questions: • • • • • • •

Who participated in the activating of the records and archives in a social justice campaign? What were the injustices identified and addressed? Where did the injustices and the responses take place? How were archives, records, and recordkeeping involved in supporting or creating social justice and injustice? What types and/or dimensions of impact (tangible to intangible, negative to positive) can be identified as resulting from actions? Who experienced the varying social justice impacts (individuals, collective groups, or several groups)? When over time do the actions take place? How has the impact change over time? When are the resulting impacts felt?

Often the individuals best positioned to answer these questions are those who have experienced the injustice and social justice impacts. Their assessments and testimonies on impact are oftentimes the only reliable evaluations of social justice impact and, unfortunately, their perspectives are often missing or very difficult to surface and/or include. In many cases, this is due to the design and orientation of evaluation frameworks that diminish and overlook the expertise of those with lived experience of injustice. We have come to believe that truly effective impact and evaluation frameworks must include the experiences of all those involved. In coming to this realisation, we have drawn on transformative approaches which state the framing of research which would study the impact of an intervention should also be set by the stakeholders rather than external sources. Recent methodological approaches (for example, see Josias 2013; Caswell et al. 2017; Punzalan, Marsh, and Cools 2017) and some of our case studies in this volume worked with affected individuals and communities. Such approaches promise more precise routes to gauging archival social justice impact.

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Some of the accounts in the literature and included here well describe social justice actions but less successfully define or tease out the impacts. Others do so more successfully by foregrounding the voices of participant subjects. And others admirably have been able to produce jointly authored accounts with participants. We have come to conclude that ascertaining impact(s) remains hard to distil. Nevertheless, the cases we have been able to assemble here indicate that archival social justice impacts can be partly and insightfully revealed even if their totality remains elusive. In “Archives, Records and Land Restitution in South Africa,” Anthea Josias unpacks the tensions and paradoxes of the role of archives and recordkeeping in initially facilitating land dispossession and later enabling faltering struggles for land restitution. Black South Africans were dispossessed of land by a series of laws throughout the twentieth century, a fact that the post-apartheid government sought to address with a 1994 Restitution of Land Rights Act and Commission on the Restitution of Land Rights (CRLR). Land claimants, researchers, and the Land Claims Commission have endeavoured to participate in the activation of archival records in order to pursue restitution. Archives, records, and individual and communal memory provide the evidence needed to demonstrate that individuals and communities had traditional territories, homes and neighbourhoods wrested from them, but the requisite records created by the apartheid government are deeply biased. Josias astutely observes that there is no small irony in the fact that the restitution programme “give[s] significant credibility to the administrative by-products of the colonial and apartheid systems for which the land restitution process seeks redress.” While many historic records have proven to be inadequate for the purposes of identifying and registering land claims, contemporary records management processes further hindered the process and resulted in many documents being lost: “CRLR and the Land Claims Commission have lacked the record keeping infrastructure to effectively manage the huge volumes of paper generated in the claims process.” There was no centralised database on land claims, and “‘the woeful recordkeeping of national and local government departments’ was identified as a major contributor to vague public understandings of the impact of land reform processes.” These recordkeeping issues exacerbated the problems posed by competing claims and blocked implementation of settlements. Thus, while activation of the records has had some positive impact (namely, the acknowledgement and remedy of historical injustice with redress measures), the overwhelming impact has remained negative, for the lack of adequate recordkeeping in the past and present has produced oppression, inequity, frustration, and barriers to the provision of restitution for the land. As Josias points out, land restitution is just one part of a broader, unfinished process of the pursuit of social justice in post-apartheid South Africa. In “‘Hang onto these words:’ Indigenous title and the social meanings of archival custody,” the core injustice is that of the denial of aboriginal land rights under regimes of settler colonialism in Canada, a form of violence that,

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accompanied by cultural imperialism, has produced systemic and institutionalised inequities. Raymond O. Frogner examines how “control over access and custody of the Vancouver Island Treaties has been both a tool of justice and injustice,” retracing the means by which these documents, from the mid-nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth century, were used, manipulated, and hidden in order to undermine Indigenous land rights, and then later “rediscovered” to validate those rights. In time, the acceptance of Indigenous oral history in courts of law, and the legal recognition of earlier treaties as “uphold[ing] a set of contemporary Aboriginal rights” have enabled redress. Steps toward justice have been enabled by the preservation of these records, recognition of their evidential value, and the restoration of access for secondary users (descendants of the First Nations communities whose land was dispossessed). For First Nations communities, the impact of the records’ creation and use has shifted from one of deep harm to one of repair, as they have been used to re-establish long-denied rights, thus enacting a fairer and more just re-distribution of power and resources. At the macro level, a major impact of this case on international jurisprudence is that such documents are no longer regarded as simply “agreements to purchase land,” but as treaties in full, “a sui generis agreement somewhere between the agreement of nation states and individuals dealing with private affairs, where ongoing, mutually binding obligations are constructed without finite resolution.” The full impact of the activation of these records will only appear in the long term and be felt in the future. As Frogner concludes, If social justice is at its core a concern for the social distribution of power, the treaties archival “rediscovery” was a demonstration of the role of archives in the struggle for social justice. …The records were in fact “rediscovered” once the colonial society was ready to discover and deal with them as records embodying legal rights to title for Indigenous Peoples. In “All I want to know is who I am,” Joanne Evans, Frank Golding, Cate O’Neill, and Rachel Tropea recount the Australian care leaver community’s struggle for archival justice. Care leaver activists, their supporters, and their families are confronting the legacies of the experiences of children who went through state and state-sponsored “care” systems, many of whom experienced neglect, separation from family, and multiple kinds of abuse. The care leaver community has identified records of in-care experiences as playing a central role in fulfilling “their identity, memory, accountability and redress needs.” The care leaver community has also sought to mobilise these records to support their struggle for acknowledgement and justice. However, poor recordkeeping systems and arduous access to information processes inflict further harm onto care leavers, as the absence of records, heavy redactions, and access restrictions all have negative direct impacts on the care leaver community. Having encountered numerous barriers to identifying and accessing the records of their childhood and family, the care leaver community, joined by individual

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academics and archivists, has fought for care leavers to have greater control over their records, or at least over the process of accessing their records. They seek to address the “information asymmetry” between care-experienced adults and the state (represented by records holders including care homes and social workers). Care leavers’ advocacy has impacted recordkeeping practices within archives and social service agencies, and may additionally shift broader societal attitudes and policies concerning care leavers, leading to more social recognition of the value of these records and of the rights of different communities to access and control. The impact of accessing these records may be immediate and life changing for individuals, but the wider societal impacts involving systemic and policy changes are longer and as-yet-unfinished processes that require further, ongoing action. Notably, it is care leavers, not archivists, who have asserted the importance of records to the understanding of their injustices. While asserting a professional obligation to participate in a movement towards equity in records and recordkeeping, the authors observe the profession’s lacklustre collective response and rightfully “question the extent to which archival and recordkeeping regimes embedded in existing power structures can meet the needs of the Care Leaver community.” While this case study takes place in Australia and concerns injustices occurring over the past seven decades, there are numerous international parallels including both settler and Indigenous populations and child migrants. In “Justice for the 96!” Andrew Flinn and Wendy M. Duff recount the fight for justice for the victims of the Hillsborough disaster, their families, and their communities. In April 1989, 96 individuals died and 766 were injured in the crush of crowds at Hillsborough Stadium in Sheffield, England. The media and local authorities responded by blaming the victims, branding them as intoxicated, ticketless fans. Moreover, the local authorities lied and manipulated evidence about the circumstances and causes of the tragedy, perpetuating the narrative that blamed the fans for their own demise and injuries. Subsequent investigations had differential, partial access to records, and the deliberate restriction and modification of evidence resulted in a prolonging of false narratives about the tragedy, ultimately delaying and preventing the police from being charged and held accountable. For nearly three decades, bereaved families, the Hillsborough Family Support Group (HFSG), the Hillsborough Justice Campaign (HJC), the media, and researchers pushed for deeper investigation into the tragedy. When the Hillsborough Independent Panel was established in December 2009 to oversee the full disclosure of public records related to the disaster, establish a digital repository of the documents, and publish a report, an archivist played a vital role in the fulfilment of this mandate. By making the records accessible and bringing them to the attention of those who could activate their potential to serve justice, the archivist contributed to the pursuit of justice. The release of the 2012 Hillsborough Independent Panel report, accompanied by the launch

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of a digital repository featuring 335,000 of the 450,000 documents disclosed and reviewed by the panel, served to disrupt and largely overturn the prevailing narratives and attitudes about the disaster. The victims were formally exonerated and recognised, receiving a formal apology from the Prime Minister, and legal proceedings have since been initiated against the parties responsible. At the individual level, victims’ families felt that a measure of justice had been attained; at the meso level, Liverpool fans and the broader public received a more accurate narrative. Nevertheless, some members of the public continued to believe the narrative promoted by these same authorities that it was the behaviour of Liverpool supporters that was ultimately responsible for the tragedy. Overall, the full impact of this case study is long-term and yet to be seen, given that legal proceedings continue. In “Social justice and historical accountability in Latin America: Access to the records of the truth commissions in Chile,” Joel A. Blanco-Rivera traces the efforts of advocacy and human rights groups to access records and to obtain accountability for the myriad crimes and human rights abuses—killings, detention, torture, and disappearances—perpetrated by the regime of dictator Augusto Pinochet between 1973 and 1990. Highlighting the widespread acknowledgement across Latin America of the importance of archives (and access to archives) for addressing the legacies of dictatorships and civil wars, Blanco-Rivera accounts the complex social and political context of these records. Post-dictatorship Chilean governments have only sought to pursue justice and accountability in a limited fashion, and have inconsistently legislated the closure of archives. Key state records, such as those of the police, are not transferred to the National Archives. Observing that the struggle for access itself is a struggle for archival justice within a broader movement for retributive and restorative justice, Blanco-Rivera suggests that “the impacts that the archives can have in serving these social justice objectives are both promoted and constrained through intersecting interests of advocacy for access and ongoing power to control and limit that access.” Human rights organisations and other groups and individuals acting with survivors and their families have coordinated campaigns (such as No More Secret Archives) specifically focused on opening up closed state (including truth commission) archives. In this chapter, the campaigns for access to records are social justice endeavours themselves, seeking to open up records including victims’ own testimonies to courts and judicial investigations. Social justice campaigns by activists (such as Londres 38) are additionally focused on creating alternative activist archives on the abuses of the regime. These advocacy campaigns are led by broad-based social movement alliances that, in addition to calling for the opening up of secret archives, call for enhanced public right of access to contemporary government records and new recordkeeping legislation. Their movement to obtain accountability for the past is inextricably linked to the movement to obtain transparency in the present. More recently, institutions including the National Archives of Chile have joined these campaigns,

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calling for the repeal of current legislation and supporting access to information reform. Focusing on campaigns to prevent the displacement of low-income communities due to gentrification in London, England, Susan Pell explores how activists who deploy anti-gentrification archives both engage in archiving “as an activist strategy within information-laden political struggles” and activate records to construct public counter-narratives. Pell recounts the events that took place at Heygate Council Estate beginning in 2010 amidst the rapid gentrification of the surrounding Elephant and Castle neighbourhood. Antigentrification activists and community members created the 56a Infoshop Archive, a DIY autonomous archiving initiative, to support local oversight of the redevelopment process, produce alternate knowledge and discourse, and convert that knowledge into action. The 56a Infoshop had an affiliated website, Southwark Notes, linked to the Southwark Notes Archive Group (SNAG). These activists drew from the archive, built upon it, and used it to publicise the struggle over redevelopment and intervene in public discourses, thereby incorporating archival practices (such as collecting records and making them accessible) into already existing activist practices. These interventions introduced “a critical language” that empowered local residents to learn about gentrification and speak out against the redevelopment of the Heygate Council Estate during public consultations. Additionally, activists utilised Freedom of Information requests to accumulate and publicise critical information, and “repurpos[ed] official records to challenge the credibility of the local Council and the legitimacy of the redevelopment[.]” Ultimately, the activist-archivist campaign did not succeed in stopping the wave of gentrification or preventing the displacement of Heygate’s former residents. The archival records show how the community’s interests and demands were overridden and overlooked. Yet, as Pell notes, “having an archive of their own impacted their political, historical, and pedagogical interventions.” Pell suggests that DIY activist archives have multiple social justice impacts even in the face of failed campaigns, namely, “the ability to mobilize alternative and counter-knowledges, strengthen collective voices in official spaces of politics, and preserve and publicize histories of resistance against inequalities in the city.” These impacts have been felt at the individual level, particularly for participants and residents who experienced changes in awareness and attitude and participated in creating and using the archive. Impacts have also been felt at the community level by those involved in the anti-gentrification campaign and, over the medium and longer term by other communities in similar circumstances, for whom the archive is an ongoing resource. Questioning the relationship between archives, shared heritage, social movements, and shifting social norms relating to sexual diversity in Canada and the United States, Rebecka Taves Sheffield unpacks the practice of archiving as activism in LGBTQ+ archives. This chapter places LGBTQ+ community archives and activists within a wider characterisation of community archives not

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just as resources that support social movements, but also as social movement organisations in their own right that seek to assert LGBTQ+ identities; combat othering, marginalisation and misrepresentation; and resist and change structures which enable discrimination and violence. These organisations are largely run by LGBTQ+ and ally volunteers, some of whom have professional training and experience, and many of whom do not. There is no division here between archivist and activist, as participants are engaged in heritage and community archive work as social movement work. Over the past five decades, LGBTQ+ repositories have preserved, managed, and made accessible materials which underpin the production of a shared heritage for LGBTQ+ people. By pointing out and rectifying absences and misrepresentations in other records and repositories, they challenge mainstream heritage systems and social norms. Additionally, LGBTQ+ archives also have symbolic value and impact. Drawing on Caswell’s (2014, p. 35) concept of “the lens of liberatory archival imaginaries,” Sheffield underscores how these archives enable us “to conceptualize a queer past, present and future based on the records that we do not have.” The impacts are evident, such as contributing to a progressive decline in homophobia and othering that are experienced at the individual, group, community, and societal level. At the individual and group level, LGBTQ+ people may experience affirmation of identity, recognition of history, and shared heritage for LGBTQ+ communities. At the societal level, public engagement with the history of LGBTQ+ marginalisation, discrimination, and violence can foster support for rights and opposition to discrimination. These impacts, however, are not linear, permanent, or universal; moreover, the social justice impacts are not distributed equitably among and within LGBTQ+ communities. Sheffield reflects on how such organisations promote social justice on some fronts while perpetuating injustice and inequality on others. Sheffield thus closes by questioning how an activist social movement archive might “recko[n] with its own biases and silences.” In “Social justice and hearing voices: Co-constructing an archive of mental health recovery,” Anna Sexton, Stuart Baker-Brown, Peter Bullimore, Dolly Sen, and Andrew Voyce assess their individual and collective experiences participating in the construction of the Archive of Mental Health Recovery, an archive based on the lived mental health experiences of its creators. In this case study, the archives’ creators seek to address disrespect for and disempowerment of people with mental health challenges, and the imbalance of power between patients and the medical/psychiatric world. The setting here is the United Kingdom, a society which negatively views people with mental health issues, and whose hospital recordkeeping programmes are often designed to serve medical professionals rather than those receiving care. With the support of the Arts and Humanities Research Council and in collaboration with the Wellcome Trust, the authors and other participants built the Archive of Mental Health Recovery to provide alternative stories—counter-narratives—of experiences with mental illness, to express their identities, and to assert ownership and enact control over personal narratives.

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Through creating the archive, the contributors acknowledged and confronted centuries of historical injustice by giving “voice to alternative identities and perspectives that seek to challenge the dominant medical model of mental illness and its associated psychiatric narrative.” They identify the project impact largely as positive insofar as the archive has disrupted structures of nonrecognition and pathologisation of mental health. The impacts appear to have been felt primarily by the participants, previous psychiatric patients whose work opened the potential for society to hear an alternative voice on mental illness. At the same time, each contributor tangles with the power dynamic of a participatory archiving project led by an archivist/researcher/academic, a factor that they observe reinforces unequal power dynamics. While Sexton suggests that the project demonstrates the effectiveness of archives as “a tool for the realisation of social justice,” she is critical of her decision to frame the project in terms of “recovery.” She suggests that this (or any) framing inhibits the archival imagination of contributors in representing their experiences, and thus overly determines the impact of participating in the archive. In “Archives ‘act back’: Re-configuring Palestinian archival constellations and visions of social justice,” Beverley Butler outlines the myriad ways in which activists challenge the “sovereignty of power”, by “acting back” and deploying the archival base in order to agitate for recognition and redress of the violent dispossession of Palestinians. Fact-seekers become fact-makers as, through acts of interpretation and storytelling, Palestinians (including refugees and members of the diaspora) as well as organisations (such as the Palestinian Association for Cultural Exchange, Riwaq Centre for the Preservation of West Bank Architecture and Hebron Rehabilitation Committee, and Open Bethlehem) build the archives and memory sites that each group and its members need. This archival “acting back” is undertaken under the sign of social justice and is responsive to the moral-ethical 'realpolitik' and truthvalue of lived experiences on the ground. These interventions centre the marginalised and include acts such as gathering oral histories, renaming sites with Palestinian place names, and creating online archives to counter settler-colonial narratives. Since the eighteenth century, imperialist powers have regarded and treated Palestinian people as “objects to be counted and governed”; through these contemporary archival interventions, activists seek to “act back” against the indignities of marginalisation, dispossession, and lack of representational belonging. Drawing on Doumani’s quest to “reconfigure the archive” with that of Agamben’s quest to “reconfigure the refugee,” Butler shows how formal, state-controlled archives serve to exclude and silence voices. She calls for a broadening of archival traces to include both the past and the present. These broader archives includes food, place names, dance, embroidery, amulets as well as stories that can “unhinge” past narratives, and ensure representation of previously excluded groups. A counter reading of the formal archives also fights against the agenda of injustices promoted by the “nation/state/territory trinity.” While the formal archives serves the nation/state and sovereignty of power, the alternative archives can decentre the colonial past and act back against symbolic annihilation by giving

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prominence to cultural identity, retrieving forgotten and silenced memories, recounting traumatic events and renaming of localities with previous nomenclatures. While impact in this multifarious case study is challenging to assess, these actors hope that their actions will have the impact of widening the archives to capture more counter-narratives, and to fight for recognition and against nonrecognition.

Conclusion These cases are not tales in which social justice has been definitively and unequivocally achieved. Rather, they underscore that struggles against injustice vary in their outcomes. In each of these chapters, social justice is sought after and still becoming and records and archives are crucial tools in these contests. In applying the framework to analyse the social justice impacts of the case studies, a common theme emerging is how the potential for records to impact social justice hinges not simply on the contents or evidential value of the records themselves, but rather the contextual factors and frameworks shaping the possibilities of activation through creation, access, and use. The case studies illuminate how different factors shape the relationship between archives, recordkeeping systems, the recordkeepers who administer these systems, and struggles for different social justice objectives. Records and recordkeeping are often integral to the systems that commit abuse and injustice. Moreover, by creating records that misrepresent, altering records to promote untruths, hiding or restricting access to records, destroying records, or never creating them at all, individuals and organisations use records not only to promote injustice but to also impede struggles for justice. In order to be used to further efforts towards social justice, records and archives must be mobilised or activated. The capacity of records to be used to pursue—or hinder—the pursuit of justice in large part derives from recordmaking and recordkeeping practices and the actions of both professional recordkeepers and archivists who carry out these practices. In this way the relationship between archives and social justice is not just about records, but rather is about human agency and intervention. Poor recordkeeping practices and the absence or incompleteness of records undermines their potential uses. This is particularly problematic in cases where individuals are seeking justice under the law, which has a high threshold for admissibility. They can also complicate efforts to raise collective consciousness and seek justice beyond and outside the law. At the same time, the absence of “official” records does not always impede social justice campaigns. This absence can in turn promote alternate practices, such as whistle-blowing or the creation and valuing of different records and methods of recording, often resulting in the establishment of alternative, community-based, and activist (digital and physical) archives.

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References Bergin, Cathy, and Anita Rupprecht, eds. 2016. “Reparative Histories: Radical Narratives of ‘Race’ and Resistance.” [Special Issue] Race & Class 57(3): 3–120. Blustein, Jeffery. 2008. The Moral Demands of Memory. New York: Cambridge University Press. Booth, William James. 2006. Communities of Memory: On Witness, Identity, and Justice. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Brundage, W. Fitzhugh. 2005. The Southern Past: A Clash of Race and Memory. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Caswell, Michelle. 2014. “Inventing New Archival Imaginaries: Theoretical Foundations for Identity-Based Community Archives.” In IdentityPalimpsests: Ethnic Archiving in the U.S. and Canada, edited by Dominique Daniel and Amalia S. Levi, 35–55. Sacramento, CA: Litwin Books. Caswell, Michelle, Marika Cifor, and Mario H. Ramirez. 2016. “‘To Suddenly Discover Yourself Existing’: Uncovering the Impact of Community Archives.” The American Archivist 79(1): 56–81. Caswell, Michelle, Alda Allina Migoni, Noah Geraci, and Marika Cifor. 2017. “‘To Be Able to Imagine Otherwise’: Community Archives and the Importance of Representation.” Archives and Records 38(1): 5–26. Cifor, Marika. 2016. “Affecting Relations: Introducing Affect Theory to Archival Discourse.” Archival Science 16(1): 7–31. https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/ 10.1007%2Fs10502-015-9261-5.pdf. Cifor, Marika, and Jamie A. Lee. 2017. “Towards an Archival Critique: Opening Possibilities for Addressing Neoliberalism in the Archival Field.” Journal of Critical Library and Information Studies 1(1). https://journals.litwinbooks.com/index.php/jclis/article/ view/10/4. Cohen, Ron. 2016. “Restorative Justice.” In Handbook of Social Justice Theory and Research, edited by Clara Sabbagh and Manfred Schmitt, 257–272. New York: Springer. Cordourier-Real, Carlos R. 2010. Transnational Social Justice. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Duff, Wendy M., Andrew Flinn, Karen Emily Suurtamm, and David A. Wallace. 2013. “Social Justice Impact of Archives: A Preliminary Investigation.” Archival Science 13 (4): 317–348. hooks, bell. 2002. Cultural Criticism & Transformation. Northampton, MA: Media Education Foundation. Josias, Anthea. 2013. “‘Methodologies of Engagement’: Locating Archives in PostApartheid Memory Practices.” PhD diss. University of Michigan. Accessed 7 September 2017. https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/97821/antheaj_1. pdf;sequence=1. Kuehn, Robert R. 2014. “Environmental Justice.” In Routledge International Handbook of Social Justice, edited by Michael Reisch, 319–338. London: Routledge. Leach, Colin Wayne, Fouad Bou Zeineddine, and Sabina Cehaji-Clancy. 2013. “Moral Immemorial: The Rarity of Self-Criticism for Previous Generations’ Genocide or Mass Violence.” Journal of Social Issues 69(11): 34–53. Marsh, Diana E., Ricardo L. Punzalan, Robert Leopold, Brian Butler, and Massimo Petrozzi. 2016. “Stories of Impact: The Role of Narrative in Understanding the Value and Impact of Digital Collections.” Archival Science 16(4): 327–372.

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Mathiesen, Kay. 2015. “Informational Justice: A Conceptual Framework for Social Justice in Library and Information Services.” Library Trends 64(2): 198–225. Nelson Mandela Foundation. Undated. Nelson Mandela International Dialogues. Accessed 25 September 2017. www.nelsonmandela.org/content/page/nelson-mandelainternational-dialogues-overview. Nelson Mandela Foundation and the Global Leadership Academy. 2014. The Mandela Dialogues on Memory Work: Report on the Dialogue Series. 26 November. Accessed 20 September 2017. www.nelsonmandela.org/uploads/files/Mandela_Dialogues_Final_ report_20141126_final.pdf. Opotow, Susan, and Kimberly Belmonte. 2016. “Archives and Social Justice Research.” In Handbook of Social Justice Theory and Research, edited by Clara Sabbagh and Manfred Schmitt, 445–457. New York: Springer. Poole, Alex H. 2014. “The Strange Career of Jim Crow Archives: Race, Space, and History in the Mid-Twentieth-Century American South.” American Archivist 77(Spring/ Summer, 1): 23–63. Punzalan, Ricardo L., and Michelle Caswell. 2016. “Critical Directions for Archival Approaches to Social Justice.” Library Quarterly 86(1): 25–42. Punzalan, Ricardo L., Diana E. Marsh, and Kyla Cools. 2017. “Beyond Clicks, Likes, and Downloads: Identifying Meaningful Impacts for Digitized Ethnographic Archives.” Archivaria 84(1): 61–102. Reisch, Michael. 2014a. “Introduction.” In Routledge International Handbook of Social Justice, edited by Michael Reisch, 1–5. London: Routledge. Reisch, Michael. 2014b. “Introduction to Part I.” In Routledge International Handbook of Social Justice, edited by Michael Reisch, 9–26. London: Routledge. Sabbagh, Clara, and Manfred Schmitt. 2016. “Past, Present, and Future of Social Justice Theory and Research.” In Handbook of Social Justice Theory and Research, edited by Clara Sabbagh and Manfred Schmitt, 1–11. New York: Springer. Sen, Amartya. 2009. The Idea of Justice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Sisson, Jonathan. 2010. “A Conceptual Framework for Dealing with the Past.” Politorbis 50(3): 11–15. Thompson, Janna. 2002. Taking Responsibility for the Past: Reparation and Historical Justice. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press. Vermunt, Riël, and Herman Steensma. 2016. “Procedural Justice.” In Handbook of Social Justice Theory and Research, edited by Clara Sabbagh and Manfred Schmitt, 219–236. New York: Springer. Wisser, Katherine M., and Joel A. Blanco-Rivera. 2016. “Surveillance, Documentation and Privacy: An International Comparative Analysis of State Intelligence Records.” Archival Science 16(2): 125–147. Yaco, Sonia, Ann Jimerson, Laura Caldwell Anderson, and Chanda Temple. 2015. “A Web-Based Community-Building Archives Project: A Case Study of Kids in Birmingham. 1963.” Archival Science 15(4): 399–427. Young, Iris Marion. 2013. Justice and the Politics of Difference. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Chapter 2

Defining the relationship between archives and social justice David A. Wallace

Introduction This chapter examines social justice in historical and contemporary perspective and offers perspectives from multiple disciplines and practical politics to unpack, frame, and understand social justice and injustice before offering a definition of social justice. It then provides a systematic review of the archival literature up through 2017 to chart the rise of archival social justice research and summarises the many arenas it touches upon. Before concluding, it examines the debates over archival ethics and the adoption of a social justice mandate. The subtext of this chapter emphasises the importance and necessity to develop more effective impact and evaluation methodologies to better understand the relationship between archives and social justice in all of its manifestations. This challenge is taken up in Chapter 3.

Social justice in historical and contemporary perspective Concepts and practices of justice and injustice have been infused into human societies for millennia, based on complex cooperative, prescribed, and coerced relationships. Often expressed as shared values and social and cultural norms, unjust social hierarchies have been scaled along a range of attributes such as class, gender, race, genealogy, language, ideology, and religion. Many of the purported “natural” differences between individuals and groups were ascribed to extra-human divine origins to give them greater power and legitimacy, despite the hard fact that they actually resulted from socially constructed “fictions” manufactured from “imagined orders and devised scripts” to establish and sustain social inequality. History regularly denies these “fictional origins” of social differentiation and instead upholds them not only as “natural and inevitable” but also “just.” All complex societies manifest social injustice and discrimination based on such “imagined” hierarchies. These fictions, through their embeddedness and routinisation in social interactions and transmission to and internalisation in individual psychologies, produce and reproduce a “vicious circle” feedback loop of cause and effect. These imagined social orders and

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their assumptions and behaviours, often supported by structures of power and the threat and use of force, manifest as concrete lived realities that benefit and privilege some members and groups of a society whilst exploiting and dominating others (Gil 2004, pp. 33–34; Harari 2014, p. 149–161). These dynamics are traceable to the onset of writing systems in emergent agricultural states that evolved into “recording, registering and measuring machine(s)” that enabled “conscription, forced labour, land seizures … and new taxes on croplands” (Scott 2017, p. 139). In short, documentary-based social control and oppression. Across the ages, theological, philosophical, and socio-political programmes on what makes a society just confined themselves to partial application of rights. Inequality, unequal resource allocations, and oppression were regularly rationalised, such as when slavery and indentured servitude existed alongside “democracy” for a privileged minority. Even the Enlightenment’s (seventeenth to eighteenth centuries) emphases on reason, rationalism, and secularity, continued a view of justice based on legitimised social, political, and economic inequalities. The paradox that restricted justice and equality for a circumscribed few based on race, gender, inheritance, and class remained entrenched despite calls for broader individual freedoms and equality of rights by the revolutionary political changes in Europe and North America during the late eighteenth to early nineteenth centuries. These considerable blind spots over how expansively such concepts were to be applied were nowhere more apparent than in the trans-oceanic empires established by modern European nation-states. Behind modern “liberalism’s abstract promises of human freedom, rational progress, and social equality” were glaring contradictions between its calls for universal rights as a philosophical and political project and the simultaneous violence and injustices that it regularly enacted through slavery, subjugation and extermination of Indigenous peoples, extractive wealth building, and the expropriation of land throughout the world (Lowe 2015, pp. 2–5). Colonial recordkeeping was an indispensable instrument for these processes, pioneering new exploitative forms of management control for profitmaking while absenting the voices and lived experiences of the subjugated (Bastian 2006; Rosenthal 2016). Information intensive “objective” and “scientific” epistemological systems arose that manufactured racial hierarchies and contrived declarations on the intrinsic inequality between peoples of different cultural groups and economic classes as a means to sanction imperial and state violence, domination, and injustice (Ewen and Ewen 2006). The birth of nation-state archives across Europe at this time restricted access to favoured researchers to ensure sympathetic interpretations of empire building while limiting the possibility for “oppositional histories.” Archivists at this time used their power as gatekeepers to “silence” potentially embarrassing sources that would unsettle state-sanctioned narratives by withholding them from users. Despite an increasing professionalisation and promotion of “scientific standards” and “historical truth” for both historians and archivists at this time and moving forward, these biasing traits remained resilient (Berger 2013).

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The nineteenth century witnessed heightened awareness of the profound disparity between justice as a philosophical ideal and the vast ongoing inequalities evident in even the most “advanced” polities based on capitalist economies. This consciousness led to the rise of a broad range of reform and revolutionary movements that connected inequality to the material political and economic conditions of domination and exploitation that resulted from human choices and not from an inevitable “natural” order. From late nineteenth to early twentieth centuries, systematic pragmatic responses emerged to challenge the structural dimensions of extreme inequality and their legitimising belief systems. Labour, housing, child welfare, women’s suffrage, immigration, public health, poverty, colonialism, and race were all targeted for reform, and connections were explicitly made between the struggles of individuals to the broader societal structures they lived within. In the United States, some of these concerns manifested through “New Deal” legislation in response to the Great Depression of the 1930s that sought to minimise extreme inequality through social welfare entitlements, labour rights, and taxation to redistribute wealth. This effort to recraft the state’s responsibilities to its citizens with special emphasis on economics and civil rights became a cornerstone of modern liberalism, as it evolved in the immediate post-World War II era up through “Great Society” of the mid-1960s (Bell 2015). At the same time, European social democratic parties united around and promoted similar social justice principles: strong labour rights and state regulation of capitalist economies, wealth redistribution through taxation to protect against extreme inequality, and provision of universal quality education and healthcare (Barry 2005, pp. 5–6). There simultaneously arose an array of social justice movements seeking fundamental change: civil rights, women’s, anti-war, LGBTQ+, Indigenous, ethnic and multicultural, as well as struggles targeting corrections, health, education, welfare, interventionism/ militarism, and the environment. During this period, these same nations continued to be systemically and pervasively unjust in their colonial relationships with non-Western societies and countries. Césaire’s (2000, pp. 31–33) scathing mid-twentieth-century critique of centuries of European colonialism persuasively argued that the justifications deployed for the global spread of “Western civilization”—evangelisation, philanthropy, overcoming disease, ignorance, and tyranny, and the promotion of the rule of law—were deceptive hypocrisies that were neither rationalisable nor defensible under claims of “reason” and “conscience.” The post-World War II era saw the rise of anti-colonial socialist independence movements across Africa, Latin America, and Asia that called and fought for more just control and distribution of local natural and other resources, more humane labour conditions, and acknowledgment and protection of diverse cultures and heritages. Despite a wave of success, national liberation movements across the “Third World” in the second half of the twentieth century, these new nations largely failed to sustain new societies based on deeper equality, and instead often shored up pre-liberation social hierarchies; became proxies of and were

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disrupted by globally dominant Cold War antagonists through coercion, destabilisation, and violence; and succumbed to painful debt and structural economic adjustments demanded by finance capital (Prashad 2007, pp. xvii–xix). The past four decades have witnessed the dramatic global rise of a new dominant social and economic organising ideology—neoliberalism—that has dismantled many of the social justice protections and advances of the previous century. Neoliberalism expanded widely under conservative rule in the 1980s and today is embraced by ruling parties in Western democracies across the mainstream political spectrum. Neoliberalism promotes competition as the “defining characteristic of human relations” and advocates the “free market” as the pathway for a better society. State intervention is seen as inimical to individual liberty and a distortion of the market’s natural wisdom. It actively opposes “efforts to create a more equal society” which it sees as “counterproductive and morally corrosive” (Monbiot 2016). The fundamentals of neoliberalism include diminished labour rights and worker protections, deregulation, privatisation, reduced public expenditures on education, healthcare, social welfare and services to the poor, and elimination of the notion of the “public good” (Martinez and Garcia Undated). These processes have led to dramatically expanding national and global economic inequalities while obscuring them through the concept of “meritocracy” that disguises the substantial advantages of the well-resourced in terms of education, access to wealth, legal expertise, and systemic rules that favour wealth growth and hoarding (The Rules 2013, 2017; Monbiot 2016). Neoliberalism also left an imprint on archival practice, research, and education. The adoption of neoliberal concepts and language such as customers, cost efficiency, measurement, outsourcing, and profitability are all well reflected across these areas. In light of contracting public funding which traditionally supported the heritage sector as a public good worthy of investment, archives have been compelled to increasingly rely on philanthropic and private funding and public–private relationships to survive. These new forms of subsidisation often support the priorities and objectives of the funder while limiting the agency/expertise of archives. These trends are particularly damaging to community archives of non-dominant groups who struggle in the status quo dominated “marketplace of ideas.” As more content is digitised, it is increasingly beholden to for-profit subscription models that seek greater control over intellectual property rights while also narrowing open access and eroding long-held notions of intellectual freedom, as better-resourced populations can more easily draw on such content for their intellectual pursuits. Further, much top tier archival scholarship and literature is cordoned through author transfers of intellectual property rights to publishers who impose high fees and costly licenses. Archival education and scholarship are increasingly feeling the pressures of the corporatised university which favours skill development to serve the marketplace over critical thinking and entrenching the exploitation of adjunct faculty. In the very competitive grants environment, well-resourced institutions have

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distinct advantages that can render “merit” through an unequal playing field (Cifor and Lee 2017, pp. 11–16. See also Punzalan and Caswell 2016). Overall, changes to the global and political economic order charted above contribute to and combine with a range of other markers fomenting greater inequality and injustice—global warming and environmental crises, resource extraction and exhaustion, militarism and expanding arms sales, invasive surveillance technologies, forced labour and migration, sexual abuse and trafficking, gender violence, racism and xenophobia, resurgent slavery, supranational corporate impunity, electoral disenfranchisement, and a loss of trust in institutions and electoral politics due to the widespread belief that they are irreversibly corrupt and increasingly oligarchic in nature. We thus find ourselves living in a disillusioned fragmented society, without a clear vision for an implementable alternative to the neoliberal order (Bauman and Donskis 2016). However, alongside deepening despair, apathy, and anxiety, we also are witnessing the continuation of social justice struggles across the globe. We believe that the past is a potent resource that can be harnessed as a guidepost that a more just world is possible and that archives can be a crucial component for promoting such aspirations (Barry 2005, pp. 233–235, 249–250; International Labour Office 2012; Appadurai 2013; Bauman and Donskis 2013; Gilens and Page 2014; Ahmed 2017; Lanchester 2017; Slovic 2017).

Framing social justice Two recent handbooks provide breadth, depth, and complexity to social justice from different geographical perspectives as well as from a wide range of disciplines (anthropology, the arts, cinema, criminal justice, cultural studies, economics, education, history, literature, music, philosophy, psychology, religion, sociology, and even archives) (Reisch 2014a; Sabbagh and Schmitt 2016). They probe alternative motivations (self-interest, belief in a just world, sensitivity and empathy, and social cognition), forms (distributive, procedural, retributive, and restorative), theories (Ghandian, conservatism, liberalism, critical theory, feminism, and postmodernism), policy and praxis arenas (social welfare, work, couples and families, children and youth, healthcare, housing and homelessness, poverty, environmental sustainability, same-sex marriage, Indigenous struggles, colonialism, decolonisation, national democratic transitions, and human rights advocacy), and topics such as violence and safety, legitimacy, and morality. This analytical richness reveals social justice through lenses of “context, culture, and history” across local, national, and global landscapes (Reisch 2014c, p. 9). Complementing this work has been the development of frameworks to better understand and delineate the complexities and pragmatics surrounding social justice and injustice. They segment social justice into distinct categories, social configurations, and analytical tiers. One approach pluralises social justice and injustice into “spheres of justice” that touch upon social arenas such as “politics, welfare, work, family, education, [and] the environment” that operate through

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different mechanisms (laws, services, money, love, knowledge, and resources). While different societies exhibit these similar spheres, their unique historical and cultural forms render differences in how they manifest and distribute justice and injustice, complicating efforts to precisely rationalise, universalise, or synthesise justice and prescriptions on its distribution (Sabbagh and Schmitt 2016, p. 7, drawing upon Walzer 1983). An approach from sociology explores how social justice becomes embedded and shifts by filtering it through four explanatory dimensions: (1) Societal conditions where justice varies in societies across time and where “structural and political changes” can stimulate greater justice seeking; (2) Institutional design of a society that shapes and reflects the practices and forms of justice pursued by a particular society, as in the re-distribution of benefits and burdens through mechanisms such as taxation and social welfare policies; (3) Social conditionality explains how individuals in a society who share similar backgrounds and experiences are likely to develop a “consensual” understanding and parallel attitudes as to what justice means, and; (4) Social consequences of (in)justice whereby individual experiences with injustice impact beliefs and conduct that can lead to broader social effects and change (Liebig and Sauer 2016, p. 38). Psychology shows how notions of justice are ingrained into and expressed through belief and behaviour and guide how individuals understand and act towards others and also how they represent themselves in social interactions. This view partitions justice and injustice into three intersecting realms: (1) Intraindividual level demonstrates how concepts of justice varies between individuals and how individuals are driven to see themselves as “fair and moral”; (2) Interpersonal level where justice is deployed to “regulate” relationships between people and groups; and (3) Intergroup level where injustice is perpetrated by one group over another and how these injustices are abated or sustained (Gollwitzer and van Prooijen 2016, p. 77). A final framework, examined in the article which initiated this research (Duff et al. 2013) shows justice across three tiers of social aggregation. (1) “Macro-level” composed of: a constitutional order that sets ground rules for social, political, economic, institutional, and legal systems; concrete politics which sees fierce competition for influence over which policies get enacted; and the policies that do get enacted (fiscal, social, military, environmental, educational, trade, and so on). (2) “Meso-level” of organisations within different “sectors” or “sub-systems” that function according to “logics of operation” and “local rationalities” which do not necessarily translate to other sectors and sub-systems (e.g., corporation in the economic system, political party in the political system, hospital in the health system, and so on). Justice at this level includes the allocation of their unique “products and services.” While a certain degree of organisational autonomy exists here, actions are influenced and even determined in some cases by the structures established at the macro-level. (3) “Micro-level” deals with “interactions between individuals in relatively unorganized social contexts” such as families. This level is also influenced by the structures established at

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the higher levels (existence or not of retiree pensions and its impact intergenerational family obligations) (Schmidt 2001, pp. 14338–14339). In combination, these alternative yet overlapping approaches illustrate that social justice and how it is understood and enacted is complex and largely context dependent. It operates on multiple intersecting personal, social, and institutional levels. It reflects dynamics of stasis and change, especially in regards to values, attitudes, self-perception, and the perceptions of others, and on the distribution, redistribution, and access to resources and services. Each has potential as insightful frameworks to examine the social justice dynamics of recordmaking, recordkeeping, and archiving. An ongoing challenge that complicates overcoming injustice is the fraught relationship between subjectivity and objectivity. This is especially true in regards to the contention that social justice is and must be more and mean more than what it is perceived to be by different individuals or groups that may hold very different definitions of social justice and injustice. One challenge of social justice for scholars is to develop some type of more objective understandings detached from presupposed and preferred judgment (deep subjectivity) that could be elided as a difference of opinion or cultural autonomy while ignoring that historically many of the claims that justified and legitimised injustice and inequality were obscured as objective or cultural. The challenge is to discover which characteristics of social systems are more and less likely to maximize equity, equality, need, liberty, respect, and other putative principles of social justice, and which characteristics lead disproportionately to unjust outcomes, such as suffering, exploitation, abuse, prejudice, and oppression. (Jost and Kay 2010, p. 1150) These strivings are complicated when injustices are not widely experienced, perceived, or acknowledged. Injustices here are perpetrated unconsciously through the basic fabric of society via its daily assumptions and practices—the “unquestioned norms, habits, and symbols [and] institutional rules and in the … consequences of following those rules” (Young 1990, p. 41). The absence of sensitivity and empathy to the struggles of those experiencing injustice in contemporary advanced societies leads to “moral blindness,” an inability or interest to understand and engage these struggles (Bauman and Donskis 2013). Countering moral blindness and an overwrought faith in objectivity and cultural “norms” is seen in feminist ethical scholarship. Gilligan (1982) argued that traditional models of moral development were biased against girls and women because they emphasised a male perspective of objectivity and rights instead of a female perspective, which focuses on empathy and compassion in moral decision-making. Held’s (2006, pp. 10–13) related “ethics of care” approach values emotion, rather than pure reason, in choosing actions and

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rejects the view that abstract reasoning is necessarily less biased. It conceives the individual as relational and interdependent rather than self-sufficient and independent. Noddings (2013, p. 4) argues that in the caring relationship, the carer should exhibit two characteristics: engrossment, or thinking about someone to gain a greater understanding about them; and motivational displacement, where the carer’s behaviour is shaped by the needs of the cared for. If the relationship is truly caring, “both parties contribute to the relation,” thus distinguishing “caring about,” which “requires some concern but does not guarantee a response to one who needs care” from “caring for,” which requires faceto-face contact. Working in the context of disability studies, Kittay (2011, p. 53) argues that the ethic of care allows us to view people as moving in and out of relationships of dependency throughout their lives. She likewise posits that moral deliberations require not only reason, but also empathy, emotional responsiveness, and perceptual attentiveness, while moral harm is not only the violation of rights but also “a consequence of failure of responsibility and responsiveness.” Another fundamental characteristic of social justice and injustice is their connections to the concepts of social and political legitimacy—the “process through which patterns of behaviour or a cultural/social object gain social support and approval” or lack thereof, in relation to power, compliance, and social change. Legitimacy not only offers the ability to incorporate social justice but also can serve to calcify injustices that are seen as part of an accepted/legalised social order. Delegitimation and social change to overcome injustice occur when movements emerge to shift the social order through culture change, such as witnessed in the various historical and ongoing civil rights movements undertaken by labour, women, immigrants, racial and ethnic and Indigenous groups, LGBTQ+ persons, and others. Crises over social and political legitimacy connected to equality, rights seeking, and self-determination—both on national and international levels—often descend into violence and oppression administered by the state to sustain inequalities and the status quo (Gil 2004, pp. 36–37; Hegtvedt, Johnson, and Watson 2016, pp. 425–426, 439–440). The extent to which cultural and social change can succeed for those seeking greater justice is tied to “changes in consciousness, values, and perceptions of interest of growing segments of societies.” Social justice movements are a key mechanism to enact these cognitive changes in individuals through “dialogical counter-education” (a la Freiré 1970; hooks 1994; Gil 1998) and “alternative models of social life” that offer other pathways to live and cooperate. Such transformations of social norms ultimately are activated at the individual level even if stimulated through mass-based actions (Gil 2004, pp. 37–38; Choudry 2015). In these regards, archives, as a unique resource into past-lived experiences at the individual and collective level, contain powerful empathetic and other properties for understanding past cultural and social changes through struggle towards both greater social justice as well as greater injustice and domination.

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Defining social justice The dynamics and complexity described above to develop frameworks to understand and analyse social justice have been complemented by efforts to articulate what social justice means, both as a philosophical ideal and as experienced reality. For one summative analysis, social justice “means socially established living conditions and ways of life that are conducive to the fulfilment of everyone’s intrinsic needs and to the realization of everyone’s innate potential, from local to global levels.” This includes “inter-related” needs such as biological/material, social/psychological, productive/creative, security, self-actualisation, and spiritual. The degree to which these needs are realised is contingent on the values and institutional structures and policies of the social context in regards to how work is organised, how goods and services are distributed, the role and status of civil, social, and political rights, how governance is operationalised, the circumstances surrounding biological and cultural reproduction, and how socialisation and social control are expressed (Gil 2004, p. 33). One analysis derived from philosophy defines social justice as a: state of affairs (either actual or ideal) in which (a) benefits and burdens in society are dispersed in accordance with some allocation principle (or set of principles); (b) procedures, norms, and rules that govern political and other forms of decisionmaking preserve the basic rights, liberties, and entitlements of individuals and groups; and (c) human beings (and perhaps other species) are treated with dignity and respect not only by authorities but also by other relevant social actors, including fellow citizens. (Jost and Kay 2010, p. 1122) Socially, just societies seek to overcome “arbitrary or unnecessary suffering, exploitation, abuse, tyranny, oppression, prejudice, and discrimination” (Jost and Kay 2010, p. 1122). They do not rely on structural violence to dominate their own or other populations. They satisfy their people’s basic needs and allow them to develop their abilities. They establish equal rights and shared responsibilities and uniform opportunities for work, governance, and access to goods and services. They further support values that promote “equality, liberty, individuality, community, mutualism, and cooperation” (Gil 2004, pp. 35–36). The origination of the research inspiring this monograph (Duff et al. 2013, pp. 324–325) developed an understanding and definition of social justice that was attuned to concrete contexts, supported Universal rights, and mindful of the appropriation of social justice by powerful social actors. Modified through the above discussion and Young (1990, pp. 33–65), social justice is characterised by what it strives towards and what it seeks to deter. The struggle for social justice is understood to be an ongoing project that faces substantial historical inheritances having contemporary significance:

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Strives toward • • • •

Full human recognition and disruption of structures of non-recognition, disrespect, marginalisation, and violence. Fair and just (re-)distribution of power, benefits and burdens, resources, goods and services, wealth, and opportunity. Full and equal participation in and access to political processes and decision-making, education, employment, and community facilities by emphasising the common good over individual rights. Acknowledgement and remedy historical injustices with specific redress measures such as recognition, restitution, reparations, and affirmative action.

Strives against •

•

Oppression through systemic and institutionalised inequities such as exploitation, marginalisation, powerlessness, social division of labour, cultural imperialism, and violence. These inequities lead to disrespect, exclusion, nonrecognition, physical and psychological damage, and thwart individual and group development, contributions, and perspectives. Domination through systemic and institutionalised inequities such as loss of autonomy, non-reciprocity, and under and biased resourcing connected to individual and group subjugation.

We further promote the following definition and framework for understanding social justice as adapted from communication, education, and social work: Vision that every human being is of equal and incalculable value, entitled to shared standards of freedom, equality, and respect. These standards also apply to broader social aggregations such as communities and cultural groups. Violations of these standards must be acknowledged and confronted. This requires attention to and action against inequalities of power and how they manifest in institutional arrangements and systemic domination and oppression that prejudicially further the interests of some at the expense of others in the distribution of material goods, social benefits, rights, protections, and opportunities.

The rise of archival social justice Contact zones regarding social justice and injustice within archival discourses touch upon a wide-ranging set of topics that overwhelmingly seek to mobilise scholarly and professional efforts towards a social justice ethic and to identify and understand the roles archives and records can contribute to social movements in their social justice struggles through frames of activism. From “archiving

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activism” efforts to secure collections of social justice activists and movements, to “archival activism” on behalf of social justice issues and movements, and to “activist archiving” deploying archiving as a core component of social justice engagement (Flinn and Alexander 2015). Though archival social justice advocacy “[has] been brewing for decades” long before became a specific phrase within archival scholarship (Punzalan and Caswell 2016, p. 28),1 it has recently emerged as a very substantial thread of scholarship and praxis. To scope this development with greater precision, the explicit usage of the phrase “social justice” was probed in six core English language archives periodicals over the past four-plus decades (Table 2.1). This analysis was conducted to chart the phrase’s growth, coverage, and depth in archival scholarship. The discipline’s self-conscious explicit articulation of the term was chosen for analysis, as it offers the best and clearest indicator of how the field frames and utilises the concept. This analysis finds that the explicit use of the term barely registers before 2000 (7 instances or 6% of all found instances). 2000–2009 exhibits steady growth (17 instances or 15% of all found instances), indicating that social justice is starting to gain formal traction. 2010 onwards experiences an extraordinary five-fold increase (88 instances or 79% of all found instances), evidencing that social justice is currently experiencing its zenith as an explicit concept of consequence in archival scholarship.

Table 2.1 Use of the term “social justice” in six English language archival journals*. Journal

Pre-1980s 1980s 1990s 2000s 2010–2017 Total

American Archivist (USA) Archival Issues/Midwestern Archivist (USA) Archival Science (International) Archivaria (Canada) Archives and Manuscripts (Australia) Archives and Records/Journal of the Society of Archivists (UK and Ireland) Total

2 0

2 2

0 1

7 1

25 1

36 5

n/a+ 0 n/a++

n/a+ 0 n/a++

n/a+ 0 n/a++

4 3 n/a++

36 11 5

40 14 5

n/a+++

n/a+++ n/a+++ 2

10

12

2

4

88

112

1

17

* Articles only and excluding book reviews, obituaries, indexes, and front matter (such as tables of contents, author bios, etc.) and citation-only mentions. n/a+—not applicable; not published at this time. n/a++—not applicable; electronic index not available to author prior to issues published before 2012. n/a+++—not applicable; electronic index not available to author prior to issues published before 1997.

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All of the pre-2000 mentions are of negligible character (one or two explicit mentions, no substantive discussion) in American Archivist and Midwestern Archivist/Archival Issues in the context of religion, competitive funding priorities, freedom of information advocacy in light of state oppression, and efforts to document social justice movements by a State Historical Society.2 Between 2000 and 2009, social justice appears more commonly—17 instances—and extends to all of the reviewable journals (see n/a++ in footer of Table 2.1). While most of these instances (11) are of negligible character, they touch upon meaningful archival and recordkeeping social justice issues such as broadening collections to include social movements, serving accountability and human rights, preserving community memory to increase inclusivity, social justice-related uses of archives, anti-colonial struggles, social justice mission of the creating body, contemporary politics of marginalised populations, heritage institutions relevance to current social justice challenges, and the emergence of social justice concerns in archival scholarship.3 Over this decade, we also see the first mentions of consequential character (several mentions and/or substantive discussion). Gilliland et al. (2008) raise it as an “ethical imperative” for the archival profession and education programmes, while Greene (2007) notes apprehension over such application. Cline (2009) features it as a part of a basis for public service to orient archival work. Flinn, Stevens, and Shepherd (2009) note its relevance in the context of the “past experiences of colonised, enslaved, marginalized and oppressed peoples” and where the promise of a better society must openly reckon and acknowledge painful pasts. Jimerson (2007) and Dunbar (2006) provide the first sustained explicit examinations. Jimerson promotes social justice in terms of needed diversity within the profession and for expanding collecting efforts. He pushes for a professional “social conscience” through active engagement with the “public arena” and taking positions on issues such as redress for historical injustices, promoting accountability, and challenging traditions of neutrality and objectivity. Dunbar mobilises social justice, alongside counter-stories and microaggressions, as critical race theory methodologies to “identify and raise social and professional consciousness of implicit racial bias.” He applies this framework to understand documentation related to racist bank lending practices to surface how archival ethics and work can either sublimate such prejudices via normative accepted professional practices or expose them as biased. He sees opportunity for research to discern social injustices in archival finding aids, government records, appraisal practices, and even the social make-up and structural relationships within the profession (via training programmes, conference attendance, and employment).4 These lenses would expose otherwise invisible, unnoticed, or seemingly “natural” injustices. He calls for a praxis that recognises structural oppression and permits oppressed individuals and groups to “express their own agency, reality or representation.” 2010 onwards witnesses a dramatic increase in archival social justice-related scholarship; 62 negligible and 26 consequential mentions, demonstrating a

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broadening and deepening discussion. Both the negligible and consequential mentions powerfully link to a diverse range of theoretical, professional practice, and wider societal issues that overwhelmingly promotes the view that archival work reflects internal professional social justice dynamics, that it is fundamental to shaping knowledge about the past, and that the choices and actions archives pursue have social justice consequences. A key theme emerging in the negligible group is the increasing use and referencing of the relatively new corpus of archival social justice literature, indicating a significant turn towards this topic.5 We see repeated calls for archival activism and the promotion of a social justice consciousness within the profession in terms of education, ethics, diversity, and core functions of appraisal, processing, description, access, and advocacy.6 We also see writings, especially from Australia and Canada, in support of Indigenous peoples’ human rights on issues of representation and the urgency for consultation on how archives create, manage, and provide access to such collections.7 Similar awareness is articulated to meet the challenges and complexities of community archiving, especially for groups existing outside of dominant societal and cultural contexts,8 as well as archiving of social movements and activism.9 Finally, connections are made to recordkeeping not only as sources of oppression and injustice, but also as rich in potential for redress through accountability and memorialisation–commemoration mechanisms.10 The 26 consequential journal writings from 2010 to 2017 map to the issues noted immediately above and provide evidence of social justice as an archival objective. These writings are supplemented by the emergence of a smaller number of archival social justice writings appearing in additional journals11 and dissertations and monographs.12 We see elaborated discussion and analysis of the historical roles of recordkeeping and archiving in service to social justice and injustice; efforts surrounding archival activism and activist archiving; Indigenous sovereignty and human and civil rights in relation to colonialism, representation, and decolonisation; ethics, practices, and motivations of community archiving as a means to challenge historical and contemporary injustices; re-conceptualisations of archival education and praxis; and debate over the appropriateness of social justice as an ethical imperative. Upward, McKemmish, and Reed (2011), Houdek (2016), Brothman (2010), and Hastings (2011) all make explicit how archives can alternately serve both social justice and injustice and more specifically how records original oppressive character can transmute towards social justice with the passage of time and through advocacy. Flinn and Alexander (2015), Pell (2015), Carter (2017), Yaco et al. (2015), Strauss (2015), Sexton (2017), and Yaco and Betancourt Hardy (2013) all grapple with and promote archival activism and activist archives, ranging from collection building that both documents and participates in resistance to gentrification by enabling the archive as an overt political strategy, to efforts to inspire today’s young people embrace and document social justice through intergenerational dialogues about the U.S. civil rights struggles, and to archival actions to document human rights violations of Pinochet-era

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Chile that also generate new materials bearing on those crimes while enabling broader access. Scholarship on medical history of mental health demonstrates how traditional professional notions of neutrality and objectivity do not mean repudiation of social justice archiving, while a survey of self-described activist archivists found that the positive effects of archival activism (workplace recognition, employer support, and promotion) surpassed negative effects (stalled advancement, minor and major punishment, and firing). Indigeneity has become one of the most profound and complex spaces in archival social justice. As reported from Australia, Canada, the United States, and elsewhere, unresolved historical legacies of colonisation and the severity of the human rights issues attending contemporary Indigenous people justify new approaches for archival education and in functions and activities such as appraisal, reappraisal, deaccessioning, repatriation, access, and use. Here, archivists have been encouraged to acknowledge and adapt to Indigenous epistemologies as a way to reframe trust and to respect and accept decolonial and Indigenous approaches to managing archives that can run counter to traditional archival praxis. These approaches require confronting historic injustices, holding human rights violators to account, supporting redress, and confronting how recordkeeping supported colonial violence of the past and reifies racism in the present (Lindsay 2011; Gordon 2014; O’Neal 2015; Genovese 2016; Ghaddar 2016; Punzalan and Caswell 2016; Thorpe, Galassi, and Franks 2016). Community archiving has been featured in most of the topics and publications showcased above, indicating that it strongly connects with a broad range of archival social justice issues. One key overview of community archiving notes that social justice is one of the main motivators for this archival form and that such projects are normally generated outside of formal archival expertise due to their estrangement from the mainstream archives sector. As a result there exists an uneasy tension between recent archival interest in community archiving and the requirement for traditional/professional archivists to be aware as to how they approach and develop collaborations with community archives (Gilliland and Flinn 2013; Caswell 2014a). In regards to archival education, we see challenges to professional neutrality and calls to advance instructional approaches that acknowledge the existence of politics behind the construction of the past and linkages to ongoing injustices, as well as the need to understand how archival concepts such as recordness and provenance relate to issues of power, invisibility, silences, and human rights (Gilliland 2011; Caswell et al. 2012; Brannon et al. 2016). Professional practices on core functions of collection building and preservation are also highlighted through a social justice lens. These incorporate affect, queer, feminist, and decolonising theories that consider emotional aspects of pain and healing, and the duty to ensure that pluralism and previously overlooked histories and marginalised experiences are secured in archives, especially for those subjected to state violence and social censure (Allard and Ferris 2015; Lee 2015; Cifor 2016; Sheffield 2016; Williams and Drake 2017). Others see

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the need to adjust access practices in a manner that promotes new forms of historical accountability (Upward, McKemmish, and Reed 2011; Elder 2016). The overwhelming trend of these writings is in support and advocacy of archival social justice. However, this support is certainly not universal and has generated substantial debate within the profession on professional ethics and identity. One of the cornerstones upon which archivists secure their societal legitimacy is public validation of archives and their processes as trusted and archivists as trustworthy guardians of the past. While carefully crafted codes of ethics remain one of the publicly touted markers of professionalism, archival social justice has unsettled these assumptions (Wallace 2010, 2017; Gilliland 2011; MacNeil 2011; Bastian 2014). Despite the claims of professional associations that their codes of ethics speak for the profession, it is increasingly recognised that the discipline and profession are actually made up of heterogeneous institutions and professionals with varying and even conflicting and contradictory missions, motivations, and objectives. Traditionalist assumptions are especially confounding in relation to the field’s emerging focus on Indigenous peoples, whose interests and perspectives have been disenfranchised by normative ethics and praxis framed through Western epistemologies (Delva and Adams 2016). Archival approaches therefore are not completely circumscribable by associational expression of values and it is in this space that archival social justice and archival ethics find both cleavage and confluence. O’Toole’s (2004) early call for a “broader moral vision” for archiving regarding “long-term historical accountability,” accepts that at times it is necessary to abandon professional ethics and practices in order to serve a “higher good.” As taken up by Harris (2007) and Jimerson (2009), we see the formal promotion of an archival social justice ethic. Harris frames social justice as the “call of justice.” Drawing from postmodernism and deconstruction, he locates this calling as a responsibility beyond where archives and archivists normally frame their social responsibilities, arguing that our obligations to fellow human beings in overcoming injustice and oppression supersede any professional edicts that narrow or confine our concerns to solely professional ones. For Harris, the archive is political, period, and oppression and social control manifest everywhere and are inescapable—enacted in large part through systems and processes of information creation, dissemination, and use. All archivists and archives reside within such systems whether they believe so or not, and denial on this reality is dangerous and reactionary. Jimerson presents a less definitive argument against archival manoeuvrability within structures of power and asserts that social justice can be embraced and promoted within the totality of the profession as it grapples with its “social conscience.” He argues that archivists can promote social justice without sacrificing “professional standards of fairness, honesty, detachment, and transparency.” Jimerson’s archival social justice is framed on the duty to remember and challenging malignant forgetting to overcome past injustices, as well as building alliances with other societal

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actors such as human rights organisations and in joining efforts to preserve at risk heritage. Given its activist and partisan nature, unease and disputation over archival social justice advocacy was inevitable. An early indicator of this was the “Sun Mad” cover controversy in the American Archivist from 2004 to 2008, when the journal chose a political activist’s 1981 poster parodying the logo of the Sun-Maid Growers of California to critique the privately held cooperative’s use of pesticides that contaminated local water supplies (Bain 2014). Reviving the journal’s dormant letters’ section, there was strong condemnation over the use of the image, ranging from accusations of it being an “attack ad against corporations … that plac[ed] sensationalism ahead of common courtesy” (Greene 2004), to an unsubtle threat that it opened up the Society of American Archivists to “unnecessary legal risk” (Mooney et al. 2004). The journal’s editor took an apologetic tone indicating that in the future “issues that are currently hot-button topics should be avoided and normal standards of decency respected” (Eppard 2004, italics added). It is clear that the dispute conflated critique of a single corporation’s social justice failings as criticism of all corporations. This one example was strained far beyond its boundaries to imply a voluntary ban on engaging real corporate injustices and failures that had serious human rights and safety consequences (see also Cox 2005; Jimerson and Pearce-Moses 2005; Abela 2008). Over time, a deeper debate emerged over archival social justice that continues up to the present. Greene (2007, 2013) roundly rejected calls for an archival social justice ethic, seeing it as “overly politicizing and ultimately damaging the archival profession ….” (p. 303). He felt that archival social justice advocates over-categorise the power structure as composed of “white, Christian, heterosexual males,” many of whom he argued actually see themselves currently as “radically disempowered” (italics original). Caswell’s (2013a) and Jimerson’s (2013) responses contended that social justice is not only not incongruous with archival work, but at times it must be the backbone driving archival efforts, especially in regards to when recordkeeping foments injustice. Cline (2009, 2012, 2014) promoted a nuanced view of how social justice as morality is an archival concern by articulating a set of values and behaviours that promote societal benefit and the common good—self-awareness, relationship building through respect, trust and reciprocity, integrity and service to equity, and fairness. Caswell and Cifor (2016) draw upon feminist ethics to promote a “radical empathy” that seeks to more fully understand the feelings and perspectives of other stakeholders in the recordkeeping orbit such as creators, subjects, users, and the larger impacted communities. In this framing, archival social justice should move beyond a strict rights-based approach and adopt an “ethic of care” approach drawn from feminist ethics as described above. The depth of the challenge presented by archival social justice ethics and practices has been amplified by the field’s historical inheritances of professed disinterested professionalism, status quo-sanctioned societal legitimacy, and anxiousness

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over financial solvency for continued operations. Although some of the dynamics that Zinn (1977, pp. 20–22), now recognised as the founding declaration advocating archival social justice, points to as biases have abated, many continue to resonate: the “existence, preservation, and availability of archives, documents, records in our society are very much determined by the distribution of wealth and power”; secrecy and the information security and classification system remain deeply biased and weighed towards protecting power over holding it accountable; the lingering belief in the evidentiary and objective value of the written over the oral; the tilt towards archiving resourced individuals and institutions that are seen as important and powerful; and the embrace of social justice movements validated by the passage of time whose earlier radicalism is now seen as safe to honour versus engagement with contemporary and controversial anti-systemic struggles. Archival social justice acknowledges and defends its inherently political and advocacy character to spur social change. Philosopher Raymond Geuss’s (2008) perspective on ethics offer guidance on this shift. The problem with professional ethics is that you can’t first develop an ideal theory about how people are supposed to act and then apply those standards to how people actually act. We should rather attempt to understand how people actually act in context of “social, economic, political … institutions” in a particular society at a particular time to surface their “real motivations”: Just because certain ideal or moral principles ‘look good’ or seem plausible to us, to those who propose them or to whom they are proposed … it does not follow that these norms, canons, or principles will have any particular effect at all on how people really act ….The realist must take powerful illusions seriously as factors in the world that have whatever motivational power they in fact have for the population in question …. (pp. 6–11) Archival social justice sees a panoply of sites of struggle and resistance to historical and ongoing injustices across society and therefore sees archival social justice advocacy and activism as its contribution to broader efforts to overcome systemic injustice, domination, and oppression.

Conclusion Since recordmaking, recordkeeping, and archiving are manifestations and mediators of human social relations, they are reflective and constitutive of those relations and as such cannot be but implicated in social justice concerns. Archival social justice endeavours are multifaceted, involve an intersection with a range of factors and agents, have complex outcomes that change and develop over time, and operate on individual and collective bases at all levels in society. Injustices are very easily identified. The harder struggle is identifying and promoting social justice, which seems mostly an

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aspiration and a future to be fought for. Can archivists marshal the past to change the present and spark alternative futures or only use it to learn about injustices that occurred in the past? As noted by Reisch (2014b, pp. 1–2): Most discussions about social justice focus on the eradication or reduction of injustices. But just as peace is not merely the absence of war, and love is not merely the absence of hate, achieving social justice requires more than the elimination of injustice. It involves envisioning what a just society would look like. It requires us to address fundamental questions about human nature and social relationships; about the distribution of resources, power, status, rights, access, and opportunities; and about how decisions regarding this distribution are made ….One component of such processes would be the development of a revised and expanded view of injustice that explores how people are affected by the intersection of their race, gender, ethnicity, class, religion, age, and sexual orientation … The creation of socially just outcomes involves more than constructing policies which allocate societal “goods” more equitably. It also requires the development of socially just means to formulate, implement, and evaluate those policies, coupled with a recognition that the translation of an idealized abstraction (social justice) into concrete terms may take different forms in different circumstances. The goal of social justice is, therefore, neither simple nor ever entirely realized. It is a goal which is constantly pursued rather than completely attained. The social justice impacts of recordmaking, recordkeeping, and archiving centre on an outcome or change in an individual or community’s relationship to the world in regards to social justice which results from records and the processes of creating/keeping/activating of records. Archives touch upon intergenerational aspects of justice and injustice in reference to what stories we can tell about the past and how the creation, survival, and mobilisation of documentary corpuses expand and limit prospects for knowledge and experiences from the past to serve social justice outcomes in the present. Archives can demonstrate changes to social norms across time and shifts in legitimacy of political, economic, and social systems. They can also serve as potent resources to challenge contemporaneous legitimacy in these same systems. Archival social justice has the potential to reach beyond individual self-interest and motivate change for those who have nothing personal to gain other than creating a better and more just society (following Barry 2005, pp. 249–250). As an advocacy practice, social justice archiving is well represented in the literature synthesised above. A critical following step in its development and elaboration, as taken up by Chapter 3, is evaluating impacts to determine what changed and to what extent (Hoefer 2006).

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Notes 1 For monographs see: Ketelaar 1997; Cox and Wallace 2002; Bastian 2003; BehrndKlodt and Wosh 2005; Beyea, Ware, and Avery 2005; McKemmish et al. 2005; Procter, Cook, and Williams 2005; Bastian and Alexander 2009; Avery and Holmlund 2010; Danielson 2010; Hill 2011; Terry 2011; Piggott 2012; Caswell 2014b. For a representative sampling of the journal literature see: Ketelaar 2002; Schwartz and Cook 2002; Montgomery 2004; Carter 2006; Schwartz 2006; Johnson 2008; Sassoon and Burrows 2009; White 2009; Valderhaug 2011; Wheeler 2011; Keenan and Darms 2013; Iacovino 2014; Sowry 2014; McCracken 2015; Caswell 2017; Luker 2017; Mills 2017; Rolan 2017. 2 Marcus 1960; Warner 1965; Motley 1984; Klaasen 1986; O’Toole 1987; Yakel 1989; Mattern 1990. 3 Tschabrun 2003; Kelly 2004; Yakel 2004; Turrini 2005; Wurl 2005; Jimerson 2006; Punzalan 2006; Schwartz 2006; Flinn 2007; Nesmith 2007; Anctil 2009. 4 This has been picked up recently in the archives literature via examinations of entrenched white privilege within the profession in Caswell 2017 and Ramirez 2015. 5 Caswell 2010; Brothman 2011; Cline 2012; Newman 2012; Paschild 2012; Wakimoto, Bruce, and Partridge 2013; Fleckner 2014; Halilovich 2014; Douglas et al. 2015; Rodrigues 2016; Wisser and Blanco-Rivera 2016; Battley 2017; Gauld 2017; Punzalan 2017. 6 Archival Education and Research Institute (AERI). Pluralizing the Archival Curriculum Group (PACG) 2011; Bingo 2011; Flinn and Shepherd 2011; Harris 2011; MacNeil 2011; Mariz et al. 2011; Stankrauf 2011; Harris 2012; Caswell 2013b; Coyner and Pringle 2014; Crookston 2014; Dooley 2014; Jones and O’Neill 2014; Wood et al. 2014; Evans et al. 2015; Ramirez 2015; Sellie et al. 2015; Yaco, Brown, and Konrad 2016; Feng 2017; Hoyle 2017; Poole 2017. 7 Gooda 2012; McKemmish et al. 2012; Jones and O’Neill 2014; Douglas et al. 2015; Evans et al. 2015; Nesmith 2015; Marsh et al. 2016; Nicholls et al. 2016. 8 Wakimoto, Bruce, and Partridge 2013; Wakimoto, Hansen, and Bruce 2013; Rodrigues 2016; Caswell et al. 2017; Cooper 2016; Long et al. 2017; Platt 2017. 9 Henderson 2013; Chazan, Baldwin, and Madokoro 2015; Webster 2016; Saber and Long 2017 . 10 Josias 2011; Price and Smith 2011; Wallace 2011; Bastian 2013; McKemmish and Piggott 2013; Gilliland 2014; Jones and O’Neill 2014; Duff and Haskell 2015; Djuric 2016; Carbone 2017; Guberek and Hedstrom 2017. 11 Library Trends, Library Quarterly, Journal of Critical Library Studies, Interactions: UCLA Journal of Education and Information Studies; Journal of Western Archives; Journal of Web Librarianship; AlterNative: An International Journal of Indigenous Peoples. 12 Gordon 2014; Morrone 2014; Lee 2015; Sexton 2017.

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Anctil, Pierre. 2009. “Préserver l’illisible: Présences de Sholem Shtern dans la Vie Littéraire Canadienne.” Archivaria 67: 63–85. Appadurai, Arjun. 2013. The Future as Cultural Fact: Essays on the Global Condition. London: Verso. Archival Education and Research Institute (AERI). Pluralizing the Archival Curriculum Group (PACG). 2011. “Educating for the Archival Multiverse.” American Archivist 74(1): 69–101. Avery, Cheryl, and Mona Holmlund, eds. 2010. Better Off Forgetting? Essays on Archives, Public Policy, and Collective Memory. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Bain, Rowan. 2014. “Ester Hernandez: Sun Mad.” Art in Print 3(6). Accessed 23 September 2017. http://artinprint.org/article/ester-hernandez-sun-mad/. Barry, Brian. 2005. Why Social Justice Matters. Malden, MA: Polity Press. Bastian, Jeanette A. 2003. Owning Memory: How a Caribbean Community Lost Its Archives and Found Its History. Santa Barbara, CA: Libraries Unlimited. Bastian, Jeanette A. 2006. “Reading Colonial Records through an Archival Lens: The Provenance of Place, Space and Creation.” Archival Science 6(3–4): 267–284. Bastian, Jeanette A. 2013. “The Records of Memory, the Archives of Identity: Celebrations, Texts and Archival Sensibilities.” Archival Science 13(2): 121–131. Bastian, Jeanette A. 2014. “Ethics for Archivists and Records Managers.” In Archives and Recordkeeping—Theory into Practice, edited by Caroline Brown, 101–129. London: Facet. Bastian, Jeanette A., and Ben Alexander, eds. 2009. Community Archives: The Shaping of Memory. London: Facet. Battley, Belinda. 2017. “Co-Producing Archival Research with Communication, Reflexivity and Friendship: Crossing the Three-Wire Bridge.” Archival Science 17(4): 371–391. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10502-017-9279-y. Bauman, Zygmunt, and Leonidas Donskis. 2013. Moral Blindness: The Loss of Sensitivity in Liquid Modernity. Malden, MA: Polity. Bauman, Zygmunt, and Leonidas Donskis. 2016. Liquid Evil. Malden, MA: Polity. Behrnd-Klodt, Menzi, and Peter J. Wosh, eds. 2005. Privacy and Confidentiality Perspectives: Archivists and Archival Records. Chicago, IL: Society of American Archivists. Bell, Jonathan. 2015. “Liberalism from the Fair Deal to the Great Society.” Oxford Research Encyclopedia of American History. Accessed 10 June 2017. http://american history.oxfordre.com/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780199329175.001.0001/acrefore9780199329175-e-13. Berger, Stefan. 2013. “The Role of National Archives in Constructing National Master Narratives in Europe.” Archival Science 13(1): 1–22. Beyea, Marion, Reuben Ware, and Cheryl Avery, eds. 2005. The Power and Passion of Archives: A Festschrift in Honour of Kent Haworth. Saskatoon: Association of Canadian Archivists. Bingo, Steven. 2011. “Of Provenance and Privacy: Using Contextual Integrity to Define Third-Party Privacy.” American Archivist 74(2): 506–521. Brannon, RaShauna, LaVerne Gray, Miraida Morales, Myrna E. Morales, Mario H. Ramírez, and Elnora Kelly Tayag. 2016. “The Social Justice Collaboratorium: Illuminating Research Pathways between Social Justice and Library and Information Studies.” In Perspectives on Libraries as Institutions of Human Rights and Social Justice (Advances in

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Wood, Stacy, Cathy Carbone, Marika Cifor, Anne Gilliland, and Ricardo Punzalan. 2014. “Mobilizing Records: Re-Framing Archival Description to Support Human Rights.” Archival Science 14(3–4): 397–419. Wurl, Joel. 2005. “Ethnicity as Provenance: In Search of Values and Principles for Documenting the Immigrant Experience.” Archival Issues 29(1): 65–76. Yaco, Sonia, Caroline Brown, and Lee Konrad. 2016. “Linking Special Collections to Classrooms: A Curriculum-to Collection Crosswalk.” American Archivist 79(2): 417–437. Yaco, Sonia, and Beatriz Betancourt Hardy. 2013. “Historians, Archivists, and Social Activism: Benefits and Costs.” Archival Science 13(2–3): 253–272. Yaco, Sonia, Ann Jimerson, Laura Caldwell Anderson, and Chanda Temple. 2015. “A Web-Based Community-Building Archives Project: A Case Study of Kids in Birmingham. 1963.” Archival Science 15(4): 399–427. Yakel, Elizabeth. 1989. “Institutionalizing an Archives: Developing Historical Records Programs in Organizations.” American Archivist 52(2): 202–207. Yakel, Elizabeth. 2004. “Reading, Reporting, and Remembering: A Case Study of the Maryknoll Sisters’ Diaries.” Archivaria 57(Spring): 142–150. Young, Iris Marion. 1990. Justice and the Politics of Difference. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Zinn, Howard. 1977. “Secrecy, Archives, and the Public Interest.” Midwestern Archivist 2(2): 14–26. Accessed 20 September 2017. https://minds.wisconsin.edu/handle/1793/44118.

Chapter 3

Methodologies for archival impact studies Wendy M. Duff and Michelle Caswell

Introduction Funders increasingly require non-profit organisations, including archives, to demonstrate their value based on empirical data. The mounting calls to evaluate programmes and services highlight a need to understand how effectively a programme performs to gather input for evidence-based decision-making and to demonstrate an organisation’s impact on its community, stakeholders, or society. These types of management-focused programme evaluations are connected to neoliberal practices of measuring and monitoring outputs, productivity, and efficiency. Transformative, democratic, culturally responsive, and Indigenous evaluations, however, embrace social justice values and aim to empower individuals and communities. This chapter discusses the concept of impact and presents a definition of the social justice impact of archives. It provides a brief history of evaluation research, from its positivist roots to its current more holistic approaches. We eschew traditional, neoliberal frameworks and methodologies, and support newer empowering models for research. The chapter provides an overview of research on archival impact, grouping the studies by type, including educational impact, economic impact, social impact, and affective impact. It considers the literature that critiques methods used in many library impact studies and concludes with a brief discussion of methods that align with culturally responsive, democratic, Indigenous, and transformative impact measures.

Definitions Definitions of impact proliferate. According to the Online Oxford English Dictionary, impact commonly means “the effective action of one thing or person upon another; the effect of such action; influence; impression” (Oxford English Dictionary). Alternatively, Wavell et al. (2002, p. 534) define impact as “the overall change in state, attitude or behavior of an individual or group after engagement with the service output.” Focusing on impact of development projects, the OECD-DAC (2002, p. 24) defined impact as “the positive and negative, primary and secondary long-term effects produced by a development intervention, directly or indirectly,

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intended or unintended. These effects can be economic, sociocultural, institutional, environmental, technological or of other types.” Environmental impact assessments also consider the location of the impact, the magnitude of the impact, whether any change is permanent or whether the change may be reversed, whether the impact is singular or synergistic, and whether there is any likelihood of a cumulative impact over time (Pastakia and Jensen 1998, p. 463). In the context of library services, Brophy’s (2005, p. 44) assessment of the impact of information services describes impact as “… any effect of a service, product or other ‘event’ on an individual or group …” that can have positive or negative, short-term or long-term results. The International Standard Organization (2014) publication “Information and documentation—Methods and procedures for assessing the impact of libraries” defines impact as a “difference or change in an individual or group resulting from the contact with library services.” Tanner’s (2012, p. 9) Balance Value Impact Model aimed at assessing the impact of digital resources defines impact as “measurable outcomes arising from the existence of a digital resource that demonstrate a change in the life or life opportunities of the community for which the resource is intended.” Not only do these definitions suggest interesting similarities, but also they have areas of divergence. Tanner’s definition emphasises the need to measure the outcomes connected to the existence of a resource, while the ISO standard and Brophy’s definitions suggest impacts could be tangible or intangible and, therefore, difficult to measure. The ISO (2014, p. 18) standard highlights challenges in studying impact including: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

The impact is for the most part intangible and difficult to quantify. The library’s influence is generally not the only and possibly not the strongest one. Impact of the same library service can vary in different user populations and in different cultural and economic surroundings. Long-term effect cannot be ascertained if the users are not available for follow-up. Expenditure of time and effort can be considerable.

For the purposes of this work, we focus on the social justice impact of records and archives. We concur that impact can be tangible or intangible, far-reaching or limited, intended or unintended, short or long term, permanent or reversible, of different magnitudes, as well as positive or negative, or both, and that such impact may shift dramatically over time. These changes can also be synergistic and have cumulative impacts over time. We understand that these impacts are not a zero-sum outcome (present–absent) but that these potential impacts can exist along continua reflecting gradients and scaling along these impacts. And that these impacts can be simultaneously different for different actors interfacing with the archives under question. We focus our attention on the social justice impacts of recordmaking, recordkeeping, and archiving and define archival social justice impact as an outcome or change in an individual or

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community’s relationship to the world in regards to social justice, which results from records and/or the processes of creating/keeping/activating records. We acknowledge that establishing the outcome or change in an individual’s or community’s relationship to the world in regard to social justice presents many challenges. Within the complex social environments in which these interactions and changes take place, the activation of records is only one of many things that influences that affiliation, “and possibly not the strongest one” as the ISO standard suggests. Furthermore, we acknowledge the challenges associated with assessing a concept, that in the words of Verne Harris (2007, p. 257) “always must be coming.” Nevertheless, despite this complexity, we believe that some social justice outcomes, both tangible and intangible, can be identified and better understood and that impact assessment remains useful in those cases even in the face of the unattainability and unmeasurability of other social justice goals.

History of evaluation Scriven (2013) posits that evaluating actions is a fundamental component of human behaviour. At an early age, we learn that certain behaviours have undesirable consequences; for example, putting one’s hand in a fire causes pain. By the late nineteenth century, after major breakthroughs in physics, research focused on non-evaluative matters and theoretical hypotheses that “generated factual predictions for confirmation” (Scriven 2013, p. 23). In the twentieth century, however, the need to evaluate programmes and services gained traction, with U.S. government mandating that programmes prove their effectiveness. Though President Ronald Reagan’s administration (1981–1989) de-emphasised programme evaluation, by late twentieth century, the U.S. federal government required funded programmes to demonstrate their value, once again. In the 1980s, the U.K. also began highlighting the importance of the social impact of services including relevancy to social and economic policy goals. By the beginning of the twenty-first century, the push towards understanding and articulating value was mirrored in the archives realm, which saw a rise in evaluation studies, including impact studies.

Types of archival impact Over the past 15 years, several frameworks have been proposed to assess the social, economic, and pedagogical impact of museums, libraries, and archives. Brophy (2005), in his assessment of the impact of information services, presents a model of evaluation that not only gauges the user’s affective relationship to information and library services, but also provides a means for information professionals to quantitatively account for the import of the services they provide. Brophy’s levels of impact provide a starting point for thinking about the concrete ways in which social and economic impact, for example, can be measured. This

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section will summarise the state of the literature on the educational, economic, social, and affective impact of archives. Educational impact In the archival realm, much of the discussion of impact has focused on educational impact, in particular, the ways in which archivists teach undergraduates how to use primary sources. Duff and Cherry (2008) assessed the educational impact of archival orientation sessions on undergraduate students, showing that even basic orientation sessions increased both student confidence about archival use and their use of archival collections. In the last ten years, many have called for the development of more rigorous and uniform methods for assessing educational impact (Krause 2010; Bahde and Smedberg 2012; Daniels and Yakel 2013). Krause (2010) found that, after an instructional session, undergraduates performed better in the areas of observation, interpretation/historical context, evaluation and critical thinking, and research skills when conducting a document analysis of a written text, a photograph, and a finding aid. Daniels and Yakel (2013) employed several educational outcome measures in a study of undergraduate archives users, including research confidence, perceptions of relevance, self-evaluations of experience, and attitudes about the likelihood of future use. Bahde and Smedberg (2012) advocate for “a blended approach” that combines citation analysis, the rubric proposed by Krause, and observational assessment. They too comment on the lack of authoritative guidelines for measuring the educational outcome of archives akin to the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) (2000) standards. One set of potential guidelines was proposed by the Archival Metrics Project (undated), which provided standardised tools such as surveys and focus group questions to assess the effectiveness of online finding aids and teaching tools. Economic impact The Archival Metrics Project (undated) has provided detailed toolkits to help archivists and special collections librarians measure the economic impact of archives. Research emerging out of the Archival Metrics project (Yakel et al. 2012) suggests that archives have a monetary impact on the communities they serve by attracting tourists and researchers. The U.K.-based Community Archives Development Group (2007) also found that community archives have a positive financial impact on the communities that were studied, in part increasing the “livability” of neighbourhoods, generating income and transferable job skills, and, in at least one case, rehabilitating an historic building that was set to be torn down. Much more research is needed to examine the financial aspects of archives, including their economic impact on communities, as well as distinguishing between archival impact and other factors affecting local economies.

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Social impact Several studies in the U.K. have attempted to measure the social impact of libraries, archives, and museums. Among these studies, social impact is seen as “… encompassing inclusion or overcoming exclusion of individuals or groups in terms of poverty, education, race, or disability and may also include issues of health, community safety, employment and education …” (Wavell et al. 2002, p. 6. See also Duff et al. 2013). The Burns Owens Partnership maintains that social impact can be located in three areas of focus, including “Stronger and Safer Communities” (which supports cultural diversity and identity, as well as familial ties and relationships); “Health and Well-Being” (which, among other things, supports care and recovery); and “Strengthening Public Life” (which encourages community empowerment and capacity building) (Horton and Spence 2006, pp. 49–50). The social impact of archives in particular manifests itself in issues surrounding the development of personal and community identity, the preservation of culture, broadening understandings of history, and the positive representation of communities (Wavell 2002). Social justice efforts within institutions by individual professionals may lead to widespread impact beyond the initial act of record preservation or acquisition. In their survey of 195 historians, educators, and archivists, Yaco and Betancourt Hardy (2013, p. 253) analysed the impact of activism by cultural heritage and social history professionals on their institutions and communities, defining activism as “activities that are intended to achieve social or political change.” As this study shows, social impact is not limited to outreach to communities, but can be transformative for the working professionals managing collections as well. Activist efforts as defined by respondents of the study range from encouraging outside activist communities to donate materials to the archive, to public speaking, and leading workshops and seminars which are meant to enact social or political change. These micro level actions such as individual efforts can lead to widespread outreach and social impact, as discussed in Chapter 2, through visibility of records and marginalised communities, increased funding and consequently increased acquisition and preservation of documents, and the empowerment of communities by establishing a need for and value of their records. Community archives have wide-ranging impact in several areas, such as the development of skills in volunteers, the preservation of narratives not found in mainstream institutions, and promotion of community pride, citizenship, empowerment, and social inclusion (Community Archives Development Group 2007). For community archives, the social impact of a collection may affect a smaller intended audience, but may also result in a higher level of cultural impact for that group. In cases of “cultural revitalization,” Thorpe and Galassi (2014) illustrate the ways in which archival materials may impact Indigenous communities worldwide, especially for those who have not had previous access to their cultural heritage. Many communities face challenges of access

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to these records, including the wide dispersal of cultural heritage collections, which are located internationally and excessively distant from the originating community, and are held in museums, libraries, and archives that do not permit access, digital or otherwise, to these records. Finding one’s language and cultural heritage materials can lead to a greater societal impact, such as redress for generational traumas, as they provide for the ability for items to be “brought together for community use” in ways that were not previously possible (Thorpe and Galassi 2014, p. 96). Acknowledging that previous studies on the impact of digitised ethnographic holdings have focused on the perspectives of non-Indigenous institutions and the professionals that staff them, Marsh and Punzalan’s ongoing research projects each focus on gathering communities’ perspectives on uses and their impacts. Punzalan, Marsh, and Cools (2017, p. 65) highlight that ethnographic archives have a diverse user base, and that source communities increasingly mobilise these records “for varied reasons, including revitalizing endangered languages and traditions, seeking legal reparations, facilitating claims to support federal acknowledgement applications, protecting sovereign resources and lands, and researching their own histories and cultures.” They write that by interviewing and “going directly to user communities, we aim to develop a more holistic characterization of impact that goes beyond institutional perspectives” (Punzalan, Marsh, and Cools 2017, p. 97). Affective impact Researchers based at UCLA have recently tried to build theory and generate models to assess the affective or emotional impact of archives with a particular emphasis on community-based archives documenting communities marginalised because of race, gender, sexuality, socio-economic status, and ability. This research has employed interviews and focus groups to generate empirical data leading to the generation of theories and models for studying the impact of community archives. Borrowing and building on the concept of “symbol annihilation” from feminist media studies scholars, Caswell, Cifor, and Ramirez (2016) explore the affective dimensions of seeing members of one’s own community absent, marginalised, or misrepresented in mainstream archives. They assert that representation—or its lack—in archives has a powerful affective impact. They propose the term “representational belonging” to describe the ways in which community archives empower people who have been marginalised by mainstream media outlets and memory institutions to have the autonomy and authority to establish, enact, and reflect on their presence in ways that are complex, meaningful, substantive, and positive to them in a variety of symbolic contexts. (Caswell, Cifor, and Ramirez 2016, p. 57)

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In another study, Caswell et al. (2016) interviewed 17 community archives founders, staff, and volunteers at 12 sites in Southern California to confirm that such concepts resonate with lived experience. Based on this empirical data, they proposed a tripartite framework for discussing the impact of community archives in the wake of symbolic annihilation: ontological impact (in which members of marginalised communities get confirmation “I am here”); epistemological impact (in which members of marginalised communities get confirmation “we were here”); and social impact (in which members of marginalised communities get confirmation “we belong here”). This model acknowledges the personal and social dimensions of records and archives and provides a conceptual tool to begin to assess their impact in affective terms. Connected to this above work, the Community Archives Lab at UCLA (https://communityarchiveslab.ucla.edu/) explores the ways in which independent, identity-based memory organisations document, shape, and provide access to the histories of minoritised communities, with a particular emphasis on understanding their affective, political, and artistic impact. From 2016 to 2019, the Lab undertook an archival impact assessment project called “Assessing the Use of Community Archives” with support from the U.S. Institute of Museum and Library Services. The project examined the way Asian American, Latinx, and LGBTQ community archives in Southern California counter the symbolic annihilation of their communities in mainstream media and archives by providing both avenues for autonomous self-representation and politically generative future-oriented spaces for shaping collective memory. The project resulted in the creation of a toolkit (https://communityarchiveslab.ucla.edu/toolkit/) for community archives to expand their practice, assess their own impact, and leverage their strengths to attract funding and support. The toolkit provides community archives with the tools to collect, analyse, and leverage stories about the emotional or affective impact of their organisations on the communities they serve and represent. By systematically interviewing stakeholders to find out how community archives are life changing, organisations can collect useful data that can help articulate their value to potential funders and make stronger cases for support, ultimately leading to increased budgets and capacity. The research team is now in the process of testing the toolkit at various community archives sites. This research on affect dovetails with the findings of several studies in Australia and Scotland on the impact of records on those who had been placed in institutional care as children. In the Australian context, Kertesz, Humphreys, and Carnovale (2012) found that the existence—and extent—of records documenting the out-of-home care experiences of children had a profound impact on their identities and emotional well-being as adults, helping to answer such basic questions as “Who am I?” Similarly, Swain and Musgrove (2012) show how the deep emotional and psychological impact of case files on care-leavers requires a new archival paradigm that centres such affective responses. More work needs to be done to assess the affective impact of records and archives in a variety of cultural, social, and historical contexts.

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Critiques of experimental methods While many researchers such as Marsh et al. have called for qualitative methods of data collection, often funders have favoured the use of experimental methods (that is, scientific and empirical methods). For example, in 2005, the U.S. Department of Education dictated the use of Randomised Control General Trials (RCGTs) and experimental methods, when possible, for funded research. In the publication “Scientifically Based Evaluation Methods: Notice,” the Department dictated: Evaluation methods using an experimental design are best for determining project effectiveness. Thus, when feasible, the project must use an experimental design under which participants—e.g., students, teachers, classrooms, or schools—are randomly assigned to participate in the project activities being evaluated or to a control group that does not participate in the project activities being evaluated. If random assignment is not feasible, the project may use a quasi-experimental design with carefully matched comparison conditions. (2005, p. 3586) Many, including the American Evaluation Association (AEA), rejected this directive and claimed that establishing causality did not require RCGTs or experimental methods. The AEA argued that RCGTs were not appropriate for ethical reasons in some situations; and in other cases, the data to conduct these studies did not exist. Furthermore, Smith (2008) notes, “support for experimental approaches to evaluation reflects a complex combination of national politics, social context, political values and technical methodological analysis and commitments.” While some scholars have highlighted the complexity of using experimental approaches, other Library and Information Science(LIS) scholars have raised concerns about the underlying reasons for conducting impact studies

Critiques of impact measures in LIS As librarians and archivists have increasingly been pressured to measure and articulate their impact to resource allocators, an emerging body of scholarship has begun to critique both the concept of impact and the criteria by which it has been assessed. Several librarians and LIS scholars have noted the increasing pressure with which libraries have been forced to demonstrate measurable impact on users, placing such impact metrics within a larger neoliberalist framework1 that emphasises the free market and values only those which can be monetised (Beilin 2005a; Buschman 2007; Cope 2015; Nicholson 2015). Eisenhower and Smith (2010, p. 314), for example, write that academic libraries have become “obsess[ed] with quantitative assessment, student satisfaction, outcomes, and consumerist attitudes towards learning.” Information literacy in

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academic libraries has become a key site for such obsession. Librarian Seale (2013, p. 40) has critiqued such measurements of information literacy, particularly the ACRL 2000 standards, for their false claims of universality and their emphasis on quantification, arguing that “dominant notions of information literacy reinforce and reproduce neoliberal ideology, which is invested in consolidating wealth and power within the upper class through the dispossession and oppression of non-elites.” Seale instead argues that librarians should take a more critical approach to literacy and begin to imagine alternatives to neoliberalist measurements that are tailored to the needs of their specific communities. What those alternatives may be is still the subject of much discussion. In response to the critique of assessing literacy through standardised measurements, in 2016 the ACRL Board shifted away from a standards-based approach in favour of adopting the new “Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education” (ACRL 2016). Rather than providing strict standards against which students’ knowledge could be measured, the framework outlines benchmark concepts of information literacy, such as “authority is constructed and contextual” and “information creation as a process,” and stresses the process of information literacy rather than measurable outcomes. While some welcomed the shift to this new framework, others criticised it as another neoliberal assessment tool under a different guise that ultimately obscures the critical aspects of information literacy such as evaluating information sources in relation to power and the construction of knowledge (Beilin 2015b). In archival studies, Punzalan and Caswell recently raised a number of questions about the effects of neoliberalism on archival institutions. They write, Across the board, the field has yet to come to terms with the ways in which neoliberal funding structures are increasingly dictating priorities that replicate structures of inequality in archives and to strategize alternative funding structures that reflect social justice aims. (Punzalan and Caswell 2016, p. 34) Examples of demonstrable metrics that archives are increasingly expected to track, produce, and report to funders include, but are not limited to: the number of square feet of collections processed (usually assessed in accordance with “More Product, Less Processing,” i.e., minimal processing) over a length of time given a certain number of staff hours at varying salary costs; the number of online visits digitised materials receive; the number of users of onsite collections and which collections they access; the number of educational or outreach sessions held, the number of attendees at such sessions, and assessments of the educational value of such sessions; and the amount of money raised from donors. Furthering the discussion of neoliberalism and archives, Cifor and Lee (2017) specifically address the market logic behind archival metrics, revealing the ways in which archives have adopted corporate terminology like “profitability,” “cost efficiency,” and “customer service” to articulate their

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value even as they are being defunded. As academic and government institutions have adopted corporatised models for demonstrating their value, measures of impact have become intimately linked to revenue streams; without demonstrating their value to resource allocators using prevailing measures, archives’ budgets can easily be slashed in the name of austerity. Furthermore, some have rejected the notion that quantitative measurements alone can be used to assess impact. Traditionally, evaluation studies and government agencies preferred quantitative methods “because they … provide statistical data and can potentially (assuming a rigorous method) provide an element of comparison across domains, sectors or over long time periods” (Tanner 2012). Tanner, however, also points out: The core disadvantage of quantitative methods is that they are somewhat cold, lacking the means to establish the change that is occurring in the lives of the stakeholders assessed, or to explain why this change is happening. Quantitative methods often answers the “what,” “where” or “who” queries adequately but tends to miss out on the “why” or “how” questions. Qualitative methods add the element of providing evidence with greater colour and depth regarding the investigation of people’s motivations, behaviours, and desires.

Narrative methodologies Marsh et al. (2015, pp 32–33) outline ways to assess the impact of archives, as organised by the categories of “knowledge,” “discourse,” “attitudes,” “capacity,” and “policy” using narrative methodologies. Examples of these types of studies employ stories about the use of objects by community members, multiple returns of communities to the institutions, resource growth within the archive, the expansion and use of digital resources and collections, and increased funding for collections and their acquisitions as empirical data to assess impact. In an important addition to Brophy’s model of evaluation of impact and the Archival Metrics toolkits, Marsh et al. (2015, p. 5) argue for the use of storytelling, mythmaking, and narratives in “the formation, maintenance, and day-to-day operations of archival institutions” as sites for qualitative measurements of impact. Building on Marsh et al.’s work, MacNeil et al.’s (2018) study of records of Scottish children in care developed narratives that reveal the experiences of children in care and highlight the potential social justice impact of administrative records on care-leavers, such as that a particular person worked at a particular time, thus providing essential information required in court cases on abuse. Marsh et al. (2015, p. 329) also point out that practitioners who work with ethnographic collections, for example, are very reluctant to use numeric assessments, given the colonial legacy of knowledge production, that is, the ways in which such assessments (particularly but not limited to quantitative assessments) have historically been used to further subjugate colonised populations. They state

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“[c]olonial practices of objectification and numeric measurement have engendered a deep concern about the use of the very term ‘metrics’ or ‘measurement’.” Such difficult epistemic legacies must be acknowledged and accounted for as new assessment tools are developed.

Theoretical constructs of evaluation Evaluation exists within a socio-cultural system with an authority structure and a particular view on the world (House and Howe 2000). Evaluation research is a value-based political exercise. Often, the funding agency’s ideals and theoretical constructs shape research studies and thus reduce their usefulness to other stakeholders (Klugman 2010). According to Gaotlhobogwe et al. (2018, p. 48), theoretical frameworks also “reflect researchers’ perceptions of reality, their values, and knowledge, and inform data collection and interpretation, and dissemination of research results.” These frameworks determine the types of data or evidence evaluators accept as valid (Smith 2008) and the causal explanations that they propose and accept (Johnson et al. 2008). Adopting a restrictive definition of scientific rigour could and often does marginalise some ways of knowing. Over the last two decades, democracy and inclusion evaluators searching for greater equity in research have sought to adopt conceptual frameworks and methodologies that better align with the worldviews of study stakeholders. Researchers have begun to reject predominant western framings of programme evaluation from the global north, highlighting the link between these frameworks and imperialism (Gaotlhobogwe et al. 2018). Not only have these studies begun to eschew these dominant constructs, but many have also adopted more inclusive, holistic methods involving stakeholders and communities in decision-making and data gathering. Culturally responsive evaluation (McBride 2011), Indigenous evaluation practices (Kawakami et al. 2008), democratic evaluation (Podems 2017), and transformative evaluation (Fetterman 2005) are all examples of such approaches that provide new constructs and methodologies for understanding research impact. Culturally responsive evaluation, which traces its origins to a merger of ideas about responsive evaluation and culturally relevant pedagogy (Centre for Cultural Responsive Evaluation and Assessment 2019), argues that conceptual frameworks should fit with the cultural context of the programme, community, or organisation involved in the study. Adopting a methodology incongruent with the worldviews of the community involved limits the validity and usefulness of any research. The call for a more responsive evaluation model has included the proposition that, when conducting studies, evaluators should consider “multicultural validity,” which requires explicit attention to culture (Kirkhart 2013). McBride (2011, p. 8) argues that the “evaluation should be infused with and/or respond to the target group’s cultural values, sensibilities, principles, feedback, and guidelines.” Multicultural validity, Kirkhart (2013, p. 136) notes, includes: the cultural appropriateness of epistemology and method; the cultural

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congruence between theoretical perspective underlying the programme and researchers’ assumptions of validity; a match between the life experience of individuals participating in a study and the evaluation process; high-quality relationships among the research team and the people being studied; and an understanding of the social consequences of the evaluation. Conducting rigorous research requires an alignment among theoretical frameworks, epistemologies, methods, researchers’ assumptions, and the cultural context of the research as well as the study’s community and stakeholders. It requires evaluators who have cultural competence. Mertens (2008, p. 47) defines cultural competence as a systematic responsive mode of inquiry that is actively cognizant, understanding, and appreciative of the cultural context in which the evaluation takes place; that frames and articulates the epistemology of the evaluative endeavour; that employs culturally and contextually appropriate methodology; and that uses stakeholder generated interpretive means to arrive at the results and further use of the findings. Team members must have the competency to frame and analyse the data within the appropriate cultural context. Waapalaneexkweew and Dodge-Francis (2018) argue, however, that not only do evaluators need cultural competencies and cultural humility, but they also require scientific, legal, and governance competencies. Haugen and Chouinard (2019) also highlight the importance of considering the power dynamics of any culturally responsive evaluation. They underscore that power is always present in evaluation research. The design, processes, and outcomes of these studies are shaped by many different types of power, including relational, political, discursive, and historical/temporal. To mitigate some of the negative influences of power dynamics, they posit that research should include both quantitative and qualitative methods to ensure input in multiple forms from a wide range of participants and stakeholders. It should also utilise collaborative evaluation processes. Finally, they argue that evaluators must deeply and fully understand the context of the programme being evaluated. Evaluators should consider: How are individuals selected to contribute to the evaluation process? …. Which voices are being heard and why those voices? [and] “Whose decision-making is driving the development, implementation, and evaluation of the program and why are they the ones driving the process?” (Haugen and Chouinard 2019, p. 91) Many Indigenous communities and researchers have also proposed new models of research that draw on Indigenous identity, epistemologies, values, spirituality, and methodologies (Kawakami et al. 2008; Morelli and Mataira 2010; Masters-

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Awatere and Waimarie Nikora 2017; Waapalaneexkweew and Dodge-Francis 2018). Kawakami et al. (2008) explain that Indigenous evaluation practices call for multiple ways of gathering data and data sources instead of a preferred narrow, single method, or gold standard. Indigenous methodologies promote the development of relationships and understanding, as well as observing and documenting how processes result in desired outcomes (Morelli and Mataira 2010). These studies require the involvement of elders and respect for individuals’ inherent intelligence (Morelli and Mataira 2010). For some communities, incorporating the core value of spirituality is essential (Luo Liu, and Liu 2018). Evaluation studies within Maori communities require the evaluator to be part of the community and to commit to positive change (Masters-Awatere and Waimarie Nikora 2017). Kawakami et al. (2008, pp. 230, 232) conclude that Indigenous research must contextualise experience “with respect to a specific place, time, community and history”; they argue for a broad definition of reliable data “that include information that extends into many facets of the lived experience. Spiritual, cultural, historical, social, emotional, cognitive, theoretical, and situated information all contribute to that understanding.” Studies of sensitive issues like tribal child welfare programmes should also consider tribal sovereignty and intergenerational and community traumas (Dodge-Francis 2018). Unlike other communities, Indigenous tribes have sovereignty and a history of trauma. These contextual elements of any community must be considered when doing evaluation. Indigenous evaluation practices connect the purpose of the evaluation research to a community’s own understandings of its context in order to ensure a positive impact on the community. These practices renounce objective, decontextualised methods conducted by external “experts” and instead, embrace methods framed by Indigenous worldviews. Addressing needs and gaps by humbly asking for help, co-developing solutions, and restoring balance are key elements of Indigenous evaluation practices. While evaluation studies have historically favoured quantitative methods with statistical data, Indigenous methodologies draw on a broad range of data, employ cultural and environmental analysis, talking circles, open listening, and storytelling (Morelli and Mataira 2010), and present findings as narratives, photos, videos, and so on. Creating and gathering a variety of data and conducting appropriate analysis require team members with cultural competence, and Indigenous worldviews for projects involving Indigenous peoples. Democratic evaluation proposes that evaluation studies need to include a broad range of stakeholders and interests, and ensure that findings are available to all different stakeholder groups (Podems 2017). According to House and Howe (2000), deliberate democratic evaluation should be guided by three principles: inclusion, dialogue, and deliberation. Inclusion requires that datagathering techniques ensure the inclusion of all stakeholders, whether through surveys or active participation in interpreting the data. Dialogue includes a range of discussions from simple clarification to critical review. Deliberation addresses concerns about how dialogue is structured and what information is

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considered: “The crux of the deliberative democratic view is that reaching evaluative conclusions, including value-laden ones, should be evidence based and requires genuine cognitive give and take” (Howe and Ashcroft 2005, p. 2277). Fetterman (2005, p. 19), outlines the basic elements of transformative processes including concepts, tools, and techniques that assist people and communities in developing the capacity to conduct research and reflect on any findings. In lieu of studies conducted by neutral evaluators, transformative evaluation involves researchers and community members building supportive relationships that seek knowledge to empower the community. These studies compel “evaluators to listen, share the evaluative endeavour and work with other participants” (Fetterman 2005, p. 6). The principles of empowerment evaluation frame the techniques for gathering and analysing data within a cultural context including improvement, inclusion, community ownership, democratic participation, social justice, community knowledge, evidence-based strategies, capacity building, organisational learning, and accountability. Instead of a neutral stance, the researcher should be committed to addressing issues of social inequity and working towards a call for social justice. Transformative and democratic evaluation should ensure the experiences of individuals who have been marginalised are included in the research in meaningful ways (Mertens 2008). Transformative principles and techniques, deliberate democratic evaluation, culturally responsive evaluation, and Indigenous methodologies lend support for the principles of social justice. Studies that aim to identify the social justice impact of recordmaking, recordkeeping, and archiving would do well to build on the processes and practices of empowerment/transformative principles and techniques. Researchers should “seek awareness of their own culturally-based assumptions, their understanding of the worldviews of culturally-different participants and stakeholders in the evaluation, and the use of appropriate evaluation strategies and skills” (American Evaluation Association 2004). Evaluation work should include consideration of diversity, discrimination, and oppression in each context (Mertens 2008). Moreover, determining the elements or criteria by which one identifies a change in an individual’s or community’s relationship to the world in regards to social justice is also an essential component of research on social justice.

Note 1 David Harvey defines neoliberalism as a political, economic, and social philosophy that posits that “human well-being can best be advanced by the maximization of entrepreneurial freedoms within an institutional framework characterised by private property rights, individual liberty, unencumbered markets and free trade.” (Harvey 2007, p. 22) More broadly, this has meant market rule; cutting public social spending; privatisation of public resources; de-regulation of corporations. In the archives world, this has meant, in part, public defunding of archival institutions, education programmes, and research initiatives, as well as increased pressure to demonstrate

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References American Evaluation Association. 2004. “Guiding Principles for Evaluators.” www.eval. org/p/cm/ld/fid=51. Archival Metrics Project. Undated. https://sites.google.com/a/umich.edu/archival-metrics/ Association of College & Research Libraries. 2000. Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education. Chicago, IL. Association of College and Research Libraries. Association of College & Research Libraries. 2016. Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education. www.ala.org/acrl/standards/ilframework. Bahde, Anne, and Heater Smedberg. 2012. “Measuring the Magic: Assessment in Special Collections and Archives Classroom.” RBM: A Journal of Rare Books, Manuscripts, and Cultural Heritage 13(2): 152–174. Beilin, Ian. G. 2015a. “Promoting and Resisting Student ‘Success’: Critical Information Literacy Instruction in the Neoliberal Academic Library.” Presentation at CAPAL. Ottawa, Canada. Beilin, Ian G. 2015b. “Beyond the Threshold: Conformity, Resistance, and the ACRL Information Literacy Framework for Higher Education.” In the Library with the Lead Pipe. 25 February. www.inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/2015/beyond-the-threshold-conformityresistance-and-the-aclr-information-literacy-framework-for-higher-education/. Brophy, Peter. 2005. “The Development of a Model for Assessing the Level of Impact of Information and Library Services.” Library and Information Research 29(93): 43–49. Buschman, John, 2007. “Talkin’ ‘Bout My (Neoliberal) Generation.” Progressive Librarian 29: 28–40. Caswell, Michelle, Alda Allina Migoni, Noah Geraci, and Marika. Cifor. 2016. “‘To Be Able to Imagine Otherwise’: A Framework for Understanding the Impact of Community Archives.” Archives and Records 38(1): 1–20. Caswell, Michelle, Marika Cifor, and Mario H. Ramirez. 2016. “‘To Suddenly Discover Yourself Existing’: Uncovering the Affective Impact of Community Archives.” The American Archivist 79: 56–81. Centre for Culturally Responsive Evaluation and Assessment. 2019. “Origins.” Accessed August 2019. https://crea.education.illinois.edu/home/origins. Cifor, Marika, and Jamie Lee. 2017. “Towards an Archival Critique: Opening Possibilities for Addressing Neoliberalism in the Archival Field.” Journal of Critical Library and Information Studies 1(1). https://journals.litwinbooks.com/index.php/jclis/article/view/10/4. Community Archives Development Group. 2007. “Summary.” www.communityarchives. org.uk/content/resource/summary. Cope, Johathan. 2015. “Neoliberalism and Library & Information Science: Using Karl Polanyi’s Fictitious Commodity as an Alternative to Neoliberal Conceptions of Information.” Progressive Librarian 43: 67–80. Daniels, Morgan, and Elizabeth Yakel. 2013. “Uncovering Impact: The Influence of Archives on Student Learning.” Journal of Academic Librarianship 39: 414–422.

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Duff, Wendy and Joan. Cherry. 2008. “Archival Orientation for Undergraduate Students: An Exploratory Study of Impact.” The American Archivist 71: 499–529. Duff, Wendy, Andrew Flinn, Karen Suurtamm, and David Wallace. 2013. “Social Justice Impact of Archives: A Preliminary Investigation.” Archival Science 13(4): 317–348. Eisenhower, Cathy, and Dolsy Smith. 2010. “The Library as Stuck Place: Critical Pedagogy in the Corporate University.” In Critical Library Instruction: Theories and Methods, edited by Maria T. Accardi, Emily Drabinski, and Alana Kumbier, 305–318. Sacramento, CA: Library Juice Press. Fetterman, David M. 2005. “A Window into the Heart and Soul of Empowerment Evaluation: Looking through the Lens of Empowerment Evaluation Principles.” In Empowerment Evaluation Principles in Practice, edited by David M. Fetterman and Abraham Wandersman, 1–26. New York: Guildford Press. Gaotlhobogwe, Michael, Thenjiwe Major, Sethomo Koloi-Keaikitse, and Bagele Chilisa. 2018. “Conceptualizing Evaluation in African Contexts.” New Directions for Evaluation 159: 47–62. Harris, Verne. 2007. Archives and Justice: A South African Perspective. Chicago, IL: Society of American Archivists. Harvey, David. 2005. A Brief History of Neoliberalism. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Center for International Studies Beyond the Headlines Series. Haugen, Jaimie Sticki, and Jill Anne Chouinard. 2019. “Transparent, Translucent Opaque: Exploring the Dimension of Power in Culturally Responsive Evaluation Contexts.” American Journal of Evaluation 40(3): 376–394. Horton, Sarah, and Jackeline Spence. 2006. Scoping the Economic and Social Impact of Archives. Yorkshire: Museums, Libraries and Archives (MLA) Council. www.socialva lueuk.org/app/uploads/2016/07/scoping_the_economic_and_social_impact_of_archives___ report_9739.pdf. House, Ernest R., and Kenneth R. Howe. 2000. “Deliberate Democratic Evaluation.” New Directions for Evaluation 85(Spring): 3–12. Howe, Kenneth R., and Catherine Ashcroft. 2005. “Deliberate Democratic Evaluation: Successes and Limitations of an Evaluation of School Choice.” Teachers College Record 107(10): 2274–2297. International Standard Organization. 2014. Information and Documentation: Methods and Procedures for Assessing the Impact of Libraries. Geneva, Switzerland: ISO. ISO 16439. Johnson, Elmina C., Karen E. Kirkhart, Anne Marie Madison, Grayson B. Noley, and Guillermo Solano-Flores. 2008. “The Impact of Narrow Views of Scientific Rigor on Evaluation Practices for Underrepresented Groups.” In Fundamental Issues in Evaluation, edited by Nick L. Smith and Paul R. Brandon, 197–218. New York: Guilford Press. Kawakami, Alice J., Kanani Aton, Fiona Cram, Morris K. Lai, and Laurie Porima. 2008. “Improving the Practice of Evaluation through Indigenous Values and Methods: Decolonizing Evaluation Practice: Returning the Gaze from Hawai’i and Aotearoa.” In Fundamental Issues in Evaluation, edited by Nick L. Smith and Paul R. Brandon, 219–224. New York: Guilford Press. Kertesz, Margaret, Cathy Humphreys, and Cathy Carnovale. 2012. “Reformulating Current Recordkeeping Practices in Out-of-Home Care: Recognising the Centrality of the Archive.” Archives and Manuscripts 40: 42–53.

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Kirkhart, Karen E. 2013. “Advancing Considerations of Culture and Validity: Honoring They Key Evaluation Checklist.” In The Future of Evaluation: A Tribute to Michael Scriven, edited by Stewart I. Donaldson, 129–159. Charlotte, NC: Information Age. Klugman, Barbara 2010. Evaluating Social Justice Advocacy: A Values Based Approach. Centre for Evaluation Innovation. www.justicefunders.org/Resources/Documents/Evalu ating%20Social%20Justice%20Advocacy.pdf. Krause, Magia G. 2010. “Undergraduates in the Archives: Using an Assessment Rubric to Measure Learning.” The American Archivist 73(2): 507–534. Luo, Laura Pan, Yonggong Liu, and Yanli Liu. 2018. “Spirituality Matters: The Role of Religion in Development Project Evaluation in the Tibetan Communities in China.” New Directions for Evaluation 159: 97–105. MacNeil, Heather, Wendy Duff, Alicia Dotiwalla, and Karolina Zuchniak. 2018. “‘If There Are No Records, There Is No Narrative’: The Social Justice Impact of Records of Scottish Care-Leavers.” Archival Science 18(1): 1–28. Marsh, Diana. E., Ricardo Punzalan, Robert Leopold, Brian Butler, and Massimo Petrozzi. 2015. “Stories of Impact: The Role of Narrative in Understanding the Value and Impact of Digital Collections.” Archival Science 16(4): 327–372. Masters-Awatere, Bridgette, and Linda Waimarie Nikora. 2017. “Indigenous Programmes and Evaluation: An Excluded Worldview.” Evaluation Matters—He Take Tō Te Aromatawai 3: 40–66. https://doi.org/10.18296/em.0020. McBride, Dominica F. 2011. “Sociocultural Theory: Providing More Structure to Culturally Responsive Evaluation.” New Directions for Evaluation 131: 7–13. Mertens, Donna M. 2008. “Stakeholders Representation in Culturally Complex Communities: Insights from the Transformative Paradigm.” In Fundamental Issues in Evaluation, edited by Nick L. Smith and Paul R. Brandon, 41–60. New York: Guilford Press. Morelli, P.T.A.T., and Peter J. Mataira. 2010. “Indigenizing Evaluation Research: A Long Awaited Paradigm Shift.” Journal of Indigenous Voices in Social Work 1(2): 1–12. www.hawaii.edu/sswork/jivsw; hdl.handle.net/10125/12527. Nicholson, Karen P. 2015. “The McDonaldization of Academic Libraries and the Values of Transformational Change.” College and Research Libraries 76(3): 328–338. OECD-DAC. 2002. Glossary of Key Terms in Evaluation and Results Based Management. Paris: OECD-DAC. Oxford English Dictionary [electronic resource]. Accessed 1 May 2016. www.oed.com. myaccess.library.utoronto.ca/view/Entry/92036?rskey=A6sHE6&result=1&isAdvanced= false#eid Pastakia, Christopher M. R., and Arne Jensen. 1998. “The Rapid Impact Assessment Matrix (RIAM) for EIA.” Environmental Impact Assessment Review 18(5): 461–482. Podems, Donna. 2017. “Democratic Evaluation and a New Democracy: Acquaintances, Adversaries or Allies.” In Democratic Evaluation and Democracy, edited by D. Podems, 1–16. Charlotte, NC: Information Age Pub. Punzalan, Ricardo, and Michelle Caswell. 2016. “Critical Directions for Archival Approaches to Social Justice.” Library Quarterly 86(1): 25–42. Punzalan, Ricardo L., Diana E. Marsh, and Kyla Cools. 2017. “Beyond Clicks, Likes, and Downloads: Identifying Meaningful Impacts for Digitized Ethnographic Archives.” Archivaria 84(1): 61–102.

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Scriven, Michael. 2013. “The Foundation and Future of Evaluation.” In The Future of Evaluation in Society: A Tribute to Michael Scriven, edited by Stewart I. Donaldson, 11–44. Charlotte, NC: Information Age Pub. Seale, Maura. 2013. “The Neoliberal Library.” In Information Literacy and Social Justice: Radical Professional Practice, edited by Lua Gregory and Shana Higgins, 39–62. Sacramento, CA: Library Juice Press. Smith, Nick L. 2008. “Fundamental Issues in Evaluation.” In Fundamental Issues in Evaluation, edited by Nick L. Smith and Paul R. Brandon, 1–23. New York: Guilford Press. Swain, Shurlee, and Neil Musgrove. 2012. “We Are the Stories We Tell about Ourselves: Child Welfare Records and the Construction of Identity among Australians Who, as Children, Experienced Out-of-Home ‘Care’.” Archives and Manuscripts 40(1): 4–14. Tanner, Simon. 2012. Measuring the Impact of Digital Resources: The Balanced Value Impact Model. London: King’s College London. www.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/fileadmin/docu ments/pubs/BalancedValueImpactModel_SimonTanner_October2012.pdf. Thorpe, Kristen, and Monica Galassi. 2014. “Rediscovering Indigenous Languages: The Role and Impact of Libraries and Archives in Cultural Revitalisation.” Australian Academic & Research Libraries 45(2): 81–100. U. S. Department of Education. 2005. “Scientifically Based Evaluation Methods: Notice.” Federal Register 70(15): 3586–3589. www.eval.org/p/cm/ld/fid=83 Waapalaneexkweew (Bowman, N., Mohican/Lunaape) and Carolee Dodge-Francis. 2018. “Culturally Responsive Indigenous Evaluation and Tribal Governments: Understanding the Relationship.” New Directions for Evaluation (159): 17–31. Wavell, Caroline, Graeme Baxter, Ian Johnson, and DorothyWilliams. 2002. Impact Evaluation of Museums, Archives and Libraries: Available Evidence Project. Aberdeen: Robert Gordon University. Yaco, Sonia, and Beatriz Betancourt Hardy. 2013. “Historians, Archivists, and Social Activism: Benefits and Costs.” Archival Science 13(2–3): 253–272. Yakel, Elizabeth, Wendy Duff, Helen Tibbo, Adam Kriesberg, and Amber Cushing. 2012. “The Economic Impact of Government Archives.” American Archivist 75(2): 297–325.

Section 2

Preface to section 2 Categorisations and patterns in the case studies Renée Saucier Drawing together these case studies allows us to tease out and identify patterns across contexts. The majority of the case studies included here illuminate the paradoxes of trying to foment social justice with records and recordkeeping systems that are themselves both the residue and the tools of injustice and oppression. Several of the chapters predominantly concern struggles to access and activate records that were created by authorities in the process of committing injustices and implementing oppressive policies and programmes. Anthea Josias and Raymond O. Frogner, for example, each consider the recognition of land rights and recordkeeping regimes of settler colonial states. In these case studies, records serve as documentary evidence and are used by activists, lawyers, and communities in the pursuit of accountability and specific policies or legal outcomes. In several of these cases, the central issue is access and the central struggle is to redistribute the power to access records, which Evans et al. term “archival justice.” The paradox of using the residue and tools of injustice to work towards justice acquires different complexities in contexts of transitional justice (Blanco-Rivera, Josias), where attempts to activate records confront and in some ways reify the lingering power—actual and symbolic—of former regimes. In other situations, quests for archival justice must contend directly with power structures that are continuous with those that have committed or overseen injustice (as seen in chapters by Frogner, Evans, and Flinn and Duff). Such dynamics shape the tenor and potentialities of the relationships between archives, records, and social justice. As seen in the chapter by Evans et al., to fully achieve their aims, campaigns for archival justice must remake recordkeeping processes and, by extension, the institutions and structures they inhabit. As contributors such as Josias note, a central paradox of using the residues of injustice in service of justice is that records and recordkeepers are embedded in structures and frameworks that foment social injustice. Individual recordkeeping professionals experience both privilege and oppression resulting from those structures and frameworks; many professionals derive direct unearned benefit, such as white privilege, from oppressive power dynamics. Moreover, both recordmakers and recordkeepers may derive substantial benefits and privilege through their control over the records.

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Other chapters (Pell, Butler, Sheffield, and Sexton et al.) predominantly concern the efforts of activist archivists to create and preserve records as a means of combating injustice, that is, archiving as an activist strategy and as part of a broader social movement. These efforts can be seen as falling under the wide umbrella of community archives, counter archives, autonomous archives, and social movement archives that constitute an alternative public sphere of memory and counter-narratives. That is, communities creating the records and repositories that they need in the course of movements organising not just for specific policy or legal changes, but for broader social, political, economic, and cultural shifts. In the case studies contributed by Joel Blanco-Rivera and Susan Pell, activists struggle for access to official records and, as both substitute and supplement, coordinate the creation of counter-archives. In activist archival initiatives such as Infoshop 56a, activists deposit copies of official records obtained through Freedom of Information requests into counter-archives, placing them into new contexts where they may be more easily accessed and differently activated. While activist-led archiving initiatives may aim to work separately from and counter to hegemonic structures and norms that produce inequity, as several contributors observe (Sheffield, Sexton et al.), these archives themselves may perpetuate and reproduce marginalisation and inequity. Like Sheffield, Sexton grapples with the perpetuation of power inequalities in autonomous social movement archiving initiatives. Such observations compel us, as archival scholars, to reflect on the contours of the processes leading to the creation of this very volume—the systems of domination that we ourselves are situated in.

Chapter 4

Archives, records, and land restitution in South Africa Anthea Josias

Introduction South Africa has a long history of land dispossession, and considering the range of heated sentiments expressed in recent public hearings on land restitution (Beinart, Delius, and Hay 2017, p. 135)), and on land expropriation (Parliamentary Monitoring Group 2018), many South Africans are acutely aware of how land dispossession has affected their livelihoods. This chapter argues that despite the centrality of records and archives to land restitution processes, their roles are also troubling, because the conditions under which these archives and records were assembled resulted in large absences which limit the potential of archives to support restitution. These limitations have not been acknowledged in the official documents that outline the purposes and procedures of land restitution to the public. Furthermore, government-managed archives have noted land reform as an example of one of the ways they support government’s developmental objectives (State of Archives and Challenges 2016). However, as I hope to demonstrate in this chapter, land restitution has many complexities. We should not be simplifying the roles of records and archives in an already complex process. A major paradox is that much of the records that qualify as evidence to support a restitution claim are incomplete remnants of colonial and apartheid-era archives, resulting in exclusion and therefore a reinforcement of colonial ideologies. There is perhaps an over-reliance and unquestioning legitimisation of colonial and apartheid-era archives. Therefore some have benefited, whilst others have not. This chapter is about the role of archives and records in the social justice process of land restitution. In the first part of this chapter, I outline the landscape of restitution by reviewing available reports and literature. In the second section, I discuss the potentials and limitations of archives and records.

Background I begin this chapter by talking about the Natives Land Act because June 1913, when this law came into effect, is the historic cut-off date for land restitution in South Africa (1994). In terms of the 1913 Land Act, the British administered

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Union of South Africa set up an African reserve (homeland) system, meaning that African people were restricted from purchasing and owning land outside of African reserves or specially scheduled areas (Switzer 1993). Just under 8% of the land was set aside for African reserves (Walker and Cousins 2015, p. 17). This does not mean that land dispossession did not occur before June 1913. As stipulated in the law, its purpose was “to make further provision as to the purchase and leasing of land by natives …” (Union of South Africa 1913, Preamble to the Natives Land Act, emphasis added). In many regions of South Africa, actions by previous colonial administrations to curtail the rights of Indigenous communities to land were widespread by the time the 1913 Land Act came into effect. Beinart and Delius write that the Act “recognised dispossession rather than caused it” (2015, p. 26) after more than a century of Dutch and British colonial expansion based on slavery and the control of Indigenous labour, and from the late 1800s, on the control of the mineral economy (Thompson 1995). As early as 1809, for example, Indigenous people were made to carry passes which were used to control their movements (Thompson 1995, p. 58). An extensive history of land dispossession is beyond the scope of this chapter, but it is worth noting that ten years before the 1913 Land Act, the South African Native Affairs Commission of the British colonial administration undertook an investigation into “the lines on which … the natural advancement [of indigenous South Africans] should proceed …” on matters ranging from education to labour, and on “the tenure of land by Natives …” (Union of South Africa 1905, p. 5). Not surprisingly, more than 50% of this report was about land, and as it quite crudely states, the first item of reference, and perhaps the most important, is Land Tenure. From it, there is a common origin of many serious Native problems. It dominates and pervades every other question, it is the bedrock of the Native’s present economic position, and largely affects his social system. (Union of South Africa 1905, pp. 13–14) These laws and practices paved the way for apartheid policy. When apartheid became official in 1948, it was accompanied by legislation such as: the Group Areas Act (1950) which enforced residential segregation by race; the Bantu Authorities Act (1951), which further entrenched the African reserve (homeland) system by legislating how the reserves were to be internally administered, and the relationship of these administrations to the apartheid government; the Prevention of Illegal Squatting Act (1951), which enabled evictions and forced removals from “illegally” occupied land; as well as laws such as the Native Laws Amendment Act (1952), which legislated who could live in towns. The Surplus Peoples Project (SPP), a non-governmental organisation which was set up in the 1980s to support communities affected by forced removals, documented more than 3.5 million forced removal “events”

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between 1960 and 1983. This number is greatly expanded upon by the government Department of Rural Development and Land Reform, which estimates that about 7.5 million people were affected by forced removals in South Africa in the twentieth century (Walker 2015, pp. 240–241). An Afrobarometer survey undertaken in 2018 showed that more than 84% of South Africans are of the opinion that land redistribution should be prioritised (Nkomo 2018). Land restitution is one of three components of land reform in South Africa. The restitution process began in 1995. Those eligible for restitution are people or communities who lost their land due to discriminatory laws, after 19 June 1913 (South Africa 1994) which is the date on which the Natives Land Act came into effect. The other two components of land reform are legally securing land tenure where it is insecure because of past racial injustices, and land redistribution which is meant to enable equitable access to land (Ramutsindela, Davis, and Sinthumule 2016). These three components of land reform are meant to address historical injustices pertaining to land as per Section 25 in the Bill of Rights of the South African Constitution which deals with property rights. Land restitution has also been legislated under the Restitution of Land Rights Act (South Africa 1994). The Commission on the Restitution of Land Rights (CRLR) is the statutory body which was set up through the Restitution of Land Rights Act to support the investigation and finalisation of land claims arising from the historical injustices of colonialism and apartheid in South Africa (Commission on the Restitution of Land Rights 2015). Legal issues pertaining to land claims are dealt with by a second body set up in terms of the Restitution of Land Rights Act, the Land Claims Court. All land claims have to be submitted, processed, and administered via the CRLR. The process of submitting a claim includes showing proof of eligibility to submit a claim and establishing the validity of claims before a settlement is reached. The five main stages of the process, in order to meet official administrative requirements, are lodging a claim, researching the validity of claims, negotiations, settlement either by the Minister, or by the Land Claims Court, and finally implementation of the settlement which has been agreed (Commission on the Restitution of Land Rights 2014). As various documented cases of land restitution can attest to, each of the five stages of the land restitution process present their own complexities. In terms of the extent of complexity, much depends on the details of individual cases. Issues which have been noted include the differences between urban and rural processes and/or outcomes, individual or community claimants, ensuring adequate representation of claimant communities and delimiting community boundaries, as well as differences in expectations from the land claims process on a combination of different levels. The CRLR is meant to assist communities and individuals in each of the five official stages of land restitution, and has been given “wide-ranging investigative powers” in terms of sourcing relevant information (South African

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Human Rights Commission 2013, p. 16). The issue of sourcing relevant information (including records and archives) is a significant one. Land restitution fits within the purview of social justice because of its objective to achieve historical redress through land desegregation, different forms of material and nonmaterial compensation, as well as through symbolic means. A major focus of the official restitution process has been on material compensation, either through financial payouts or through land allocations. By 2013, financial compensation amounted to R7.6 billion, and three million hectares were awarded “though not necessarily acquired and transferred by the state” (Walker 2015, p. 240).

Reviewing the numbers It is difficult to find aggregated and up-to-date statistics on the number of land claims submitted, and on the extent of “successful” land claims in South Africa. Official numbers from sources such as the CRLR, the South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC), the Parliamentary Monitoring Group (PMG), and more recently the Department of Rural Development and Land Reform (DRDLR) have varied over the years. Walker writes that this situation can be attributed to different ways of calculating claim units, as well as problems with information management (Walker 2015, p. 239). What has been documented is the following. The first land restitution claims were lodged between 1995 and 1998. By December 1998, the initial cut-off date for the lodgement of land restitution claims, more than 60,000 claims were submitted. By 2000, only 4925 of these had been settled (South African Human Rights Commission 2013, p. 5), but the amount of settled claims increased rapidly after negotiated settlements were sought with claimants as opposed to a court adjudication process (Hall 2004, p. 217). By 2006, the amount of settled claims had reached 73,433 and late in 2010, it was reported that 75,800 out of approximately 80,000 officially lodged claims had been settled (CRLR as referenced by Walker 2012). In terms of figures sourced from the Parliamentary Monitoring Group (PMG), the amount of settled claims increased to 77,334 by March 2013. These reports did however make a distinction between “settled claims” and “finalised claims,” noting that 59,758 claims had been finalised by March 2013 (Nkwinto 2013). Evidently, the numbers are not always consistent, and the processes have been slow. It has also been reported that in the first phase of the restitution process between 1995 and 1998, 88% of claims came from urban areas (Ramutsindela, Davis, and Sinthumule 2016). But this is only a piece of the picture. A second wave of land restitution claims which began in July 2014 was made possible by an amended law, the Restitution of Land Rights Amendment Act (Number 15 of 2014). A new deadline for the lodgement of claims thus came into effect, 30 June 2019. Between July 2014 and January 2015 alone, more than 46,000 new claims were lodged with the CRLR, as noted in official

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numbers provided by the Minister of Rural Development and Land Reform (Commission on the Restitution of Land Rights 2015, p. 4). Two years later, in 2016, the Constitutional Court ruled against the constitutionality of the Restitution of Land Rights Amendment Act because of inadequate public input, but by this time 160,000 new claims had already been lodged (Beinart, Delius, and Hay 2017). While these more recent claims have now been “frozen” (Department of Rural Development and Land Reform 2017), the claims backlog has been significantly supplemented, leading to recent media speculation that “it could take more than 700 years to complete the land restitution process if claims were reopened and processed at the current pace …” (Kahn 2018). While these figures may be a cause for concern, they are hardly surprising in the context of South Africa’s historical legacy of land dispossession and displacement. In June 2018, public hearings commenced to address the Constitutional Court’s nullification of the 2014 Restitution of Land Rights Amendment Act. There were indications of extensive public support for reopening land claims (Beinart, Delius, and Hay 2017; Parliamentary Communication Services 2018). If current proposed amendments are validated, the date for claim lodgements will be extended to 30 June 2021, and the CRLR would need to ensure the finalisation of claims lodged before December 1998 before new claims can be processed (Department of Rural Development and Land Reform 2018).

Restitution and social justice Articles detailing individual cases—both successes and the range and depth of complexities associated with individual cases—feature prominently across the humanities, social sciences, political studies, environmental, and legal disciplines (Du Toit 2000; Kepe 1999, 2010; Hall 2004; Bohlin 2007; Legassick 2007; Dhupelia-Mesthrie 2010; Dodgson 2010; Fay and James 2010; Barry 2011; Walker 2012, 2015; Mbatha 2013; Huizenga 2014; Krüger, Cundill, and Thondhlana 2016; Beinart, Delius, and Hay 2017). Not only is the slow pace of restitution a cause for concern, but there is the crucial question of implementation and whether the restitution programme is designed to achieve its purpose (Du Toit 2000). Social justice in the land restitution process means different things to different entities and people. There are goals that have been articulated at a national policy level, and there are also hopes and expectations that have emerged at the level of local communities and individuals. For national government, a goal was for 30% of white-owned agricultural land to be transferred to black South Africans by 2014, in order to deracialise land ownership—a target which has been extended to 2025 (Greenberg 2010, p. vii). According to Walker and Cousins (2015), only 8% of farmland had been transferred through redistribution and restitution since 1994. Restitution has also been targeted towards historical redress in terms of national policy

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and the Restitution of Land Rights Act in which people who were dispossessed of land and forcibly displaced as a result of legislation such as the 1913 Natives Land Act and the apartheid Group Areas Act of 1950 could seek compensation. In terms of restitution policy, settlement options have included monetary compensation on the one hand, and claimants returning to their land on the other (Hall 2004, p. 217). Of the urban claims settled, most of them have been through cash payments, and many reportedly settled claims are yet to be implemented and finalised (Cousins 2016). The issues and outcomes have been different for urban and rural areas—in rural areas, claims have been lodged to large areas of commercial farmland (Hall 2004, p. 217), and reportedly many claimant communities have chosen land over monetary compensation. One of the patterns that has emerged in land restitution claims is for urban claimants to submit individual claims, and rural claimants to submit collective community claims, even though this is not strictly the case for all rural or urban claims. One specific rural claim in the Northern province, for example, involved between 8,000 and 10,000 individuals, whereas about 1,200 individual claims were submitted in the urban District Six claim (Du Toit 2000, p. 77). There have also been differences in approach and aftereffects pertaining to environmentally protected areas where settlements have included various comanagement arrangements between claimant communities, conservationists, and other stakeholders such as tourism agencies (Krüger, Cundill, and Thondhlana 2016). What is clear from much of the literature that has emerged over the last 20 years is that the administrative settlement of a claim is not always enough for social justice. Many claims regarded as settled in terms of administrative processes went through lengthy challenges, and the nature of settlements led some claimants to conclude that justice was not done. Dhupelia-Mesthrie considered the meanings of restitution for residents in an urban community in Cape Town, Black River, from which more than 300 families were forcibly displaced between 1966 and 1979 (Dhupelia-Mesthrie 2010). For some residents, restitution was in fact about making a symbolic statement against violations that they had experienced in the past. However, the author notes that “as time passed, restitution came to be very specifically about the end result” which in many urban cases was money. In much the same way as the Truth and Reconciliation Report noted that “much of the damage wreaked by the country’s colonial and apartheid pasts is irreparable,” Dhupelia-Mesthrie concluded that “Black River claimants know that justice cannot be done” where in some cases token monetary payments were in fact signs of a failure of restitution. Monetary payments were mainly symbolic and not based on any market value, it often did not lead to any significant betterment of people’s lives, or as Bohlin (2007) notes did not have a resulting transformative effect of desegregation which was one important goal of the restitution process. As argued by Du Toit,

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… land is not the only thing that was lost. What was destroyed … was a whole way of being, a set of community relations …, and … a broader system of economic relations and livelihoods of which the land was but a part … (Du Toit 2000) While settlements are important, both symbolically and in terms of improving people’s lives, there is more at stake and deeper consideration needs to be given to the meanings of restitution for individual claimants and communities. There are some examples of successful land claims in primarily rural and/or peri-urban communities of the Northern Cape province. Further research however shows that many of these claims were settled in semi-arid regions such as the Northern Cape, which is not considered as prime land for farming, with a resulting settlement bias (Hall 2004). The first settlement to be reached via the Land Claims Court in 1996 in Elandskloof in the Western Cape has also been noted (as have other cases) for a lack of post-settlement support—in a number of such cases there were unmet expectations by the claimant community that the state would assist with infrastructure and housing development after the return of the land. In Elandskloof, there was also a breakdown in relations between community members, which required an intervention by the government department of land affairs to assist with community administration (Barry 2011, p. 139). Furthermore, in recent public hearings on the outcome of the restitution process more generally, there was an overwhelming sense that government is to blame for the failure of the process and that “claimants have seen little or no benefit from land restitution themselves, even though in some cases their claims had supposedly been finalised” (Beinart, Delius, and Hay 2017, p. 139). Thus, several ongoing issues and themes have been iterated in regard to both material and nonmaterial manifestations and outcomes of the restitution process.

Records and archives In South Africa, no empirical research has been done on the extent to which archival records have been relied upon by claimants and other participants in the land restitution process, and on the extent to which these records have shaped restitution outcomes at individual and collective scales. But it is apparent that archives, records, and memory are acutely involved in the restitution process. What is known is the following. Records sourced from various types of archives or record accumulations are central to the procedures for lodging a land claim. Amongst other requirements, claimants have to show supporting documentation to prove the validity of their claim to the CRLR. As noted in a 2014 Land Claims manual, such supporting documentation may be found in national and provincial archives, with the Registrar of Deeds, in property descriptions with the Surveyor

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General, and in court records, and there may also be additional sources of information to support a claim (Commission on the Restitution of Land Rights 2014, p. 9). Here, the issue of “document bias” emerged as a concern, in the sense that where documentary evidence could be furnished to the CRLR, claims could be more easily processed within shorter periods of time (Walker 2012, p. 816). There is also the related question of who does the archival research on behalf of claimant communities, and perceptions of trust in these processes. Fay and James (2010) noted that “communities at Dwesa-Cwebe [in the Eastern Cape] … were dependent on state representatives to access archival evidence regarding their claim, leading to the mistaken perception that their claim might not succeed if pressed in court.” The late historian Martin Legassick recounted processes of conducting community interviews to supplement official records, as well as significant periods of time spent combing through official archival records in order to verify claims on behalf of the CRLR and claimant communities in the Northern Cape province, in a search for “legal truth.” In Legassick’s experience, records sourced from various archives of the former apartheid government included contextual information on the “racial shaping” or engineering of these communities in the 1940s, as well as lists of community members, and aerial photographs. Legassick acknowledged that while the sources consulted were not perfect, they provided a “means of verification” (2007, p. 132), but noted that it was not possible to map the archival records to contemporary interviews with community members (2007, p. 133). The work of the CRLR has also been affected by inadequate or non-existent recordkeeping of contemporary processes. The forms on which claims were lodged and accompanying verification documents represent an official archive of land claims between 1994 and the present. However, the CRLR and the Land Claims Commission have lacked the recordkeeping infrastructure to effectively manage the huge volumes of paper generated in the claims process. Walker identifies information management (including records management) as one of three major challenges which “bedevilled” the work of the CRLR in its early years (2012, p. 811). Describing the extent of the problem in the context of verification research on African tenants in the Western Cape, Legassick makes reference to having to reconstruct claimants lists, and to a finding that nearly half of the claimant files had been misplaced (2007, p. 138). According to Beinart, Delius, and Hay, vital information was not being accounted for, and these included claim forms, historical verifications, lists of claimant beneficiaries, oral history transcripts, correspondence, and archival files from the National Archives (2017, pp. 113–114). These problems in managing active records have had implications, serving as major obstacles in instances where competing claims needed to be identified and in some cases blocking the implementation of settlements (Beinart, Delius, and Hay 2017, p. 114). Some researchers have noted as problematic the lack of a centralised database on land claims (Kepe 2010; Cousins 2016; Krüger, Cundill, and Thondhlana

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2016). The literature shows exasperation on the part of some claimants on the way in which required documents (official records generated in the course of a land claim) have been managed by officials. One claimant noted that “After the first verification, the documents disappeared” (Kimberly Claimant as referenced by Krüger, Cundill, and Thondhlana 2016, p. 1055). Reportedly, many documents and files have been lost, and there is little indication of how such problems will be dealt with for existing claimants (South African Human Rights Commission 2013, p. 48). More broadly, several critical information problems were captured in an opinion piece by Ben Cousins as published in the Mail and Guardian in March 2018 titled “South Africa’s land debate is clouded by misrepresentation and lack of data” in which “the woeful recordkeeping of national and local government departments” was identified as a major contributor to vague public understandings of the impact of land reform processes. Even though there are limited writings which directly address the role of information and records in land restitution, their instrumentality is implicit in writings which detail individual claims. Issues pertaining to information and records have also been at the centre of complaints received by the South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC). There have been instances in which missing records affected the ability of the CRLR to assign a monetary value to claims (South African Human Rights Commission 2013, p. 22). Additionally, research abilities, which include access to records, have been singled out as a major challenge in the process of submitting a land claim, and as a significant delay factor. The SAHRC has acknowledged that “access to information in government archives and active records would need to be facilitated much more actively than is currently the case” (South African Human Rights Commission 2013, pp. 46–47). Legassick’s work places a spotlight on tensions between different forms of evidence. Relatedly, Walker notes that “data management [was] under pressure from the start” because non-documentary evidence did not conform to the requirements of the land claim forms (2012, p. 817). There were however occasional instances where non-document-based evidence such as grave sites and physical markers were presented, as in the case of the Dwesa-Cwebe nature reserve land claim where “claimants led representatives of the Land Claims Commission to deep pits where their ancestors had stored maize” (Fay and James 2010). Legassick also noted in his work on the African tenants project in the Western Cape that claimants were largely unable to provide documentary evidence because there were no street addresses (claimants reported to have lived “in the bush”), and were thus reliant on questionable affidavits (2007, p. 139). The problems with finding credible evidence are not expected to disappear. Even in the new phase of claim submissions, claimants are still expected to provide documentary evidence that is difficult for them to find and/or access (Walker 2015, p. 246), or which in fact may not exist.

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Huizenga offers a different kind of critique which, to a large extent, highlights problems, not necessarily with access to documentary evidence per se, but in the way that historical documents have been utilised to construct a frozen, unambiguous, static narrative of displacement and land claims which “fail[s] to articulate change that occurs over time,” leaving important aspects of the claimant community “unrepresented” (2014, p. 154). One such example in Huizenga’s critique is the underrepresentation of women (Walker, as cited by Huizenga), specifically in the ≠Khomani San community claim1—where changes in gender relations in San communities over recent decades were not considered (Kent, as cited by Huizenga). In this instance, the main object of critique was an electronically accessible community information repository of legal documents, NGO publications, and relevant government reports assembled by the Legal Resources Centre from various sources as likely legal evidence in the ≠Khomani San land claim. Huizenga’s analysis connects to an ongoing challenge and area of conflict and/or contestation which has been widely cited in research on individual claims across rural and urban areas—the establishment of community boundaries—and the extent to which records have been used to construct particular community narratives that define community boundaries leaving some constituencies unrepresented. The seriousness of this issue as a more widespread problem is evident in the SAHRC investigation into complaints pertaining to the restitution process, which found that the research phase of the claims process has experienced the longest delays when it comes to establishing community boundaries (South African Human Rights Commission 2013, pp. 46–47). This situation is hardly surprising considering that “land claims are … lodged by a present-day community, representing a pre-eviction community” (Sundnes 2013, p. 71).

Archival roles and responsibilities In an article with distinct resonances to some of the archival challenges identified above—written in the context of agrarian reform in Mexico after 1920— Craib noted that the colonial national archive was regarded by many as “the juridical ground zero, the archival basis, upon which claims were evaluated,” calling it “an edifice that mirrored colonial epistemology,” and a “bureaucracy [which] far outlasted its master” (Craib 2010, p. 414). Similarly, Mbembe calls for an understanding of official archival institutions and records accumulations as “epistemic spaces” (2014), which underscore a need to take account of colonial ideologies that live in colonial archives and their limited capacity to support social justice. Much of the quandary surrounding management of active records, as well as access to records and other relevant information, suggest that there is a need and an opportunity for archivists to become activists in the land restitution process, through sharing of expertise, as well as through actively facilitating access to information (both kept within archives and elsewhere) which as

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noted in the SAHRC report is so greatly needed in order to move restitution processes forward. There is also a need for archival institutions and the archival, heritage and information sectors, more broadly, to consider and take a position on its role in addressing historical legacies of information inequality and asymmetry, which are clearly key contributing factors in social justice processes such as land restitution. In order to meet some of the recordkeeping challenges of land restitution and other important contemporary issues, there is an urgent need to revisit archival appraisal strategies. The appraisal policy guidelines of South Africa’s National Archives and Records Service date back to 2002. Part of the guidelines call on archivists to identify processes “which are poorly documented by the records and which need to be supplemented by collecting activities (private papers, publications, oral history, etc.)” (National Archives and Records Service of South Africa 2002, p. 6). The macroappraisal framework referenced in the appraisal policy also makes provision for archivists to appraise processes before the records are created to ensure that important records are not lost (National Archives and Records Service of South Africa 2002, p. 9). Neither of these two policy recommendations, which have direct relevance to the limitations of land records, appear to have been considered or implemented. Relatedly, with reference to Namibian government archives, Namhila argues that the impact of the limited or non-existence of “person-related records” in colonial archives on “non-academic users” is an issue that deserves more focussed attention by archivists and/or archival researchers. Namhila notes that there are no studies of colonial archives that detail which “questions do not get answered … due to gaps in its collections” (Namhila 2016, p. 120). Similarly, Valderhaug writes that it is often people looking for documentation of personal rights that have the greatest need for assistance from the archivist (2011, p. 21), and makes a strong case for more effective “public control of the public record” in order to guard against the creation of records that are “biased and defective” (2011, p. 22). Even in cases where it is not possible to find records within the public record system, the archivist may use her archival expertise to uncover the conditions of record creation in the given period … [helping to answer questions such as] … What administrative procedures may have been used? What kind of information might have been archived in the first place? Is it probable that any of the records might have been lost? Could there be found better information at other archives? … Is it possible to reconstruct any of the missing documentation from the few traces that may be found? (Valderhaug 2011, p. 20) An area which this chapter has not touched upon is the extent to which independent archives have and can be utilised to support land restitution claims. This includes university-based archives, as well as church records. The Wits

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University Historical Papers Archive, as one example, houses the archives of the Anglican Church of South Africa (1835 to the present). This collection includes baptismal, marriage, confirmation and other parish registers that record where people lived (Historical Papers Research Archive 2017), in addition to other important historical information. Furthermore, many of these records have been digitised and are available on familysearch.org. There is also a vast body of community archives and memory—as housed in non governmental institutions such as the District Six Museum—the extent to which these kinds of sources have been systematically mobilised requires further analysis. In occasional instances such as the Dwesa-Cebe land claim, local knowledge played a vital role in verifying claims, as referenced earlier in this chapter. Huizenga’s (2014) reference to a community information repository which was maintained by the Legal Resources Centre suggests that a range of possible sources of evidence were integrated into the ≠Khomani San land claim, despite the problems of representation which he identified. Bohlin (2007) writes that people’s memories were activated in the process of submitting claims, largely through community forums and rituals. However, the extent to which these memories have been documented, mobilised as evidence, and/or mobilised for social justice beyond the restitution model is an issue for further consideration and analysis.

Conclusion Archives and records feature in the successes and failures of land restitution. It is apparent that both access to relevant records, as well as recordkeeping, are two key contributors in shaping the outcomes of the restitution process. These have been complicated by access and management challenges, but also by underlying epistemic issues, or the ongoing presence of colonial ideologies, which have resulted in inadequate representation in archival institutions. Mbembe’s call for “epistemic diversity” or “a horizontal strategy of openness to dialogue among different epistemic traditions” (2014, p. 19) in knowledge production processes is meaningful for thinking about the role of archives and records in land restitution. There is much challenging but necessary work for archivists in lending support, their expertise and a way of working which builds relationships with claimants, researchers and the broader knowledge sectors in order to address the representational challenges in a multifaceted way. Archivists need to know the weaknesses in their collections so as to avoid using management practices that replicate the problems (Namhila 2016). However, these are not the problems that archivists can fix on their own. Much more active knowledge building strategies need to be conceptualised and implemented involving archival institutions, memory practitioners, holders of local knowledge, and academics. Questions about land give archival institutions (especially public archives) an opportunity to solidify their relevance by

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becoming much more involved in contemporary issues with major societal significance, to begin to decolonise archival practice, processes, and collections. While social justice is a worthy goal, the past cannot be undone, and for some claimants and “communities” justice will always be “unfinished business.” The fact that restitution is even possible shows that a part of the struggle has been won (Fay 2007), but people lost more than just land in land dispossession.

Note 1 The ≠Khomani San were awarded the rights to six farms in an historic land claim in the southern Kalahari desert in South Africa. See Huizenga (2014).

References Barry, Michael. 2011. “Land Restitution and Communal Property Associations: The Elandskloof Case.” Land Use Policy 28(1): 139–150. https://doi.org/10.1016/j. landusepol.2010.05.007. Beinart, William, and Peter Delius. 2015. “The Natives Land Act of 1913: A Template but Not a Turning Point.” In Land Divided Land Restored: Land Reform in South Africa for the 21st Century, edited by Ben Cousins and Cherryl Walker, 24–39. Auckland Park, Johannesburg: Jacana. Beinart, William, Peter Delius, and Michelle Hay. 2017. Rights to Land: A Guide to Tenure Upgrading and Restitution in South Africa. Johannesburg: Jacana. Bohlin, Anna. 2007. “Claiming Land and Making Memory: Engaging with the Past in Land Restitution.” In History Making and Present Day Politics: The Meaning of Collective Memory in South Africa, edited by Hans Erik Stolten, 114–128. Uppsala: Nordiska Afrikainstitutet. “Comment Sought on Draft Restitution of Land Rights Bill.” 2017. SabinetLaw. 19 July 2017. https://legal.sabinet.co.za/articles/comment-sought-on-draft-restitutionof-land-rights-bill/. Commission on Restitution of Land Rights. n.d. “Re-Opening of the Lodgement of Land Claims.” Accessed 14 February 2020. https://web.archive.org/web/2018*/www.gov.za/ about-government/opening-lodgement-land-claims-campaign. Commission on the Restitution of Land Rights (CRLR). 2014. How to Lodge a Land Claim. Commission on the Restitution of Land Rights (CRLR). 2015. Strategic Plan 2015–2020 and Annual Performance Plan 2015–2016. https://pmg.org.za/committee-meeting/ 20682/. Cousins, Ben. 2016. Land Reform in South Africa Is Sinking. Can It Be Saved? Nelson Mandela Foundation. www.nelsonmandela.org/uploads/files//Land__law_and_leader ship_-_paper_2.pdf. Cousins, Ben. 2018. “South Africa’s Land Debate Is Clouded by Misrepresentation and Lack of Data.” Mail & Guardian. 12 March 2018. https://mg.co.za/article/2018-03-12south-africas-land-debate-is-clouded-by-misrepresentation-and-lack-of-data. Craib, Raymond B. 2010. “The Archive in the Field: Document, Discourse, and Space in Mexico’s Agrarian Reform.” Journal of Historical Geography 36(4): 411–420. https:// doi.org/10.1016/j.jhg.2010.01.005.

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Department of Rural Development and Land Reform (DRDLR). 2017. “Restitution of Land Rights Amendment Private Member Bill: Briefing, with Minister | Parliamentary Monitoring Group.” 5 October 2017. https://pmg.org.za/committee-meeting/25155/. Department of Rural Development and Land Reform (DRDLR). 2018. “Restitution of Land Rights Amendment Bill: Finalisation | Parliamentary Monitoring Group.” 5 September 2018. https://pmg.org.za/committee-meeting/27032/. Dhupelia-Mesthrie, Uma. 2010. “Urban Restitution Narratives: Black River Cape Town.” In Land, Memory, Reconstruction, and Justice: Perspectives on Land Claims in South Africa, edited by Cherryl Walker, Anna Bohlin, Ruth Hall, and Thembela Kepe, 83–99. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press. Dodgson, Alan. 2010. “Unfinished Business: The Role of Governmental Institutions after Restitution of Land Rights.” In Land, Memory, Reconstruction, and Justice: Perspectives on Land Claims in South Africa, edited by Cherryl Walker, Anna Bohlin, Ruth Hall, and Thembela Kepe, 273–287. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press. Duff, Wendy, Andrew Flinn, Karen Suurtamm, and David Wallace. 2013. “Social Justice Impact of Archives: A Preliminary Investigation.” Archival Science 13: 317–348. Du Toit, Andries. 2000. “The End of Restitution: Getting Real About Land Claims.” In At the Crossroads: Land and Agrarian Reform in South Africa into the 21st Century: Papers from a Conference Held at Alpha Training Centre, Broederstroom, Pretoria on 26 - 28 July 1999, edited by Ben Cousins, 75–91. Cape Town and Johannesburg: University of the Western Cape and National Land Committee. Fay, Derick. 2007. “Struggles over Resources and Community at Dwesa-Cwebe, South Africa.” The International Journal of Biodiversity Science and Management 3(2): 88–101. Fay, Derick, and Deborah James. 2010. “Giving Land Back or Righting Wrongs: Comparative Issues in the Study of Land Restitution.” In Land, Memory, Reconstruction, and Justice: Perspectives on Land Claims in South Africa, edited by Cherryl Walker, Anna Bohlin, Ruth Hall, and Thembela Kepe. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press. http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/umichigan/detail.action?docID=1773377. Greenberg, Stephen. 2010. Status Report on Land and Agricultural Policy in South Africa, 2010. Research Report No. 40. Bellville: Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies, School of Government, UWC. Hall, Ruth. 2004. “A Political Economy of Land Reform in South Africa.” Review of African Political Economy 31(100): 213–227. https://doi.org/10.1080/ 0305624042000262257. Historical Papers Research Archive. 2017. Guide to the Archives of the Anglican Church of Southern Africa. University of the Witwatersrand Library. http://historicalpapersatom.wits.ac.za/guide-to-archives-of-anglican-church-of-southern-africa-acsa. Huizenga, Daniel. 2014. “Documenting ‘Community’ in the ≠khomani San Land Claim in South Africa.” PoLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review 37(1): 145–161. https://doi.org/10.1111/plar.12055. Kahn, Tamar. 2018. “Land Restitution in SA Could Take 700 Years.” Times Live. Accessed 18 October 2018. www.timeslive.co.za/politics/2018-03-14-land-restitutionin-sa-could-take-700-years/. Kepe, Thembela. 1999. “The Problem of Defining ‘Community’: Challenges for the Land Reform Programme in Rural South Africa.” Development Southern Africa 16(3): 415. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=8610724&site= ehost-live.

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Kepe, Thembela. 2010. “Land Claims and Comanagement of Protected Areas in South Africa: Exploring the Challenges.” In Land, Memory, Reconstruction, and Justice: Perspectives on Land Claims in South Africa, edited by Cherryl Walker, Anna Bohlin, Ruth Hall, and Thembela Kepe, 235–254. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press. Krüger, Ruth, Georgina Cundill, and Gladman Thondhlana. 2016. “A Case Study of the Opportunities and Trade-Offs Associated with Deproclamation of a Protected Area Following a Land Claim in South Africa.” Local Environment 21(9): 1047–1062. https:// doi.org/10.1080/13549839.2015.1065804. Legassick, Martin. 2007. “Reflections on Practising Applied History in South Africa, 1994-2002: From Skeletons to Schools.” In History Making and Present Day Politics : The Meaning of Collective Memory in South Africa, edited by Hans Erik Stolten, 129–47. Uppsala: Nordiska Afrikainstitutet. Mbatha, Nhlanhla. 2013. “Relationships Drive Success in the Land Restitution Process.” HSRC Review 11(1): 5–6. http://www.hsrc.ac.za/uploads/pageContent/3055/HSRC% 20News_March%202013.pdf. Mbembe, Achille. 2014. “Decolonizing Knowledge and the Question of the Archive.” https://wiser.wits.ac.za/system/files/Achille%20Mbembe%20-%20Decolonizing% 20Knowledge%20and%20the%20Question%20of%20the%20Archive.pdf. Namhila, Ellen Ndeshi. 2016. “Content and Use of Colonial Archives: An Under-Researched Issue.” Archival Science 16(2): 111–123. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10502-014-9234-0. National Archives and Records Service of South Africa. 2002. “Appraisal Policy Guidelines, 3rd ed.” Accessed 11 August 2019. http://www.nationalarchives.gov.za/sites/default/files/ NARS_DMLIB-%231326-v1-Appraisal_Policy_Guidelines__Third_Edition_ April_2002%20%282%29.pdf. Nkomo, Sibusiso. 2018. “Land Redistribution: South Africans Prioritize Land Taken in Forced Removals, Support ‘Willing Seller’ Approach.” Afrobarometer Dispatch No. 254, Institute for Justice and Reconciliation. 13 November 2018. Nkwinto, Gugile E. 2013. “Minister of Rural Development and Land Reform 2013 Budget Speech & Responses by ANC, DA and IFP.” Parliamentary Monitoring Group. https://pmg.org.za/briefing/19042/. Parliamentary Communication Services. 2018. “Public Hearings on Restitution of Land Rights Amendment Bill Continue—Parliament of South Africa.” 27 June 2018. www. parliament.gov.za/press-releases/public-hearings-restitution-land-rights-amendmentbill-continue. Parliamentary Monitoring Group. “Section 25 Review Process.” Parliamentary Monitoring Group, 2018. Accessed 11 August 2019. https://pmg.org.za/page/Section25review process?via=homepage-feature-card. “Progress on Land Claims in Protected Areas: Briefing by Chief Land Claims Commissioner.” PMG. Accessed 18 October 2018. https://pmg.org.za/committee-meet ing/16216/. Ramutsindela, Maano, Nerhene Davis, and Innocent Sinthumule. 2016. “Diagnostic Report of Land Reform in South Africa: Land Restitution.” Commissioned Report for High Level Panel on the Assessment of Key Legislation and the Acceleration of Fundamental Change, an Initiative of the Parliament of South Africa. www.parliament.gov. za/storage/app/media/Pages/2017/october/High_Level_Panel/Commissioned_Report_ land/Commissioned_Report_on_Land_Restitution_Ramutsindela_et_al.pdf. South Africa. 1994. Restitution of Land Rights Act. Act Number 22.

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South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC). 2013. Report of the SAHRC Investigative Hearing: Monitoring and Investigating the Systemic Affecting the Land Restitution in South Africa. South African Human Rights Commission. www.sahrc.org.za/ home/21/files/Land%20Restitution%20Report%20Proof%202.pdf. “State of Archives and Challenges in South Africa: National Archivist Briefing; Strategic Overview & Future Plans.” 2016. Meeting Report of the Arts and Culture Parliamentary Portfolio Committee, 1 March. https://pmg.org.za/committee-meeting/22093/. Sundnes, Frode. 2013. “The past in the Present: Struggles over Land and Community in Relation to Dukuduku Claim for Land Restitution, South Africa.” Forum for Development Studies 40(1): 69–86. https://doi.org/10.1080/08039410.2012.727464. Switzer, Les. 1993. Power and Resistance in an African Society: The Ciskei Xhosa and the Making of South Africa. Madison, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press. Thompson, Leonard. 1995. A History of South Africa. New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press. Union of South Africa. 1905. South African Native Affairs Commission 1903–1905. Cape Town: Cape Times Limited. https://archive.org/details/southafricannati00sout/page/n1. Union of South Africa. 1913. Natives Land Act. Act Number 27. http://www.ruraldevelop ment.gov.za/phocadownload/1913/nativelandact27of1913.pdf. Valderhaug, Gudmund. 2011. “Memory, Justice and the Public Record.” Archival Science 11(13): 13–23. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10502-010-9110-5. Walker, Cherryl. 2012. “Finite Land: Challenges Institutionalising Land Restitution in South Africa, 1995–2000.” Journal of Southern African Studies 38(4): 809–826. https://doi.org/10.1080/03057070.2012.750915. Walker, Cherryl. 2015. “Sketch Map to the Future: Restitution Unbound.” In Land Divided Land Restored: Land Reform in South Africa for the 21st Century, edited by Ben Cousins and Cherryl Walker, 232–249. Auckland Park and Johannesburg: Jacana. Walker, Cherryl, and Ben Cousins. 2015. “Introduction.” In Land Divided Land Restored: Land Reform in South Africa for the 21st Century, edited by Ben Cousins and Cherryl Walker, 1–23. Auckland Park and Johannesburg: Jacana.

Chapter 5

“Hang onto these words” 1 Indigenous title and the social meanings of archival custody Raymond O. Frogner

This chapter is about the many legal and social implications of archival custody. There are often unique social insights to be learned from a document’s custodial history. Often this significance can be lost in the contemporary legal and social debate over the values a document embodies. Such is the case with the Douglas (Vancouver Island) Treaties. As Hamar Foster illustrates in the following comment, … [S]ome of the moves and counter-moves in the campaign for Aboriginal title that ended in 1928, … I have chosen to call the first legal campaign. The second legal campaign may be regarded as beginning in the 1950s, after some of the obstacles to litigating Aboriginal title had been removed and the Nishga Tribal Council was established. It really got rolling in the 1960s, when lawyers discovered the Douglas Treaties …. (Foster 2007, pp. 61–62) A discovery in the archives is not uncommon. In private records, such discoveries indicate how records can reflect the unpredictable inspiration, the very faint and human order of our private lives (Ondaatje 1987, p. 148). But to “discover” in a public archives documents providing proof of rights for legitimate citizen communities in a constitutional democracy raises issues of quite a different nature. It questions how evidence of citizens’ rights are recognised, recorded, preserved, and referenced in the context of a constitutional democracy. In the tradition of English Common Law, such documentary discoveries speak to the democratic principles of the Crown; for the Crown is personified through the ethical fulfilment of its bureaucratic legal obligations and duties (McHugh 2007, p. 746). These discoveries become even more important in the context of archives of jurisdictions with a colonial history, where the Indigenous polity confronted vital issues of sovereignty, status, and self-determination, often without access to legal representation. Over the last 25 years, many writers have examined the concept of the “archival turn” in the social sciences and humanities. This concept concerns the intimate role of public archives in the social creation and dissemination of

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knowledge (Foucault 1977; Derrida 1996; Cook 2001; Ketelaar 2001; Nesmith 2002; Stoler 2002). In this view, the foundations of a dominant cultural and legal order are built on privileged sources of memory strategically preserved and referenced in archival sources. To understand the archival record, one must attend to the historical contingencies and social provenance that shape the record over time. There are several embedded, institutionalised traditional archival procedures—appraisal, acquisition, accession, description, and reference—that impact our understanding of the historical evidence archival records embody. Considering these, a researcher should conceive of “archives not as sites of knowledge retrieval, but of knowledge production ….” (Stoler 2002, p. 87). The contemporary archivist has become an interpreter of the archival record, rather than the classic depiction of neutral gatekeeper (Jenkinson 1937). This model of archives shifts our traditional archival knowledge paradigm “from product to process, from archives to archiving, …” (Cook 2001, p. 4). In the social chaos of the colonial encounter, new models of power and authority juxtaposed and occasionally interrelated cultural values of the Indigenous and the colonial. And just as in great periods of European social disruption, such as the Russian and French revolutions, research reveals the strategic textual enshrinement of new cultural and legal orders in burgeoning colonial public institutions of law and archives. One can also find the social values of Indigenous knowledge and culture written out of the holdings of privileged settler archival memory and legal evidence. Researchers must carefully consider the documentary activities of creation, representation, social provenance, and custodianship, and how these activities affect the meaning of colonial archival records. Archival writers share a unique viewpoint concerning questions of colonial records’ appraisal, representation, custody, description, and reference. Here the archivist can add insight to the modern understanding of archival value. To this end, in the context of the campaign for Indigenous title in British Columbia, I look at one example when settler authorities wilfully hid, sequestered, or strategically referenced archival evidence supporting Indigenous title. The example is the custodial history of the Vancouver Island Treaties (V.I. Treaties, aka, Douglas Treaties). In their undocumented colonial creation, unreliable custody, legal discovery, and reappearance on the stage of contemporary Indigenous jurisprudence, this example illustrates how archival protocols and procedures can deliberately render archival evidence. Archival evidence is not a fact; it is a matrix of relationships. And like all relationships they are vulnerable to trust and mistrust, good faith and manipulation. These questions of faith and manipulation often play out at the level of archival custody. Archival custodial history is “the [legal and physical] safekeeping by an archives of the records in its care” (Tschan 2015, p. 35). It is the detail of an archival record that confers authenticity. In archival studies, a record is considered authentic when it is the document that it claims to be. (Duranti 1995, pp. 6–7; MacNeil and Mak 2007; Mak 2012). This is proven through reliable procedures and protocols designed to guarantee the record has never

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been “manipulated, altered, or otherwise falsified after its creation,” during the time of its contemporary handling and reference, or during its archival preservation (Duranti, Eastwood and MacNeil 2002, pp. 27–28). A close look at the custodial history of the V.I. Treaties reveals the treaties have undergone quite the opposite journey: from a set of oral informal agreements to create a negotiated colonial co-existence; to a register of treaties loosely translated and transcribed into English in-camera, post negotiation; to land conveyance documents of purposely concealed custody; and finally, court “rediscovery” as foundational documents for Indigenous rights (Harris 2002; Frogner 2010; Frogner and Vallance, 2015). The custodial history of the V.I. Treaties highlights the colonial origins of the public archives of British Columbia. In the colonial archivalisation of knowledge, the documents were designed to acquire and preserve the documentary foundation to legitimise a nascent setter society on the West Coast of Canada. In the trajectory of evolving colonial common law, the value of Indigenous treaties has moved from dispossession to one of empowerment, from technical legal instruments of control and domination; to sites of active Indigenous resistance. Duff et al. argue that archives can both produce and reproduce justice and injustice in the decisions they make on how they shape the past and engage the present. One of the key challenges confronting this research is unpacking the dual imperative of archives vis-à-vis social justice. (Duff, Flinn, Suurtamm, and Wallace 2013, p. 319) Control over access and custody of the V.I. Treaties has been both a tool of justice and injustice. The V.I. Treaties enshrined in the textual code of colonial common law the sovereign relationship between First Nations societies and the British imperial programme on the mid-nineteenth century West Coast. Indigenous communities on the colonial West Coast were on the cusp of this relationship when they entered the British colonial fold in 1849 under the Charter of Grant of Vancouver’s Island (1914, pp. 678–679). Although the Charter did not mention the sovereign status of Indigenous peoples, there was concern that the Indigenous peoples of Vancouver Island, however unknown in the Colonial Office, maintained a kind of “inchoate title” to the lands of the Island (Public Offices Document 1849, p. 635). This position was consistent with the Colonial Office’s position dating back to the Royal Proclamation of 1763. Shortly after he accepted his position as Chief Factor of the HBC on Vancouver Island, Douglas wrote to Archibald Barclay, HBC Secretary, concerning the documentation of their title: Some arrangement should be made … with the native tribes for the purchase of their lands … they will thus derive a permanent benefit from the sale of their lands and the colony will have a degree of security for their

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future good behavior. I would also strongly recommend equally as a measure of justice, … that the Indians fisheries, village sites and fields, should be reserved for their benefit. (“Douglas to Barclay” 1849, para. 24) The quote reveals Douglas’ concern for agreements addressing security and justice, not common concerns of simple land conveyance documents. Between 1850 and 1854, James Douglas, representing the HBC and ultimately the British Crown, negotiated a series of 14 oral agreements with local Indigenous communities to acquire their rights to title. In the undocumented negotiation held in the Chinook trading language, Douglas requested the Indigenous representatives who participated in the first nine treaties in 1850, to “sign” blank pieces of paper by placing an “X” on the documents. Approximately four months later, Douglas added the main text, including annotations, based on formulas sent from the HBC in London. The original Indigenous signatories were not present during the subsequent documentation. Douglas repeated this unaccountable documentary process on all the treaties. The treaties recognised “village sites” and “enclosed fields” as the property of the Indigenous communities. Aside from “these small exceptions,” “the land itself” became forever the property of the “white people.” The treaties’ unreliable creation process represents the start of the textual manipulation of evidence of Indigenous title for Indigenous communities on Vancouver Island (Lee 2005, p. 1; Hudson’s Bay Company, 1850-1860). Once areas of early settlement were accounted for in treaties, Douglas focused on promoting and recording colonial land settlement. Although required by royal warrant, Governor Douglas avoided a representative assembly until 1856. As both Chief Factor and Governor, he ruled with a council through gubernatorial edict (Foster 1988; McHugh 2011, p. 137). Douglas was therefore fully empowered to create the common law documentary infrastructure for colonial land distribution. This assertion of settler sovereignty took the form of land acts, ordinances, proclamations, title registers, and other texts establishing the legal evidence of land title. This documentary evidence was reconfirmed as an assertion of colonial sovereignty in 1972, when the Nishga’a First Nation challenged the Crown’s land title in the Supreme Court. Crown lawyers cited this early period of colonial title registration as legitimate confirmation of sovereign jurisdiction. At trial (Calder et al. v. Attorney-General of British Columbia), lawyers for the Crown cited nine colonial proclamations and four land ordinances of Douglas’ design. It was in these registers and land documentation, preserved in archival process, that Indigenous title was first brought into settler control. It is for this reason, R.E. Gosnell, the first provincial archivist of British Columbia, felt empowered to challenge the reservation title of the Malahat First Nation, a signatory to a Douglas Treaty, on the grounds of improper documentary process.

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Douglas slowly implemented the legal and administrative infrastructure to enshrine in letters colonial land title. By the late 1850s, settlers began to complain of the uncoordinated approach to recording land title. Not trained in the common law, Douglas often requested assistance from the Colonial Office concerning land rights noting: “I am not sufficiently acquainted with the Law of Tenures [sic] to decide validity of the Titles …” (“Douglas to Barclay” 1851). In response to settler complaints, Douglas struck a committee in 1863 to investigate the distribution of Crown lands. Cail speculates that Douglas appointed the Select Committee of 1863 to respond to a memorial he received in 1861 from New Westminster citizens complaining about the trustworthiness of the land distribution. The memorial declared the need for a New Westminster land registry office, decried careless land administration, and questioned the lack of a land tax (Cail 1974, p. 16). However, the Commission’s minutes suggest Douglas resisted participating in the investigation. When the Commission asked for survey maps, Assistant Colonial Surveyor Benjamin Pearse replied by letter he could not produce survey maps for the Commission’s inspection claiming he required Douglas’ permission, which was apparently not forthcoming. On the day he attended the Commission hearings as a witness, Pearse failed to return in the afternoon to complete his interview. The Commission closed the day’s session composing a report for the Legislature on Pearse’s behaviour and declaring in frustration the next meeting would be held in the Victoria Lands Office (Vancouver Island 1864, p. 2). But if Douglas and Pearse were uncooperative producing land records, Colonial Surveyor General of Vancouver Island, J.D. Pemberton, was wilfully misleading. When the Committee questioned Pemberton on the details of the government reserve at James Bay, the lands of the first Indigenous reserve of the colony, Pemberton denied any knowledge of the relevant agreement Douglas struck with the Songhees peoples (Vancouver Island 1864, p. 2). It is difficult to believe the Surveyor General of Vancouver Island had never seen the only land conveyance agreements written between Indigenous communities and the Hudson’s Bay Company. Particularly when each treaty, save for the Sarlequun, contained the same clause: “… the lands shall be properly surveyed hereafter …,” (“Register of Land Purchases”) a clause pointing directly to the functional responsibilities of his official position. Furthermore, in 1852, Douglas sent back to the HBC offices in London “a tin case containing various drawings and plans from Mr. Pemberton” (“Douglas to A. Barclay” 1852).2 The plans mapped out several areas of the V.I. Treaties. In fact, Pemberton surveyed most of the earliest reserves of the Victoria area, with land title documented in treaties. But if the Surveyor General claimed ignorance of the V.I. Treaties, the Assistant Surveyor, Benjamin Pearse, was not only well informed, he recognised their value and was suitably concerned for their safekeeping. Less than five years after Pemberton denied to the Select Committee on Crown Lands any knowledge of the treaties, Pearse arranged to take an extended leave of duty. Pearse left recordkeeping instructions concerning the

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most important documents in the Surveyor General’s office, including the V.I. Treaties: In most of the districts from North Saanich to Sooke, and in the vicinity of Nanaimo town, the Indian title has been extinguished, by the payment to them of certain blankets, etc. The book bearing on this subject is in the safe (Lands Office Notes 1869) We can conclude from Pearse’s dutiful concern for their custody, the treaties were kept safely in the Lands Office safe. Seven years later, the treaties again became the subject of custodial gamesmanship. In July 1871, the Colony of British Columbia joined confederation. Article 13 of the Terms of Union speaks to British Columbia conveying land to the Dominion in trust for Indigenous societies (Department of Justice 1871). Under the British North America Act of 1867, Section 91(24) provided Ottawa with “exclusive legislative authority” to the classes of subjects known as “Indians, and Lands reserved for Indians” (BNA Constitution Act, 1867 in Department of Justice 2013, p. 27). However the conveyance agreement under Article 13 was founded on the pre-existing Indigenous land administration of the Colony of British Columbia: “a policy as liberal as that pursued by the British Columbia Government” (Province of British Columbia 1871). Only after the union did Ottawa realise that not only did British Columbia lack a consistent policy of managing land title rights with Indigenous peoples, but the province was not open to pursuing such a programme. The province spent the next several decades resisting the legal obligation to convey land title for Indigenous reserves to federal authority. The province finally conveyed to Ottawa title for Indian Reservations in 1938 under Order-in-Council (British Columbia 1938; Foster 1996a, 1996b; Smith, 1988). Until then, the documentation of Indigenous title, and its archival safekeeping, was subject to considerable manoeuvre. Confederation brought a federal governance variable to the Indigenous land title equation. In this period, as Ottawa’s representatives struggled to address the Indigenous title situation in BC, references to the V.I. Treaties originated predominantly from federal offices. This is the context of the next three public references to the V.I Treaties. All three references describe local settler institutions of law and governance avoiding issues of status, title, and sovereignty with Indigenous society. The first is a report from the federal Minister of Public Works: Report of the Hon. H.L. Langevin, C.B., 1872. The report was a survey on the resources of new province in the Dominion. The report includes a table documenting the “Return of Treaties made by the Hudson’s Bay Company with the Indian Tribes, shewing lands conveyed and sums paid” (Langevin 1872). Langevin acquired this documentation from Benjamin Pearse, by now the province’s first Chief Commissioner of Lands and Works. Pearse prepared the first comprehensive account of all the reserves in BC

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shortly after union. Pearse presented his “Return of all Indian Reserves (etc)” to the legislature in 1872. He counted 94 reserves “situated in the districts of Vancouver Island, New Westminster, and Yale” (British Columbia 1872–1877). The report includes excerpts from each individual treaty and full transcriptions of two treaties. Significantly, the report began the trend of transcribing the body of the treaties’ text but omitting the long lists of Indigenous signatories. The same table is found in The Report of the Superintendent of Indian Affairs for British Columbia for 1872–73 from I.W. Powell, Ottawa’s recent selection for the position of Superintendent for Indian Affairs in BC. Powell prefaces his first report with a thorough documentation of reserves and a comment on the need to establish an “Indian Policy,” suggesting none existed in over 20 years of colonial settlement. “Immediate action is very desirable, … in locating reservation lands for Indians in those portions of the province where white settlers are now anxious to pre-empt homesteads” (Powell 1873, p. 4). As Ottawa became informed of the confused BC Indigenous land title question, debate turned to the allocation of lands for reservation. At the start of 1875, Ottawa and BC were struggling to agree on a formula for acreage per family when calculating reserve size. Addressing the situation, William Tolmie, a former HBC trader, moved in the legislature that “the government publish for examination …, all papers relating to the Indian land question” (British Daily Colonist. 1 April 1875, 3 First Provincial Legislative Assembly, 1 April 1875, p. 3). William Smithe, informal leader of the opposition, who sensed Premier Walkem was vulnerable on the issue, quickly supported the motion. The House passed the motion to assemble the papers. It was followed quickly by another motion to strike a committee to write a report on the documents (Ibid.). The committee included Premier Walkem and Chief Commissioner of Lands and Works Robert Beavan, representing the government, and four members of the assembly including Smithe as Chair. As noted by Fisher, “neither the motion to produce the papers nor that to set up the committee was a government initiative” (Fisher 1992, p. 199). After weeks of delay and debate, Premier Walkem finally presented to the assembly a packet of papers purporting to be the discussed documents (Legislative Assembly of British Columbia 1875, p. 32). They were given to the Speaker to be sent to the government printer. Following more delay, the papers were determined missing. Writing in the Daily British Colonist, Smithe explained the Deputy Provincial Speaker notified him that the papers were hidden in his office (“First Provincial Legislative Assembly” 14 April 1875, p. 3). The Deputy Speaker explained to Smithe the packet Walkem theatrically presented to the Legislature was unrelated waste paper. Walkem admitted only to accidental error, the correct papers were printed and the Committee began to compose its report. Time progressed and neither Walkem nor Beavan attended committee meetings. It became clear the government strategy was to wait out the end of the House session on 22 April, when the Committee would expire without a report. On 20 April, Smithe attempted to submit the Committee’s report but Beaven

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protested the report lacked input from government representatives (Legislative Assembly of British Columbia 1875, p. 44). A filibuster ensued on 21 April lasting until 5:00 am the next morning in a government attempt to kill the Committee before it could resubmit. Walkem moved to adjourn until 2:30, the exact time the House prorogued. At 2:30, Lieutenant Governor Trutch prorogued the House without allowing Smithe to submit the Committee’s Report. But Smithe immediately handed a copy of the Report to a representative of the Daily British Colonist. Walkem protested, and the Committee Chair withdrew the document. (Tennant, 1990) The report was never printed and has been lost. The papers were printed in the Sessional Papers for 1875; however, only the government correspondence is in the Sessional Papers, there is no mention of the V.I. Treaties. It is not clear when or who made the decision to include copies of the V.I. Treaties in the final version published separately later in 1875. In spite of the government’s best effort, there was a published public record of the settler administration’s early management of Indigenous title. The publication was not widely circulated. And as with Pearse’s earlier version, the list of Indigenous signatories in the attestation of each treaty is not included in the published version. It was difficult to locate a copy and Indigenous representatives were later even denied a copy of the publication (Fisher 1992, p. 199). The public archives of BC finally published a second edition in 1984, ensuring for the first time a wide general audience for the records. The Daily British Colonist summarised the government position in an editorial. Let them disguise it as they may, the fact remains … that the government were determined to frustrate the attempt made to arrive at a satisfactory solution of the Indian trouble, and this too;—not by a manly, straightforward, honorable opposition, but by shifting, twisting, artful dodging. (“Indian Affairs” 28 April 1875, p. 4) The custody of the V.I. Treaties continued at the centre of this “dodging.” As the legislature was debating Indigenous title, I.W. Powell continued to investigate a land reserve programme. He requested the Chief Commissioner of Lands and Works, in early April, to send him the V.I. Treaties “of the Songhees and Nanaimo Tribes as contained in the Record Book at present in your office” (“I. W. Powell to R. Beavan,” 7 April 1875, file 891/75). Powell closed the letter with an attempt to acquire permanent custody of the Treaties. “Should you think it necessary that the book remain in your care, I shall be glad to return it safely” (Ibid.). Three days later, Powell returned the Treaties to Beavan. He again made an unsuccessful effort to permanently acquire the Treaties. As the record relates purely and absolutely to Indian affairs I should be glad if through yourself His Excellency the Lieut. Governor in Council would subsequently consider the propriety of placing this and any other documents referring to the lands in my possession. (“I. W. Powell to R. Beavan,” 10 April 1875, File 955/75)

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In 1876, Victoria and Ottawa came to an agreement to create the Joint Indian Land Commission to travel the province and identify reserve lands for Indigenous communities. Between 1876 and 1908, three separate Land Commissions established Indigenous reserves across the province to bring those identified lands under s.91 (24) of the BNA as “land reserved for Indians.” Aware of the V.I. Treaties, in 1877, Gilbert Malcolm Sproat, Treaty Commissioner, made what is one of the last known statements on the location of the original treaties in the nineteenth century. In an official report, Sproat described the context of the agreements with a note on their current location: Mr. J. Douglas, Governor of the Hudson’s Bay Company, … with full executive powers by written agreement (the original of which is in this office) which sets forth as one of the conditions of the purchase that—‘our village sites and enclosed fields are to be kept for our own use ….’ Under this condition the tract of land … was set apart by the Company’s agent in the colony for their use …. (Sproat 1877, p. 2) It is possible Sproat, like Powell, had requested the Treaties as part of the Reserve Commission research. It seems the provincial land title office was willing to lend out the originals for inspection provided the land office retained permanent custody. Although Indian affairs had requested possession of the originals to fulfil their functional responsibilities, the provincial office of Crown Lands was reluctant to deliver possession of documents they recognised to hold proof of Indigenous land title. While they travelled the province, the Land Commissions made occasional reference to the V.I. Treaties but did not again request access to the originals nor cite their location. For example, looking at the Victoria reserve in 1877, the Commission commented on the Treaties citing Papers Connected with the Indian Land Question: It is the first case in which the effect of the conveyances of land to the Hudson’s Bay company by Indian tribes—see Paper Connected with the Indian Land Question (1875, pages 5–12)—has to be considered, as it has not been necessary to cut off any of the reserves so far, to which these matters refer … The conveyance which refers to the Victoria Reserve will be found at page 6 of the ‘Papers Connected with The Indian Land Question’ …. (Joint Indian Reserve Commission 1877) Political manoeuvres ended the initial three-person commission before it could lay out a comprehensive plan for reserves across the province. But it did identify lands pre-empted by settlers on areas set out as “Indian Land” in the V.I. Treaties. It also found areas the Treaties covered where still no lands were set out for

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Indigenous reservations almost 30 years after the Treaties’ creation. Commenting on the area near Beecher Bay, covered by one of the V.I. Treaties, Sproat commented, “it was unfortunate that lands were not assigned to these Indians in accordance with the spirit of the agreement of 1850” (Sproat 1871, p. 27 [cited in Harris 2002, p. 27]). While the custodial history of the V.I. Treaties remained open to politics, Indigenous communities continued remembrance of the treaties as oral histories. This form of history was both a tradition and a necessity since the Indigenous signatories were not given copies of the original treaties, as was the Crown’s practice in other areas of the British colonial empire. The common law privileging of text has until recently undervalued these oral remembrances. However there is at least one example when the oral history, like the making of the Treaties, was rendered to text in an official format to give it common law weight of evidence. The Royal Commission on Indian Affairs was formed in 1912 after negotiations between federal representative J.A.S. McKenna and Premier McBride of BC. The commission reviewed or created 1,000 reserves by 1916. On 28 May 1913, the Royal Commission visited the Nanaimo (no.1) Town Reserve. Amongst the interviewed was Dick Whoahkum who recalled witnessing as a young man the meeting with James Douglas in 1854 when the “Sarlquun” treaty was discussed with the local Snuneymuxw people. During his Royal Commission interview, Whoahkum related the discussions he witnessed with Douglas. “Sir James Douglas said ‘I will buy this coal … I will not buy anything but the coal … all the wood and the land is yours.’” … COMMISSIONER MCKENNA: “And you made treaty with Sir James?” WHOAHKUM: “Yes, he said ‘the land is yours.’” (Cowichan Agency 1913, p. 5; Vallance, 2015) WOAHKUM:

Woahkum was under oath to a Royal Commission. When one considers the in camera documentation of the original treaties, created by Douglas ex post facto, this process was no less reliable. Unlike the other treaties, Douglas kept blank pieces of paper for the agreements with the Snuneymuxw, but he never added the body of text. The Snuneymuxw oral histories would have profound impact 50 years later when, thanks to these oral histories, the treaties were “rediscovered” and brought to court to prove Indigenous hunting rights. At trial in 1963, Justice Norris ruled these blank documents were treaties in the same manner as the other 13 (Regina v. Clifford White and David Bob 1965, p. 481). Although the reserve commissions from 1877 to 1908 made reference to the V.I. Treaties, there was no mention of the custody of the originals. In fact, there is no evidence of their location for decades until 1933 when Premier Tolmie revealed they were in the Provincial Archives. In 1933, the Saanich Pioneer Museum Society held a ceremony to begin construction of the new

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public museum. Premier Tolmie was a guest of honour. To commemorate the event, he brought copies of the 1852 North Saanich Treaty and South Saanich Treaty. As the Victoria Colonist reported, His gift to the society was copies of two original deeds in the Provincial Archives in which in 1852 the Indians of North and South Saanich sold a great part of the district to the Hudson’s Bay Company … (“Saanich Pioneers Honor Memory of Hardy Forefathers” 1933, p. 1)3 It is significant to note the Times Colonist suggested the WSÁNEĆ (Saanich) Peoples were in legal possession of the land and sold it. More significantly, this is possibly the first clear statement in the twentieth century on the custody of the original treaties. Somehow, between their last known location with the Joint Indian Land Commission in 1877 and 1933, they were transferred to the public archives. A thorough search of the accession records and other archival operational records does not indicate when the records were accessioned into the archives.4 The V.I. Treaties do not have another significant appearance on the public stage until 1963. This is when lawyer Thomas Berger, representing members of the Snuneymuxw First Nation on charges of hunting out of season, referenced their right to hunt under the terms of the V.I. Treaties. Berger explained he first heard mention of the treaties in meetings with representatives of the Snuneymuxw. He wrote Provincial Archivist Willard Ireland in 1963. I have been engaged in connection with an appeal by two Indians from their conviction under the Game Act for hunting illegally on unoccupied Crown lands.//Our defense is that by a series of treaties made in the early 1850’s between Sir James Douglas and the Indian peoples of southern Vancouver Island, the Indians reserved the right to hunt on unoccupied lands.//I have been given a photo static copy of a collection of papers connected with the Indian land question (1850–1875) printed by the Government Printer in 1875 … Would you be good enough to let me know whether these treaties are to be found in the Provincial archives? (“Berger to Ireland” 1963) Ireland replied, “We have in the Provincial Archives a manuscript volume entitled ‘Register of Land Purchases from Indians’ which contains the original of the treaties published in the 1875 Papers Relating to the Indian Land Question” (“Ireland to Berger” 1963). Douglas White, former Chief of the Snuneymuxw First Nation, recently commented that Ireland brought the original documents to a meeting in Nanaimo with the Snuneymuxw when discussing their court action (2012). Berger had Ireland take the stand as an expert witness on the treaties. He confirmed the court’s assumption that the V.I. Treaties were bone fide originals. Had he been

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asked how the archives acquired the documents, or the details of their custodial history, he would have been unable to supply a clear answer. This is because Wilfred Ireland never kept accession files. Unless the acquisition was of notoriety, there was no documentary evidence of the accession. Berger concluded his court representation of the Snuneymuxw hunters observing the question is really one of social justice and human rights. He suggested a common thread of international human rights running through the colonial Indigenous history of the British Empire: I submit that those are human rights that ought to be upheld, and I submit that it would be most fitting and proper to do so at this time, because it was only yesterday that we celebrated the fifteenth anniversary of the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by the United Nations, in 1948. (Regina v. Clifford White and David Bob 1965, p. 97) The British Columbia government appealed to the Supreme Court of Canada that the V.I. Treaties were only agreements to purchase land, not to recognise title rights. On 10 November 1965, the Supreme Court dismissed the Crown’s appeal. The documents were identified in court qua treaties, and the treaties upheld a set of contemporary Indigenous rights. The post-war period witnessed an increasing international recognition for human rights. As Berger anticipated in his argument, this would have a hothouse effect for the recognition of Indigenous rights in post-colonial jurisdictions. The decision in R. v. White and Bob presaged a transformative jurisprudence that grew highly influential on the international stage: international Indigenous law. “In the new century, aboriginal title surfaced in fraternal jurisdictions of Africa, Belize, New Zealand … and Malaysia as well as rippling to other legal systems” (McHugh 2011, p. viii). There is now a general recognition in international law of a set of distinct rights conceived of as “Indigenous” in character. These recognised rights have influenced the drafting of national constitutions as well as national programmes of colonial redress such as the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation.5 In his depiction of an Indigenous treaty, Justice Norris’ BC Supreme Court decision in R v. White and Bob introduced what would become an international characterisation of an Indigenous treaty as a sui generis agreement somewhere between the agreements of nation states and individuals dealing with private affairs, where ongoing, mutually binding obligations are constructed without finite resolution. From this seed has grown the concept of an Indigenous treaty as creating an intersocietal space supporting ongoing narratives of “dynamic ongoing constitutional processes.” (Promislow 2012). Read in this light, R. v. White and Bob is a taproot to modern international Indigenous treaty jurisprudence.

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The custodial history of the V.I. Treaties tells us memory can be framed and manipulated by textual sources. If the creation of the V.I. Treaties was about the recognition of land possession, dispossession, and its common law acquisition and expression in title, the archival custodial history of the treaties narrates the distribution of wealth and power in a colonial settler society. If social justice is at its core a concern for the social distribution of power, the treaties archival “rediscovery” was a demonstration of the role of archives in the struggle for social justice. Rather than trusted archival stewards, the archival story of the V.I Treaties is more one of wilful neglect that reflected the contemporary orders and values of colonial authorities. The records were in fact “rediscovered” once the colonial society was ready to discover and deal with them as records embodying legal rights and title for Indigenous peoples. Considered in recognition of their social provenance, the custodial history of the V.I. Treaties reminds us in public archives we are what we choose to remember; but we are also what we choose to forget.

Notes 1 The quote is from Hang On to these Words: Johnny David’s Delgamuukw Testimony, the published 1985–86 interviews of Witsuwit’en Chief, Maxlaxlex [aka Johnny David], a witness in the Delgmauukw v. British Columbia trial (Delgamuukw v. British Columbia 1997; Mills 2005) The Supreme Court’s ruling in this case broke new ground when it admitted traditional Indigenous oral testimony as evidence in court. 2 This case is lost. “Douglas to A. Barclay,” 18 March 1852. 3 I am grateful to Royal BC Museum archivist Ann ten Cate for discovering this reference and sharing it with me. The Saanich Museum has carefully placed Tolmie’s gift in secure off-site storage. 4 The record groups examined include GR-975, Provincial Archives Records, Royal BC Museum (Archives); GR-1738 Provincial Archives Correspondence, Royal BC Museum; E.O.S. Scholefield fonds, PR-0191. 5 It is also worth noting that on 27 March 2018, at a ceremony at the Royal BC Museum, the Canadian Committee of the UNESCO Memory of the World Register program added the Vancouver Island Treaties to the national register recognizing them as documents that hold significant enduring values for Canadian society

References “Berger to Ireland.” 5 November 1963. Correspondence [series title]. GR-1783, Box 14 File 1. Royal BC Museum (BC Archives). BNA Constitution Act, 1867. 2013. (U.K.), 30 & 31 Vict., c. 3, reprinted in R.S.C. 1985, App. II, No. 5 Section 91 (24) as seen in the Department of Justice, Canada. 2013. A Consolidation of the Constitution Acts, 1867 to 1982. Ottawa: Department of Justice Canada. British Columbia. 1876. Papers Connected with the Indian Land Questions, 1850-1875. British Columbia. Legislative Assembly. British Columbia. 1872–1877. “Return of Indian Reserves.” British Columbia Journals. 1st Parliament, 2nd Session. Appendix, Sessional Papers.

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British Columbia. 1938. Order-In-Council 1036. 29 July. Accessed 23 August 2016. www.bclaws.ca/civix/document/id/oic/arc_oic/1488_1976. British Daily Colonist. 1 April 1875, 3. British North America Act. 1867. Enactment no. 1, 30–31 Vict., c.3 (U.K). Accessed 23 August 2016. www.justice.gc.ca/eng/rp-pr/csj-sjc/constitution/lawreg-loireg/p1t11.html. Cail, Robert E. 1974. Land, Man, and the Law: The Disposal of Crown Lands in British Columbia, 1871–1913. Vancouver, BC: University of British Columbia Press. Calder et al. v. Attorney-General of British Columbia [1973] S.C.R. 313. Accessed 23 August 2016. https://scc-csc.lexum.com/scc-csc/scc-csc/en/5113/1/document.do. Charter of Grant of Vancouver’s Island to the H.B.C. [13 January 1849] 1914. British Columbia from the Earliest Times to the Present Day Vol. 2, edited by Ethelbert Olaf Stuart Scholfield and Federic William Howay. Vancouver, BC: The S.J. Clarke Publishing Company. Cook, Terry. 2001. “Archival Science and Post Modernism: New Formulations for Old Concepts.” Archival Science 1(1): 3–24. Cowichan Agency. 28 May 1913. “Meeting at the Nanaimo Town Reserve.” Royal Commission on Indian Affairs for the Province of British Columbia. Ottawa: 1916. Delgamuukw v. British Columbia, [1997] 3 S.C.R. 1010. Department of Justice, Canada. 16 May 1871. Order of Her Majesty in Council Admitting British Columbia into the Union, reprinted in R.S.B.C. 1979, vol. 7 (App.). Accessed 23 August 2016. www.justice.gc.ca/eng/rp-pr/csj-sjc/constitution/lawreg-loireg/p1t41. html. Derrida, Jacques. 1996. Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Douglas to A. Barclay. 1852. Letterbooks vol. 3, Sir James Douglas Fonds, MG24–A35. 18 March. Ottawa: Library and Archives Canada (LAC). “Douglas to Barclay.” 3 September 1849. para. 24, Fort Victoria Correspondence, A.11/ 731849, Hudson’s Bay Company Archives, Winnipeg, Manitoba. Douglas to Barclay. 2 November 1851. Letterbooks vol. 3, Sir James Douglas fonds, MG 24–A35. Ottawa: Library and Archives Canada (LAC). Duff, Wendy M., Andrew Flinn, Karen Emily Suurtann, and David A. Wallace. 2013. “Social Justice Impact of Archives: A Preliminary Investigation.” Archival Science 13(4): 317–348. Duranti, Luciana. 1995. “Reliability and Authenticity: The Concepts and Their Implications.” Archivaria 39(Spring): 5–10. Duranti, Luciana, Terry Eastwood, and Heather MacNeil. 2002. Preservation of the Integrity of Electronic Records. London: Kluwer. “First Provincial Legislative Assembly.” 1 April 1875. Daily British Colonist, p. 3. “First Provincial Legislative Assembly.” 14 April 1875. Daily British Colonist, p. 3. Fisher, Robin. 1992. Contact and Conflict. Indian-European Relations in British Columbia, 1774–1890, 2nd edition. Vancouver, BC: UBC Press. Foster, Hamar.1988. “Measures Essentially Unjust: English ‘Law’ and Native ‘Custom’ in New Zealand, Vancouver Island and British Columbia, 1769–1871.” Master of Jurisprudence. Faculty of Law, University of Aukland. Foster, Hamar. 1996a. “Road Blocks and Legal History, Part 1: Do Forgotten Cases Make Good Law?.” The Advocate 54(Part 3): 355–366.

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Foster, Hamar.. 1996b. “Road Blocks and Legal History, Part II: Aboriginal Title and S. 91(24).” The Advocate 54(Part 4): 531–546. Foster, Hamar.. 2007. “We are Not O’Meara’s Children: Law, Lawyers, and the First Campaign for Aboriginal Title in British Columbia, 1908–1928.” In Let Right Be Done: Aboriginal Title, the Calder Case, and the Future of Indigenous Rights, edited by Hamar Foster, Heather Raven, and Jeremy Webber, 61–84. Vancouver, BC: UBC Press. Foucault, Michel. 1977. “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History.” In Language, Counter-Memory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews by Michel Foucault, edited by Daniel Bouchard, 139–164. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Frogner, Raymond O. 2010. “Innocent Legal Fictions: Archival Convention and the North Saanich Treaty of 1852.” Archivaria 70(Fall): 45–94. Frogner, Raymond O. 2015. “‘Lord Save of from the Et Cetera of the Notary’: Archival Appraisal, Local Custom, and Colonial Law.” Archivaria 79(Spring): 121–158. Harris, Cole. 2002. Making Native Space: Colonialism, Resistance, and Reserves in British Columbia. Vancouver, BC: UBC Press. “I.W. Powell to R. Beavan.” 7 April 1875. Correspondence Files with Regards to Crown Lands, Lands Branch, file 891/75, GR-1440, Royal BC Museum (BC Archives). I.W. Powell to R. Beavan. 7 April 1875. Correspondence Files with Regards to Crown Lands, Lands Branch, file 955/75, GR-1440, Royal BC Museum (BC Archives). “Indian Affairs.” 28 April 1875. Daily British Colonist, p. 4. “Ireland to Berger.” 1963. Correspondence [series title], GR-1783, Box 14, File 1, 8 November. BC Archives. Jenkinson, Hilary. 1937. Archive Administration. London: Percy, Lund, Humphries and Company. Joint Indian Reserve Commission. 1877. Joint Indian Reserve Commission, File 20, GR0494, Royal BC Museum (BC Archives). Ketelaar, Eric. 2001. “Tacit Narratives: The Meanings of Archives.” Archival Science 1(24): 131–141. Lands Office Notes. 1869. Benjamin Pearse Fonds. 23 February Royal BC Museum (BC Archives). Langevin, Hector, Sir. 1872. British Columbia, Report of the Hon. H.L. Langevin, C.B., Minister of Public Works. Lee, Brent. 2005. “Authenticity, Accuracy and Reliability: Reconciling Arts Related and Archival Literature.” InterPares 2 Project Discussion Paper. Legislative Assembly of British Columbia. 16 April 1875. Journals. Vol. 4. MacNeil, Heather Marie, and Bonnie Mak. 2007. “Constructions of Authenticity.” Library Trends 56(1): 26–52. Mak, Bonnie. 2012. “On the Uses of Authenticity.” Archivaria 73(Spring): 1–17. McHugh, Paul G. 2007. “Sir John Salmond and the Moral Agency of the State.” Victoria University of Wellington Law Review 38: 743–769. McHugh, Paul G.. 2011. Aboriginal Title: The Modern Jurisprudence of Tribal Land Rights. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Mills, Antonia, ed. 2005. Hang on to These Words: Johnny David’s Delgamuukw Testimony. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Nesmith, Tom. 2002. “Seeing Archives: Postmodernism and the Changing Intellectual Place of Archives.” American Archivist 65(Spring/Summer): 24–41.

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Ondaatje, Michael. 1987. In the Skin of a Lion. New York: Vintage International, A Division of Random House. Powell, Israel Wood. 1873. Report of the Superintendent of Indian Affairs, for British Columbia, for 1872 & 1873. Ottawa. Accessed 23 August 2016. http://eco.canadiana.ca/ view/oocihm.16227/6?r=0&s=1. Promislow, Janna. 2012. “I sooth’d him up with fair words”: Intersocietal Law, from Fur Trade to Treaty. Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies, Doctor of Philosophy, Osgoode Hall Law School, York University. Public Offices Document C.O. 305/1, MG11, Foreign Office, Confidential Document, British Foreign Office to [None], March 1849. Colonial Office Fonds, Library and Archives Canada. Regina v. Clifford White and David Bob., 6. C.N.L.C. 684 (1965), 52 D.L.R. (23nd) 481 (S.C.C.). Hudson’s Bay Company. “1850-1860. Register of Land Purchases from Indians in the Neighborhood of Fort Victoria,” MS-0772, Royal BC Museum (Archives), Victoria, BC. “Saanich Pioneers Honor Honor Memory of Hardy Forefathers.” 9 February 1933. Victoria Colonist, 3. Victoria, BC. Smith, Donald. 1988. “Title to Indian Reserves in British Columbia: A Critical Analysis of Order in Council 1036.” Master’s of Law Thesis, University of British Columbia. Sproat, Gilbert Malcolm. May and June 1871. Memorandum on Negotiations with the Beecher Bay Indians. Provincial Collection of Minutes of Decision, Correspondence, and Sketches, vol. 1, Corr.#1354/77. Copy held at Indian and Northern Affairs Canada, Specific Claims West. Sproat, Gilbert Malcolm.. 23 March 1877. Indian Reserve Commission Report to E.E. Meredith. Ottawa. Stoler, Ann Laura. 2002. “Colonial Archives and the Arts of Governance.” Archival Science 2(102): 87–109. Tennant, Paul. 1990. Aboriginal Peoples and Politics: The Indian Land Question in British Columbia, 1849–1989. Vancouver, BC: UBC Press. The Province of British Columbia. 1871. “Enactment, No. 4: Order of Her Majesty in Council Admitting British Columbia into the Union,” dated the 16th of May, 1871. www.justice.gc.ca/eng/rp-pr/csj-sjc/constitution/lawreg-loireg/index.html. Tschan, Reto. 2015. “Custodial History.” In Encyclopedia of Archival Science, edited by Luciana Duranti and Patricia Franks, 453. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield. Vallance, Neil. 2015. “Sharing the Land: The Formation of the Vancouver Island (Or ‘Douglas’) Treaties of 1850–1854 in Historical, Legal and Comparative Context.” PhD Diss. University of Victoria. Vancouver Island (B.C.). 1864. Minutes of Proceedings of a Select Committee of the House of Assembly, Appointed to Inquire into the Present Conditions of the Crown Lands on the Colony. Victoria, Harries and Company, for Her Majesty’s Government. Accessed 23 August 2016. https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=hvd.hl54ek. White, Douglas. 2012. “Personal Communication during Vancouver Island University’s Douglas Treaties Conference,” March.

Chapter 6

“All I want to know is who I am” Archival justice for Australian care leavers Joanne Evans, Frank Golding, Cate O’Neill, and Rachel Tropea

Archival and recordkeeping failings loom large in reports from the many inquiries and commissions held in a number of countries over the past two decades into the physical, emotional, and sexual abuse and neglect suffered by so many people who were in institutional “care” as children (Senate Community Affairs References Committee 2001, 2004, 2009; Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse 2009; Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada 2015). Survivors have testified repeatedly about the barriers they have faced in gaining access to records about their childhood experiences, as well as the ongoing discrimination and disadvantage that they suffer. They have repeatedly questioned why the rights of organisations and institutions to own, administer, and arbitrate access to records are put ahead of those who have been so severely impacted upon by child welfare systems. Part of the overall campaign for redress for childhood abuse and neglect in Australia has been the quest for archival justice. Care Leavers1 have demonstrated the impacts existing archival and recordkeeping regimes have on their ability to meet their identity, memory, accountability, and redress needs and are asking for fairer, equitable, more respectful, and less harmful systems. To support archival justice, organisations and institutions must recognise Care Leavers’ rights to their childhood records, and take action to represent and enact these rights. In this chapter, we will critically examine the response of the Australian archival and recordkeeping community to these calls, focusing in particular on the archival actions delivered through the Australian Government’s Find and Connect Program (Department of Social Services 2015). We will identify the roles archival and recordkeeping professionals are, and should be, playing in the ongoing struggle for equity in records and recordkeeping. We will question the extent to which archival and recordkeeping regimes embedded in existing power structures can meet the needs of the Care Leaver community. We ask whether the profession is up to sharing, and if necessary relinquishing, archival control in order to deliver on social justice.

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The quest for records All he wants is to know who he is. He is entitled to know his heritage. Our children and our grandchildren are missing their heritage. (Senate Community Affairs References Committee 2004, Confidential Submission 32) It is often very difficult to equate the term “Care” with what an estimated half a million children experienced when they came into contact with Australia’s child welfare systems throughout the twentieth century.2 Children separated from their families as “Wards of the State” and/or otherwise placed into Children’s Homes, often lost all contact with their siblings, their parents, their wider family, and place of origin. Some were told they had no parents or, if they did, that their parents wanted nothing to do with them. Institutions actively discouraged parents from visiting, and many children were left with unanswered questions about why they had been taken from their family and put into Care. Many had a tough time in Care. They had no love. Instead, they were cruelly abused—emotionally, physically, and sexually–and had their childhood and development needs severely neglected. Children who tried to report their abuse were not believed and often punished for their impudence. They had no childhood photographs, no medical histories, no school reports, or personal mementos. When they were sent to work, many left younger siblings behind and never saw them again. In other cases, brothers and sisters were placed in different institutions and given different surnames. Some have found out about these siblings only when, many years later, they have finally been allowed to access their records. The introduction of Freedom of Information (FOI) laws at state and federal levels in Australia in the 1980s was the mechanism by which Care Leavers began to gain access to records—at least for those lucky enough to be aware of it. Many have borne a lifelong sense of unfinished business and gained renewed hope that finding and accessing “their files” would help on their journey of selfdiscovery and authenticate their childhood memories. But FOI processes were not designed for this purpose, and the legislation, despite intentions, “perpetuates traditional information asymmetries between the citizenry and the state” (Stubbs 2008, pp. 670–671), and so the reality has fallen far short of expectations. Gaining access to their records has not been easy for Care Leavers. Where to start? Some could barely remember the name of the orphanage where they were held and many Homes were long since closed with the organisations that ran them no longer in existence. Others remembered being passed around several institutions and foster homes. Did the record follow the child, or was there a new file at each placement? Some were Wards of the State and others were not; others were not sure. They did not know that this made a difference to what was recorded and archived. They also were not aware that FOI legislation may not apply to records held by non-government organisations, and that these

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organisations developed their own policy and procedures for accessing records. Many were utterly confused. Some Care Leavers found their way to the right place to ask for their records only to experience long delays and a bureaucratic runaround (Victorian Auditor General 2012; Victorian Ombudsman 2012). Many were heart-broken to be told that files had been lost or destroyed or could not be found. Others were disappointed with what was found: superficial facts, large gaps in their life story when nothing was recorded, incorrect dates, misspelled names, insulting and defamatory comments, and hurtful gossip about themselves or their parents. Some expected to see basic information like family medical history, school reports, or a birth certificate, but were profoundly disappointed that such information was never recorded. I get two sheets of paper with about 9 or 12 lines on it, I look at these two sheets and I am devastated, 18 years of my life on two sheets of paper. I ponder and wonder this can’t be all of my 18 years on two sheets of paper. (Senate Community Affairs References Committee 2004, Confidential Submission 3) Most perplexing were the redactions. Other people were mentioned in their records, so those names and other identifying details had to be censored—even when the “third party” was a close relative. The Department decides I cannot have certain information about MY parents. Why should the Department staff get to read the file about my parents and then relate it to me? How dare the Department decide that I cannot read about MY parents. (Senate Community Affairs References Committee 2004, Submission 167) Redaction also extended to the rare cases when letters from family members were included in the files. In many cases there was no explanation for these redactions. The ubiquitous “s33(i)” (a clause in the Victorian FOI Act that deals with third party privacy) scrawled in the margin of the censored document was the only clue. Photographs, another rare and valued record, were also released with faces blurred or heads cut out in clumsy attempts to protect the privacy of “third parties” with no regard for the emotional impact this would have. In many cases, record holders were unsympathetic and lacked empathy.3 Some indicated that they were too busy with other duties and did not rate access to historic records by Care Leavers among their priorities. Some discouraged requests because the records were not indexed and bureaucrats did not relish the work entailed in locating the right file. Care Leavers who asked for “my file” were put in their place: this is not “your file”; it belongs to the

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Department, or the agency that compiled it (Recordkeeping Innovation 2015). Yet, when they asked why it was being kept in the archives, nobody seemed to be able to give a plausible answer. This led some Care Leavers to form the view that the record holders had something to hide. This was reinforced when repeat requests for access to records would turn up different files, without adequate explanation. Some Care Leavers also dreaded having to return cap in hand to the places where they were abused as a child to ask for assistance with their records. But where else could they go?

Care leaver campaigning for social and archival justice The forgoing summarises the obstacles and challenges that Care Leavers have had to face in striving to discover, access, and use the records of their childhood. Care Leaver activism and advocacy has played a large part in a succession of inquiries (Swain 2014a), which have highlighted the lifelong impacts of brutal and punitive child welfare systems and the inherent tendency of archival regimes, designed for information elites, to perpetuate the trauma (Gilliland 2015). Hard won improvements to access practices have come about through tireless individual and collective campaigning for archival justice by the Care Leaver community. Prior to the establishment of latest inquiry, the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse (RCIRCSA), in 2012, Care Leavers Australasia Network (CLAN) saw the 2003–2004 Inquiry into Children in Institutional Care by the Parliament of Australia’s Senate Community Affairs References Committee as their peak achievement after years of struggle. In fighting for an inquiry, CLAN had met Commonwealth and State Ministers, lobbied all political parties, courted key advocates inside and out of politics, conducted monthly protests at public venues, and orchestrated a letter-writing campaign. At the opening of the CLAN office in Bankstown, Sydney on 6 March 2004, then Senator Andrew Murray declared that the Inquiry: would never have seen the light of day had it not been for the commitment and energy of concerned activists … Their persistent lobbying efforts in the halls of Canberra and elsewhere did much to ensure I procured the necessary political support from the Labor Party to establish this Inquiry. (Murray 2004) Following his leading role in this Senate scrutiny of the short- and long-term impacts of child abuse and neglect suffered by those in institutional and other out-of-home care, Murray was one of the six RCIRCSA commissioners investigating how a wide range of institutions have handled allegations of child sexual abuse. Reports from the Senate Inquiry were handed down in 2004 and 2005, with the Forgotten Australians Report (Senate Community Affairs References

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Committee 2004) dedicating a whole chapter to highlighting the issues around identity, records, and access and making seven recommendations for improvements, based on the rights of Care Leavers to be able to view all the information relating to themselves. It is worth noting that with nothing in the Senate Committee’s terms of reference about records, it was the weight of evidence from Care Leavers that led to the Committee identifying it as a major issue, with its own chapter and specific set of recommendations. This has been repeated in the latest inquiry. The RCIRCSA developed a consultation paper on records and recordkeeping practices in 2015 in response to what they were learning in private and public hearings (Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse 2016). A further report in 2009 reviewing the progress (or lack thereof) in implementing recommendations from the Forgotten Australians Report and the Lost Innocents Report from the earlier 2001 Inquiry into Child Migration (Senate Community Affairs References Committee 2001, 2009), along with further lobbying and campaigning, eventually led to the Prime Minister making a National Apology on the 16 November 2009 (Prime Minister of Australia 2009). This was followed by national government commitment to enhanced family tracing and records discovery, access, and support services, with A$26.5 million over four years made available for developing an integrated suite of Find and Connect Services and Projects to better support Care Leavers in their search for identity, memory, and family (Department of Social Services 2015). A key feature of this program has been its collaborative development with a range of stakeholders—the advocacy organisations representing Forgotten Australians, Former Child Migrants and Care Leavers, support services, state and territory governments, records specialists, and non-government record holders. A further A$9.7 million has been provided to continue the Find and Connect Services through to mid-2019.

Responses from the Australian archival and recordkeeping community What has been the role of the Australian archival and recordkeeping community in this campaign for social justice? Where has been the voice of Australian archivists and other recordkeeping professionals in this quest for rights to records? Sadly, not at the forefront of advocating for Care Leaver’s archival needs and being part of the campaigning for inquiries. While some individual archivists had worked to factor the access needs of the Care Leaver community into their practices, there was no collective advocacy across the profession. The Australian archival and recordkeeping community has instead been one of the groups called on to respond to inquiry recommendations and address the glaring deficiencies in archival practices (Eberhard 2015). The words from the Bringing Them Home Report (1997), which brought to the nation’s attention

Figure 6.1 Senate Inquiry, Reports, Apology, and Find and Connect Program Timeline.

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the forcible removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families under a range of assimilation and welfare policies—the Stolen Generations—are stark. … access to records must be made easier and less hurtful. (Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission 1997, p. 299) Far from being neutral and benign, archival access frameworks, designed from organisational, institutional, and governmental perspectives, have added to past injustices rather than alleviating them. The Lost Innocents (2001) and Forgotten Australians (2004) reports reiterated these issues for the Former Child Migrant and Care Leaver communities. In response to inquiry recommendations, a number of directories and specialised guides to records have been developed by government and non-government record holders.4 Name indexing projects have also been undertaken, particularly for records relating to the Stolen Generations in Commonwealth and state government archives given the recommendations in the Bringing Them Home Report to establish and resource Records Taskforces. We argue that these responses, despite the good intentions behind them, have not gone far enough in addressing social justice issues. They have soothed symptoms with some improvements to access— most welcomed by individuals and impacted communities—but in our opinion need to go further to address the challenges that the inquires reveal. To justify these assertions, we look initially at one of the earliest of these directories, Connecting Kin, published by the New South Wales Department of Community Services in 1999. It documented what was known at that point-intime about records relating to institutional Care. It was essentially a print publication although also made available online as a pdf. This format meant that it lacked a mechanism for easy updating, as new and more detailed information came to light particularly through the indexing projects and other Records Task Force activities, or for changes in access conditions and procedures. Inevitable inaccuracies and incompleteness were exposed, which has made guides like this less and less useful and reliable (Swain 2014b). This has perhaps inadvertently contributed to the distrust Care leavers have of records holders. What have they got to hide if they can’t give me a simple and up to date answer to the question of where the records relating to my childhood are? Yet despite the shortcomings, record holders still choose this form to disseminate information about their record holdings. Most recently, the National Archives of Australia published the 2015, second edition of its Tracking Family Guide to Aboriginal Records Relating to the Northern Territory in book form, with the online version being the book chapters reproduced as html pages (National Archives of Australia 2015). It is a worthy and weighty tome, but its form is static and unwieldy. Those seeking records about their childhood must first translate their request into the language of the bureaucracy. We ask whether our records’ discovery systems should better address the needs of

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those the records document, rather than just reflecting the organisation’s world of documentation. We also question whether pdf/html versions of published guides are really the best that the archival and recordkeeping community can do to harness digital and networking capabilities in improving access. Apart from the issue of information losing currency, these finding aids perpetuate the existing power differentials of the system of institutional Care. Just as the records were created about, rather than for, children in Care, discovery and access tools too often reflect what the records mean to the record holder, not what they mean to Care Leavers. As Gudmund Valderhaug writes Individuals who approach the archives to find documentation of injustice committed against themselves are very often strangers to the archives. They have never been to an archive before; they do not know how to use our finding aids; they may not even understand the record’s bureaucratic rhetoric. They represent a new kind of user, signifying something new, something unknown, something strange—and sometimes even frightening. They approach us with their demands for justice, with their angst and their hopes, with their wants and their desires; they are coming to change their lives. The archives are strange to them; they know little about what may be found there, but they know that the archives are part of the same public system that some years ago neglected or mistreated them. And they may even be strangers in the archives, because their lives are poorly documented—and sometimes totally absent—in the records. (Valderhaug 2010, p. 20) We assert that despite the range of finding aids and indexing projects that have been undertaken, it is clear that Australia’s archival and recordkeeping community is addressing recommendations regarding records access in the inquiry reports from organisational perspectives, and is “yet to make the shift to ‘pluralised recordkeeping’ practices” (O’Neill, Selakovic, and Tropea 2012, p. 32). From Care Leaver perspectives, the records are still deeply embedded within the system in which they were created. Records discovery and access systems too often end up reflecting an authoritarian, risk-averse, and self-protective culture of record holding organisations and institutions. In continuing to “protect” former residents, record holders have played a role in re-traumatising; in effect becoming a continuation and extension of the regimes under which they suffered abuse and neglect as children. The final report of the RCIRCSA identifies the problems as “systemic and enduring” and notes that the fact that survivors told us they were still experiencing considerable difficulty and distress in accessing records indicates that problems have not been overcome by reforms in response to the recommendations of earlier inquiries. The records and recordkeeping practices of many institutions

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operating today may still not meet the standard required to promote child safety and institutional accountability. (Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse 2017, p. 8:439) For some recordkeeping and other professionals, coming face-to-face with Care Leavers and gaining an understanding of their records access experiences has led to a questioning of the power and privilege bound up in traditional archival and recordkeeping frameworks, processes and systems (McKemmish, Faulkhead, and Russell 2011; O’Neill, Selakovic, and Tropea 2012; Humphreys et al. 2014; Evans et al. 2015). The growing realisation of the social injustices built into existing archival access and control frameworks is leading to calls for archival activism and becoming part of the community calling for change (Evans et al. 2015). Enabling archival autonomy—the ability of individuals and communities to be participatory agents in recordkeeping and archiving for identity, memory, and accountability purposes—requires transformation rather than just incremental reform.

Find and Connect Web Resource The development of the Find and Connect Web Resource5 as a centrepiece of the Find and Connect Program is an example of archival thinking, systems, and people starting to take a more prominent role in improving records access services for Care Leavers, and advocating for more radical transformations. Developed as part of the package to support locating and accessing records of childhood Care experiences, particularly in support of family reconnection, it was conceived as a national, online, single access point to overcome the fragmented and complex mazes of guides, and finding aids that Care Leavers had to navigate. The Find and Connect Web Resource brings together publicly available information about records and other historical resources relating to institutional “care” in Australia, using Records Continuum and Australian Series System principles to map the complex contextual network that surrounds the records to help in discovery, accessibility, interpretation, and use (McCarthy and Evans 2012). The Find and Connect Web Resource is not just the pages on the web but the whole ethos that has surrounded its initial and on-going development. It was based on the pioneering Pathways Victoria, a key outcome of the 2009–2011 ARC Linkage Who am I? Project, which brought together social workers, archivists, and historians with community sector, advocacy organisations, and government to investigate and drive changes to social work, archival, and recordkeeping practices (McCarthy and Evans 2012; McCarthy, Swain, and O’Neill 2012; O’Neill 2012; Humphreys et al. 2014). Not only does the Find and Connect Web Resource itself aim to lift the layers of bureaucracy and shrouds of secrecy around Care Leaver records, but the program of

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workshops that accompanied its initial development aimed to nurture a community who could better respond to Care Leaver needs in their archival practice. Using the Knowledge Diamond approach of the Who am I? Project (Humphreys and Kertesz 2012), with its emphasis on the exchange of ideas between key stakeholder perspectives (Service User/Consumer Experience, Research Evidence, Policy Perspectives, and Practitioner Wisdom), these workshops brought the Care Leaver experience to the fore, shared examples of empathetic practices, and discussed the conundrums and systemic barriers to better service provision. One of the outcomes of this Knowledge Diamond approach has been the development of ways of describing records to reflect Care Leaver experiences and needs. Entries in the Find and Connect Web Resource may document record series in ways that are substantially different from documentation in the record holder’s system, to describe their relevance to Care Leavers and ensure the key information they are likely to be looking for is included (Golding, O’Neill, and Story 2013). Swain (2014b) describes the ways in which entries were shaped through dialogue with the Care Leaver community. Feedback was encouraged through the web interface as entries from pre-existing print and online directories initially went live—warts and all. The community was quick to respond pointing out the inaccuracies and outdated information, as well as the ways in which the descriptions represented the biases of official sources. The Pirra Girls’ Home in Victoria was one example, where the rosy picture of young girls enjoying a rural lifestyle was quickly contested. The current entry reflects a long process of both negotiation and research, using the voices of former residents and staff, accessed through evidence presented to a range of inquiries, unpublished reminiscences, and published autobiographies as well as feedback to the website. It acknowledges both the contradictions and coalescences between these various accounts as evidence that there is no single way in which Pirra can be remembered. (Swain 2014b, p. 42) Find and Connect Web Resource historians and archivists have also worked with record holders to come up with ways to more sensitively deal with records absences. For example an entry for records relating to St Cuthbert’s Boys’ Home acknowledges that some records are likely to be found in the Anglican Diocese of Ballarat Archives, but at this stage “it is not known exactly what is there” (O’Neill 2015). It then encourages those seeking records to contact the Anglican Diocese of Ballarat Archives so that they can do what they can to help. Such an entry rarely exists in a traditional archival finding aid, designed around documenting only what was known when the finding aid was created about extant record holdings. It is an example of owning up to the limitations of the documentation, the shortcomings of appraisal systems that have seen so few records survive, and seeking to establish a relationship with the person looking for their records.

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A further example of the way in which documentation about the absence of records has been developed with community input is provided in the entry for the records which Child and Family Services (CAFS) Ballarat holds (Guy and Tropea 2017). Care Leavers report that they have often been told that records have not survived due to fires, floods, and other kinds of disasters and given the climate of distrust can be very sceptical of the veracity of these claims. Given that CAFS did experience a flood in their archives in 1992, where files were damaged and lost, at the suggestion of Care Leaver and advocate, Leonie Sheedy, the entry now includes this information along with a citation to the newspaper article in which the flood and loss were documented. The entry takes further heed of advice about what matters to Care Leavers with a “highlights” section to indicate the availability of records which may have documented their daily life, like menu books and photographs. It also features a photograph of the then heritage worker Sharon Guy along with references to the volunteers (often Care Leavers) who together worked to build the archives access service. These are small ways in which to reveal that while the CAFS archive houses paper records and other objects, it is also a community of evidence and memory, run and maintained by people and encompassing many individual stories. More recently, a new image policy for the Find & Connect Web Resource has been implemented, which challenges conventions around archival titles (Find & Connect Web Resource 2017). Names of superintendents and other staff have been removed from titles and are relegated to descriptive notes. Where staff are known abusers then they are named as such, with references to the newspaper articles, court cases, or other evidence of their actions and its impact. Other hurtful titles—as identified by Care Leavers—have been treated in a similar manner. They are not removed entirely as they provide key information used to identify an archival item; however, the hurt they cause is acknowledged. Participants in the Who am I? Project and the community engagement associated with the development and management of the Find & Connect Web Resource advocated for and negotiated these changes (Wright 2017). Building these relationships, listening to the concerns, and working together to find an acceptable solution are all part of enacting archival justice. While some record holders are shifting their thinking and practices through engagement with the Find and Connect Program, others are more reluctant to proactively share information and consider reforming their attitudes, processes, and systems. The RCIRCSA forced some of these organisations to take action in order to protect themselves. On being told how responsive record holders had been to RCIRCSA requests for records, Care Leavers could not help contrasting that with their own experiences. The RCIRCSA also noted that: On a number of occasions the Royal Commission received more complete records about individuals in response to our summonses than the individual received in response to their own access requests. (Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse 2017, p. 8:98)

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Find and Connect access principles and best practice guidelines While the Find and Connect Web Resource enhances the discoverability of records, improving access processes for Care Leavers is also paramount. Those creating entries for the web resource experienced first-hand just how complex the network of record holders and access procedures can get. Records are distributed across government and non-government agencies, coming under differing legislative provisions, and managed with varying degrees of professional expertise. Recommendation 16 of the Forgotten Australians Report called for an agreed set of access guidelines, across jurisdictions, which enshrine the right of Care Leavers to access and receive copies of all records about themselves in a timely manner, free of charge and which feature “flexible and compassionate interpretation of privacy legislation to allow a care leaver to identify their family and background” (Senate Community Affairs References Committee 2004, p. 286). Find and Connect workshops highlighted the ongoing frustrations for Care Leavers in inconsistent and uncaring interpretations of privacy and FOI legislation, with record holders also keen for official guidance. Through the Find and Connect Program, a project was established in 2014 to consult with record holders and Care Leaver advocacy and support communities on these issues, leading to the development of a set of Access Principles and Best Practice Guidelines in 2015 (Recordkeeping Innovation 2015). They particularly take up the challenge of shifting access practices away from rigid interpretations of legislative mandates which hinder rather than support a Care Leaver’s search for identity. The Guidelines support a proactive approach to releasing records to enable maximum access to those who are the “subject” of the records. This approach recommends a liberal approach to access, not relying solely on the provisions of the various legislative instruments that govern access (particularly to government records) in each jurisdiction. (Recordkeeping Innovation 2015, p. 10) The Access Principles and Guidelines are a useful resource for record holders and those providing records access services, but their existence alone is not enough evidence of change. They are aspirational and, despite promising shifts in some jurisdictions, they are yet to be comprehensively endorsed, embedded, and monitored across all record holders. Disappointingly soon after their release, when an agency asked its state privacy commissioner about releasing photographs to a Care Leaver, it was given advice contrary to the principles. This suggests a strong need for the work of the Records Access Working Group, the coalition of Care Leavers, archivists, historians, government, advocates, and support service staff that advocated for the development of the principles, to continue.

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A pessimistic reading could be that the Access Principles and Guidelines are an acknowledgement that the work done over the past decade in responding to recommendations has not delivered major improvements. What might be holding this back? It is noted that while consultation was a feature of their development, ultimately the Guidelines favour government and other record holders’ perspectives over those of Care Leavers. For example, Section 4.9 that asks “What rights do Care Leavers have over the records?” states Care Leavers often assume that the records about them, belong to them. Unfortunately this is not the case. (Recordkeeping Innovation 2015, p. 10) A further example of where Care Leavers are not equal players lies in the discussion in the preamble that the principles will require endorsement or adoption by each State and Territory jurisdiction, and private Records Holders, where applicable, before they become community practice. (Recordkeeping Innovation 2015, p. 6) What about also seeking endorsement from the Care Leaver community?

Evaluating the social justice impact of the Find and Connect Program What has been the social justice impact of the Find and Connect Program? What kind of archival justice has been achieved? A 2014 evaluation report shows the “considerable progress,” which the Find and Connect Services have made towards meeting the needs of Forgotten Australians and Former Child Migrants (Australian Healthcare Associates 2014). But does this mean that the program is delivering social justice outcomes? Barbara Klugman (2010), in a case study brief for the Center for Evaluation Innovation, discusses a value-based approach to evaluating social justice advocacy. In that report she defines social justice advocacy as: work[ing] for structural and enduring changes that increase the power of those who are most disadvantaged politically, economically and socially. It tackles the root and avoidable causes of inequities for those who are systematically and institutionally disadvantaged by their race, ethnicity, economic status, nationality, gender, gender expression, age, sexual orientation, or religion. (Klugman 2010, p. 3)

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By this definition, the Find and Connect Program is an example of social justice advocacy as it is working to promote and enact the rights of Care Leavers in records and recordkeeping processes, a structural cause of inequities. Klugman identifies “three broad and interconnected values” to guide evaluations of social justice advocacy namely: (1) Resources should be distributed so that everyone can live a decent life. (2) Human beings all have equal human rights, and should be recognised in all of their diversity. (3) All people should be represented and be able to advocate on their own behalf (Klugman 2010, p. 3). In short, she argues for setting and evaluating advocacy goals in terms of “whether they increase marginalised groups’ access to resources, social recognition and participation.” Mapping the Find and Connect Program to these social justice values is an illuminating exercise. Table 6.1 shows how activities have addressed and/or incorporated these values, suggesting that overall the Program may be on the right track for enabling social justice outcomes for the Care Leaver community. A promising start but to what extent do the reforms meet the archival and recordkeeping needs of the Care Leaver community? Are barriers to access, social recognition, and participation removed or do traditional attitudes and practices continue to dominate? The above-mentioned 2014 evaluation report of the Find and Connect Program highlighted some of the ongoing challenges, with records access continuing to be a major area of concern (Australian Healthcare Associates 2014). Delays in obtaining records, complicated search processes, varied application processes, variable outcomes, and legislative barriers were all identified as issues that impacted on the ability of the support services to meet the needs and expectations of the Care Leavers using their services. While this evaluation predates the release of the Access Principles and Guidelines discussed above, it does seem to emphasise their aspirational nature, rather than being a codification of existing practices. This suggests that the improvements to services brought about through the Find and Connect Program fall short of the archival justice that Care Leavers are ultimately advocating in having their rights to childhood records recognised and represented in archival and recordkeeping frameworks, processes, and systems (Golding 2015b). For example, in gaining access to records, Care Leavers are increasingly concerned at the onesided story that they tell, and in so doing, how they can contribute to retraumatisation and on-going marginalisation (Selakovic 2010; Recordkeeping Innovation 2015). Concerns are being raised about the capacities of archival systems to allow for the righting of the record by telling another side of their story, not just as an annotation, but as an integral part of the record. Questions are also being raised by Care Leavers about having a say over future access to

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Table 6.1 Mapping of Find and Connect Program to social justice values. Access to resources

• • • • •

Social recognition

•

• Participation

• •

•

Funding a network of services to support Care Leavers and Former Child Migrants through records access and family-tracing processes. Developing the Find and Connect Web Resource to bring publicly available information about records and other historical resources relating to institutional “care” in Australia together. Providing indexing grants to records holders to improve the quality and accessibility of the records under their jurisdiction. Commissioning research into the Freedom of Information, Privacy and Right to Information legislation. Producing national records Access Principles and Best Practice Guidelines for Forgotten Australians and Former Child Migrants (Recordkeeping Innovation 2015). Heritage projects including a national Oral History Project (National Library of Australia 2012) and a travelling exhibition Inside: Life in Children’s Homes and Institutions (National Museum of Australia 2011) aimed at “ensuring this dark chapter in Australia’s history is never forgotten.” Aged care information package developed by the Department of Health. Enhanced funding for the key advocacy organisations to strengthen their ability to be a voice in Government policy development and decision-making. Establishment of Find and Connect Advisory Group to provide implementation and evaluation advice, so that the services and projects making up the Find and Connect Program were developed in collaboration with advocacy and support organisations, state and territory governments, records specialists, and non-government records holders. Development of a set of service delivery design principles which put clients at the centre of support service provision and promote self-determination.

their files, including a right to be forgotten (Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse 2016). However, where they have had an impact is in mobilising sections of the archival and recordkeeping community to be part of the campaign for social justice. Through the advocacy and activism of Care Leaver and other communities facing identity, memory, and accountability crises, a growing awareness of the systemic failings of existing archival access systems is prompting calls for their radical transformation. Leading archival scholars (Cook 2013; Gilliland and McKemmish 2014a, 2014b) are calling for interventions to transform archival and recordkeeping systems so that they represent, manage, and respect multiple rights in records. Without such a transformation, these systems reinforce the power and privilege inherent in “dominant, gendered and age bound notions

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of single provenance, agency and authority that govern so much of records creation and also archival practice” (Gilliland 2015). While the Find and Connect Program has opened up access to records for the Care Leaver community, it also can be used to point to the further actions that need to be undertaken by the archival and recordkeeping community in order to meet social justice objectives. Klugman’s framework can be used for this critique as illustrated in Table 6.2. To address these needs, archival and recordkeeping scholars and practitioners have joined forces with community advocates to form the Setting the Record Straight for the Rights of the Child Initiative.6 The Initiative convened a National Summit in May 2017 bringing together a wide range of community, organisational, government, and professional perspectives to address the “systemic and enduring” failings of recordkeeping and archiving systems for those who experience childhood out-of-home care. At the end of two days of facilitated discussions, participants resolved to advocate for and develop a unified, collaborative, and strategic plan aimed at transforming recordkeeping and archiving infrastructure so that

Table 6.2 Further actions for achieving archival justice for care leavers. Access to resources

• • • • • •

Social recognition

• • •

Participation

• • •

Patchy, inconsistent, and paternalistic as embedded in a singular records creator rights framework. Need to overcome the tendency of access solutions to reflect institutional silos versus networked models. Contributing to Find and Connect Web Resource as an afterthought rather than essential part of access practice. Who should hold these records? Are the current care providers and other institutions who have inherited records the best option? Care leavers are calling for an independent body. Reform of legislative frameworks to reflect shared ownership and stewardship. Person and community-centred archival description as part of trauma informed practices. Testimony—growing, critical mass of evidence as an alternate history and mandate for change. Historical justice and reconciliation—recognising how archival and recordkeeping frameworks have contributed to marginalisation. Need for heritage projects to go beyond consultation, for example, instead of institutional controlled exhibitions moving to co-curated exhibitions. Involvement of the Care Leaver community in the design of archival services rather than just consultation or usability testing. Increased participation in recordkeeping processes relating to an individual’s case files. Matching the rhetoric around annotating records to the system reality.

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rather than being the passive “subject” of organisational records, children, young people, and their adult selves have voice, agency, and autonomy in their records and in recordkeeping processes (Evans 2017).

Conclusion However adept it has been in addressing some of the systemic failings, the Find and Connect Program’s ongoing effectiveness is dependent on a broader, active community that includes Care Leavers, record holders, those providing access and support services, advocates, researchers, past providers, and government as equal partners. One of the Program’s key impacts has been to foster this community of participation and to embolden the archival and recordkeeping professional and disciplinary community to take on a leadership role. After years of campaigning for archival justice by Care Leavers, the profession is now starting to see things differently. In shifting from responding to government recommendations towards working WITH and FOR Care Leavers, “their” campaign can now become “our” campaign. We can join together in re-imagining recordkeeping and archival systems in support of responsive and accountable child-centred out-of-home care and as enablers of historical justice and reconciliation … [and] re-position[ing] recordkeeping and archiving, not as bureaucratic overheads, but as drivers of high-quality, efficient, and effective person-centred child protection and out-of-home care services. (Evans, McKemmish, and Wilson 2016) Understanding the role that records play in people’s lives and with that knowledge being prepared to fight against archival and recordkeeping injustices is revitalising for the profession and discipline in the twenty-first century (Gilliland 2015). If not for this, then it is just much ado about boxing and shelving or curating of bright and shiny objects for information elites. The campaigning for reforming of archival frameworks, processes, and systems for recognising and respecting multiple rights in records is now part of the Care Leaver campaign for archival and social justice. Being asked to write this chapter and address the question of evaluating the impacts of archival and recordkeeping interventions in the Care Leaver campaign for social justice has enhanced our understanding of what has been done to date and what still needs to be done. Applying a simple evaluation framework like Klugman’s in a critical and reflective manner is one way in which more nuanced understanding of how archival actions can work towards and against the social justice needs of marginalised communities. We feel that we have much more to gain than lose in campaigning for archival and recordkeeping frameworks, processes, and systems to be re-designed around multiple rights in records.

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Coda With the handing down of the RCIRCSA final report on 15 December 2017, Australian government and other organisations began responding to its recommendations. The Royal Commission emphatically linked good recordkeeping to child safety and well-being and developed a set of recordkeeping principles to promote institutional best practice. This includes recognising “to the fullest extent” rights to access and amend records (Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse 2017, p. 8:10). A national Redress Scheme for survivors of institutional child sexual abuse has also been established from 1 July 2018 in response to RCIRCSA recommendations. The RCIRCSA emphasised the need for the Redress Scheme to be survivor centred, and as with the Find and Connect Program and the RCIRCSA itself, work with survivor advocacy communities in all aspects of its design. It is therefore disappointing to write that this has not been the case. Survivors are now trying to make sense of a Redress bureaucracy that puts institutional needs ahead of their own. It is a reminder that gains in achieving social justice can all too easily be lost. We hope that archival responses to the RCIRCSA recommendations do not make the same mistake and ensure that they work with the Care Leaver community to continue to progress their quest for archival justice.

Notes 1 Throughout this chapter, we have generally chosen to use the term “Care Leavers,” rather than “Forgotten Australians.” Some people reject the term “Forgotten Australians” for its “connotations of perpetual passive victimhood” (Golding 2015a). We have used capital letters to “signal the ironic connotations” of the word Care (Wilson and Golding 2016). We capitalise the word Home when referring to orphanages and other institutions, to mark the contrast between these institutions and “normal” family homes. The authors provide this explanation to minimise offence to anyone who favours one term over another, and to draw the reader’s attention to the problematic nature of terminology when writing about the institutionalisation of children. 2 Constitutionally, child welfare policy in Australia is a matter for each State and Territory and, over time, each jurisdiction has developed a hybrid mix of programs run by government, churches, charities, even some private individuals, and more recently commercial providers. It has been described as a “history of failures to meet a fundamental social obligation, namely protecting children and young people from abuse and exploitation” with a lack of effective coordination and chronic lack of resources (Bessant and Watts 2016). The legislative hotchpotch is reflected in a fractured and fragmented records landscape. 3 The records of the institutional Care of children are dispersed across a range of organisations in Australia. Record holders can be government departments responsible for the child and family welfare function, non-government organisations with a legacy of running children’s institutions in the past (and sometimes these organisations are also still involved in providing out-of-home Care on behalf of state governments), churches, and charities that have inherited the records of institutions run by religious orders, as well as cultural institutions such as state libraries, government archives, and collecting archives.

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4 For a list of these resources, which provided a starting point for the Find & Connect web resource, see “Key Resources,” in http://www.findandconnect.gov.au/about/ acknowledgement/. 5 See https://www.findandconnect.gov.au/. 6 See https://rights-records.it.monash.edu/.

References Australian Healthcare Associates. 2014. “Evaluation of Find and Connect Services Final Report.” Department of Social Services. www.dss.gov.au/families-and-children/pro grammes-services/family-relationships/find-and-connect-services-and-projects/evalu ation-of-find-and-connect-services-final-report. Bessant, Judith, and Rob Watts. 2016. “Children and the Law: An Historical Overview.” In Children and the Law in Australia, edited by Lisa Young, Mary Anne Kenny and Geoffrey Monahan, 3–23 Chatswood, New South Wales, Australia: Lexis Nexis. Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse. 2009. “Final Report of the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse.” www.childabusecommission.ie/publications/index.html. Cook, Terry. 2013. “Evidence, Memory, Identity, and Community: Four Shifting Archival Paradigms.” Archival Science 13(2–3): 95–120. Department of Social Services. 2015. “Find and Connect Services and Projects.” 22 December 2015. www.dss.gov.au/our-responsibilities/families-and-children/pro grams-services/find-and-connect-services-and-projects. Eberhard, Kim. 2015. “Unresolved Issues: Recordkeeping Recommendations Arising from Australian Commissions of Inquiry into the Welfare of Children in Out-of-Home Care, 1997–2012.” Archives and Manuscripts 43(1): 4–17. https://doi.org/10.1080/ 01576895.2014.959536. Evans, Joanne. 2017. “Setting the Record Straight for the Rights of the Child Summit.” Archives and Manuscripts 45(3): 247–252. https://doi.org/10.1080/01576895.2017.1373244. Evans, Joanne, Sue McKemmish, Elizabeth Daniels, and McCarthy. Gavan. 2015. “SelfDetermination and Archival Autonomy: Advocating Activism.” Archival Science 15(4): 337–368. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10502-015-9244-6. Evans, Joanne, Sue McKemmish, and Jacqueline Z. Wilson. 2016. “Response to Consultation Paper on Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse in Out-of-Home Care.” Find & Connect Web Resource. 2017. “Find & Connect Web Resource Policy on the Use of Images.” Document. 30 January 2017. www.findandconnect.gov.au/about/policies/ image-policy/. Gilliland, Anne. 2015. “Permeable Binaries, Societal Grand Challenges, and the Roles of the Twenty-First Century Archival and Recordkeeping Profession.” Auckland, New Zealand. http://escholarship.org/uc/item/90q5538g. Gilliland, Anne, and Sue McKemmish. 2014a. “Rights in Records as a Platform for Participative Archiving.” In Studies in Archival Education and Research: Selected Papers from the 2014 AERI Conference, edited by Richard J. Cox, Alison Langmead and Eleanor Matter. Litwin Press. Gilliland, Anne. 2014b. “The Role of Participatory Archives in Furthering Human Rights, Reconciliation and Recovery.” Atlanti: Review for Modern Archival Theory and Practice 24: 79–88. Golding, Frank. 2015a. “Please Don’t Call Me a Forgotten Australian.” 12 July 2015. http://frankgolding.com/please-dont-call-me-a-forgotten-australian/.

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Golding, Frank. 2015b. “A Charter of Rights to Childhood Records.” Frank Golding (blog). 7 December 2015. http://frankgolding.com/a-charter-of-rights-to-childhoodrecords/. Golding, Frank, Cate O’Neill, and Natasha Story. 2013. “Improving Access to Victoria’s Historical Child Welfare Records.” Provenance: The Journal of Public Record Office Victoria (12). http://prov.vic.gov.au/publications/provenance/provenance2013/child-wel fare-records. Guy, Sharon, and Rachel Tropea. 2017. “Child and Family Services Ballarat Records (c. 1865–).” In Find & Connect Web Resource. Find & Connect Web Resource Project for the Commonwealth of Australia. Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission. 1997. “Bringing Them Home: Report of the National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from Their Families.” Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission. www.humanrights.gov.au/publications/bringing-them-home-report-1997. Humphreys, Cathy, and Margaret Kertesz. 2012. “‘Putting the Heart Back into the Record’: Personal Records to Support Young People in Care.” Adoption & Fostering Journal 36(1): 27–39. Humphreys, Cathy, Gavan McCarthy, Melissa Dowling, Margaret Kertesz, and Rachel Tropea. 2014. “Improving the Archiving of Records in the Out-of-Home Care Sector.” Australian Social Work 67(4): 509–524. https://doi.org/10.1080/0312407X. 2013.856453. Klugman, Barbara. 2010. “Evaluating Social Justice Advocacy: A Values Based Approach.” Case Study Brief Series. Center for Evaluation Innovation. https://www.eva luationinnovation.org/publication/using-a-social-justice-lens-in-advocacy-evaluation/. McCarthy, Gavan J., and Joanne Evans. 2012. “Principles for Archival Information Services in the Public Domain.” Archives and Manuscripts 40(1): 54–67. https://doi.org/ 10.1080/01576895.2012.670872. McCarthy, Gavan J., Shurlee Swain, and Cate O’Neill, eds. 2012. “Archives, Identity and Survivors of Out-of-Home Care.” Archives and Manuscripts 40: 1. McKemmish, Sue, Shannon Faulkhead, and Lynette Russell. 2011. “Distrust in the Archive: Reconciling Records.” Archival Science 11(3–4): 211–239. https://doi.org/10.1007/ s10502-011-9153-2. Murray, Andrew. 2004. “Speech at Opening the CLAN Office in Bankstown.” Sydney 6 (March): 2004. National Archives of Australia. 2015. Tracking Family: A Guide to Aboriginal Records Relating to the Northern Territory, 2nd ed. National Archives of Australia. http:// guides.naa.gov.au/tracking-family/index.aspx. National Library of Australia. (2012). Forgotten Australians and Former Child Migrants Oral History Project. http://www.nla.gov.au/oral-history/forgotten-australians-andformer-child-migrants-oral-history-project Accessed 31 August 2014. National Museum of Australia. (2011). Inside: Life in Children’s Homes and Institutions. http://www.nma.gov.au/exhibitions/inside_l.ife_in_childrens_homes_and_institutions/ home Accessed 31 August 2014. O’Neill, Cate. 2012. “Accessing the Records of the Forgotten Australians: Learning from the Human Rights Context to Improve Archival Practices and Restorative Justice.” International Council of Archives Congress, Brisbane, Australia, 21–24 August 2012. http://ica2012.ica.org/files/pdf/Full%20papers%20upload/ica12Final00354.pdf.

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O’Neill, Cate. 2015. “St Cuthbert’s Home for Boys (1948–1977).” In Find & Connect Web Resource. Find & Connect Web Resource Project for the Commonwealth of Australia. www.findandconnect.gov.au/ref/vic/biogs/E000138b.htm. O’Neill, Cate, Vlad Selakovic, and Rachel Tropea. 2012. “Access to Records for People Who Were in Out-of-Home Care: Moving beyond ‘Third Dimension’ Archival Practice.” Archives and Manuscripts 40(1): 29–41. https://doi.org/ 10.1080/01576895.2012.668841. Prime Minister of Australia. 2009. “Transcript of Address at the Apology to the Forgotten Australians and Former Child Migrants, Great Hall, Parliament House, 16 November 2009.” 16 November 2009. pandora.nla.gov.au/pan/110625/20091116-1801/www.pm. gov.au/node/6321.html. Recordkeeping Innovation. 2015. “Access to Records by Forgotten Australians and Former Child Migrants: Access Principles for Records Holders, and Best Practice Guidelines in Providing Access to Records.” DSS1687.11.15. Department of Social Services. www.dss.gov.au/families-and-children/programmes-services/familyrelationships/find-and-connect-services-and-projects/access-to-records-by-forgottenaustralians-and-former-child-migrants-access-principles-for-records-holders-bestpractice-guidelines-in-providing-access. Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. 2016. “Consultation Paper: Records and Recordkeeping Practices.” Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. www.childabuseroyalcommission.gov.au/policy-andresearch/our-policy-work/making-institutions-child-safe/records.aspx. Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. 2017. Final Report: Volume 8 Recordkeeping and Information Sharing. Vol. 8. 17 vols. AttorneyGeneral’s Department, Australian Government. www.childabuseroyalcommission.gov. au/recordkeeping-and-information-sharing. Selakovic, Vlademir. 2010. “Transcript of Presentation Given at ‘Archiving: Moving Forward as a Community’ Workshop Victorian Archives Centre, North Melbourne, 15 April 2010.” www.findandconnect.gov.au/ref/vic/objects/D00000344.htm. Senate Community Affairs References Committee. 2001. “Lost Innocents: Righting the Record—Report on Child Migration.” Commonwealth of Australia. www.aph.gov.au/ Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Senate/Community_Affairs/Completed_inquiries/ 1999-02/child_migrat/report/index. Senate Community Affairs References Committee. 2004. “Forgotten Australians: A Report on Australians Who Experienced Institutional or Out-of-Home Care as Children.” Commonwealth of Australia. www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Com mittees/Senate/Community_Affairs/Completed_inquiries/2004-07/inst_care/report/index. Senate Community Affairs References Committee. 2009. “Lost Innocents and Forgotten Australians Revisited: Report on the Progress with the Implementation of the Recommendations of the Lost Innocents and Forgotten Australians Reports.” Commonwealth of Australia. www.aph.gov.au/binaries/senate/committee/clac_ctte/recs_lost_innocents_ forgotten_aust_rpts/report/report.pdf. Stubbs, Rhys. 2008. “Freedom of Information and Democracy in Australia and Beyond.” Australian Journal of Political Science 43(4): 667–684. https://doi.org/10.1080/ 10361140802429270. Swain, Shurlee. 2014a. “History of Australian Inquiries Reviewing Institutions Providing Care for Children.” Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual

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Chapter 7

Justice for the 96! The impact of archives in the fight for justice for the 96 victims of the Hillsborough disaster Andrew Flinn and Wendy M. Duff

Introduction This chapter focusses on a specific struggle for justice: the fight for justice for the 96 people who died as a result of the Hillsborough disaster and for their families and for the communities to which they belonged. Hillsborough, the worst stadium disaster in British history, took place on 15 April 1989; 96 men, women, and children sustained injuries that resulted in death, a further 766 people sustained injuries but survived, and thousands more were traumatised by their experiences that day. Immediately following the event, the police identified drunken, ticketless fans as the cause of the disaster. Though subsequent inquiries, publications, and films concluded that the responsibility for the disaster lay with the police and poor adherence to safety standards by the local authorities and stadium owners, Sheffield Wednesday Football Club, many continued to believe the narrative promoted by these same authorities and allies in the media that it was the behaviour of Liverpool supporters on the day that was ultimately responsible for the tragedy. The supporters were not fully exonerated until September 2012, with the publication of the Hillsborough Independent Panel’s Report, although the publication of this report does not represent the end of the struggle for justice (namely the prosecution of those culpable), a frustrating process which at the time of writing is still not completed. This chapter builds on the work of Duff et al. (2013) into the impact of archives in a social justice context, particularly the multi-dimensional and temporal (and often delayed) impact by providing a narrative of the role records played in shedding light on the events that led up to the disaster and the actions of the police prior to, during, and after the disaster. It draws on interviews, public lectures, and records to investigate what was known and accepted at key points in the period up to the publication of the report and to understand the role archival records played in identifying the actions of the various actors in the disaster, and ultimately in finally undermining the credibility of the version of events promoted by the police, other public authorities, and sections of the media.

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Methods We drew on a number of sources in our study. We interviewed Peter Evans, the archivist of the Sheffield Archives, via the phone and Sarah Tyacke, former Keeper of Public Records and a member of the Hillsborough Independent Panel in person. We also gathered insight from other members of the Independent Panel, from a podcast “Hillsborough: the Tangled Web” by Christine Gifford (2013), an expert on access to information and a member of the Independent Panel, and a video of lecture “Recovering Truth, Informing Justice-Researching the Hillsborough Disaster” by Professor Phil Scraton (2013) given at Queens University Belfast on 17 April 2013. We also drew heavily on Lord Justice Taylor’s Interim and Final Report, newspaper articles, campaign material, scholarly literature on Hillsborough, the Hillsborough Independent Panel Report, and documents in the Hillsborough digital archives.

Hillsborough disaster On 15 April 1989, Liverpool Football Club faced Nottingham Forest Football Club in a Football Association Challenge Cup (FA Cup) semi-final match in Hillsborough Stadium in Sheffield England. Traditionally, such semi-finals were played at neutral grounds and Hillsborough was a regular venue for these games. (Chief Superintendent David Duckenfield was named as police match commander for the game—replacing Hillsborough’s experienced match commander Chief Superintendent Brian Mole.) At the time the government, the police in Great Britain and the football authorities were very concerned with the threat of football hooliganism, and to reduce the possibility of crowd disturbances, football stadiums were modified to ensure the separation (“segregation”) of supporters. At the time, stadiums contained both standing (terraces) and sitting areas. For this game, Liverpool supporters were allocated the Leppings Lane end of the stadium with a capacity for 24,256 ticket holders. Supporters entered the stadium through 23 turnstiles accessed via a narrow concourse. However, 16 turnstiles provided access to 14,156 seats in the North and West stands and only seven turnstiles provided access to 10,100 standing places in the lower tier of the West stands. The terraces, the standing room area of the stadium located behind the goals, were divided into four pens. Lateral fences between the pens further restricted the movement of fans between pens and a high overhanging fence with a narrow locked gate at the front of the pens ensured that supporters could not reach the pitch. The stadium had been modified over the years to ensure the containment of fans and to reduce the possibility of fighting. In general, the police and football authorities were at the time of the disaster more focussed on preventing violence than ensuring public safety. On the day, traffic congestion on the road over the Pennines from Liverpool to Sheffield delayed some fans, while other ticket holders chose, as was the practice with many supporters at the time, not to enter the stadium early. With

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the game due to kick off at 3:00 pm, problems at the stadium began around 2:15 when crowds began to form in front of turnstiles at the Leppings Lane end of the stadium and between 2:30 and 2:40 the build-up of fans occurred resulting in too many people trying to access too few turnstiles into the Lapping Lane terraces. Fearing that excessive crowding would lead to injury, police on the ground requested the start of the game be postponed, an action taken two years previously in similar circumstances but Dunkenfield refused this request. With approximately 5,000 supporters still trying to enter the stadium minutes before the start of a game, Police Superintendent Marshall radioed Duckenfield and asked permission to open the exit gates to allow fans to enter. Duckenfield agreed and at 2:52 the police opened the gates and the crowding at the turnstiles eased as over 2,000 fans immediately entered through the exit gate. These supporters then proceeded unstewarded into the stadium through a tunnel with a 1 in 6 gradient leading directly to pens already filled to capacity. Rather than blocking off the tunnel and directing supporters to the relatively empty sections on either side, the police left fans to “find their own level.” At 3:04, action on the pitch caused the crowd in the stadium to cheer and supporters entering the pens surged forward to see what was happening. The capacity of pens 3 and 4 was approximately 1,600 people, but around 3,000 fans entered the two pens. The crush barriers in that section of the stadium did not meet safety standards and they collapsed under pressure of the crowd. In an attempt to escape the crush, a few fans scaled the outer fence and attempted to get onto the pitch while a few others managed to break a lock on a side gate. The police interpreted these actions as hooliganism and pushed the fans back into the pens. As the true cause and extent of the problem became apparent, some constables tried to help fans get out of the pens, but others were paralysed by shock, “The scene was emotive, and chaotic as well as gruesome” (Taylor 1989, p. 15). Dunkenfield finally moved to call the game off at 3:06 but by that time the pressure in the pens, the collapse of the barriers, and the fences and locked gates would cause 96 people to die from asphyxia and over 700 people to sustain injuries. Rescue operations When the police became aware of the severity of the disaster, they notified the emergency services but failed to declare a major incident. At 3:08, the police requested ambulances but did not use the code word required to implement the major disaster plan. The Deputy Chief Ambulance officer contacted the South Yorkshire Metropolitan Ambulances Service (SYSAM) staff stationed at the stadium for further information. Unfortunately, the SYSAM staff located at the stadium also misinterpreted the problem, assuming that supporters had caused the problems by fighting, initially reporting that just 50–100 people were on the field, with “quite a lot of that’s been crushed, probably just winded”

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(Hillsborough Independent Panel 2012, p. 135). The first ambulance arrived at the stadium at 3:17 and it was only at 3:21, 15 minutes after the calling off of the game, that a station officer declared a major incident; no one, however, implemented the major incident procedure. Moreover, the South Yorkshire Metropolitan Ambulances Service directed the ambulances to the North end of the stadium. The Leppings Lane end was located at the opposite end of the field from the ambulances; supporters used advertising boards and placards torn from the walls to carry the injured to the ambulances. Some spectators and police officers tried to resuscitate unconscious victims pulled from the pens, providing mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and CPR. Many of the unconscious had regurgitated their stomach contents, clogging up their throats and mouths. Unconscious supporters were placed on their backs on the field, which may have caused more damage. Some fans infuriated by the slow response to assist the injured, vented their anger at the police. Accusing the victims When senior football officials entered the police control room to find out what happened, Duckenfield initially lied alleging that ticketless fans had forced the gate. Officials repeated this lie to the press and the international press published it; immediately following the disaster, the police, football officials, the press, and some politicians blamed the Liverpool fans. For example, M. Jacques Georges of the European Football Association, on 17 April, described Liverpool supporters as “beasts waiting to charge into the arena” whose actions were “not far from hooliganism” (Bradbury 2012). On 18 April, the Sheffield Star reported that drunken fans had stolen from the dead and attacked police officers and rescue workers. The Sun, a national daily tabloid newspaper provided the most offensive coverage; under the headline of “The Truth” the newspaper claimed, “Some fans picked pockets of Victims” “Some fans urinated on brave cops,” and “Some fans beat up PC giving life kiss” (The Sun 1989, p. 1). In publishing such stories, fed to them by the police and local politicians, the media sought to firmly assign the blame for the tragedy by demonising Liverpool supporters. The press coverage intensified the grief and pain of families dealing with the loss of a loved one, and injured and traumatised spectators, and provoked a furious response from the community. Inquiries, inquests, investigations, and trials On 17 April 1989, Lord Justice Taylor was appointed to head an inquiry with a mandate to investigate the causes of the disaster as well as to make recommendations into safety at sporting events and the needs of crowd control. The Taylor Inquiry issued an interim report in August 1989 and then a final report in January 1990. From 18 April to 4 May 1990, the Coroner held limited

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preliminary hearings or “mini–inquests” into the deaths of each of the 95 victims (Tony Bland, the 96th victim, was not taken off life support until March 1993). In May, the inquest adjourned until after the Director of Public Prosecutions made his decision about criminal charges. On 19 November 1990, the inquest resumed in generic form and continued until 28 March 1991. The jury then returned a majority verdict of accidental death in all cases. On 6 April 1992, the High Court allowed six families to request a judicial review but Lord Justice McCowan rejected the request on 5 November 1993, ruling that the inquests had been conducted properly. In 1996, Hillsborough, a docudrama by Merseyside writer Jimmy McGovern’s broadcast on national television by Granada TV, claimed that new evidence not considered by previous inquests existed. The film also drew attention to two videotapes of the event that went missing from the police control room in the aftermath of the disaster. In 1997, a Labour government was elected and in June of that year, the new Home Secretary Jack Straw met with families and agreed to propose a “scrutiny” of “new evidence.” Lord Justice Stuart-Smith was appointed to conduct the review and in February 1998, he reported that he felt there was insufficient new evidence to justify a further public inquiry on the matter. The Home Secretary agreed. In 2000, the families took Duckenfield and Murray, his assistant, to court in private criminal charges for manslaughter. The jury deliberated for 16 hours before returning a verdict of not guilty for Murray; the jury could not come to an agreement on the verdict for Duckenfield. Throughout this period and all these inquiries, the families and their supporters kept up their demands for the truth and their rejection of the narrative that blamed the supporters advanced by the police and parts of the media and the political establishment. Groups such as the Hillsborough Family Support Group (HFSG) and the Hillsborough Justice Group (HJC) and others in the media continued to demand justice, campaigning for the release of all the records held by the government, the police, and other public services and pressurise politicians to re-open the investigations. Finally, in December 2009 reacting to the persistent strength of such campaigns and the advocacy of local politicians like Andy Burnham MP, Home Secretary Alan Johnson announced the establishment of the Hillsborough Independent Panel to oversee the full disclosure of public records related to the Hillsborough Disaster, establish a digital repository of the documents, and publish a report on the disaster.

Findings This research investigates what was known and accepted about the disaster through various inquests, inquiries, and published sources prior to the HIP Report and what changed with the Panel’s review and public release of the records relating to the disaster and its aftermath.

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The Taylor inquiry On 17 April 1989, two days after the disaster, the government appointed Lord Justice Taylor to head an inquiry “into the events at Sheffield Wednesday Football Ground on 15 April 1989 and to make recommendations about the needs of crowd control and safety at sports events” (Taylor 1989, p. 1). In August 1989, Taylor published an interim report that focussed on the disaster and a final report published in January 1990 that focussed more generally on safety at sporting events. Taylor had the assistance of two assessors, Brian Johnson, Chief Constable of Lancashire, and Leonard Maunder, a professor of Mechanical Engineering. The West Midlands Police acted as an independent investigating force and collected the evidence for the inquiry. The inquiry heard evidence from 174 witnesses and received information from 2,666 telephone calls, 3,776 statements, and 1,550 letters. Counsel provided written submissions on 7 July and 14 July. The inquiry also had access to 71 hours of film covering the period before, during, and after the disaster provided by the police, the football stadium, and the B.B.C. The report notes, “the material gathered and potentially available for presentation at the oral hearing was enormous. From this mass it was essential to select only sufficient good and reliable evidence necessary to establish the facts and causes of the disaster” (Taylor 1989, p. 2). In summarising the reasons for the disaster, Taylor identified three broad causes for overcrowding up to 2.52 pm: (i) The layout at the Leppings Lane end. (ii) Lack of fixed capacities for the pens. (iii) Lack of effective monitoring of the terraces. He identified six other causes for the crushing after 2:52 pm: (iv) (v) (vi) (vii) (viii) (ix)

The The The The The The

build-up at the turnstiles. blunder on opening the gates. barriers in pen 3. crushing not recognised. response of the police. perimeter gates were too small. (1989, p. 20)

Taylor exonerated the St. John Ambulance Services, the fire brigade, and the South Yorkshire Medical Assistance Services. He highlighted the poor coordination and communication between the police and emergency services but in view of the nature and extent of the crushing, the time when police rescue began and the pathetically short period for which those unable to breathe could survive, it is improbable that quicker recourse to the emergency services would have saved more lives. (1989, p. 53)

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Taylor reserved his most serious criticism for the senior police officers and their failure to safely steward supporters to the side pens and away from the already dangerously crowded pens 3 and 4 when they opened the exit gates. He noted that Duckenfield lied about the opening of the gate and concluded that Duckenfield froze because he could not face the consequences of agreeing to open the gate. In discussing police testimony, Taylor observed: In all some 65 police officers gave oral evidence at the Inquiry. Sadly I must report that for the most part the quality of their evidence was in inverse proportion to their rank …. senior officers in command were defensive and evasive witnesses … … neither their handling of problems on the day nor their account of it in evidence showed the qualities of leadership to be expected of their rank. (Taylor 1989, p. 50) He went on: It is a matter of regret that at the hearing, and in their submissions, the South Yorkshire Police were not prepared to concede they were in any respect at fault in what occurred. Mr Duckenfield, under pressure of cross-examination, apologised for blaming the Liverpool fans for causing the deaths. (Taylor 1989, p. 50) He continued, however, that the police had not accepted blame and instead the senior police officers continued to claim (and brief the press) that the disaster was caused by fans who arrived late and drunk, and the failure of the Club to monitor the pens. Taylor concluded that the police also argued that the: fatal crush was not caused by the influx through gate C but was due to barrier 124a being defective. Such an unrealistic approach gives cause for anxiety as to whether lessons have been learnt. It would have been more seemly and encouraging for the future if responsibility had been faced. (Taylor 1989, p. 50) In December 1989, the South Yorkshire police admitted liability and offered limited compensation to the relatives of the deceased. Coroner’s inquests The Coroner’s inquests were held in two parts. Limited preliminary hearings of the evidence concerning the deaths of each of the then 95 deceased were held before a jury between 18 April and 4 May 1990. At the preliminary hearings, the pathologist provided medical evidence on each deceased including blood alcohol levels, the location of bodies prior to death, and the identification of the

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bodies. The coroner, Dr. Popper, ordered blood alcohol level tests on all victims, even children. No evidence was provided on how the people died; a designated West Midlands police officer provided summaries of witness statements and another gave identification information about the photographs. The coroner decided not to gather any evidence on how the victims died until after the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) had ruled on criminal charges. Furthermore, he did not allow access to the original witness statements, or to cross-examine the police officers. Scraton (2004, p. 189) suggests the jury were presented with “a mixture of interpretation, selection and conjecture presented, unchallenged, as fact. Unable to access primary statements and crossexamine the evidence, bereaved families were left with numerous unanswered questions, disqualified as being outside the agreed parameters of the preliminary hearings.” After the completion of mini-inquests on each victim, the coroner adjourned the inquests until after the DPP made his decision about prosecutions. In August 1990, the DPP decided against pressing charges, citing a lack of evidence to warrant criminal charges against the police, Sheffield Wednesday Football Club, or Sheffield City Council. The Police Complaints Authority (PCA) decided to proceed with disciplinary charges for “neglect of duty” but Duckenfield retired on medical grounds and eventually the Authority decided not to pursue charges against Murray, Duckenfield’s assistant, who was directly responsible for ground operations. After the DPP’s decision, the Coroner’s inquests resumed in generic form between 19 November 1990 and 28 March 1991. When the inquest reconvened, Dr. Popper controversially decided against admitting evidence of any activities that took place after 3:15 pm, when the first ambulance arrived on the field. He explained: … the overwhelming pathological evidence is and was that the people died as a result of crushing or traumatic asphyxia. … That does not mean to say that some of them did not in fact respire for a period of time or even have a heart beat thereafter, but the damage was done … I considered the medical evidence. The medical evidence was that once—I am not quoting verbatim—but the sense … was that once the chest was fixed so that respiration could no longer take place, then irrecoverable brain damage would occur between four and six minutes. (South Yorkshire Coroner 1990, pp. 16–17) Many of the families asked that evidence of events up to 4:00 o’clock be considered, contending that in terms of accounting for wider capabilities and potential for prevention of some of the deaths, consideration of actions post 3:15 pm was essential but Dr Popper refused. In his direction to the jury, Dr Popper identified the two possible verdicts: unlawful killing and accidental death. He stated:

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that the word “accident” straddles the whole spectrum of events from force majeure or Act of God. In other words, from something over which one has no control—an earthquake, for instance, where most of us would take the view that no-one could be blamed—to a situation where you are in fact satisfied there has been carelessness, negligence, to a greater or lesser extent and that someone would have to make, for instance, compensation payments in civil litigation. It straddles a whole range of events and the fact that the jury brings in a verdict of accidental death does not mean to say that nothing has not gone wrong. In other words, bringing in this verdict does not mean that you absolve each and every party from all and every measure from blame. (South Yorkshire Coroner 1991, pp. 62–63) He also indicated that to return a verdict of “unlawful killing” one had “to be satisfied on the evidence beyond reasonable doubt or so that you are sure” that there was a recognition of an obvious and serious risk and a decision to take the risk had occurred (South Yorkshire Coroner 1991, p. 57). On 28 March 1991, the jury returned verdicts of accidental death in all 95 cases, by a majority of 9 to 2. The challenges A challenge to those verdicts on behalf of six bereaved families commenced in April 1992. Families asked the verdicts be squashed because of irregularity of proceedings, insufficiency of inquiry, and the emergence of new evidence. The main argument presented by the family was the Coroner’s bias. As an employee of one of the interested parties, the Sheffield City Council, the families argued that he should have not have overseen the inquests (Stuart-Smith 1998, p. 12). In November 1993, the High Court dismissed the judicial review of the inquests, concluding that no evidence had been suppressed and the direction to the jury was “impeccable.” In 1996, Jimmy McGovern’s powerful docudrama Hillsborough was shown on national television. Produced by Granada TV, Hillsborough was a work of polemical investigative journalism in dramatic form, drawing upon direct testimony from families and survivors, archive footage, and court transcripts to depict the events of the day and the inquests and investigations that followed. McGovern wrote the script to “empower the powerless” and to present the Liverpool fans’ point of view (Hughson and Spaaij 2011). The film suggested that some evidence (including video film from the police control room) had gone missing, other evidence been tampered with, and questioned the official account of what happened. In 1997, when the Labour Party came into office, Jack Straw MP, the new Home Secretary met with families of the victims and commissioned an independent judicial scrutiny of the evidence relating to Hillsborough.

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Stuart-Smith scrutiny On 30 June 1997, Commissioner Lord Justice Stuart-Smith was appointed to conduct a judicial scrutiny in order to: ascertain whether any evidence exists relating to the disaster at the Hillsborough Stadium on 15 April 1989 which was not available; (a) To the Inquiry conducted by the late Lord Taylor; or, (b) To the Director of Public Prosecutions or the Attorney General for the purpose of discharging their respective statutory responsibilities; or, (c) To the Chief Officer of South Yorkshire Police in relation to police disciplinary matters; and in relation to (d) To advise whether any evidence not previously available is of such significance as to justify establishment by the Secretary of State for the Home Department [Home Secretary] of a further public inquiry; … and to advise whether there is any other action which should be taken in the public interest. (Stuart-Smith 1998, pp. v–vi) Stuart-Smith took evidence from 34 families of the deceased, some in private meetings and others through written submissions. He also consulted with 16 officials. He reviewed the evidence given to the Taylor Inquiry, analysed the written police reports, and examined many of the body files of those who died. His report discussed in detail the various video recordings of the disaster. Stuart-Smith discounted claims that the Taylor Inquiry did not have access to all recordings. He also investigated claims that a police officer had put improper pressure on a witness to change his or her evidence. He stated: I have looked into this in great detail because an allegation of improper pressure against a police officer to persuade a witness to change his or her evidence contrary to that witness’s recollection and belief, is a very serious matter. But there is all the difference in the world between such conduct and seeking to reconcile, if one can, apparent inconsistencies between witnesses. (Stuart-Smith 1998, p. 67) He also investigated Professor Scraton’s claim that officers’ statements had been taken in a manner which was “highly irregular and leaves itself open to accusations of widespread and institutional malpractice; it does smack of getting our stories right before they go to the investigation force” (Stuart-Smith 1998, p. 78).

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Stuart-Smith noted that senior police officers told junior officers to submit hand-written recollections of the day on paper and solicitors or senior officers then edited the statements before forwarding them to the Taylor Inquiry. He reviewed all statements and identified only five cases in which factual information were excluded from statements. He indicated, however, that he did “not think the solicitors were guilty of anything that could be regarded as unprofessional conduct” (Stuart-Smith 1998, p. 80). Furthermore, he noted that Lord Taylor and the Inquiry team were “clearly well aware that original self-written statements were being vetted by the solicitors and in some cases altered” (Stuart-Smith 1998, p. 82). He concluded that Professor Scraton’s claims were not substantiated and he did not “consider that there is any question of misconduct either by the solicitor who gave the police advice upon the statements or by the police officers who suggested alterations to the statements without referring the statements to the solicitors” (Stuart-Smith 1998, p. 107). After reviewing all claims of irregularities, Stuart Smith recommended that no further investigation be conducted. The South Yorkshire Police original and amended statements were then transferred to the House of Lords Library, from July to October 1998 and made available to the public. It was perhaps hoped that Stuart-Smith’s judgement would mark an end to the demands for a new inquiry and justice. But this underestimated the determination and anger felt by the HFSG, HJC, and their supporters (Scraton 2013, p. 16), the campaigns kept up the pressure and on the twentieth anniversary of the disaster, the then Minister for Health Andy Burnham addressed the annual Hillsborough memorial service at Liverpool’s Anfield stadium and “announced the Government’s intention to effectively waive the 30-year rule withholding public records to enable disclosure of all documents relating to the disaster” (Hillsborough Independent Panel 2012, Summary). In July 2009, the HFSG and a group of Members of Parliament from Merseyside, presented a case to the then Home Secretary Alan Johnson for disclosing all the records related to the Hillsborough disaster. In January 2010, the Home Secretary announced the appointment of the Hillsborough Independent Panel (HIP), chaired by James Jones, Bishop of Liverpool, and including Professor Scraton, an access to information expert Christine Gifford, and archivist and former Keeper of Public Records Sarah Tyacke. Hillsborough independent panel The HIP mandate included: • •

Overseeing full public disclosure of relevant government and local information and managing the disclosure process; Consulting with the Hillsborough families to ensure that the views of those most affected by the tragedy are taken into account;

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Working with the Keeper of Public Records in preparing options for establishing an archive of Hillsborough documentation, including a catalogue of all central Governmental and local public agency information and a commentary on any information withheld for the benefit of the families or on legal or other grounds; and Producing a report explaining the work of the Panel and illustrating how the information disclosed added to public understanding of the tragedy and its aftermath.

Based on the panel’s review of the available documentation and evidence released to them, the HIP Report outlined what was known when the Panel was established, the background and context to the disaster, the response of the emergency services, the subsequent police investigations, litigation, the Coroner’s inquiry, the alteration of police statements, and the role of the media. The report concludes with a discussion of the provision for a permanent archive of all the documents released and considered by the panel. The emergency response The HIP noted that the disclosed documents showed evidence of “failures in leadership and emergency response coordination.” Neither the South Yorkshire Metropolitan Ambulance Service (SYMAS) nor the police fully activated the major incident procedure; and lack of the procedure greatly hindered the emergency response. Communication problems in the control room also affected the response. Doctors and nurses attending the match were critical of the “lack of leadership, coordination, triage and equipment.” The SYMAS countered these criticisms with claims that they came from “ill-informed and impulsive doctors caught up in the emotions of the disaster.” The panel queried the SYMAS criticisms. Furthermore, the HIP found that the SYMAS used a process to review and revise the statements from emergency workers similar to the police, which is discussed in the subsequent section. The Coroner’s inquest and the 3:15 pm cut off The HIP concluded the inquest process was seriously flawed, that the Coroner’s decision to limit the gathering of evidence to events that took place before 3:15 pm when the first ambulance arrived on the pitch was not correct. As previously stated, the Coroner based this decision on the belief that those that died were beyond assistance, the effects of asphyxia were irreversible, by 3:15. A medical expert reviewed the autopsy reports of all 96 victims and concluded:

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There was clear evidence from the post mortem reports that 28 of those who died did not have traumatic asphyxia with obstruction of the blood circulation, and asphyxia may have taken significantly longer to be fatal. There was separate evidence that in 31 the heart and lungs had continued to function after the crush, and in 16 of these this was for a prolonged period. (These numbers cannot be added to the 28 as some featured in both groups.) (Hillsborough Independent Panel 2012, p. 178) The report found that some of the victims may have been able to be resuscitated and that the victims were made further vulnerable due to inappropriate positioning, etc., while unconscious. The panel also determined that the procedure the Coroner followed, that is allowing police to summarise witness statements and not allowing crossexamination of the witnesses seriously undermined the reliability of the evidence, stating that “The Coroner’s file notes indicate his acceptance, regardless of Lord Justice Taylor’s findings, that the relationship between alcohol consumption, late arrivals and crowd behaviour could have contributed to the disaster” (Hillsborough Independent Panel 2012, p. 20). The panel concluded that the police had influenced the Coroner’s decision to record the alcohol levels of the 96 victims. The police statements As previously noted, the Stuart-Smith Scrutiny analyzed the hand-written statements given by the South Yorkshire Police and concluded that only five statements had factual matter removed. The HIP studied the process the police established for gathering statements from police officers present at Hillsborough Stadium. Senior police officers instructed officers to record their recollections of the disaster over the days following the disaster rather than make notes in their police pocketbooks per normal operating procedures. SYP also set up a small team of investigators led by Chief Superintendent Donald Denton in consultation with Peter Metcalf, a senior partner in Hammond Suddards, the SYP solicitors, to review all handwritten notes. The SYP instructed the investigative team to remove any statements of opinion on the performance of the police and other emergency services on the day from the notes, but to keep matters of fact. The officers reviewed the amended statements and were asked to sign them for submission to the Taylor inquiry. A number of officers raised concerns over the review and alteration of their statements; some officers also raised concerns over the involvement of solicitors in the process. Attempts by senior SYP officers to address the concerns included “Hillsborough updates” and the establishment of an inquiry liaison team to assist officers who were called to give evidence to the Taylor inquiry.

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The HIP’s detailed review and comparison of all the hand-written and revised statements identified six types of revisions: grammatical clarification; informal or coarse language removed; criticisms of the police response amended; comments on poor communications or inadequate radio contact revised; references to “chaos,” “fear,” “panic,” or “confusion” among officers deleted; and abusive criticism of supporters removed. The HIP indicated that 116 of the 164 modified statements had substantive amendments and “central to the process was a determination to alter or delete statements ‘unhelpful to the Force’s case’” (Scraton 2013, p. 22). The report concluded that the statements had undergone an irregular process of review and modification. The media Over the years, many of the families had repeatedly raised concerns over the insensitive, and at time, vicious attacks on the Liverpool supporters. The HIP also investigated the source of the stories and why the press blamed the supporters for the disaster immediately afterwards and then continued to do so despite the clear, contrary findings of the Taylor inquiry. The Panel found that the media allegations against the supporters originated with a local Sheffield press agency that had been influenced by the SYP Police Federation spokesperson and by a local MP who had been briefed by the police. The Panel concluded that the SYP Police Federation “sought to develop and publicise a version of events that focussed on several police officers’ allegations of drunkenness, ticketlessness and violence among a large number of Liverpool fans. This extended beyond the media to Parliament” (Hillsborough Independent Panel 2012, p. 24). The Panel found no evidence that supported these allegations and their report fully exonerated the fans.

The impact The Panel’s report highlighted the injustices surrounding the disaster and its aftermath and the digital archives provided access to a range of disclosed documents (over 335,000 pages out of the 450,000 disclosed and reviewed by the panel are not available at the time of writing because of the current court case). Following the publication of the report, the Prime Minister David Cameron apologised to the families for the “double injustice” of the “failure of the state to protect their loved ones and the indefensible wait to get to the truth” whilst suffering from the sustained “efforts to denigrate the deceased and suggest that they were ‘somehow at fault for their own deaths’” (“Hillsborough Papers” 2012). The original inquest verdicts of accidental death were immediately overturned, and new inquests were established (with preliminary hearings in 2013 and full hearings commencing in 2014). In April 2016, the jury rejected the original death by misadventure verdicts and returned a verdict of unlawful killing in respect of all 96 victims.

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What was different about the Hillsborough independent panel During the 20 years following the Hillsborough disaster, the families and supporters of the 96 victims of Hillsborough had fought for justice but not until the Report of the Independent Panel did they feel vindicated. While the disclosure of documents played an important aspect of the work of the Panel many of the archival documents had been available for many years. This fact raises the question of what was different about the Hillsborough Independent Panel. Our analysis points to six factors that lead to the Panel producing a report that exonerated the fans and provided strong evidence of a police cover-up. Time had passed The setting up of the Panel and its membership pointed to the government’s willingness to acknowledge that the supporters were not to blame for the disaster. Professor Scraton (2009, 2016), the leading scholar on the committee, had previously written numerous reports, articles, and books that blamed the police for their focus on controlling the fans, rather than on crowd safety. The Panel’s mandate also included the disclosure of documents and the establishment of a digital archive in which the wishes of the families were to be paramount. This mandate suggests the government was willing to be much more open than in previous inquiries. By 2009, disclosure of the closed papers had also become increasingly inevitable. A Freedom of Information request by the B.B.C. for key papers although initially turned down by the government was upheld by the Information Commissioner on appeal, and the discussions to reduce the 30-year closure rule to 20 years on public records more generally were also on-going. As Duff et al. (2013) suggest, in the understanding of the contexts for archival social justice impacts “consideration of time and temporalities is crucial.” Frame of reference The Panel’s frame of reference was “Families First.” While Parliament, the Coroner’s inquest, and the Stuart-Smith Scrutiny seems to have been briefed and influenced by the police’s view of the event, the Hillsborough Independent Panel was committed to helping the families. The frame of reference of the panellists was considerably different; this frame of reference undoubtedly affected how they interpreted the records and their analysis of the evidence. The difference between Stuart-Smith’s conclusion that in only five police statements had matters of fact been altered, and the Panel’s very different assertion that 116 statements contained substantial amendments, reflects the different frames of reference of the two investigations.

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Records While many of the records had previously been accessible, for example, the police statements had been available for years, the disclosure process made many key records easily (digitally) and publicly accessible for the first time. For example, the panel had access to minutes of police meetings, correspondence, etc., that were previously closed. These records shed light on how the police influenced the media, the Coroner, and Parliament against Liverpool supporters, and helped publicise a story that transferred the blame from the police to drunk and ticketless fans, etc. In studying the link between the work of the archives and social justice in this case, our interviewees stated that the work of the archivist in acquiring and preserving records, as well as arranging, describing, and making them accessible, played a vital role in making justice possible. Gifford (2013) also noted that the panel could not have done its work without the documents. However, in his article on the legacy of Hillsborough, Scraton (2013) reminds us that: The research, however, should not be represented as “truth recovery” because the documents were never lost. They lay in un-catalogued archives, unfiled cabinets and in personal collections across numerous organisations, each with institutional interests to safeguard. They were available to, but neutralised by, the processes of investigation, inquiry and scrutiny. This allowed their powerful evidence to remain hidden while myth prevailed. In bringing them together as the Hillsborough Archive, in placing them in a public space curated and referenced, online and in hard copy, their “truth” has been liberated. (Scraton 2013, p. 25) These statements give support for the Duff et al. (2013, p. 339) conclusion that “the potentiality of archives to impact on social justice may lie dormant until they are utilized and fed into the public arena.” Information access and the digital archives Christine Gifford (2013), the panel member with expertise on Access to Information legislation, also highlighted the importance of access to information legislation in getting organisations to open up access to their records, “although not always glamorous, and not sexy, it is the day-to-day work that ensures records are available when needed to enable justice to be done and the ‘truth’ to be known.” While the Panel had access to analog documents, the establishment of the digital archives played an important role in changing the narrative around the Hillsborough Disaster. As Gifford (2013) points out, “Anything that was said in the report was backed up by a document, and one group of documents would lead to another group of documents.” This created a powerful tool for

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highlighting the Panel’s analysis of what happened and it also placed all (or nearly all) the documents in the public arena, accessible to the families and the media, diminishing the opportunity for police-led counter-narratives to undermine the panel’s findings as they had previously successfully undermined the Taylor report’s findings that the supporters were not responsible for the disaster. People who could find and interpret the records The Independent Panel included individuals with a broad range of expertise, which proved essential for conducting the work of the Panel. The medical expert re-reviewed all the medical files and raised questions about the 3:15 pm cut-off time. As previously indicated, the new interpretation of the medical evidence raises questions about the Coroner’s decision to establish a 3:15 cut off and raises doubts about the inquests in a number of different ways. Furthermore, Sarah Tyacke noted that the historian on the panel played an essential role in locating missing documents to fill in gaps. Without the requisite expertise, records could not be located or interpreted. As Scraton suggests above, the records and documents existed and to a large extent were accessible, but they required investigators who had the expertise and the predisposition to recognise those potential qualities and activate the records in the service of social justice. The people who fought for justice Without a shift in public opinion, the government would not have established the Hillsborough Independent Panel. This shift was brought about by the relentless work of the families, their supporters, groups such as HFSG and HJC, researchers who had investigated police and media misconduct, for example, Scraton, Jemphrey, and Berrington, and film makers, for example, Jimmy McGovern who presented a different narrative. Many of the family members followed every avenue to keep the story of the disaster and its aftermath in the press. The determination to keep the campaign alive, to never stop reaching out for truth and justice resulted in the panel being established, constituted, and focussed. The struggle to have the truth of the events including the individuals responsible for the events publicly established (in place of the official police and establishment narrative), and to ensure that that acknowledgement of responsibility be established in a court of law was part of a sustained fight for justice. However, the public acknowledgement of the truth long known and attested to by the families and their supporters and prime ministerial apology was a significant social justice achievement in of itself. It is no coincidence that Kevin Sampson’s HJC endorsed oral history of the Hillsborough (Hillsborough Voices: The Real Story Told by the People Themselves) entitles the section relating to the HIP process and its report as “The Truth” and the section on the inquiries and court cases that followed as “Justice?” Peter Carney, a Liverpool fan present in the Leppings Lane and founding activist of the HJC, described

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his feelings on hearing the panel’s findings and reflected on what for him represented justice: ‘What is justice? Who guards the guards?’ That was my default position, this fundamental philosophical question—what is justice? And my answer was: justice is what we know to have gone on. It’s not a judge’s decision; it’s your own understanding of what has actually occurred. We have our own justice. And we the people, guard the guards. So yes, justice is getting the right outcome; but it’s the process too—establishing the platform, giving ourselves a voice so we can validate our own personal histories. (Peter Carney, in Sampson 2016, p 288) The panel’s report, its detailed and unequivocal findings, and the Prime Minister’s clear and unambiguous public apology for the double injustice done to the Hillsborough families (“the failure of the state to protect their loved ones and the indefensible wait to get to the truth” [“Hillsborough Papers,” 12 September 2012]) set in train a series of legal and government actions, some more conclusive than others. First, the original (and for the families, most devastating) verdicts of accidental death were quashed and new inquests were begun in 2014 and concluded in April 2016 with new verdicts of unlawful killing and complete exoneration of the supporters. In January 2017, after investigations by the Independent Police Complaints Commission and the police files on 23 individuals and organisations were passed on to the Crown Prosecution Service and in June 2017, it was announced that six people including Former Chief Inspector Sir Norman Bettinson, Former Chief Superintendent David Duckenfield, and former Sheffield Wednesday club secretary Graham Mackrell, were to be charged with regard to their responsibility for the events at Hillsborough. The challenges of these ongoing struggles for justice can be judged from repeated attempts throughout this process to reintroduce now discredited material implicating fans and the failure to get guilty verdicts in the courts. Charges were dropped against Bettinson and then in November 2019 in his second trial the jury found Duckenfield not guilty of the charge of gross negligence manslaughter. At the time of writing in the winter of 2019, further charges relating to events after the disaster (the cover up) remain to be heard. The process is, therefore, an incomplete one. For the families and campaigners, the changes brought about by the acknowledgement of bringing “the truth into light” by the panel (“the truth existed from the outset but had been withheld from them by the family”) was a real achievement but it also “allowed the families to move to the next stage of their protest, the demand for justice” in terms of the legal responsibility for the unlawful killing (Cronin 2017, p. 263). In the words of one family member and campaigner, the result of panel was:

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… excellent, the judgment was excellent, and when he quashed that accidental death verdict it was amazing, I was so pleased. Because everyone knows that Hillsborough was not an accident, so that sort of got rid of that one. The accidental verdict used to really, really upset me, because it let them off the hook didn’t it? Let’s just hope we get the right verdict in place now, and that the people who are really to blame will get punished. (Anne Williams,1 mother of Kevin Williams who died at Hillsborough, and lifelong Hillsborough justice campaigner, in Sampson 2016, p. 316) However, the failure to successfully prosecute those in charge on the day has left the families and campaigners angry and frustrated. Justice delayed and justice prevented. As Margaret Aspinall (2019), chair of the Hillsborough Family Support Group, said on the day of Duckinfield’s acquittal on 28 November 2019, if the 96 were unlawfully killed then “who the hell unlawfully killed them.” The long, evolving, and certainly ongoing struggle for justice and continuing grief felt by the Hillsborough families and supporters is clearly expressed by The Right Reverend James Jones, former Bishop of Liverpool and chair of the HIP. Commissioned by the government to prepare a report on the lessons for the treatment of future victims and survivors, he looked at what could be learnt from the experience of the Hillsborough families in facing the injustices of what he refers to as “the patronising disposition of unaccountable power.” He addressed his introduction directly to the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary and towards the end of this open letter he turned to the continuing grief and feelings of the family: Furthermore, grief is a journey without a destination. The bereaved travel through a landscape of memories and thoughts of what might have been. It is a journey marked by milestones, some you seek, some you stumble on. For the families and survivors of Hillsborough these milestones have included the search for truth, accountability and justice. But even these are not the end of the road. They are still travelling. (Jones 2017, p. 3)

Conclusion After numerous inquiries, and studies, the search for justice continues in the courts. The 2016 inquest verdict that the fans were unlawfully killed and that they had played no part in those events marks an end to one part of the campaign for justice for the 96—clearing the names of all the supporters present that day of responsibility for the events that took place. As we have made clear the next stage, seeking legal judgements of culpability on the police officers is a longer process and ultimately harder to achieve. Making the records related to Hillsborough disaster public and the building

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of a digital archive that makes available the distributed records consulted and disclosed by the HIP via one portal has played an important role in revealing what happened during and after the Hillsborough disaster. But many other factors played an important role. As Sarah Tyacke indicated, the archival role is to get records and keep them safe. In the Hillsborough case, different archives and archivists took possession of many records and preserved them. While dormant in the archives, the records remained silent. For the archives to have an impact on social justice, records must be preserved, disclosed, made available, used, and interpreted. So, while the identification and preservation of records with justice, accountability, and social justice potential is a crucial archival role, there is also a role of archivists (amongst others) in making those records speak by making them accessible and drawing them to the attention of others who might be able to activate that potential. For Sarah Tyacke, membership of the HIP represented a moment when an archivist was invited to serve into the “boardroom” and given the opportunity to provide input into this nationally significant review. The Hillsborough disaster and its aftermath was a tragedy for the individuals, families, and communities directly affected and also represented a profound injustice perpetrated on the same families and communities over more than two decades. The police who viewed Liverpool supporters as drunken hooligans needing to be controlled rather than as excited individuals, whose safety should have been prioritised, precipitated the tragedy. Thereafter, the police who could not acknowledge their culpability and an establishment who viewed football supporters as representatives of “the enemy within” lied, falsified documents, and maligned the victims in the aftermath of the disaster. Drawing on Cohen’s work on “techniques of denial,” Scraton (2013, p. 23) describes this process by the police of defending and directing attention away from their own culpability by attacking someone else, in this case the supporters, as “interpretative denial,” creating a powerful and dominant discourse which crowds out other voices. Hillsborough illustrates the capacity within state institutions to engage in discourses of deceit, denial, and neutralisation that protect and exonerate those in positions of power, those who stand highest in established hierarchies of credibility. Politically and ideologically, the “view from below” was subordinated and disqualified. Official discourse and legal defences were orchestrated to protect powerful public and private interests responsible for the disaster (Scraton 2013, p. 24). This point was also embedded in on John James’ 2017 report “The patronising disposition of unaccountable power” A report to ensure the pain and suffering of the Hillsborough families is not repeated, which makes a number of recommendations on the treatment of families and survivors and responses of public authorities, which should not seek to prioritise the protection their own reputation over the rights to justice of the victims. Describing as a “real barrier to accountability”:

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a “patronising disposition” is a cultural condition, a mindset which defines how organisations and people within them behave and which can act as an unwritten, even unspoken, connection between individuals in organisations. One of its core features is an instinctive prioritisation of the reputation of an organisation over the citizen’s right to expect people to be held to account for their actions. (Jones 2017, p. 6) Hillsborough, however, also illustrates that records and evidence are not enough alone to change hegemonic state narratives of “deceit and denial.” Instead, justice requires the commitment of dedicated individuals and communities working together to fight for justice, activating the evidence and operationalising expertise, to promote the “view from below,” and to successfully challenge and transform the discourse. In arguing that contemporary accountability technologies have been developed to hinder the accountability of the neo-liberal state, Cooper and Lapsley (2019, p. 18) make the point that as important as the records and information were “without an incredibly tenacious social movement, [the records] would not have brought anyone to account … the collective questioning of power.” Ultimately, the panel report and the disclosed records that underpinned it, only described a narrative that those who were there had always known and had always sought to assert as the truth but had struggled to be heard. Now that narrative was undeniable and publicly attested to by an archive available for all to check and this was attested to by the final and complete exoneration of the supporters by the inquiry in 2016, although successful prosecutions of those responsible remain tragically elusive: We have campaigned for 23 years for this but we never thought it would happen. It’s unbelievable—not the findings—but that it was all there and is now made public. All along we’ve been lied to, even our own lawyers let us down, but now it’s there for all to see. (family member, quoted in Scraton 2013, p. 22)

Note 1 Williams died in April 2013, after the original verdicts had been quashed but before the new inquests had returned the unlawful killing verdicts in April 2016.

References Aspinall, Margaret. 2019. “Margaret Aspinall on Hillsborough Retrial Conclusion.” Liverpool Football Club. 28 November. www.liverpoolfc.com/news/announcements/ 374754-margaret-aspinall-on-hillsborough-retrial-conclusion.

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Bradbury, Sean. 2012. “Hillsborough Disaster: How the Liverpool ECHO Reported the Tragedy in 1989.” Liverpool Echo. 11 September. www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/liver pool-news/hillsborough-disaster-how-liverpool-echo-3334610. Cooper, Christine, and Irvine Lapsley. 2019. “Hillsborough: The Fight for Accountability.” Critical Perspectives on Accounting, published online 2019. https:// doi.org/10.1016/j. cpa.2019.02.004. Cronin, Mike. 2017. “Loss, Protest and Heritage: Liverpool FC and Hillsborough.” International Journal of the History of Sport 34(3–4): 251–265. Duff, Wendy M., Andrew Flinn, Karen Emily Suurtamm, and David A. Wallace. 2013. “Social Justice Impact of Archives: A Preliminary Investigation.” Archival Science 13 (4): 317–348. Gifford, Christine. 2013. “Hillsborough: The Tangled Web.” National Archives Podcast Series. https://media.nationalarchives.gov.uk/index.php/hillsborough-the-tangled-web/. “Hillsborough Papers: Cameron Apology over ‘Double Injustice.’” 12 September 2012. BBC News. www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-merseyside-19543964. Hillsborough Independent Panel (HIP). September 2012. Hillsborough. The Report of the Hillsborough Independent Panel HCI 581. London: HMSO. Hughson, John, and Ramon Spaaij. 2011. “‘You Are Always on Our Mind’: The Hillsborough Tragedy as Cultural Trauma.” Acta Sociological 54(3): 283–295. Jones, James. November 2017. The Patronising Disposition of Unaccountable Power’: A Report to Ensure the Pain and Suffering of the Hillsborough Families Is Not Repeated. London: HMSO. Sampson, Kevin. 2016. Hillsborough Voices: The Real Story Told by the People Themselves. London: Ebury Press. Scraton, Phil. 2004. “Death on the Terraces: The Contexts and Injustices of the 1989 Hillsborough Disaster.” Soccer & Society 5(2): 183–200. Scraton, Phil. 2009 and 2016. Hillsborough—The Truth. UK ed. London: Mainstream Publishing. Scraton, Phil. 2013. “The Legacy of Hillsborough: Liberating Truth, Challenging Power.” Race & Class 55(2): 1–27. Scraton, Phil. 2013a. “Recovering Truth, Informing Justice- Researching the Hillsborough Disaster.” Queen’s University Belfast. www.youtube.com/watch?v=3E0QTrvZNac. South Yorkshire Coroner. 1990. Inquests into the Deaths of the Victims of the Hillsborough Football Stadium Disaster on the 15th April, 1989. Transcript of Proceedings, 1st day. The Town Hall, Sheffield, 19 November. South Yorkshire Coroner. 1991. Inquests into the Deaths of the Victims of the Hillsborough Football Stadium Disaster on the 15th April, 1989. Transcript of Proceedings, 75th day. The Town Hall, Sheffield, 21 March. Stuart-Smith, Lord Justice. February 1998. Scrutiny of Evidence relating to the Hillsborough Football Stadium Disaster. Cmnd 3878 London: Home Office. The Sun (United Kingdom) Wednesday, 19 April 1989, p. 1. Taylor, Lord Justice. 1989. The Hillsborough Stadium Disaster 15 April 1989 Inquiry by the Rt Hon Lord Justice Taylor Interim Report. London: HMSO.

Chapter 8

Social justice and historical accountability in Latin America Access to the records of the truth commissions in Chile Joel A. Blanco-Rivera Introduction This chapter explores the issues of control and access to archives related to the Pinochet dictatorship, and the advocacy efforts by Chilean organisations to open these archives. Specifically, I discuss contestations regarding the access to the records of three truth commissions established in Chile: the National Commission for Truth and Reconciliation in 1990, the National Commission on Political Imprisonment and Torture in 2003, and the Consultative Commission for the Qualification of Disappeared, Political Executions and Victims of Political Detention and Torture in 2010. The three commissions have their own laws and policies to address the subject of access to their records. The National Commission on Political Imprisonment and Torture is the strictest, with a law that specifically labels all the records of the commission as secret for 50 years, during which no authority, including the judiciary, is allowed consulting them. This 50-year secret, along with the lack of a uniform management of the archives of the three truth commissions, and the struggles over access to the records of the Pinochet dictatorship, particularly from military and police archives, have been publicly denounced by human rights organisations. This chapter illustrates the intersections and contentions between political power and archival advocacy in the context of transitional justice in Latin America by discussing how the Chilean government have addressed issues of access to the archives of three truth commissions and of the dictatorship, and how ongoing advocacy work by human rights groups clash with legal and administrative actions. Specifically, I discuss the advocacy work of the organisation Londres 38, espacio de memorias (Londres 38, A Space of Memories), which coordinated with other groups the campaign No Más Archivos Secretos (No More Secret Archives). I also discuss the use of legal recourses by victims to challenge the 50-year secrecy rule and obtain their files. Seen as a whole, these examples underscore unresolved issues about reckoning with the legacy of the Pinochet dictatorship, which includes the matter of control and access to archives. It accentuates how these archival issues are impacted by complex political and societal matters that shape the prospect for archives to serve

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social justice aims. In other words, when analysing access and control of archives in truth-seeking and human rights efforts, it is important to recognise “the social in social justice” (Duff et al. 2013, p. 240) and observe archival implications to social justice issues that manifest at the intersections between political structures, policymaking, and civil society advocacy.

Control and access to archives in post-dictatorial societies in Latin America Important reports about archives and human rights (Joinet 1996; Orentlicher 2005; González Quintana 2009; Ramírez Mourraille et al. 2017) have stressed the significance of access to archives as an imperative to address legacies of human rights violations, combat impunity, and respect the rights of the victims of abuses during periods of dictatorship and civil wars. This view is shared by the Latin American Transitional Justice Network (RLAJT for its Spanish initials), which in 2015 held two meetings to discuss issues related to archives and transitional justice in Latin America. A by-product of those meetings was a study by Shana Marques Prado dos Santos (2016) about the management of human rights archives, including government archives and archives of truth commissions, in seven Latin American countries.1 Prado dos Santos pointed to a series of challenges that include the “lack of archives and freedom of information laws consonant to international human rights principles,” and “attempts to conceal information or destruction of archives; unjustified restrictions to information, etc.” (2016 p. 99 Translated). These challenges illustrate Duff et al.’s emphasis on the primary role of power and power differentials between social actors as a fundamental consideration for understanding the relationship between archives and social justice. Therefore, it is important to recognise that access is impacted, positively and negatively, by the political and social maneuvers in which control of the archives interact. In Chile, administrative, legal, and political contestation over government records of and about the dictatorship illustrate how power struggles over control and access shape social justice endeavours of retributive justice, human rights, and historical accountability. As such, the impacts that the archives can have in serving these social justice objectives are both promoted and constrained through intersecting interests of advocacy for access and ongoing power to control and limit that access. The rest of this chapter illustrates these intersections and contentions between political power and archival advocacy in Chile. It follows Duff et al.’s (2013) conceptualisation of the archival approach to social justice, which recognises that the contestations over recordkeeping implicate social justice endeavours (p. 330). The advocacy work of groups like Londres 38 and the legal recourses used by victims to gain access to their files are social justice endeavours that confront the politics and powers that have controlled access to government records related to the dictatorship.

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It is important to conceptualise social justice in the context of this chapter. The most common term used in relation to justice in post-conflict societies is transitional justice, which the International Center for Transitional Justice (n.d.) defines as the ways countries emerging from periods of conflict and repression address large scale or systematic human rights violations so numerous and so serious that the normal justice system will not be able to provide an adequate response. One of the core principles of transitional justice is that it puts the victims and their dignity at the forefront of its endeavours. Its purpose is to acknowledge human rights violations and work towards preventing them from happening again. This is done with measures such as reparations, reforms of laws and institutions, and memorialisation. Therefore, when discussing social justice in the context of this chapter, I focus on two of the four objectives that Duff et al. identify as what social justice strives to achieve (p. 10): • •

Full human recognition: in the context of this chapter, it refers to the transitional justice principle of recognition of the victims’ dignity. Acknowledgement and remedy of historical inequalities with specific measures: in the context of this chapter, it refers to the transitional justice measures explained, particularly truth commissions.

In sum, I argue that the right to access to records of and about the Pinochet dictatorship is fundamental to recognise the dignity of the victims and to acknowledge and remedy historical inequalities that stemmed from the systematic repression committed by the State during the dictatorship. In Chile, the State has implemented measures towards the acknowledgement of the human rights violations (i.e. truth commissions, memorials, and museums), and remedy historical inequalities (i.e. financial reparations to victims and/or their relatives, scholarships to victims’ relatives). Yet, just as social justice “is always a process” (Duff et al. 2013, p. 11), transitional justice in Chile has been a continuous process, which is reflected in the issues of access to the archives. For as the reports issued by the commissions and reforms and reparations that took place afterwards represents a public recognition of the State of past human rights violations, the political and legal contestations over access to the records of these commissions represent the complexities of reckoning with a traumatic past.

The Chilean transition and access to archives On 11 March 1990, Patricio Aylwin was sworn in as the first president of Chile elected after the end of the Pinochet dictatorship.2 While the country

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was to be governed by a coalition of centre-left political parties called the Concertación, the shadows of the dictator himself remained in the politics of Chile since Pinochet stayed as the army commander in chief. Twenty-five years later, and 10 years after the death of Pinochet on December 2006, the shadows of a traumatic past continues, and the country lives in what Manuel and Roberto Garretón (2010) call an “incomplete democracy” (p. 117). During his inaugural presidential address, Aylwin stated that the government’s first responsibility was to “achieve national reconciliation founded on truth and justice” (Aylwin 1990, p. 10. Translated). He announced the creation of the National Commission for Truth and Reconciliation (CNVR for its Spanish initials), which he saw as a “reaffirmation that the moral conscience of the Nation demands the clarification of truth, and pursue justice to the extent possible—conciliating the virtue of justice with the virtue of prudence” (Aylwin 1990, pp. 12–13. Translated). “To the extent possible” (“en la medida de lo posible”), a phrase that encapsulated Aylwin’s approach to the legacy of human rights violations during the Pinochet dictatorship (Stern 2010, p. 32), and continues to resonate and complicate ongoing struggles over truth-seeking and justice. These alternative, and at times conflicting, desires for justice against the calls for “prudence” continue to frustrate Chile’s ability to deal openly with the Pinochet era. And at the heart of many of these battles lie contests over access and control of archives. Table 8.1 provides a general description of various truth-seeking mechanisms established by different administrations during the first 20 years postPinochet (1990–2010). These mechanisms illustrate the complexities of addressing the legacy of human rights abuses committed during the dictatorship. For instance, the CNVR issued its final report on 8 February 1991, identifying 2,279 victims of killings and disappearance (Report of the Chilean National Commission 1993, p. 1122). However, because of the specific mandate of investigating cases of killings and disappearances, the CNVR did not fully investigate additional thousands of cases of torture and illegal detentions that took place during the dictatorship. This was done by the National Commission on Political Imprisonment and Torture, created by President Ricardo Lagos in 2003 and commonly known as the Valech I Commission because it was chaired by Monsignor Sergio Valech. It issued its final report on November 2004, recognising 27,255 victims of torture and illegal detention (Comisión Nacional sobre … 2004, p. 301). On 24 November 2009, President Michelle Bachelet signed Law 20.405, which created the National Human Rights Institute (INDH for its Spanish initials) (Chile. Ministerio Secretaría General de la Presidencia 2009). On 13 February 2010, under powers granted under the law, President Bachelet created the Consultative Commission for the Qualification of Disappeared, Political Executions and Victims of Political Detention and Torture (Comisión Asesora para la Calificación de Detenidos Desaparecidos, Ejecutados Políticos y Víctimas de Prisión Política y Tortura). This commission continued investigating cases of torture,

Gave President Bachelet the power to • create the Consultative Commission for the Qualification of Disappeared, Political Executions and Victims of Political Detention and Torture, known as the Valech II Commission. Thirty additional cases of political execu- • tions and disappearances. 9,795 additional cases of political imprisonment and torture.

Created by President Michelle Bachelet on 5 February 2010 to continue investigating cases of torture, illegal detentions, and killings not reported by the CNVR and the Valech I Commission.

Consultative Commission for the Qualification of Disappeared, Political Executions and Victims of Political Detention and Torture (Valech II) •

•

• •

•

•

•

•

•

•

Created on 24 November 2009 through Law 20.405.

National Human Rights Institute (INDH)

Created by decree by President Ricardo Lagos on 26 September 2003.

•

•

2,279 cases of killing and disappearance. 95% of the human rights violations documented were committed of the State. Most violations occurred between 1974 and 1977. 27,255 victims of torture and illegal detention. 1,132 detentions centres. A complementary report issued on June 2005, documented 1,204 additional cases of torture and illegal detention.

• •

Created by decree by President Patricio Aylwin on 25 April 1990.

National Commission on Truth and Reconciliation (CNVR) National Commission on Political Imprisonment and Torture (Valech I)

Law 20.405 established that the records of the consultative commission were to be kept confidential. However, the law does not explicitly prohibit all authorities from accessing them, nor did it establish a period for keeping the records closed.

Records are to be kept confidential, except for the Courts, which are allowed to access records. The law does not provide a period for keeping the records closed. Section IV, Article 15 of Law 19.992 classified as secret all the documents created and accumulated by the Commission. Records are to be kept secret for 50 years. No individual or authority, including the courts, would have access to the records. Article 15 does recognise the right of victims to access their records. Under Law 20.405, the INDH became the custodian of the records of the CNVR, and the Valech I and II Commissions.

Archival issues

Findings/Actions

Date created

Transitional Justice mechanism

Table 8.1 Truth-seeking mechanisms.

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illegal detentions, and killings, opening another door for victims who were not able to offer their testimonies to the CNVR or the Valech I Commission. Monsignor Valech was also the chair of the consultative commission, and thus it became known as the Valech II Commission. The Valech II Commission presented its report to President Sebastián Piñera on 18 August 2011, identifying 30 additional cases of political executions and forced disappearances, and 9,795 additional cases of political imprisonment and torture (Chile. Instituto Nacional de Derechos Humanos 2016a). The importance of underlining these government actions lies in their archival implications, and particularly in relation to control and access. There is no legislation or policy for the integrated management and access of the archives of the three commissions (Chile. Instituto Nacional de Derechos Humanos 2014, p. 274). To illustrate the discrepancies, after the CNVR released its report in 1991, Congress passed law 19.123, creating the National Corporation for Reparations and Reconciliation, responsible for implementing the CNVR recommendations. The law states that the National Corporation would keep their records and the records of the CNVR, and that “access to this information should safeguard its absolute confidentiality” (Chile. Ministerio de Interior 1992, p. 2. Translated). The only exception was the courts, which were allowed to access the records. The law did not establish a time period for keeping the records closed (Londres 38, espacio de memorias 2015, p. 8). That is not the case for the records of the Valech I Commission. On 24 December 2004, Congress passed Law No. 19.992, which provides the grounds for reparations to the victims recognised by the Commission. Section IV, Article 15 classifies as secret all the records created and accrued by the Valech I Commission, and are to be kept secret for a period of 50 years (Chile. Ministerio de Interior 2004, p. 3). The law states that during those 50 years, “no individual, group, authority or judiciary should have access” to the records (p. 4. Translated, emphasis added). Therefore, and contrary to the CNVR records, the courts are not allowed to access the records of the Valech I Commission. This provision became known as the “Valech secret” (Secreto Valech). When presenting the law before the Chilean Chamber of Deputies, President Lagos argued that one of the main reasons for the 50-years secret was to honour and safeguard the trust that victims gave to the Commission, and that the government “cannot allow that their courageous testimonies and painful memories be used for any purpose other than that for which were provided, which is, for the elaboration of the Commission’s report” (Biblioteca del Congreso Nacional de Chile 2004, p. 18. Translated). Some members of the Chamber criticised this rationale. Eugenio Tuma, from the Party for Democracy, warned that the 50 years of secrecy could lead to impunity over human rights violations (p. 75). Laura Soto, from the Party for Democracy, added that Article 15 might be unconstitutional and might violate international treaties because it limited the judiciary’s legal responsibility to investigate and prosecute human rights violations (p. 81). Tuma, Soto, Isabel Allende, and other deputies

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presented an amendment that would have allowed the courts to access at least the testimonies, and, with the victims’ consent, their personal information. The motion did not pass, and Law 19.992 was eventually approved as initially proposed by President Lagos (p. 93). Article 15 does allow victims to access their records and “make them known or provide them to others under their own will” (Chile. Ministerio de Interior 2004, p. 4. Translated). But, as discussed below, the provision led to different interpretations. Adding to these complexities, Law 20.405, which created the National Human Rights Institute in 2009, classified as secret the records that were to be created by the Valech II Commission. But unlike the Valech I Commission records, the law neither explicitly impede the courts from accessing their records, nor did it establish a time period for keeping the records closed. In addition, through this law the INDH became the new custodian of the records of the CNVR, Valech I, and Valech II commissions. It gave the INDH the mandate to process the records of the commissions, but did not address the discrepancies over access of each commission’s records. This is particularly problematic with the records of the Valech I Commission since the language of the law explicitly bans any authority of accessing the records, thus leading to questions of whether the archivists could even be allowed to process them. On 19 November 2013, and in response to multiple requests from various courts that were investigating cases of human rights violations, the INDH requested from the Comptroller General an opinion about the Institute’s authority to process the records of the Valech I and II commissions and provide access to the courts.3 In the request, the INDH explains the contradictions emanating from Law 20.405 regarding the processing of the records of the Valech I and II Commissions. This law, the INDH explains, establishes the Institute as the custodian of the records, and responsible for its processing, “a responsibility that results contrary to the secret character [of the Valech I and II records], and therefore a situation that needs clarification to define how to proceed” (Chile. Instituto Nacional de Derechos Humanos 2013, p. 2. Translated). The INDH asked the Comptroller General to allow them to process the records of the Valech I and II commissions and give access to the courts in their investigations of human rights violations (pp. 20–21). The Comptroller’s response, on 10 June 2014, stated that because of Law 19.992’s explicit provision about the secrecy of the records of the Valech I Commission, the restriction of access by any individual or authority stands (Chile. Contraloría General de la República 2014). However, and regarding the records of the Valech II Commission, the Comptroller argued that while Law 20.405 does not explicitly ban the courts from having access, it did not have the authority to rule on whether the INDH could give the courts access to the records; this authority falls on the courts themselves (ibid.). The Comptroller did express that the INDH could process the records, because this responsibility was included in Law 20.405, but clarified that the processing of the records was to be done exclusively within the context of meeting the objective of safeguarding the information (ibid.). The INDH interpreted the Comptroller’s opinion regarding Valech

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II as an opening to provide records of that commission to the courts investigating cases of human rights violations (Collins 2015, p. 8). On 27 November 2015, the INDH turned over 605 files from the Valech II Commission to the Appeals Court of Rancagua, which requested the records because of over 25 active investigations of human rights violations committed in that city (Diario UChile 2015). Yet, fundamental issues regarding access to the records of the commissions persist. For while the courts can use the records of the CNVR and Valech II for their investigations, the “Valech secret” continues to block possibilities of using the records of Valech I, which documented over 27,000 cases of torture and illegal detention, for investigations by the judiciary. The INDH, in its 2014, 2015, and 2016 annual reports have reiterated its calls for legislation to repeal the Valech secret and allow the courts access to the records. Julia Lorena Fries, director of the INDH from 2000 to 2016, added in a 2015 interview that “the State’s responsibility is truth and in that sense, eliminate any obstacle to know the truth” (El Mostrador 2015. Translated). Not only are there issues with the access to the archives of the commissions, but also of the records of the army and the police, and specifically the lack of authority the National Archives of Chile have on handling these records. The National Archives is part of the Directorate of Libraries, Archives and Museums (DIBAM for its Spanish initials), which was established by law in 1929. This law states that the National Archives has the responsibility of acquiring, arranging, and preserving the records of the Chilean government and “all the documents and manuscripts related to the Nation’s history” (Chile. Ministerio de Educación Pública 1929, p. 3). The law is still in effect. However, on January 1989, just three months after Pinochet lost a plebiscite that would have kept him in power for eight more years, the law was amended, adding that the records of the armed forces and the police were exempted from being transferred to the Chilean National Archives, and thus giving them the authority to dispose of their records without the authorisation of the National Archives (Chile. Ministerio De Defensa Nacional 1989). The inconsistencies with the laws and actions taken with the management of government records of and about the dictatorship, especially in terms of control and restriction of access to those records, have been part of the grievances brought by victims, their relatives, and human rights organisations. The work of these types of groups, both national and transnational, has been underscored by the transitional justice literature as a fundamental component of transitional justice (Roht-Arriaza 2005; Collins 2010; Sikkink 2011). Therefore, archival advocacy becomes an important action that can impact social justice issues.

Transitional justice and archival advocacy The Valech secret and the amended National Archives law that closed off the opening of military and police archives would potentially block criminal investigations, and thus negatively impact social justice goals, especially those related to legal justice, and historical narratives. As noted by Amanda Strauss,

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the evidentiary value of archival records is amplified in the context of human rights violations, for if documentary evidence cannot be presented to substantiate the detention, torture, or disappearance of a victim, it is as if this person simply vanished—or never existed. (2015, p. 385) In the context of the work of the three commissions considered in this chapter, the evidentiary value of records created and accumulated by the commissions served a role for each commission to reach conclusions on the cases documented in their respective reports. However, the publication of the reports and the end of the commissions’ work does not equal closure for the archival records. Rather, they build ongoing evidentiary, administrative, and historical values, which in turn serve purposes of judicial and historical accountability. And for victims and their relatives that seek various forms of justice, access to records become engrained to their efforts. Londres 38, espacio de memorias and No Más Archivos Secretos Archival praxis is not just about working with the documents; it is also about advocacy, and especially so in the Chilean context regarding human rights violations. In Chile, archivists and non-archivists have become involved in advocacy works that have focused on campaigning for the opening of the archives of the dictatorship and access to the records of the Valech Commissions. One of the organisations that became involved in advocacy work regarding archives is Londres 38, espacio de memorias (Londres 38, A Space of Memories). The organisation created a public campaign called No Más Archivos Secretos (No More Secret Archives) that began in 2013, the 40th anniversary of the military coup against Salvador Allende. Before discussing this advocacy work, some context about the organisation and the building where it is based is warranted. During the early months of the dictatorship, the military regime used places such as hospitals, schools, and public buildings as detention centres. One of those places was a house located in an upscale neighbourhood in the capital, Santiago, at 38 Londres Street. The house served as headquarters for the Socialist Party during the Allende years (1970–1973) (Ochoa-Sotomayor and Maillard-Mancilla 2011, p. 23). Soon after the coup, the military took over the house and transformed it into a detention centre. According to testimonies received by the Valech I Commission, the house was known as La Silla (The Chair) because of the way the detainees were kept: tied to a chair and blindfolded (Comisión Nacional sobre … 2004, p. 528). There is evidence of 98 individuals who were detained at Londres 38 and were either executed and/or disappeared (Londres 38, espacio de memorias 2019a). Londres 38 served as a detention centre from September 1973 to September 1974 (Comisión Nacional sobre … 2004, p. 39). On November 1978, by executive order, Augusto Pinochet transferred the house to the O’Higgins Institute (Comisión Nacional

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sobre … 2004, p. 42). The Institute was founded in 1953 with the mission of studying and remembering the legacy of Bernardo O’Higgins, the leader of Chilean independence from Spain (Stern 2010, p. 271). The Institute had as its members former Army officers (Wyndham and Read 2011, p. 201), and kept a connection with the Army (Stern 2010, p. 271). The house continued to serve as the headquarters of the O’Higgins Institute until 2007, when a combination of actions by the Chilean government, the Institute, and human rights groups led to the repossession of Londres 38 as a memorial and museum. Today, the house is a Historic Monument, as declared by the Chilean National Monuments Council (Ochoa-Sotomayor and Maillard-Mancilla 2011, p. 62). Since 2011, it is run by the organisation Londres 38, espacio de memorias, whose members include survivors and relatives of individuals killed or disappeared. Londres 38 serves as a space for memorialisation, education, documentation, and dissemination. Its mission is to “contribute to the knowledge and dissemination of the memories and history” of the former detention centre, “its protagonists and the related experiences of resistance” (Londres 38, espacio de memorias 2016a. Translated). Since its beginning, Londres 38 envisioned the creation of a digital archive that would include historical documents and interviews with survivors and relatives of prisoners of Londres 38 (Londres 38, espacio de memorias 2012, p. 41). It would also serve as a virtual space to offer as much information as possible about the history of Londres 38. The digital archive was initially published on August 2011 (p. 83), and is accessible through www.londres38.cl/ 1934/w3-channel.html. Paulina Bravo, who started in 2011 as the organisation’s archivist, recalls that since 2012, “the organization began to realize that the topic of archives was something that should be addressed in concert with other areas” (Pers. comm. Translated). She added that it “was a year in which an awareness [about the importance of archives] was germinating within the organization,” and evolved from a collective process (ibid). The archival functions within Londres 38 served two main components. One is the digital archive and the institutional archive of the organisational records of Londres 38, espacio de memorias. The second component is more directly related to the role of archives as mechanisms to uncover silences from a traumatic past. The organisation has been working on a project to document and disseminate the stories of each of the individuals who suffered detention and torture at Londres 38 during the dictatorship (Pers. comm.). The organisation created an index card, available online through the digital archive, of each individual (Londres 38, espacio de memorias 2019a). Each card has the name, date of birth, date of detention, and political/movement affiliation of the person (if known). Some cards have a picture of the person, and links to information about judicial processes related to the individual. This initiative could be seen as an approach to use archives for the purposes of, as Elizabeth Jelin (2003) explains, opening memories that were silenced during the dictatorship, becoming part of the social struggles to reckon with the past. These index cards also

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become what Laura Millar (2006) typifies as “triggers or touchstones that lead to the recollection of past events” (p. 114). In the context of the 40th anniversary of the coup in 2013, Londres 38 collaborated with other human rights organisations to establish dialogues about the unresolved issues regarding the legacy of the dictatorship. These dialogues also sought to connect this legacy with contemporary social justice issues in Chile in 2013. These issues included social and economic models implemented by the dictatorship and continued by post-dictatorship governments, which have led to massive mobilisations and protests. For instance, in 2011, there were massive mobilisations by students protesting the neoliberal education model implemented during the dictatorship and continued post-dictatorship, that significantly increased tuition costs at private universities and widened the quality gap within education because of weak regulations (Guzman-Concha 2012, p. 412).4 As part of this dialogue, four thematic lines of action were established, one of which was “The right to information and access to archives” (Londres 38, espacio de memorias 2013, p. 68). A working group was established, with representatives from Archivists without Borders Chile, Londres 38, the Association of Relatives of the Disappeared and Detained, and the Museum of Memory and Human Rights, among other organisations (p. 81). The working group decided to focus on the absence of a legal framework for the systematic management of the archives related to the dictatorship (p. 82). Similar to the connection of the legacy of the dictatorship with current social and political issues in Chile, the problematic nature of the laws and policies related to access of the dictatorship and truth commissions’ records typified a broader need for improving the management of current public records in Chile. One of the results of this work was the release of a declaration on 9 June 2013, International Archives Day (Paulina Bravo, pers. comm.). The declaration underscored the country’s lack of awareness regarding the importance of archives as a tool to claim citizens’ rights and made as one of its objectives to increase awareness to improve the situation of public archives in Chile (Londres 38, espacio de memorias 2013, p. 84). To raise awareness, the working group prepared and disseminated a poster titled “La información pública ¡es tuya! ¡Exige el libre acceso a la información!” (Public records are yours! Demand free access to information!) (Londres 38, espacio de memorias 2019b). The poster explains what archives are, underscores the need for a new archives law, and how the absence of this law and of better archival practices are an impediment to the access of public records. Paulina Bravo, who was part of the working group, reflected on the work of this group: For Londres 38, the framework of the commemoration of the 40 years (of the coup) was to do collective work with other organizations … Therefore, the majority of the members of the archives working group had no prior relation with Londres 38 … And thus many people participated and it was

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positive because we were able to debate these topics and we thought about how to make more visible the problem of the legal protection of archives. (Pers. comm. Translated) Parallel to the working group initiatives was the campaign No Más Archivos Secretos. Its planning took place in the context of the 40th anniversary of the coup, and had as its main objective promoting the importance of the right to access information and the need to open the archives about the dictatorship (Londres 38, espacio de memorias 2016b). While the initiatives of the archives working group explained above focused on the importance of public archives, No Más Archivos Secretos focused on the need to open three types of archives: the archives of the truth commissions; the archives of the army, police, and intelligence agencies; and the archives of the detention centre Colonia Dignidad (ibid).5 On 15 January 2014, human rights organisations went to the Presidential Palace, La Moneda, and handed over a petition with the first 1,500 signatures (Ibáñez Canelo 2014).6 Throughout 2014, participants of the campaign held meetings with the President of the Supreme Court, authorities from the Ministry of Justice and members of the Chilean Congress (Londres 38, espacio de memorias 2015, p. 18). Copies of the campaign’s poster were placed throughout the streets of Santiago, Chile, giving more visibility to archival issues. By May 2016, the number of signatures have grown to over 3,000 (Paulina Bravo, pers. comm.). One of the outcomes of No More Secret Archives was the introduction of legislation to repeal the 1989 law that gave the army and police forces authority to dispose of their records. In July 2014, the Chamber of Deputies’ Human Rights Commission visited Londres 38, and during the meeting, Londres 38 petitioned for the repeal of the law.7 Deputy Tucapel Jimenez was one of the members of the Chamber who visited Londres 38 (Chile. Cámara de Diputados … 2015b), and in March 2015, he and Gabriel Boric introduced such legislation (Londres 38, espacio de memorias 2015, p. 19). The proposed legislation was unanimously endorsed by the Chamber of Deputies’ Human Rights Commission (Chile. Cámara de Diputados 2015a). However, the Chamber’s National Defense Commission suggested changes to the proposed legislation, basically keeping the authority within the armed forces on which records should remain secret, and limiting the authority of the National Archives for overseeing the management of the records (Londres 38, espacio de memorias 2016c). As of August 2017, the law is still under the legislative process.8 While at the time of writing this chapter, it is uncertain whether the bill will pass, and thus a tangible impact cannot be, how the legislation emerged puts into perspective Duff et al.’s (2013) conceptualisation of the archival approach to social justice, which recognises that the contestations over recordkeeping implicates social justice endeavours (p. 330). The advocacy work through No More Secret Archives and the archives working group is a social justice

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endeavour that confronts the politics and powers that have controlled access to government records related to the dictatorship and that have excluded individuals, and particularly victims and their relatives, from using those records for their own endeavours towards accountability and truth-seeking. Furthermore, these contestations over control and access of the archives related to the dictatorship have served to put into perspective the need for an archives law that would strengthen the management of public archives in Chile.9 Desclasificación Popular Other advocacy initiatives from other groups and individuals have led to tangible archival impacts to social justice, and using the law itself as a mechanism to crack the Valech secret. As explained earlier, article 15 of Law 19.992 includes a provision that allows victims named in the Valech I report to request their records. To use this provision, Chilean visual artist Francisco Papas Fritas and former political prisoners created the initiative Desclasificación Popular (Popular Declassification) in 2015. This advocacy initiative encourages victims named in the Valech I report to use the provision to request their records. Its website, http://desclasificacionpopular.cl/, includes a manual explaining to those interested how to request the records. During the same time that Popular Declassification went public, Fabiola Valenzuela Valladares, whose name appears in the report of the Valech I Commission, went to the courts to request access to her records. Fabiola’s mother, Rosaura Valladares was detained and suffered torture in 1973 and became pregnant with Fabiola during detention (The Clinic Online 2016). Both Rosaura and Fabiola appear in the list of victims recognised by the Valech I Commission (Comisión Nacional sobre … 2004, p. 610). Fabiola gave testimony to the Valech Commission in 2003, and her file is one of the thousands that was closed because of Law 19.992. In an interview for The Clinic Online, Fabiola explains her reason for requesting the records: On the 40th anniversary of the coup I learned that at least a quarter of the former political prisoners [named in] the Valech I Commission were dead by 2013 … I gave testimony when I was 30 years old, so at 80 years old, if I’m still alive, my testimony might be opened. Therefore, I decided that I needed to do something. (The Clinic Online 2016. Translated) On 26 August 2015, Fabiola and her lawyers presented an access request to the INDH, requiring all the records related to her case. The Institute responded on 17 September, indicating that it was impossible to provide the records because the INDH’s only responsibility was as custodian of the records and lacks the authority to process and provide the records given their secret character (Valenzuela Valladares v. Instituto Nacional de Derechos Humanos 2015a).

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The INDH did encourage Ms. Valenzuela Valladares to take the request to the courts (Valenzuela Valladares v. Instituto Nacional de Derechos Humanos 2015a). On 17 October, Fabiola and her lawyers sought legal recourse from the Chilean Court of Appeals (“La odisea de Fabiola …” 2016). On its response to the court, the INDH underscores the importance of access to information in the context of accountability for human rights violations and states that it assists diligently on the requests to access records from the commissions (Valenzuela Valladares v. Instituto Nacional de Derechos Humanos 2015a, p. 4). Yet, the INDH states that it is under the oversight of the Office of the Comptroller General, which, as explained above, submitted an opinion which concluded that the INDH was inhibited from processing the records of Valech I because of the law’s explicit classification of the records as secret (Valenzuela Valladares v. Instituto Nacional de Derechos Humanos 2015a, p. 10). On 21 December 2015, the Court of Appeals of Santiago, Chile decided in favour of Valenzuela Valladares, requiring the INDH to give Fabiola access to her file because of the provision of Law 19.992 that give victims the right to request their records (Valenzuela Valladares v. Instituto Nacional de Derechos Humanos 2015b, p. 6). The INDH did not appeal the decision, and its Director expressed the Institute’s desire to provide the records (Areyuna 2015). Fabiola Valenzuela was the first person who successfully obtained her file, but not the only one who went to the courts. On 16 June 2016, and with the help of members of Popular Declassification, 14 individuals named in the Valech I report filed legal recourses before the Court of Appeals of Santiago claiming their right to access their files and requesting the Court order the INDH to provide them their files.10 On 2 August 2016, the Court of Appeals of Santiago ruled in favour of the fourteen petitioners (“Corte de Apelaciones …” 2016) and the INDH officially gave the files to the petitioners on 24 September (Carrasco 2016). On 19 October 2016, the INDH announced a change in its policy, indicating that the Institute would be providing the files to any individual named in the Valech I report who request them (Chile. Instituto Nacional de Derechos Humanos. 2016b.) The INDH’s decision to give access to the records to the victims that request them, instead of waiting for a court order, can be seen as an impact of the legal recourses presented by Fabiola and 14 other victims, and the advocacy work done by Popular Declassification, which pointed to the law that established the Valech secret as the same tool that can be used to begin opening secret archives. Similarly, one of the archival impacts of No More Secret Archives has been to keep the debate about the Valech secret on the public discourse, to the point that legislation was presented to repeal the Valech secret. On 11 September 2014, deputy Hugo Gutiérrez introduced a bill to declare the Valech I Commission’s records as public (“Boletín No. 9598–17 …” 2014). The bill also gave the INDH the authorisation to provide records to the courts. However, on 31 August 2016, the bill felt short of three votes to be approved by the Chamber of Deputies (Oberreuter and Becerra 2016).11 Hence, these

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struggles for social justice through opening archives to confront historical human rights abuses and the need for accountability through victim agency remain ongoing.

Conclusion This chapter has looked at the issue of access to records of the CNVR, the Valech commissions, and the security forces to illustrate the complexities and contestations surrounding the control of archives in post-dictatorial societies. The different laws and policies that regulate the management and access of the records of the three commissions have presented difficulties to the National Human Rights Institute in term of its own responsibilities regarding the processing of the records. Furthermore, the Valech secret, which explicitly constrains access by any authority, except the victims themselves, to the records of Valech I for 50 years, has hindered ongoing investigations by the judiciary over human rights abuses. However, the recent realisation that victims can obtain their own files possibly opens the window to assemble evidence for prospective court cases. The unresolved issues regarding the archives of the truth commissions and of the dictatorship have been actively present more than 25 years after the end of the dictatorship. Archival advocacy has become a social justice endeavour through the work of Londres 38, Desclasificación Popular, and the campaigns towards improving the situation of public records in Chile. The works of archivists and non-archivists have moved archives to the forefront of the question of accountability for human rights violations during the dictatorship. As an example of the continuous commitment of Londres 38 to archival advocacy, the organisation has been actively participating in archives related forums. For example, on 9 June 2017, Londres 38 participated in the third Interdisciplinary Archives Seminar in Chile (Londres 38, espacio de memorias 2017a). Also in 2017, Londres 38, along with other human rights groups, sent a letter to the director of the Chilean National Archives, Emma de Ramón Acevedo, asking the National Archives for a more proactive role, recognising that the National Archives is the one responsible for the proper management of government archives (Londres 38, espacio de memorias 2017b). De Ramón Acevedo responded with a recognition of the challenges that the National Archives has, given the current legal structure. She concluded the letter stating: We trust that by continuing working together, as we have done so far, we can continue this path and, in the shortest possible time, repeal the laws that we inherited and which does not allow us access to all the information. (Londres 38, espacio de memorias 2017c) Doors have started to open as a direct impact of these campaigns, as is the case of the legislation presented by Tucapel Jimenez and Gabriel Boric to

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derogate the 1989 law that gives the military and police the authority to dispose of their records. Furthermore, the successful legal recourses presented by 15 victims named in the Valech I report, and the INDH’s change in its policy has led to the recognition of the right of each victim to claim her or his file. These results illustrate both the individual and societal impacts of archives in the context of human rights. The response of one of the victims after receiving her file summarises it: The recovery of these archives is part of the moral reparations that the State owns us. We need to be owners of such information and little by little we should give them to society. A piece of the truth is now in our hands. (Talarn Rabascall 2016)

Notes 1 The countries are Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Peru. 2 For more on Pinochet’s regime, see Pamela Constable and Arturo Valenzuela, A nation of enemies: Chile under Pinochet (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1991); Peter Kornbluh, The Pinochet file: A declassified dossier on atrocity and accountability (New York: The New Press, 2013). 3 The INDH is by law under the authority of the Comptroller General. 4 In July 2016, President Michelle Bachelet introduced her administration’s Education Reform. By October 2016, the bill was still under the legislative process of the Education Commission at the Chamber of Deputies. See Macarena Segovia y Maria Belén Medina, “Educación superior: La reforma sin rumbo,” El Mostrador, 5 de octubre de 2016. Accessed 20 October 2016. www.elmostrador.cl/noticias/pais/ 2016/10/05/educacion-superior-la-reforma-sin-rumbo/. 5 Colonia Dignidad was established in the mid-fifties in Chile by a group of German immigrants after World War II. In 1961, Paul Schaefer, having immigrated from Germany where he was sought for child molestation, took over Colonia Dignidad, converting it into a cult. During the dictatorship, Schaefer collaborated closely with Pinochet’s intelligence division, DINA, which used Colonia Dignidad as a centre for detention and torture. 6 A video of the event is available at www.youtube.com/watch?v=aq65Wr4Ihko (Accessed 20 October 2016). 7 See www.londres38.cl/1937/w3-article-96425.html (Accessed 21 August 2017). 8 The records and status of the bill are available at www.camara.cl/pley/pley_detalle. aspx?prmID=10378&prmBL=9958-17 (Accessed 20 October 2016). 9 In Latin America, this type of legislation is commonly known as “general archives law” (“ley general de archivos”). 10 The legal recourses are available online through the Court of Appeals’ database of cases, http://corte.poderjudicial.cl. The case numbers are: 48,719–2016; 48,721– 2016; 48,723–2016; 48,727–2016; 48,729–2016; 48,732–2016; 48,734–2016; 48,737–2016; 48,739–2016; 48,741–2016; 48,744–2016; 48,745–2016; 48,747– 2016; and 48,755–2016. 11 The bill needed 60 votes to pass. The records of the bill, including a transcript of the debate on 31 August 2016, is available at www.camara.cl/pley/pley_detalle. aspx?prmID=10014. (Accessed 31 August 2017)

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References Areyuna, Héctor. 2015. “INDH deberá entregar información a víctimas incluídas en Informe Valech.” Diario UChile. 23 December 2015. Accessed 20 October 2016. http://radio.uchile.cl/2015/12/23/corte-de-apelaciones-obliga-a-indh-entregar-informa cion-de-informe-valech/. Aylwin, Patricio. 1990. “Mensaje Presidencial, Legislatura 320a, Ordinaria Sesión del Congreso Pleno, en lunes 21 de mayo de 1990.” Accessed 2 July 2016. https://web.arch ive.org/web/20160508093053/http://historiapolitica.bcn.cl/obtienearchivo?id=recurso slegales/10221.3/10558/1/1990.PDF. Biblioteca del Congreso Nacional de Chile. 2004. “Historia de la Ley No. 19.992. Establece pensión de reparación y otorga otros beneficios a favor de las personas que indica.” Accessed 2 July 2016. www.leychile.cl/Navegar?idNorma=233930&buscar=Historia+ de+la+Ley+No.+19.992. Carrasco, Basthian. 2016. “Desclasificación Popular logra que el INDH de información de 14 casos de la Comisión Valech.” Radio Smoke. 24 September 2016. Accessed 20 October 2016. web.archive.org/web/20160817145136/www.radiosmoke.cl/quienes-somos/. Chile. Cámara de Diputados. 2014. “Boletín No. 9598-17. Proyecto de ley que establece el cáracter público de los antecedentes recogidos durante funcionamiento de la Comisión Nacional sobre Prisión Política y Tortura, llamada también ‘Comisión Valech’.” 11 September 2014. www.camara.cl/pley/pley_detalle.aspx?prmID=10014. Chile. Cámara de Diputados. 2015a. “Comisión aprueba proyecto que prohíbe destrucción de documentos en las fuerzas armadas.” Accessed 20 October 2016. www.camara.cl/ prensa/noticias_detalle.aspx?prmid=127185. Chile. Cámara de Diputados. Comisión de Derechos Humanos Y Pueblos Originarios. 2015b. “Informe de la Comisión de Derechos Humanos y Pueblos Originarios recaído en el proyecto de ley que modifica el decreto con fuerza de ley n°5.200, de 1929, del Ministerio de Educación Pública.” 21 August 2015. Chile. Comisión Nacional de Verdad y Reconciliación. 1993. Report of the Chilean National Commission on Truth and Reconciliation. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press. Chile. Contraloría General de la República. 2014. “Dictamen 41230.” 10 June. Chile: Informe anual 2014. Santiago, Chile: Instituto Nacional de Derechos Humanos. Chile: Informe anual 2015. Santiago, Chile: Instituto Nacional de Derechos Humanos. Chile. Instituto Nacional de Derechos Humanos. 2013. “Solicita pronunciamiento que indica sobre reconsideración parcial de dictámenes que señala y alcances de facultades del INDH. Ord. No. 506.” Santiago. 19 November. Chile. Instituto Nacional de Derechos Humanos. 2014. Situación de los derechos humanos en. Chile. Instituto Nacional de Derechos Humanos. 2015. Situación de los derechos humanos en. Chile. Instituto Nacional de Derechos Humanos. 2016a. “Información Comisión Valech.” Accessed 2 July 2016. web.archive.org/web/20160717013137/www.indh.cl/informa cion-comision-valech. Chile. Instituto Nacional de Derechos Humanos. 2016b. “Consejo INDH acuerda entregar a titulares documentos del Archivo Valech.” 19 October 2016. Accessed 20 October 2016. www.indh.cl/consejo-indh-acuerda-entregar-a-titulares-documentos-delarchivo-valech.

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Chile. Ministerio De Defensa Nacional. 1989. “Ley 18.771. Modifica decreto con fuerza de ley no. 5.200, de 1929, del Ministerio de Educación Pública.” Accessed 2 July 2016. www.leychile.cl/N?i=30150&f=1989-01-17&p=. Chile. Ministerio de Educación Pública. 1929. “Decreto con fuerza de ley núm. 5200.” Accessed 2 July 2016. www.leychile.cl/N?i=129136&f=1989-01-17&p=. Chile. Ministerio de Interior. 1992. “Ley 19.123. Crea Corporacion Nacional de Reparacion y Reconciliacion, establece pension de reparacion y otorga otros beneficios en favor de personas que señala.” Accessed 2 July 2016. www.leychile.cl/N?i=30490&f=200912-10&p=. Chile. Ministerio de Interior. 2004. “Ley 19.992. Establece pension de reparacion y otorga otros beneficios a favor de las personas que indica.” Accessed 2 July 2016. http://bcn.cl/1uw0h. Chile. Ministerio Secretaría General de la Presidencia. 2009. “Ley núm. 20.405 del Instituto Nacional de Derechos Humanos.” Accessed 2 July 2016. www.leychile.cl/N? i=1008867&f=2016-01-05&p=. Collins, Cath. 2010. Post-Transitional Justice: Human Rights Trials in Chile and El Salvador. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press. Collins, Cath. 2015. “Chile 2014—¿Una nueva medida de lo posible? Verdad, justicia, memoria y reparaciones pos dictadura.” Transitional Justice Institute Research paper no. 15-07. 25 September. Comisión Nacional sobre Prisión Política y Tortura. 2004. “Chile. Informe Comisión Nacional sobre Prisión Política y Tortura.” Accessed 2 July 2016. www.bcn.cl/bibliodi gital/dhisto/lfs/Informe.pdf. Diario UChile. 2015. “INDH entrega a Corte de Rancagua antecedentes de Comisión Valech II.” Diario UChile. 28 November 2015. Accessed 20 October 2016. http://radio. uchile.cl/2015/11/28/indh-entrega-a-corte-de-rancagua-antecedentes-de-comisionvalech-ii/. Duff, Wendy M., Andrew Flinn, Karen Emily Suurtamm, and David A. Wallace. 2013. “Social Justice Impact of Archives: A Preliminary Investigation.” Archival Science 13 (4): 317–348. El Mostrador. 2015. “Directora del INDH lamenta secreto de 50 años de los testimonios de la Comisión Valech y dice que ‘estamos un poquito taponeados.” El Mostrador. 12 December 2015. Accessed 20 October 2016. www.elmostrador.cl/noticias/pais/ 2015/12/12/directora-del-indh-lamenta-secreto-de-50-anos-de-los-testimonios-de-lacomision-valech-y-dice-que-estamos-un-poquito-taponeados/. Garretón, Manuel Antonio, and Roberto Garretón. 2010. “La democracia incompleta en Chile: La realidad tras los rankings internacionales.” Revista De Ciencia Política (Santiago) 30(1): 115–148. González Quintana, Antonio. 2009. Archival Policies in the Protection of Human Rights. Paris: International Council on Archives. Accessed 20 October 2016. www.aefp.org.es/ NS/Documentos/Articulos-Informes/AGQ2009PoliticasArchivisticasDH_ENG.pdf. Guzman-Concha, Cesar. 2012. “The Students’ Rebellion in Chile: Occupy Protest or Classic Social Movement?” Social Movement Studies 11(3–4): 408–415. HoyxHoy. 2016. “Corte de Apelaciones ordenó desclasificar documentos de víctimas de Comisión Valech.” HoyxHoy. 3 August 2016. Accessed 20 October 2016. www.soy chile.cl/Santiago/Politica/2016/08/03/409774/Corte-de-Apelaciones-acogio-recursosde-proteccion-de-victimas-de-Comision-Valech-contra-INDH.aspx.

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Ibáñez Canelo, María Jesús. 2014. “Presentan campaña “No más Archivos Secretos”.” El Ciudadano. 15 January. Accessed 2 July 2016. www.elciudadano.cl/2014/01/15/ 101776/presentan-campana-no-mas-archivos-secretos/. International Center for Transitional Justice. n.d. “What Is Transitional Justice?” web.archive.org/web/20190904223054/www.ictj.org/about/transitional-justice. Jelin, Elizabeth. 2003. State Repression and the Labors of Memory. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Joinet, Louis. 1996. Appendix B: The Administration of Justice and the Human Rights of Detainees: UN Document E/CN.4/Sub.2/1997/20, 59 Law and Contemporary Problems 249–281. Londres 38, espacio de memorias. 2012. “Informe de gestión Londres 38. Un espacio de memorias en construcción. Año 2011.” Accessed 2 July 2016. www.londres38.cl/1937/ articles-93179_Informe2012.pdf. Londres 38, espacio de memorias. 2013. “Informe anual de actividades—Año 2013.” Accessed 2 July 2016. www.londres38.cl/1937/articles-93179_actividades2013.pdf. Londres 38, espacio de memorias. 2015. “El secreto de los documentos y antecedentes de comisiones de verdad en el estado de Chile.” Accessed 2 July 2016. www.londres38.cl/ 1934/articles-97312_recurso_1.pdf. Londres 38, espacio de memorias. 2016a. “Qué hacemos.” Accessed 2 July 2016. www. londres38.cl/1937/w3-propertyname-2812.html. Londres 38, espacio de memorias. 2016b. “A 40 años del golpe de estado y de dos décadas de gobiernos civiles hay archivos que se mantienen en secreto.” Accessed 2 July 2016. www.londres38.cl/1937/w3-article-95544.html. Londres 38, espacio de memorias. 2016c. “Ley que impide destrucción de archivos de FFAA llega al Senado.” Accessed 2 July 2016. www.londres38.cl/1937/w3-article97499.html. Londres 38, espacio de memorias. 2017a. “Londres 38 participa en Seminario Interdisciplinario Sobre Archivos en Chile.” Published 12 June 2017. www.londres38.cl/1937/ w3-article-98890.html. Londres 38, espacio de memorias. 2017b. “Urge fortalecer la institucionalidad archivística para terminar con el secretismo.” Accessed 23 August 2017. www.londres38.cl/1937/ w3-article-98495.html. Londres 38, espacio de memorias. 2017c. “Directora del Archivo Nacional ratifica necesidad de derogar leyes que impiden acceso a la información.” [Emma de Ramón Acevedo to Londres 38, espacio de memorias] Published 21 April 2017. Accessed 23 August 2017. www.londres38.cl/1937/w3-article-98510.html. Londres 38, espacio de memorias. 2019a. “Victimas y Protagonistas.” web.archive.org/web/ 20190723153117/www.londres38.cl/1937/w3-propertyvalue-35254.html. Londres 38, espacio de memorias. 2019b. “Infografía acceso a la información.” web .archive.org/web/20190727040011/www.londres38.cl/1934/w3-article-97117.html. Millar, Laura. 2006. “Touchstones: Considering the Relationship between Memory and Archives.” Archivaria 61: 105–126. Oberreuter, Haydeé, and Paz Becerra. 2016. “El pacto de silencio detrás del secreto Valech.” BioBioChile. 11 de septiembre. Accessed 20 October 2016. http://rbb.cl/ess4. Ochoa-Sotomayor, Gloria, and Carolina Maillard-Mancilla. 2011. La persistencia de la memoria: Londres 38, un espacio de memorias en construcción. Santiago, Chile: Londres 38: Espacio de Memorias.

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Orentlicher, Diane. 2005. Conjunto de principios actualizado para la protección y la promoción de los derechos humanos mediante la lucha contra la impunidad. Geneva: United Nations. Distr. GENERAL. E/CN.4/2005/102/Add.1; 8 February. Ramírez Mourraille, Ana M., María P. Ángel Arango, Mauricio Albarracín Caballero, Rodrigo Uprimny Yepes, and Vivian Newman Pont. 2017. Acceso a los archivos de inteligencia y containteligencia en el marco del posacuerdo. Bogotá, Colombia: Centro de Estudios de Derecho y Justicia y Sociedad, DeJusticia. Roht-Arriaza, Naomi. 2005. The Pinochet Effect: Transnational Justice in the Age of Human Rights. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Santos, Shana Marques Prado dos. 2016. Tratamento de arquivo de direitos humanos na América Latina = Tratamiento de archivos de derechos humanos en América Latina. Brasília: Red Latinoamérican para la Justicia Transicional. Sikkink, Kathryn. 2011. The Justice Cascade: How Human Rights Prosecutions are Changing World Politics. New York: W. W. Norton & Co. Stern, Steve J. 2010. Reckoning with Pinochet: The Memory Question in Democratic Chile, 1989–2006. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Strauss, Amanda. 2015. “Treading the Ground of Contested Memory: Archivists and the Human Rights Movement in Chile.” Archival Science 15(4): 369–397. Talarn Rabascall, Julia. 2016. “Las víctimas de Pinochet consiguen destapar archivos secretos sobre la dictadura.” El Mundo. 25 August. Accessed 20 October 2016. www. elmundo.es/internacional/2016/09/25/57e803e8e2704e0a2c8b4591.html. The Clinic Online. 2016. “La odisea de Fabiola: Cómo una víctima de la dictadura logró romper con el secreto de 50 años de la Comisión Valech.” The Clinic Online. 13 January 2016. Accessed 20 October 2016. www.theclinic.cl/2016/01/13/la-odiseade-fabiola-como-una-victima-de-la-dictadura-logro-romper-con-el-secreto-de-50anos-de-la-comision-valech/. Valenzuela Valladares v. Instituto Nacional de Derechos Humanos. 2015a. “Rol No. 91.155-2015. [Informe de Julia Lorena Fries Monleón al Recurso de Protección].” 11 de noviembre de 2015. Valenzuela Valladares v. Instituto Nacional de Derechos Humanos. 2015b. “Rol No. 91.155-2015. [Pronunciamiento de la Novena Corte de Apelaciones de Santiago].” 21 de diciembre de 2015. Wyndham, Marivic, and Peter J. Read. 2011. “The Day Londres 38 Opened Its Doors: A Milestone in Chilean Reconciliation.” Universitas Humanística 71: 193–212.

Chapter 9

Documenting the fight for the city The impact of activist archives on anti-gentrification campaigns Susan Pell

Introduction While the power of archives to write histories and to serve as evidence in the public sphere has long been recognised, the impact they have on social justice is only beginning to be studied and assessed. Leading this field, Duff, Flinn, Suurtamm, and Wallace state the social impact of archives comes in the form of, “providing public space, welcoming all members of society, and providing information resources that aid in their development” (Duff et al. 2013, p. 332). While this is an ideal view of archives as a social institution, studies find that the configuration of an archive mirrors the politics of the group who controls it (Gilliland and Flinn 2013; Sellie et al. 2015; Pell 2015). As such, archives can both foster hegemony and resistance (Schwartz and Cook 2002). Recognising that no archive can equally represent and serve everyone, many groups have started to collect and manage their own archives, ranging from non-profit institutions with a national focus, like Black Cultural Archives in the United Kingdom, to small-scale, informal archives in activist resource centres. This growth in independent archives demonstrates the importance and impact of archives’ “evidential value,” which can support a group’s collective identity and history and strengthen their public voice and authority; while more broadly, “promote a culture of accountability and transparency” (Duff et al. 2013, p. 332). Having an archive thus builds a group’s internal organisation and their capacity for public engagement. Though attention has been brought to the politics of archives, and the role of archives in political struggles, according to Duff et al. there remains the challenge of finding ways to “utilize the past to inform and change the present through concrete action” (Duff et al. 2013, p. 330). This emphasises the need to understand tangible effects on social justice, yet much of the impact of archives lies in their potential and is realised in its secondary uses (in publications, academic work, journalism, etc.) (Duff et al. 2013, p. 332). Thus, measuring the impact of archives on social justice is complicated both by their on-going, yet at times dormant, potential to affect social justice in the future, and also the difficulty of assessing its largely subjective and less-tangible impact in the

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present. Nonetheless, research in this area is important in order to strengthen efforts for social justice, which motivates the present collection of essays. Looking at struggles in the city, this chapter offers a case study of activist archiving in hopes of adding to conversations about the multiple impacts of archives on social justice struggles, particularly those fought on the terrain of information-based politics. In order to assess the social justice impact of archives on urban struggles, I describe practices of archival activism that emerged within an anti-gentrification campaign, focusing on the case study of the 56a Infoshop Archive in London, United Kingdom, and its associated digital archives. This anti-gentrification campaign drew from the archive, built upon it, and used it to publicise the struggle over the redevelopment of the Heygate Council Estate and the gentrification of the surrounding Elephant and Castle neighbourhood. This case suggests that archives are a critical resource for challenging controversial redevelopment projects and for engaging the politics of information that surrounds them. Driven by increasing land value and real estate speculation, gentrification involves the redevelopment of lower-cost property (often within inner-city neighbourhoods) into more upscale, market housing, and commercial spaces. Oriented towards a middle-class population, gentrified neighbourhoods result in the marginalisation and displacement of poorer residents who cannot afford to live in these areas. Before redevelopment projects can proceed, they must first receive planning permission and development permits from local authorities, which almost always include public consultations and public forums. It is here that archives aid activists. Participation within these forums requires knowledge of city policies and bylaws, and increasingly the ability to decode the public relations rhetoric of the developers and local officials (Minton 2013; Lees 2014). Resisting gentrification, thus, necessitates a strong grasp of information-based politics and the skill to use it to one’s advantage—a situation helped by activist archives. This chapter thus discusses archiving as an activist strategy within informationladen political struggles, of which urban redevelopment is an example. It highlights two strands in archival activism used within anti-gentrification campaigns: (1) incorporating archival practices (such as collecting records and making them accessible) into already existing forms of activism and (2) drawing from their archival records to intervene within public discourses. The first practice builds activist archives that can be used to challenge official claims and strengthen demands for public accountability and transparency within the redevelopment process, highlighting an immediate impact of archives in the present-day campaigns. The second instance employs archival materials to construct counter-narratives that are circulated within public spheres, highlighting the secondary impact of archives achieved through their use in the publication and dissemination of information. With activists drawing from both public and independent archives within these practices, I will argue that the formation of activist archives and the repurposing of official records for social justice aims at shifting the power of the archive, democratising information production and management. Archiving

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as an activist practice thus ultimately impacts the configuration of knowledgepower within society, facilitating alternative forms of knowledge production and dissemination, and preserving, utilising, and publicising the material culture of resistance. To develop this claim, I first discuss the archival turn in activism, evident in the rise of do-it-yourself (DIY), autonomous archives. I describe how activist archives are spaces for knowledge production and movement building, leading to critical participation in the public sphere. Next, I describe in detail the case of 56a Infoshop Archive and its use within an anti-gentrification campaign, focusing on how archiving was mobilised during and after the local consultation process on the redevelopment of the Heygate Council Estate. I discuss how the activists used archives to challenge the redevelopment process and to critically intervene in discourses of regeneration and gentrification more broadly. In working through this case, I consider the impact that having one’s own archive has on activist groups and their social justice struggles.

The archival turn in activism The politics of a society is largely shaped by its dominant forms of knowledge: the ways in which its knowledge is produced, organised, and deemed authoritative (Foucault 1972; Stoler 2009), and also how this knowledge is used to remember the past, to make decisions in the present, and to envision the future. Increasingly this knowledge is organised in and through archives; thus, who controls the archives (and how) can affect a group’s ability to construct discourses and also to participate culturally and politically in society (Derrida 1996; Schwartz and Cook 2002). For example, archival records are used in public forums, like development consultations, aiding forms of persuasive speech by enabling appeals to emotion (e.g. through memories and shared identities), and to logic (e.g. through reference to economic and legal discourses and historical precedence). Therefore, archival knowledge is productive. It helps to bring certain worlds into being, maintains them, and, at times, transforms them. This is a power that can be mobilised by both dominant and marginalised groups. Cognizant of the archive’s political and cultural power, marginalised and politicised groups are increasingly engaged in archiving, as they collect and manage their own archives. Often housed in activist spaces, independent, autonomous archives (of workers, LGBTQ groups, squatters, Indigenous groups, etc.) collect marginalised histories that facilitate practices of remembrance and learning, and also operate as spaces where alternative knowledges are mobilised in pursuit of social justice (Flinn, Stevens, and Shepherd 2009; Moore and Pell 2010). These archives are often maintained as open-access collections that can be read, interpreted, and used for research and social action by those in the community. By intentionally archiving their material

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culture, politicised groups reorient their relationship to the past, distinguishing themselves as historical actors and incorporating collective memory into social justice work. The archival turn in activism, and interest in the role archives can play in social justice, can be seen in the rise of blogs and websites devoted to archival activism (e.g. Radical Reference, Activist Archivists, and Activism and the Archive). Many of these sites advocate that groups create their own archives. For example, the Activist Archivist, who emerged as a part of Occupy Wall Street, encourages activists to archive as a means of promoting accountability, accessibility, self-determination, education, and continuity within their movements. As they state, archiving is “about taking responsibility for one’s records” (Activist Archivists 2016). With archiving being a practice that assembles information and makes it accessible (and at times useful for social action) for these and other activist groups, creating an archive emphasises the importance of knowledge production and dissemination. Archiving is in itself a mode of knowledge production expressed as documenting, ordering, and re-representing one’s own materials. Kate Eichhorn, in her research on feminist archives, thus suggests the interest of activists and academics in alternative archives and reflects that today, the “making of archives is frequently where knowledge production begins” (Eichhorn 2014, p. 3). With access to one’s own archive, groups can use records to develop and enhance already existing collective self-education and learning practices. For example, archives are being “activated” as a means to engage users in various forms of historical, political, and cultural practices by working directly with archival materials. Activations are conducted as collective activities that bring together participants from different movements and across different generations of activism with the goal of transforming dominant approaches to knowledge production by socialising and collectivising them. As archivist activists at the Mayday Rooms in London UK describe, activations aim to create dynamic situations—not to sit passively on archival “holdings.” By using the intrinsic socialising potential of historical material, we hope to allow the latencies of the past and the future to meet in an open field beyond the enclosures of official knowledge. (Mayday Rooms 2016) At the Interference Archive in New York, they describe this practices as shifting priority to “preservation through use” (Sellie et al. 2015, p. 9). As pedagogical practices, activations point to activist orientations to record-management and historical knowledge production that seek to disrupt official narratives of the past, which are viewed as fixed, closed, authoritative, and which often ignore marginalised or radical histories. By unsettling discourses, activations help to transform them.

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As this suggests, activist archives often intentionally seek to connect knowledge and action, and as such, contribute to alternative forms of politics and movement building. Alongside building historical discourses and supporting collective identities, activist archiving can strengthen self-determination, as groups engage in collecting, valuing, and using their own knowledge to strategically inform their activism. Sellies et al. describe this as a “pre-figurative space,” meaning that archives do “more than collect; they also enact the politics of their communities” (Sellie et al. 2015, p. 5). As activist archives are “helping others (re)discover marginalized social histories and continue to build new social movement culture” (Sellie et al. 2015, p. 9), the materials can be used to build connections between diverse struggles in the present, and with movements from the past. As such, they contribute towards social movements’ learning and networking, with the archive serving as a tool of communication (Garay and Verduyn 2008, p. 154). The archive is thus a site of possibility, described by Eichhorn as being an “essential way of understanding and imagining other ways to live in the present” (Eichhorn 2014, p. 9). Together with movement building, activist archives constitute counterpublic spheres. Archives are resources for activists to generate knowledge and produce discourses, and spaces from which to disseminate these more broadly. With access to their own records, marginal groups can write alternative and counter-histories that can be used to fill absences, correct misrepresentations, and transform social histories (Flinn 2011; Gilliland and Flinn 2013), as well as to cultivate collective identification and solidarity (Moore and Pell 2010). They also aid the work of critique and contestation, as archival records bring greater credibility and legitimacy to the political and cultural claims. Not only are archives valuable for constructing discourses, they are also spaces of publicity. As Sellie et al. explain, “an archive [is] a means to bring their collections to the public” (Sellie et al. 2015, p. 6). In making activists’ materials available and accessible to the community (and beyond), the scale on which information is circulated is expanded, as is its potential to affect social change. Thus, by being spaces for the formation of discourses and their dissemination within larger public spheres, activist archives have the potential to challenge and transform dominant discourses and institutions. Archiving is thus a form of activism in itself. Archives preserve and publicise collective knowledge and experiences that can build affinities between current struggles and create continuity with those movements that have come before and which will follow them. Archives function as a knowledge-action network, encouraging collective and social learning, and strengthening credibility in the public sphere. While all archives have these potentials, their individual impact can be found in their particular formation and mobilisation, as will be seen in the case of anti-gentrification campaigners use of the 56a Infoshop Archive.

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The 56a Infoshop archive The 56a Infoshop started as a squat of the Pullen Estate in 1991. Today, it operates as a multi-use activist space run by volunteers that survives largely through selling books, zines, t-shirts, and badges (56a Infoshop 2016). Filling the shelves that line the small room that the Infoshop occupies, the archive started as a collective project a few years after the Infoshop opened; and it is currently maintained by members, and volunteers during ad hoc “archiving nights.” As described on its website, the archive assembles documents from anarchist and radical social movements, representing a history of ongoing resistance in the neighbourhood, the city, and internationally (56a Infoshop Archive 2015).1 It collects the ephemera (e.g. posters, fliers, pamphlets, and magazines) that come through the Infoshop, and also materials produced through workshops and donated by supporters. Some of the documents have been digitised and put on their website, and, in the case of gentrification, the affiliated website, Southwark Notes. The archive seeks to preserve the social history of various movements and to be an educational tool. As they further describe on their website, “We hope that people will come by to read it or to use it to research radical writing (towards action!)” (56a Infoshop Archive 2015). Here, the 56a Infoshop Archive advances an idea central within many activist archives, which is that it is not enough just to collect materials, they must be actively used and connected to current struggles. As one of the volunteer archivists at 56a explained during an interview, What exists in the archive is a collective imaginary of all those people who have decided things aren’t right, and we can do things. … For me it’s how you make the archive move, isn’t it, how you shape it and how it moves. [It is not enough] if it just sits there and it’s got this history. It has to feed the future. (56a interview 2012) As this statement suggests, the aim of activist archives is to impact both the present and the future, drawing inspiration from, and contributing to, the accumulation of collective knowledge. Not only does the 56a Infoshop Archive gather the material culture of past activism, it continues to collect materials from current movements and campaigns, with gentrification being a key contemporary struggle. Changing issues, practices, and contexts of activism can thus be read in and through the archive. An activist involved in the anti-gentrification campaign explains the archive in this way, You are never trying to get everything, but you always look for things that respond to a very specific problem. So in that sense, the archive is more

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a documentation of certain trains of thought, and certain desires to mobilize knowledge for political purposes rather than to have an overview of things. (SNAG interview 2015) As a map to their anti-gentrification activism, an analysis of the archival practices provides a glimpse of its political usefulness and impact on social justice campaigns.

Activist archiving within an anti-gentrification campaign Urban redevelopment is a global process guiding the transformation of cities, and also a set of discourses that describe these changes. Both the process and discourses are sites of contention, with some labelling urban redevelopment “regeneration” (or “revitalization”) and others calling it “gentrification” (Pell 2014). City governments and private developers (the drivers of often-controversial redevelopment projects) tend to describe the process as the “regeneration” of “deprived” neighbourhoods, achieved by stimulating the local economy through building-up the private housing market and attracting the middle-class residents and consumers to the area. This framing of urban redevelopment draws from popular representations of low-income neighbourhoods and social housing as places of anti-social behaviour and criminality (Mann 2015; Watt and Minton 2016), a view predicated on the contentious belief that poverty and social problems are products of badly designed neighbourhoods (Lees 2014). Countering this largely positive discourse of “regeneration,” the term “gentrification” is used by local campaigners to emphasise that many urban redevelopment projects are a part of, and instigators of, a process of marginalisation and displacement of low-income residents. They criticise “regeneration” as an ideological and political position that values private property and profit over alreadyexisting communities, giving the wealthy license to transform the city into a place devoid of the poor and other marginalised inhabitants. It is this global process that anti-gentrification activists at 56a resisted in the struggle against the redevelopment of the Heygate Council Estate and the displacement of its 3,000 residents. The Elephant and Castle neighbourhood in south London (home to both the 56a Infoshop and the Heygate) has been undergoing gentrification as councilowned social housing has been replaced with privately owned upscale flats. Since the 1990s, local residents and activists have been critically engaged in the redevelopment of the area (DeFilippis and North 2004); yet when Southwark Council’s announced an agreement with Lend Lease, a global private property firm, to redevelop the Heygate Council Estate in 2010, groups across the neighbourhood mobilised to resist the proposed plan to demolish the existing estate, build predominantly market-priced private housing, and relocate the residents.

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As a requirement of the redevelopment process, Lend Lease held public consultation on their Master Plan. Between 2011 and 2012, they employed the consultant group Soundings to engage the local community through “public exhibitions, workshops, liaison groups, community forum meetings, outreach, a website, and drop-ins at the Consultation Hub” (Lend Lease, Elephant and Castle 2012). Their final application was presented to the Southwark Council in January 2013. However, from objections to the Master Plan, and to the consultation process itself, each moment in Heygate’s redevelopment was challenged and contested by active community members. Through different groups and organisations, and through a variety of means, community members created their own vision of the Elephant and Castle (i.e. Elephant Amenities Charter), critically participated in the consultation processes, and demonstrated against the gentrification of the neighbourhood. However, much of the activists’ time was spent trying to understand, keep up with, and counter the official discourses presented during consultation process and public forums. For some activists, especially those affiliated with the 56a, archiving emerged as an important tactic in their anti-gentrification campaign. Taking the name Southwark Notes Archive Group (SNAG), they used the archive both during and after the consultation process to document and track the long, and evershifting redevelopment processes, and to aid in the construction of counterdiscourses of urban change. Their archival practices included collecting and publicising materials during walking tours of the local area and activist conferences, and then the sharing of these critical practices with others through publications and websites. Forming an anti-gentrification archive A number of anti-gentrification walks were organised by SNAG at the 56a Infoshop Archive between 2011 and 2013, as part of their mobilisation against the redevelopment of the Heygate Council Estate and the controversial consultation process. The walks involved identifying and discussing key sites of gentrification in the Elephant and Castle area—those that had been developed, and those about to be. This information drew from the 56a Infoshop Archive, and was also gathered from participants, as people discussed experiences and expertise in local issues of gentrification and memories of the neighbourhood. The walks were a tactic of collective self-education and learning about what was happening in the neighbourhood through participants sharing histories, knowledge, and strategies. They helped to develop a critical language about the redevelopment of the Heygate that enabled more local residents to speak authoritatively against the project during the consultation process. Focusing more specifically on generating strategies to resist gentrification, activists organised “The Siege of the Elephant: A Convergence Against the Gentrification of the Elephant and Castle” in November 2012 (two months before the Council’s final hearing of Lend Lease’s application). The Convergence aimed to

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create a network of activists fighting gentrification in the neighbourhood and beyond. Using workshops to build critical, collective knowledge for social action, participants shared evidence and experiences, and discussed alternatives. They addressed causes and effects of gentrification, looking at displacement, the role of consultation, and the use of “spin” in regeneration projects (Southwark Notes 2012). Archiving this local and activist knowledge was integral to the workshops. Prior to the event, one of the posters called for contributions to the archive, with the aim “to expand the archive through inclusion of books, newspaper cuttings, council brochures and academic publications on the local area as well as the local and global gentrification struggles” (Southwark Notes 2012). The Convergence, like the walks, helped to mobilise people around the public consultation and redevelopment process, and functioned as a space for collective learning about gentrification. In addition to assembling materials from the local community, official documents about the redevelopment were collected during the consultation process. When information from the Council was not forthcoming, campaigners utilised Freedom of Information (FOI) requests. Through FOI requests, activists gathered information about the process of decanting residents from the Estate that helped to challenge the local Council’s claims that these residents had the “right to return” to the area after redevelopment was complete (London Tenants Federation et al. 2014, p. 16). They obtained information about compensation received by leaseholders for the compulsory purchase of their homes, which was well below market value (Heygate Was Home 2016). They also learned that “viability assessments” conducted by the Council, which outlined the finances of various redevelopment options, actually did not support the “necessity” to demolish the Heygate (Flynn 2016). Repurposing official records to challenge the credibility of the local Council and the legitimacy of the redevelopment became central tactics in their campaign. In reflecting on the campaign, an activist explains, It was this counter narrative that we started to think about. That this was the important thing, to just constantly and relentlessly have a counternarrative to everything the Council said, because … their only response to everything was that it was all good. … So we would constantly be going—and still are—here is another thing about displacement, here is testimony. (SNAG interview 2015) Gathering information at the public forums and through the FOI requests allowed the activists to bring greater transparency to the redevelopment process, and, in particular, it enabled them to counter the narrative of the Council, and to do so with supporting documents. This in the end was crucial, because as another activist explains, to challenge the redevelopment process, “It is literally like a war of information” (SNAG interview 2015).

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Through their archival practices, activists contributed to a culture of transparency and accountability. They collected and used the records to expose the private interests behind the redevelopment, and reveal the negative consequences for ex-residents. They also made the material accessible through the 56a Infoshop Archive and disseminated them more widely on websites, such as Southwark Notes, Heygate Was Home, and the 35% Campaign, enabling others to utilise this information. Activist archiving lent evidential value to their anti-gentrification campaign, which helped give credibility to the locals’ concerns during the consultation. Mobilising the archive in the public sphere Following the approval of Lend Lease’s Master Plan and the end of the public consultation, activists used materials from the archive to continue the work of countering the discourses of regeneration of the Elephant and Castle through publications that shared their experiences and collective knowledge. Making the archive public not only worked to disrupt the settling of official narratives about the Heygate, but also it helped to build the secondary impact of the archive, as the activists’ records and research was publicised and disseminated beyond their campaign and served as a learning resource for others. One such publication, Listening to No End (Southwark Notes 2013), reflected on the consultation process. Written by the Southwark Notes Archive Group (SNAG), it shares experiences, strategies, and critical discourses with other groups involved in gentrification struggles. Moreover, it “re-politicises” public consultation, making them more accountable to the local community (Southwark Notes 2013, p. 1). In the article, they criticise the engagement techniques as being means to limit debate to a set of predetermined choices, and charge the consultations as being little more than PR exercised used to “absorb public criticism,” both of which left Lend Lease’s Master Plan largely unchanged despite community opposition. This detailed and heavily referenced document draws on the archival records to outline how the community’s interests and voices were ignored and marginalised. Disseminating the information online, the website this article appears on has had over 200,000 views (SNAG interview 2015), demonstrating the scope of its influence. Another output that drew from the archive, and the various workshops, was the publication, Staying Put: An Anti-Gentrification Handbook for Council Estates in London (London Tenants Federation et al. 2014), a collaboration between anti-gentrification groups in London. Like the Convergence, it focused on building a critical language about gentrification, displacement, consultation processes, and affordable housing in order to challenge official discourses of “regeneration.” Within the Handbook, telling one’s story is listed as a key strategy. As it explains, residents’ stories can challenge negative public representations of council estates and social housing, and counter the PR and media spin of redevelopment projects that, as already noted, paint neighbourhoods as

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pathological and, hence, justifies regeneration through gentrification (London Tenants Federation et al. 2014, p. 19). To get their stories heard, activists need to engage with mainstream journalists in attempts to shift dominant representations, and also use alternative media and other public platforms to get residents’ voices into the public sphere. One way to be a reliable source for media, they explain, is to have evidence (London Tenants Federation et al. 2014, p. 19). Emphasising the importance of archiving for anti-gentrification campaigns, they advocate: Build evidence for your story through photographs, videos, and radio recordings as well as documents. As the campaign develops, it is important to archive these along with newsletters, reports, interviews, minutes of meetings and so on, so that community activity against gentrification and displacement is recorded for use in the future and opened up as a resource and a space for reflection and debate. (London Tenants Federation et al. 2014, p. 20) As Staying Put makes clear, gentrification is a battle over information, and activists need to counter official narratives and transform public discourses about social housing and urban development, and this can be achieved in part with records and through archives. A digital archive, Heygate Was Home, emerged to tell the story of the controversial redevelopment. It collects oral testimony of ex-residents forced to leave the Heygate, helping to preserve and insert their voice into the public record of the redevelopment process. In addition to these interviews, it assembles documents from the Council, news media, and developers, and attaches them to a timeline of the redevelopment process. From the various sources, the activists used the data about the Council’s relocation of the Heygate residents to create “displacement maps.” They show how far people were moved away from the Elephant and Castle, with some having to go beyond London itself (Heygate Was Home 2016). These maps provide stark visual evidence of the effect the decanting and demolition process had in breaking up the community at the Heygate. Bringing all this information together, the website also serves as an archive and research resource. This digital archive orders, visualises, and makes accessible the copious information produced and collected during the redevelopment process, making it searchable and meaningful to those interested in the Heygate and gentrification of the Elephant and Castle. It is a research aid that allows activists and academics alike to make clear arguments about the impact of regeneration.

The social justice impact of anti-gentrification archives As this case study highlights, gentrification involves discursive and material struggles over inequality in the city. The campaign against the redevelopment

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of the Heygate Council Estate required critical participation in public spheres, including those created through consultation processes, within media, and by activists themselves. It also necessitated the mobilisation of collective knowledge about the neighbourhood, cultivation of local expertise, and reimagination of the area’s future. Across these strategies, archiving served to enhance existing practices, as activists collected evidence, demanded transparency, and told counter-stories about the process and about the neighbourhood. The 56a Infoshop Archive acted as a hub for activists to come together to gather and produce counter-discourses, which were then taken into the neighbourhood through the walks and workshops, helping to build solidarity and resistance. The digital archives served as a resource for those researching and fighting against gentrification, while publications about the experience at the Heygate connected the campaign in Elephant and Castle to other anti-gentrification activism and contributed to the growing social housing movement in London. At a larger political and ideological level, collecting and publicising records about the redevelopment helped to reveal the lies and conflicts of interest of the Council and developers. Through their archival practices, activists manifested a culture of transparency and critical democratic participation, modelling ways to challenge and intervene within the current field of information-based politics. Ultimately, archiving did not prevent the demolition of the Heygate or the displacement of its residents; yet having an archive of their own impacted their political, historical, and pedagogical interventions. Politically, the 56a activists used the archive as a way to engage with people, producing local knowledge that was mobilised within their campaign against gentrification. The archive also served as a resource to track the redevelopment process, helping activists strategically participate within the consultation process. Empowered through information and local memory, they used archival records to forcefully counter the local authority and global developers, strengthening the campaigners’ voices in the public sphere, while the archive also allowed them to disseminate information more broadly and make interventions into dominant discourses. Historically, by documenting activism in the neighbourhood, as well as collecting local histories and knowledge, the archive preserved and publicised alternative and counter-narratives of Elephant and Castle’s transformation. It supported collective memories of contestations in the neighbourhood, and remembrance of alternative futures that were imagined and fought for. Across these practices, the archive served as a pedagogical space, encouraging collective learning and experimental knowledge production. By bringing together different issues and campaigns, archives also contribute to networking and movement building. These activist archives also have the potential to impact future campaigns against gentrification and expand possibilities of social justice in the city. This potential requires continued attention to and use of these archives and the evidence they provide that neighbourhoods can resist changes imposed by private developers and neoliberal governments. However, many activist archives must themselves be protected from the threat of gentrification.

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While the 56a Infoshop is safe in Pullen Estates for now, the Feminist Library, another activist archive in the neighbourhood, was not so lucky, as it was forced to move from the site it has inhabited for 42 years because of raising rents. This is happening in many places, as radical, free spaces are disappearing through global processes of gentrification and neoliberal austerity (Sellie et al. 2015). The existence of radical spaces, whether they be archives, resource centres, or libraries, is in many ways essential to the possibility for radical politics, providing alternative public spheres (Atton 1999) and offering a social place to engage with people and alternative materials in a social and collaborative way. Preserving and amplifying the long-term social impact of activist archives means then preserving these spaces to ensure their potential can be actualised in the present and in the future.

Note 1 At the time of writing, the 56a Infoshop website is online at http://56a.org.uk/. Prior versions of the site may be accessed via the Internet Archive.

References 56a Infoshop. 2016. “56a Infoshop Social Centre.” Accessed 25 April 2016. www.56a. org.uk/. 56a Infoshop Archive. 2015. “56a Infoshop Archive.” Accessed 24 April 2016. web. archive.org/web/20150515064957/www.56a.org.uk/archive.html. 56a member. 2012. “Interviewed by Susan Pell. Personal Interview.” London, UK. April 10. Activist Archivists. 2016. “Why Archive?” Accessed 25 April 2016. https://web.archive. org/web/20160509102646/http://activist-archivists.org/wp/?page_id=1431. Atton, Chris. 1999. “The Infoshop: The Alternative Information Centre of the 1990s.” New Library World 100(1146): 24–29. DeFilippis, James, and Peter North. 2004. “The Emancipatory Community? Place, Politics and Collective Action in Cities.” In The Emancipatory City: Paradoxes and Possibilities, edited by Loretta Lees, 72–88. London: Sage. Derrida, Jacques. 1996. Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression, Religion and Postmodernism. Trans. Eric Prenowitz. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Duff, Wendy M., Andrew Flinn, Karen Emily Suurtamm, and David A. Wallace. 2013. “Social Justice Impact of Archives: A Preliminary Investigation.” Archival Science 13: 317–348. Eichhorn, Kate. 2014. The Archival Turn in Feminism: Outrage in Order. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. Flinn, Andrew. 2011. “Archival Activism: Independent and Community-Led Archives, Radical Public History and the Heritage Professions.” InterActions: UCLA Journal of Education and Information Studies 7(2). Accessed 24 April 2016. https://escholarship. org/uc/item/9pt2490x. Flinn, Andrew, Mary Stevens, and Elizabeth Shepherd. 2009. “Whose Memories, Whose Archives? Independent Community Archives, Autonomy and the Mainstream.” Archival Science 9(1–2): 71–86.

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Flynn, Jerry. 2016. “Complete Control.” City 20(2): 278–286. Foucault, Michel. 1972. The Archaeology of Knowledge, and the Discourse on Language. Trans. A. M. Sheridan Smith. New York: Pantheon. Garay, Kathy, and Christl Verduyn. 2008. “Activism in Archives: Introduction.” Topia 20: 151–154. Gilliland, Anne, and Andrew Flinn. 2013. “Community Archives: What Are We Really Talking about?” Keynote paper presented at the CIRN Prato Community Informatics Conference, Monash Centre Prato, Italy, 28–30 October. Heygate Was Home. 2016. “Broken Promises.” Accessed 25 April 2016. http://heygatewa shome.org/displacement.html. Lees, Loretta. 2014. “The Urban Injustices of New Labour’s ‘New Urban Renewal’: The Case of the Aylesbury Estate in London.” Antipode 46(4): 921–947. Lend Lease, Elephant and Castle. 2012. “Transforming the Heygate: Help Make It Happen.” Accessed 25 April 2016. web.archive.org/web/20160402030505/www. elephantandcastle.org.uk/pages/consultation_dialogue/164/elephant_castle.html. London Tenants Federation, Loretta Lees, Just Space, and Southwark Notes Archive Group. 2014. Staying Put: An Anti-Gentrification Handbook for Council Estates in London. London: Calverts Co-operative. Mann, Nicola. 2015. “A Disconnected Community? (Re)visioning the Heygate Council Estate through Digital Activism.” Writing Visual Culture 6: 1–15. Mayday Rooms. 2016. “Activations.” Accessed 25 April 2016. http://maydayrooms.org/acti vation/. Minton, Anna. 2013. “Scaring the Living Daylights Out of People: The Local Lobby and the Failure of Democracy.” Spin Watch, Public Interest Investigations. Accessed 16 February 2020. http://spinwatch.org/index.php/issues/lobbying/item/5458-the-locallobby-and-the-failure-of-democrac. Moore, Shaunna, and Susan Pell. 2010. “Autonomous Archives.” International Journal of Heritage Studies 16(4): 255–268. Pell, Susan. 2014. “Mobilizing Urban Publics, Imagining Democratic Possibilities: Reading the Politics of Urban Redevelopment in Discourses of Gentrification and Revitalization.” Cultural Studies 28(1): 29–48. Pell, Susan. 2015. “Radicalizing the Politics of the Archive: Reading an Activist Archive.” Archivaria 80 (Fall): 33–57. Schwartz, Joan M., and Terry Cook. 2002. “Archives, Records, and Power: The Making of Modern Memory.” Archival Science 2: 1–19. Sellie, Alycia, Jesse Goldstein, Molly Fair, and Jennifer Hoyer. 2015. “Interference Archive: A Free Space for Social Movement Culture.” Archival Science 14(4): 453–472. SNAG members. 2015. Interviewed by Susan Pell. Personal Interview. London, UK. July 6. Southwark Notes. 2012. “Siege the Elephant (Poster).” Accessed 25 April 2016. https:// southwarknotes.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/siege-poster.jpg. Southwark Notes. 2013. “Listening to No End.” Accessed 25 April 2016. https://southwar knotes.wordpress.com/our-longer-writings/listening-to-no-end-regeneration-consultationand-soundings-ltd-at-the-elepant/. Stoler, Ann Laura. 2009. Along the Archival Grain: Epistemic Anxieties and Colonial Common Sense. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Watt, Paul, and Anna Minton. 2016. “London’s Housing Crisis and Its Activism.” City 20(2): 204–221.

Chapter 10

Social justice struggles for rights, equality, and identity The role of lesbian and gay archives 1 Rebecka Taves Sheffield

In the early morning hours of 12 June 2016, about 320 people were enjoying a night out at Pulse, a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, when an armed man approached the building on foot and entered the establishment. Once inside, he began shooting at the mostly Hispanic crowd, killing 49 people and injuring 53 others before he was taken out by police. Washington Post quickly reported that the incident was the deadliest assault on US soil since the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001 (Swanson 2016). On June 16, just days after describing the shooting as “a devastating attack on all Americans,” US President Barack Obama travelled to Orlando to lay flowers at a memorial to the victims and visit with family members (Garunay 2016). On his executive order, American flags at all federal buildings had been lowered to half-staff until sundown that day. Meanwhile, as far away as the United Kingdom, journalists began tussling over the shooter’s motivations. Was this incident a hate crime perpetrated against LGBTQ people or the act of a deranged individual, influenced by terrorist ideology? Some speculated that the shooter himself was a closeted gay man, unable to cope with the homophobic shame that this brought on his conservative family. Three weeks later, I sat watching the Toronto Pride Parade on cable TV with my daughter and witnessed an entire city fall quiet for a moment of silence to recognise the Orlando shooting as a tragic historical event. For many days that followed, people used social media platforms to share stories about their own queer histories with the associated hashtag, #OnePulse. The Pulse nightclub shooting weighs heavy in my mind as I write this chapter. Not four months prior to the Orlando incident, I travelled to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, to give a public lecture on the role of LGBTQ archives in social justice struggles for rights, equality, and identity. As part of my research and preparations for the lecture, I read extensively about Louisiana’s own queer past, and learned that in 1973, an arsonist set fire to a gay bar in New Orleans, killing 32 people. Until the shooting in Orlando, the fire at the UpStairs Lounge in New Orleans’ French Quarter was the deadliest known attack on LGBTQ people in US history. It was also largely forgotten. Despite ample coverage of the fire, most journalists shied away from acknowledging the UpStairs Lounge as a gay bar and underreported the broader impact of the fire

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on the city’s gay and lesbian community. Public officials refused to recognise the tragedy with a day of mourning as they had for similar tragedies. As Townsend (2011) reports, some families even refused to claim bodies of their loved ones after learning that they had perished in a gay establishment. According to Anderson, few people affected by the fire were able to publicly grieve due to fears of homophobic backlash from colleagues and family. While the arson made national news, the incident was largely divorced from the gay culture that it occurred within (The UpStairs Lounge Fire 2013). Amid this silence, knowledge of the UpStairs Lounge fire and its aftermath remained limited until recently, despite an extensive record of documentation left behind by criminal investigators and news media. A lot has changed during the four decades between the 1973 fire and the 2016 shooting. Despite recent political setbacks in a post-Obama United States, the progressive recognition of sexual orientation as a protected class under human rights legislation and the increasing normalisation of same-sex relationships have greatly improved the conditions under which many gay men and lesbians live. Although there is no benefit to claiming that gay men and lesbians have achieved equality across the continent, this social and political shift is widespread, as is the broadening of our understanding of a shared heritage that includes queer people. On 24 June 2016, for example, New York City’s Stonewall Inn—the site of a 1969 riot widely regarded as the start of the modern lesbian and gay rights movement—was added to the National Register of Historic Places as a National Historic Landmark (Tau 2016). In Canada that same month, Toronto police Chief Mark Saunders issued a formal apology on behalf of his force for the 1981 raids on four gay bathhouses that resulted in the arrest of 286 men (Janus 2016). The political protests and marches that began in response to these homophobic police raids have transformed into the month-long Toronto Pride festival, an entrenched part of summer celebrations in the country’s largest city. With the rise of sexual diversity studies as a legitimate area of research and more than 40 years of work within this field to recover and reclaim queer histories, the Pulse nightclub shooting is now counted as an attack on all Americans, and can be remembered as both queer history and public history. How did we get here? And how have archives contributed to this social and political shift? This chapter is about the relationship between shared heritage, which creates and affirms collective identities, and social movements that seek historical representation, justice, and civil rights for lesbian and gay people. It is also about the ways in which lesbian and gay archives and archival endeavours, especially grassroots community archives, not only support social movement struggles, but can also serve as social movement organisations themselves. This chapter looks briefly at the relationships between shared heritage, social movements, and archives and then describes in more detail the role of lesbian and gay archives in North America, with a particular focus on The ArQuives: Canada’s LGBTQ2+ Archives. I will then return to the question of queer history as public history.

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Shared heritage, archives, and social movements Over the past decade, I have worked with The ArQuives: Canada’s LGBTQ2+ Archives (formerly the Canadian Lesbian and Gay Archives), first as a volunteer, then as a grant-funded digital archivist, and later as the organisation’s first Executive Director and Archives Manager. Although I have since left The ArQuives, the organisation and its collections continue to inspire my work and writing, which focuses on community archival practices, the social dimensions of recordkeeping, and the role of shared heritage in social justice work. In particular, I have been interested in the development of lesbian and gay archives and how these organisations have contributed to queer social movements in North America since the late 1960s. Before moving into an examination of the role of lesbian and gay archives in social justice struggles, however, it is worth dwelling on some of the concepts germane to this discussion. In this section, I will provide a working definition for shared heritage and briefly look at its relationship to social justice work through the lens of archival studies. The term shared heritage has been widely adopted by Western heritage institutions and policymakers to acknowledge the ways in which common cultural heritage can create and affirm collective identities. Having a shared heritage helps us feel that sense of belonging that we need to fully participate within our own local communities and in society at large. As Cheddie (2012) suggests, the concept of shared heritage emphasises the relationships between and among culture, human rights, historical representation, and social inclusion. The concepts of social inclusion and exclusion are now key themes in discussions about health and citizenship, as well as broader debates over the processes by which groups become marginalised and remain disenfranchised over time (cf. Putnam 2001; Jeannotte 2003; Pendlebury, Townshend, and Gilroy 2004; Smith 2010). Within information studies, the concept of shared heritage is most commonly associated with museum studies. Sandell (1998, 2003) was among the first to suggest that museums might become agents of social inclusion by working with communities to ensure participation from disenfranchised groups with the goal of producing exhibits and museum experiences that better represent marginalised histories. Crooke (2007) has looked specifically at community-based exhibitions and their importance as “springboards for further action,” suggesting that cultural representation can stimulate social justice work (p. 37). Reconceptualising museums as inclusive spaces would, as Ya’ari (2010) suggests, place shared heritage at the “root of consensus building within conflicting ideas and places” (p. 9). In this sense, museums can become trusted spaces where the difficult work of building a cohesive society can begin. Although shared heritage is less common in archival literature, the relationships between archives and community identity have been widely discussed. Andrew Flinn was among the first to explicitly tie concepts of social inclusion and social justice to the work of community archives. He writes:

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Community archives and the stories they tell can help us construct an inclusive local and national heritage in which all communities, all relations and interactions are included. This heritage and the uses to which it can be put (publications, exhibitions, performance, and personal research) help to connect people to places, communities and traditions, bring together and foster understanding between different generations and communities, and thus contribute to a wider social justice agenda. (Flinn 2007, p. 161) Flinn, Mary Stevens, and Elizabeth Shepherd (2009), who have traced the rise of grassroots community archives in the United Kingdom over the past 40 years, note that these organisations often begin in response to a real or perceived failure on the part of mainstream heritage institutions to adequately and accurately represent the experiences of marginalised and disenfranchised groups. Shauna Moore and Susan Pell (2010) recognise that the “functions of archives in social justice and public life are broader than their evidentiary capacities” (p. 255). In other words, community archives have practical and symbolic value as spaces where community members can come together to engage in archival practices. Building on ideas about the symbolic value of archives put forth by James O’Toole in 1993, Michelle Caswell (2014a) describes the ways in which marginalised communities participate in archiving practices as a way to counter the absence of representation they experience within traditional cultural heritage systems. Caswell, Marika Cifor, and Mario H. Ramirez (2016) describe how community archives are spaces that create “representational belonging,” where under-represented people have the “authority to establish, enact, and reflect on their presence in ways that are complex, meaningful, substantive, and positive to them in a variety of symbolic contexts” (p. 57). The concept of shared heritage is also central to studies of new social movements that have emerged in the latter half of the twentieth century, including the lesbian and gay rights movement (Buechler 1993). With its roots in gay liberation and lesbian feminism, the lesbian and gay rights movement is as much focused on materialist claims as it is concerned with creating political, cultural, and economic transformation for the benefit of lesbian and gay people (Stein 2012). In order to achieve such goals, the movement has used collective identity to advocate for human rights by strategically creating a common narrative that situates sexuality as an immutable and inherent characteristic that is part of human diversity. As Stein (2012) contends, the development of a shared heritage has been a key ingredient for the success of the lesbian and gay rights movement because this has motivated people to act in solidarity despite differences in race, ethnicity, class, sex, and gender. In a previous writing (Sheffield 2017), I have drawn on social movement theory to discuss how lesbian and gay archives are both products of social movement action and actors in collective action for social change. I have also argued that lesbian and gay archives serve as social movement

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organisations (SMOs). John D McCarthy and Mayer N Zald (1977) were the first to introduce the concept of SMOs as organisational and administrative structures that assist social movement communities to acquire, manage, and distribute resources for the purpose of collective action for social change. Although lesbian and gay archives are rarely able to contribute human or financial resources to direct actions, these organisations accomplish two significant tasks. First, they are the de facto repositories for preserving the material resources necessary for the cultural production (and practices) that promote a shared heritage that underpins a collective lesbian and/or gay identity. Second, in the absence of some records or documentary heritage, they create a sense of representational belonging that supports social cohesion among community members. As Kate Eichhorn (2013) claims, these organisations also have the “greatest potential to disrupt” the status quo by exposing silences or misrepresentations in the historical record (p. 25). In other words, lesbian and gay archives can accomplish what Alberto Melucci (1995) has suggested is the central task of new social movements, which is to expose “that which is hidden or excluded by the decision-making process … [and] bring to light the silent, obscure or arbitrary elements that frequently arise in complex systems decisions” (p. 185).

Social justice struggles and the emergence of lesbian and gay archives In North America, a number of lesbian and gay archives have emerged and coalesced alongside gay liberation and lesbian feminist movements as key spaces for cultural production and identity construction (Wakimoto, Bruce, and Partridge 2013).2 This cohort of community archives has collected, preserved, and made accessible the documentary heritage of lesbian and gay people, thus aiding in the development of a shared heritage that has improved social cohesion among otherwise socially dispersed individuals. These organisations are also sites for community building, where participants actively work to create a historical record that challenges and confronts homophobic and heteronormative public histories promulgated by mainstream heritage institutions. The remainder of this chapter will discuss the emergence, development, and current practices of lesbian and gay archives, with a particular focus on The ArQuives. While The ArQuives does not serve as a stand-in for all community archiving practices that have emerged from within queer social movements, especially lesbian feminist movements, its history is characteristic of a cohort of archives that were established within this same sociological moment. In Rethinking the Gay and Lesbian Movement, Stein (2012) argues that, although there is evidence of queer people and queer social spaces dating back centuries, it was not until the mid-1950s that lesbians and gay men began to think of themselves as a minority class of people. Under the threat of McCarthyism,

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which resulted in the purging of queer people from public and military service, and escalating police harassment, gays and lesbians across the United States and Canada began organising (Kinsman and Gentile 2009; Stein 2012). As Stein notes, the primary goal of these early homophile groups, such as the Mattachine Society and the Daughters of Bilitis, was to provide a space where gay men and lesbian could begin to envision a world in which they had basic human rights. As more of these groups formed, they also established communication networks to share ideas and give advice on how gay men and lesbians might better integrate into mainstream society (McKinney 2015). According to McKinney, these networks included newsletters, magazines, and other publications that circulated from coast to coast, becoming touchstones for gays and lesbians isolated by geography and social status. These publications, Stein claims, were not only essential for creating and promoting a collective identity, but also important tools for communicating movement goals. Perhaps for this reason, when news spread in 1969 that an uprising against police had occurred at New York’s Stonewall Inn, gay men and lesbians were already mobilising resources to support social justice work. The emergence of lesbian and gay archives is inherently tied to the emergence of a gay press in the 1950s and 1960s, and the mobilisation of gays and lesbians in the wake of the Stonewall uprising. The ONE National Gay and Lesbian Archives, for example, is a legacy project of the collective that produced an early gay publication, ONE Magazine. The magazine was produced by members of the Los Angeles chapter of the Mattachine Society, a homophile organisation founded in 1950 to protect and improve the rights of gay men (Faderman and Timmons 2006; White 2009). Postal officials seized issues of the magazine in 1953, and again in 1954, on charges of obscenity. In January 1958, after almost four years of litigation, the Supreme Court declared that ONE Magazine was protected under the First Amendment to the US Constitution, which guarantees freedom of speech and freedom of the press (One, Inc. v. Olesen 355 U.S. 371). The ruling, which was the first to deal with homosexuality and First Amendment rights, was a landmark decision in the United States and created an environment in which gays and lesbians felt more comfortable publishing and mailing publications with explicitly homosexual content. By the time ONE Magazine ceased publication in 1967, contributors had amassed a significant collection of reference materials relating to queer topics, issues, and individuals, as well as a documentary record of homophile activities that had unfolded over the past two decades since the end of the World War II. The collection complemented a growing library established by Jim Kepner, Dorr Legg, and Thomas Merritt, who had used some of the magazine’s resources to found the ONE Institute for Homophile Studies, which would later become a recognised higher education institution. In Canada, the founding of The ArQuives is also tied to the development of a gay press. According to McLeod (2003), Canada’s first gay tabloid, GAY, was first published in 1964, roughly a decade after ONE Magazine and several

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years before the Stonewall uprising. McLeod points out that 1964 was an important year for gay men and lesbians living in Canada. As he notes, the country’s first gay-positive organisation, Vancouver’s Association for Social Knowledge (ASK), was formed in 1964, and it was also the year that several positive media stories on homosexuality appeared in Maclean’s and the Toronto Telegram, two mainstream publications. In addition, Jane Rule’s lesbianthemed novel, Desert of the Hearts, was published that year by Macmillan Canada. Rayside (1998) has also described the year 1964 and the decade that followed as a period of growing social unrest, during which time feminism and student radicalism were erupting in more forceful and public protests. In Canada, the federal government under Lester B. Pearson was expanding the welfare state and religious communities were engaging in discussions about reform on policies previously above reproach. It is within the context of these larger social and cultural shifts and with the cultural resources already built by homophile groups that a more radical gay liberation movement emerged. As news spread of the uprising at the Stonewall Inn, Canadians were already celebrating the passage of Bill C-150, which introduced major changes to the Canadian Criminal Code that effectively decriminalised homosexuality. Two years later, on 28 August 1971, various gay groups marked the anniversary of the Criminal Code amendments by marching to Ottawa with a letter and list of demands for additional legislative reforms to ensure human rights for gay men and lesbians. The We Demand protest marks the beginning of a mobilised gay liberation movement in Canada. It also served as a watershed moment for the development of a new kind of gay press that was more radical and less fearful of communicating ideas that were disruptive to the status quo. Among the first and most significant of these publications was The Body Politic, Canada’s gay liberation newsmagazine of record from 1971 to 1987. Jearld Moldenhauer, who first proposed the idea of launching the magazine, was aware that mainstream media and even leftist publications were hesitant to print stories about the We Demand protest and the gay liberation movement more generally. Bébout (1998) recalls in his history of The Body Politic that the first issue was produced by a collective of mostly gay men and two lesbians, and sold at local bars and clubs. The success was immediate and the collective, which lost and gained new members over the years, grew from a small operation working out of Moldenhauer’s house to a significant business with a professional office space. Over the course of its work, The Body Politic collective was twice charged with publishing obscene material, had its offices raided by police, and ignited a series of international protests against the seizure of gay-themed materials by customs and border patrols. Collective members also communicated by mail with gay and lesbian groups and exchanged copies of The Body Politic with other gay and lesbian publishers around the world. They built up a small library of reference materials that included press clippings, books, photographs, court proceedings, and organisational records that members contributed to and used while putting together issues. Together,

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the correspondence and working files of The Body Politic constituted a significant historical record of gay liberation activity within and outside of Canada. Roughly two years into the publication, Moldenhauer became increasingly aware of the importance of the historical record compiled by The Body Politic collective. He also grew concerned about the precariousness of the gay press, which he monitored through his work with Glad Day Books, a gay bookstore that he had founded in 1970. Moldenhauer enlisted Ron Dayman to help him begin the process of organising the materials as an archival collection. As Moldenhauer later recalled, the collective came to realise that the materials were more than an archives of The Body Politic; they represented a record of the Canadian gay liberation movement more broadly. With the support of the publishing collective, Moldenhauer and Dayman founded the Canadian Gay Liberation Movement Archives (CGLMA) in 1973, to ensure that the materials would be preserved and that they would continue to build the collection as a distinctly archival endeavour. Soon after, Moldenhauer left the project with Ed Jackson, another member of the publishing collective, who provided the archives with its first guiding statement: A conspiracy of silence has robbed gay people of their history. A sense of continuity, which derives from the knowledge of a shared heritage, is essential for the building of self-confidence in a community. It is a necessary tool in the struggle for social change. (as cited in Bébout 1979, p. 21) Even then, Jackson recognised the importance of shared heritage for social change, and the role that the archives had in ensuring that this heritage would be preserved for future generations. Jackson’s guiding statement recognised the risks associated with the loss or erasure of this historical record and gestured at the urgent need to reclaim, collect, and preserve this documentary evidence. Beginning in 1974, The Body Politic ran a series of foundational articles by James Steakley, which introduced the history of a gay community in Berlin under Germany’s Weimar Republic (Jackson 1982). Steakley described the founding of Magnus Hirschfeld’s Institute for Sexual Science in 1919, and the subsequent rise of sexology studies, as well as the presence of bars and clubs that catered to homosexuals and gender nonconformists. In the final article, Steakley details the dismantling of this community after the rise of Adolf Hitler and the fury with which the Nazis destroyed any evidence of Hirschfeld, sexology, and homosexuality—gay Berlin was expunged from public history. Steakley went on to describe the persecution of homosexuals during the Holocaust and the ways in which gay men and lesbians were arrested and detained in concentration camps. As Mossop (2014) reports, the Steakley articles were highly influential and generated a considerable paranoia on the part of those involved in the archives project as they worked

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diligently to ensure that evidence of Canada’s own gay community would never be lost to fascists. As knowledge of the archives spread, gay men and lesbians from across the country began to send in materials from their own personal collections, documenting both current activism and historical experiences. By 1975, Jackson recognised that the collecting scope of the archives had grown beyond its initial mission to preserve records of the gay liberation movement; in the absence of any traditional library or archives actively collecting records about gay people, the CGLMA had become the de facto collecting authority on gay Canada. In response, Jackson renamed the archives the Canadian Gay Archives (CGA) and began recruiting volunteers with professional expertise to work with the materials. It was around this time that a representative from the Archives of Ontario contacted the CGA to enquire about the possibility of acquiring some of the material it had collected for the province. This was the first notice of attention from professional archivists and a pivotal moment in the history of the organisation. As Bébout (1979) recalls, the offer was tempting because it would ensure that professional archivists would maintain the collection, records would be more accessible to researchers, and the acquisition itself would acknowledge that gay people are part of the public history of the province. Jackson remained fearful, however, that the collection could be easily neglected or destroyed if the social and political will of the government shifted. In the end, the CGA declined the offer to hand over materials to the province. The capacity of the CGA to collect on behalf of all gay Canadians was nevertheless tested in the early 1990s, with the closure of the Canadian Women’s Movement Archives (CWMA). As Hogan (2008) explains, the CWMA began as an activist project in much the same way as the CGA. A small group of women involved with the women’s liberation movement began collecting records documenting the work of this movement and its participants. The CWMA was founded the year before the CGA and, as a result, had developed relationships with many lesbian women’s groups and activists involved in the lesbian feminist movement. Although women had always participated in the CGA and contributed to its collections, lesbian women were more likely to donate materials to the CWMA, especially if the records documented activities that fell under the broad rubric of the women’s movement in Canada. As a result, the collections of the CGA initially developed with a bias towards men’s activities and experiences. When the CWMA closed in 1992 and its collections moved to the University of Ottawa, the CGA responded by formally changing its name to the Canadian Lesbian and Gay Archives (CLGA). This name persisted until 2018, when the Board announced that the organisation would rebrand as The ArQuives: Canada’s LGBTQ2+ Archives. The addition of “lesbian” to the organisation’s formal name was intended to reflect the archives’ commitment to including lesbian women in its work and to acknowledge the critical need to more actively collect and preserve lesbian women’s history. This acknowledgement, however, did not necessarily translate

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into instrumental changes in the archives’ collecting practices. While serving as the Executive Director and Archives Manager of The ArQuives, I conducted a careful review of the collections based on provenance and available descriptions. Nearly 25 years after the name change, the archival collections continued to foreground the experiences of gay men, with roughly 80% of the collections predominantly documenting men’s activities and experiences. Despite this imbalance in representation along gender, The ArQuives has continued to grow over the past 20 years and continued to play an essential role in social justice struggles for rights, equality, and identity for both lesbian and gay Canadians. In 1999, for example, The ArQuives added its name as co-complainant to a case filed with the Ontario Human Rights Commission on behalf of Ray Brillinger against Scott Brockie and Imaging Excellence. In 1996, Brillinger, then serving on the board of The ArQuives, asked Brockie for a price quote for printing envelops, letterhead, and business cards for the archives. According to court documents, Brockie refused to serve the archives, citing his religious beliefs, and denied Brillinger service. In response, Brillinger filed the complaint that was heard by the Ontario Human Rights Commission, which found that his rights were infringed. Brockie was ordered to provide services to the archives and pay Brillinger $5,000 in damages (Brillinger v Brockie, 2000). The finding set a legal precedent in the province that positioned the rights of lesbian and gay people over religious freedoms. The ArQuives has also participated in the work of lesbian and gay rights activism in a number of capacities. Legal and advocacy groups, such as EGALE Canada and the Association for Marriage and the Family in Ottawa, and human rights lawyer R. Douglas Elliott, have accessed the collections of The ArQuives to investigate how gay men and lesbians have historically lived together and contributed to family relationships and should be treated as couples under common law and within legal marriages. Immigration lawyers have used the archives’ international clipping files to establish discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation in the home countries of some refugee claimants. In addition, The ArQuives’ extensive collections of records relating to the AIDS crisis have been regularly consulted. In the late 1990s, for example, The ArQuives was contacted by the Royal Commission of Inquiry on the Blood System in Canada, commonly referred to as the Krever Commission. The commission asked The ArQuives to participate in a fact-finding mission to locate evidence that the system of government, private, and non-governmental organisations responsible for supplying blood and blood products to the health care system had failed to protect Canadians by allowing blood contaminated with HIV to be used. The Krever Commission established a part-time paid position within the archives to review The ArQuives’ AIDS collections, which contained documents that no other institution had preserved. More recently, members of the Toronto Police Service, in advance of Chief Saunders’ formal apology on behalf of the force, used The ArQuives’ collections to confirm

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details about the 1981 bathhouse raids. Countless others have used the primary sources preserved by The ArQuives to write journal articles, news media, and books that centre lesbian and gay histories in ways that would not have been possible without the extensive collections preserved and made accessible by the archives. The ArQuives’ holdings have also been digitised by GALE Cengage Learning as part of its efforts to build the Archives of Sexuality and Gender, a database that now includes more than 1.5 million pages of primary sources. Participation in this partnership ensures that a significant LGBTQ documentary heritage is now widely available in post-secondary institutions around the world. While the most obvious ways that The ArQuives has contributed to social justice struggles has been the provision of documentary evidence necessary to support movement goals of equality and civil rights, the very existence of an archive created by, for, and about lesbian and gay people has additional symbolic value. As Kaplan (2000) claims, “notions of identity are confirmed and justified as historical documentation validates their authority” (p. 126). Like other lesbian and gay archives that have emerged within similar socio-political contexts, The ArQuives has rescued, preserved, and made accessible any record of a queer past as a way to create historical documentation, even if this has resulted in collecting ephemera or photographs that are contextually vague and might otherwise be dismissed by traditional collecting institutions as lacking evidential value. As Marcel Barriault (Fall 2009) notes, sometimes non-traditional records or incomplete documentation are all that remains of our collective queer past. The power of the absence of documentary heritage is also meaningful because it draws attention to the ways in which lesbians and gay men have been excluded from fully participating in their own communities. The ArQuives can therefore be understood through what Caswell (2014b) has called, “the lens of liberatory archival imaginaries” (p. 35). That is, the power of The ArQuives does not end with its collections or even its collecting practices, but rather, it allows us to conceptualise a queer past, present, and future based on the records that we do not have. This political potential is reflected by Ajamu X, Topher Campbell and Mary Stevens (2009), who contend that “‘sifting the past’ to recover what ‘isn’t there but was’ is not just a solitary reflective endeavor for individuals from disinherited groups, it can also be an act of collective rebellion” (p. 272). At The ArQuives, volunteers work together to sift through a shared queer past as they carefully catalogue pin buttons, t-shirts, books, periodicals, meeting minutes, and other records as they add them to the growing collections. The symbolic aspect of this work is that The ArQuives has become such an entrenched part of the Canadian heritage landscape that its mere existence confirms and justifies a shared heritage for a gay and lesbian identity. It also challenges a mainstream heritage system to acknowledge the existence of a queer past and reckon with its history of obscuring, undervaluing, or censoring this history.

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Conclusion: Lesbian and gay archives and public history I began this chapter with a difficult accounting of the shooting at Orlando’s Pulse nightclub and a claim that the memory of this incident will be both queer history and public history. I also suggest that lesbian and gay archives have played central roles in helping to establish a shared heritage for lesbian and gay people that can been used strategically to ensure that queer histories are both validated and included in public history. These archives have also served as social movement organisations, creating space for lesbian and gay people to create and develop a collective identity, strengthen social cohesion, and mobilise cultural resources for the purpose of collective action for social change. The response to the Pulse shooting has been starkly different than the public forgetting of the 1973 arson at New Orleans’ UpStairs Lounge. Two archival projects, the One Orlando Collection, a partnership between the Orange County Government and the City of Orlando (The History Center), and the Orlando 49 Project (We Are Orlando), organised by the Stonewall National Museum and Archives, seek to document the lives of those lost in the deadly attack and the implications of this tragedy for citizens across the state and beyond. These archival initiatives, which ask community members to contribute cards, signs, family photographs, and other memorial artefacts, exist simultaneously, one as a grassroots community endeavour and the other as a function of the state’s formal heritage system. Together, these archives work to ensure that the stories of those impacted by the Orlando shooting are part of the public record. Of course, the development of any shared heritage or collective identity is fraught with tensions that are presently at play within the cohort of lesbian and gay archives discussed throughout this chapter. While The ArQuives has served as a social movement organisation to support lesbian and gay rights movements broadly defined, it has also participated in the development of a particular shared heritage that underpins these movements and their goals. On one hand, it has offered gay men and lesbians who have been marginalised from socio-political and economic structures a way to document their own cultural productions. It has also provided a space where gay and lesbian Canadians can have “autonomy and authority to establish, enact, and reflect on their presence in ways that are complex, meaningful, substantive and positive to them in a variety of symbolic contexts” (Caswell et al. 2016, p. 1). The ArQuives is a place where lesbian and gay Canadians can see themselves reflected in the collections, even if they are only a glimpse of the full range of gay and lesbian experiences. On the other hand, the ways in which The ArQuives’ collections have developed and are used to support equality and civil rights reflect a particular understanding of what it means to be lesbian or gay in Canada. Over the past decade, I have logged criticism against The ArQuives for its refusal to fully engage with communities of colour, trans people, rural communities, and others whose sexuality or gender expression does not fit comfortably

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within the categories of gay or lesbian. The archives, established as a way to confront the marginalisation of lesbian and gay men from traditional heritage systems, also has the power to marginalise those who fall outside of the collective identities that its collections and collecting practices have helped develop. After the Orlando shooting, as many cis-, white, gay men and lesbians took to social media to share their own recollections of finding community and sanctuary from homophobia in gay bars, it became clear that the majority of victims at Pulse were Latinx or of African or Afro-Caribbean descent. The incident was not, in fact, a devastating attack on all Americans; it was violence directed towards queer people of colour who had gathered at the bar for its weekly Latin music night. This is an important distinction because, in the United States, 79% of homicides resulting from anti-LGBTQ violence are people of colour (National Coalition of Antiviolence Programs 2016). Queer people of colour are twice as likely to experience physical violence than lesbian, gay, bisexual, or queer-identified white people (National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs 2016). Although Canada’s racial and ethnic histories are different than those of the United States, both countries share a tendency to celebrate a lesbian and gay identity that foregrounds whiteness, as well as cisgender and homocentric expressions. As Tim McCaskell (2016) argues, a shared heritage of lesbian and gay people that does not account for class, racial, ethnic, and gender differences only reproduces the kinds of injustices and social inequalities that the gay liberation and lesbian feminist movements aimed to dismantle. Can lesbian and gay archives, which have been active agents in producing this shared heritage, also take part in the work of creating a more just society for those marginalised by this heritage? Perhaps this is also part of the symbolic power of the archives—not only can we imagine what The ArQuives’ collections are missing, but we can also envision a future in which the archives itself reckons with its own biases and silences.

Notes 1 This chapter is based on the author’s PhD thesis (Sheffield 2015). The author would like to thank Ed Jackson, Jearld Moldenhauer, Harold Averill, and Alan V. Miller for their generosity of time assisting with the historical research on The ArQuives and The Body Politic; Anna Robinson-Sweet for her keen eye editing sections of the text; and the two anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful feedback on early versions of this chapter. 2 This cohort includes, for example, the ONE National Gay and Lesbian Archives, The June L. Mazer Lesbian Archives and the GLBT Historical Society in California, the Stonewall National Museum and Archives in Florida, the Ohio Lesbian Archives, the Lesbian Herstory Archives in New York, the Chris Gonzalez Library and Archives in Illinois, the Boston History Project and the Sexual Minorities Archives in Massachusetts, the Pride Library and The ArQuives: Canada’s LGBTQ2+ Archives, Archives gaies du Québec, and the BC Gay and Lesbian Archives. These archives and others are listed in Lavender Legacies, the Society of American Archivists (SAA) Lesbian and Gay Archives Roundtable’s Guide to Sources in North America.

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References Barriault, Marcel. Fall 2009. “Hard to Dismiss: The Archival Value of Gay Male Erotica and Pornography.” Archivaria 68: 219–246. Bébout, Rick. 1979. “Stashing the Evidence.” The Body Politic. August, pp. 21–22, 26. Bébout, Rick. 1998. Inventory of the Records of the Body Politic and Pink Triangle Press. CLGA. web.archive.org/web/20170331104815/www.clga.ca/Material/Records/inven/ tbp/tbpint.htm. Brillinger and the Canadian Lesbian and Gay Archives v. Brokie and Imaging Excellence Inc. 2000. “Ontario Court of Justice.” B1-0179-98. Accessed 22 October 2018. https:// archive.org/details/boi00_003_R. Buechler, Steven. M. 1993. “Beyond Resource Mobilization? Emerging Trends in Social Movement Theory.” The Sociological Quarterly 34(2): 217–235. Caswell, Michelle. 2014a. “Seeing Yourself in History: Community Archives in the Fight against Symbolic Annihilation.” The Public Historian 36(4): 26–37. Caswell, Michelle. 2014b. “Inventing New Archival Imaginaries: Theoretical Foundations for Identity-based Community Archives.” In Identity Palimpsests: Ethnic Archiving in the U.S. and Canada, edited byDominique Daniel and Amalia Levi, 1st ed., 35–55. Sacramento, CA: Litwin Books. Caswell, Michelle, Marika Cifor, and Mario. H. Ramirez. 2016. “‘To Suddenly Discover Yourself Existing’: Uncovering the Affective Impact of Community Archives.” The American Archivist 79(1): 56–81. Caswell, Michelle, Alda Allina Migoni, Noah Geraci, and Marika. Cifor. 2016. “‘To Be Able to Imagine Otherwise’: Community Archives and the Importance of Representation.” Archives and Records 38(1): 5–26. Cheddie, Janice. 2012. “Embedding Shared Heritage: Human Rights Discourse and the London Mayor’s Commission on African and Asian Heritage.” In Museums, Equality and Social Justice, edited by Richard Sandell and Eithne Nightingale, 270–280. Abingdon: Routledge. Crooke, Elizabeth. 2007. Museums and Community: Ideas, Issues and Challenges. London: Routledge. Eichhorn, Kate. 2013. The Archival Turn in Feminism: Outrage in Order. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. Faderman, Lillian, and Stuart Timmons. 2006. Gay L.A.: A History of Sexual Outlaws, Power Politics, and Lipstick Lesbians. New York: Basic Books. Flinn, Andrew. 2007. “Community Histories, Community Archives: Some Opportunities and Challenges.” Journal of the Society of Archivists 28(2): 151–176. Flinn, Andrew, MaryStevens, and Elizabeth Shepherd. 2009. “Whose Memories, Whose Archives? Independent Community Archives, Autonomy and the Mainstream.” Archival Science 9(1): 71–86. Garunay, Melanie. 2016. “President Obama on the Tragic Shooting in Orlando.” [online] White House Blog. Accessed 22 October 2018. www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2016/06/12/ president-obama-tragic-shooting-orlando. Hogan, Mél. 2008. “Dykes on Mykes: Podcasting and the Activist Archive.” Topia 20: 199–215. Jackson, Ed. 1982. “Introduction.” In Flaunting It! A Decade of Gay Journalism from the Body Politic, edited by Ed Jackson and Stan Persky, 1–6. Toronto, ON: Pink Triangle Press.

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Janus, Andrea. 2016. “Toronto Police Chief Mark Saunders to Apologize for 1981 Bathhouse Raids.” CBC. Accessed 22 October 2018. www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/bath house-raids-apology-1.3645082. Jeannotte, Sharon M. 2003. “Singing Alone? The Contributions of Cultural Capital to Social Cohesion and Sustainable Communities.” International Journal of Cultural Policy 9(1): 35–49. Kaplan, Elisabeth. 2000. “We Are What We Collect, We Collect What We Are: Archives and the Construction of Identity.” The American Archivist 63: 126–151. Kinsman, Gary, and Patrizia Gentile. 2009. The Canadian War on Queers: National Security as Sexual Regulation. Vancouver, BC: UBC Press. McCarthy, John. D, and Mayer. N. Zald. 1977. “Resource Mobilization and Social Movements: A Partial Theory.” American Journal of Sociology 82(6): 1212–1241. McCaskell, Tim. 2016. Queer Progress: From Homophobia to Homonationalism. Toronto: Between the Lines. McKinney, Cait. 2015. “Newsletter Networks in the Feminist History and Archives Movement.” Feminist Theory 17(1): 310–328. McLeod, Donald. W. 2003. A Brief History of GAY: Canada’s First Gay Tabloid, 1964–1966. Toronto: Homewood Books. Melucci, Alberto. 1995. “The Process of Collective Identity.” In Social Movements and Culture, edited by Hank Johnston and Bert Klandermans, 41–63. London, UK: University College Press. Moore, Shaunna, and Susan Pell. 2010. “Autonomous Archives.” International Journal of Heritage Studies 16(4–5): 255–268. Mossop, Brian. 2014. “1974: The Weimar Republic Comes to Gay Canada.” In Translation Effects, edited by Kathy Mezei, Sherry Simon and Louise von Flotow, 399–415. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press. National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs. 2016. Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer and HIV-affected Hate Violence in 2016. New York City Gay & Lesbian Anti-Violence Project, Inc. and the Arcus Foundation. Accessed 22 October 2018. https://avp.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/NCAVP_2016HateViolence_REPORT.pdf. One, Inc. v. Olesen 355 U.S. 371. Accessed 22 Oct 2018. https://web.stanford.edu/~mro senfe/more_cases/ONE_v_olesen_US_SC_1958.pdf. O’Toole, James. 1993. “The Symbolic Power of Archives.” The American Archivist 56: 234–255. Pendlebury, John, Tim Townshend, and Rose Gilroy. 2004. “The Conservation of English Cultural Built Heritage: A Force for Social Inclusion?” International Journal of Heritage Studies 10(1): 11–31. Putnam, Robert D. 2001. Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. New York: Simon and Schuster. Rayside, David. 1998. On the Fringe. Gays and Lesbians in Politics. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Sandell, Richard. 1998. “Museums as Agents of Social Inclusion.” Museum Management and Curatorship 17(4): 401–418. Sandell, Richard. 2003. “Social Inclusion, the Museum and the Dynamics of Sectoral Change.” Museum and Society 1(1): 45–62. Sheffield, Rebecka Taves. 2015. “The Emergence, Development and Survival of Four Lesbian and Gay Archives.” PhD., University of Toronto.

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Sheffield, Rebecka Taves. 2017. “Community Archives.” In Currents of Archival Thinking, edited by Terry Eastwood and Heather MacNeil, 2nd ed., 352–376. Santa Barbara, CA: Libraries Unlimited. Smith, Laurajane. 2010. “Ethics of Social Justice? Heritage and the Politics of Recognition.” Austalian Aboriginal Studies 2: 60–68. Stein, Marc. 2012. Rethinking the Gay and Lesbian Movement. New York: Routledge. Swanson, Ana. 2016. “The Orlando Attack Could Transform the Picture of Post-9/11 Terrorism in America.” Washington Post. Accessed 22 October 2018. www.washington post.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/06/12/the-orlando-attack-could-transform-the-pictureof-post-911-terrorism-in-america/ Tau, Byron. 2016. “Obama Designates Stonewall National Monument to LGBT Rights.” Wall Street Journal. Accessed 22 October 2018. http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2016/ 06/24/obama-designates-stonewall-national-monument-to-lgbt-rights/ The History Center. 2016. “One Orlando Digital Memorial.” Accessed 22 October 2018. www.thehistorycenter.org/digital-memorial/. 15 February 2020 site available at http:// oneorlandocollection.com/ The UpStairs Lounge Fire. 2013. [Video]. New Orleans, LA: Royd Anderson. Townsend, Johnny. 2011. Let the Faggots Burn: The UpStairs Lounge Fire. New Orleans, LA: BookLocker.com, Inc. Wakimoto, Diana. K., Christine Bruce, and Helen Partridge. 2013. “Archivist as Activist: Lessons from Three Queer Community Archives in California.” Archival Science 13(4): 293–316. We Are Orlando. 2016. Accessed 22 October 2018. www.weareorlando.org. Accessed February 17, 2020 . https://web.archive.org/web/*/www.weareorlando.org White, Todd. C. 2009. Pre-Gay L.A.: A Social History for the Movement for Homosexual Rights. Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press. X, Ajamu, Topher Campbell, and Mary Stevens. 2009. “Love and Lubrication in the Archives, or Rukus!: A Black Queer Archive for the United Kingdom.” Archivaria 68: 271–294. Ya’ari, Elizabeth. 2010. “Promoting Understanding of Shared Heritage (PUSH).” Museum International 62(1–2): 9–13.

Chapter 11

Social justice and hearing voices Co-constructing an archive of mental health recovery Anna Sexton, Stuart Baker-Brown, Peter Bullimore, Dolly Sen, and Andrew Voyce

Co-constructing the mental health recovery archive In 2011–2013, the authors of this chapter came together1 to build the Mental Health Recovery Archive.2 We will each explore our motivations for producing the archive, and our views on the recovery framework underpinning it. The project was born from Anna’s PhD work, which was based at the Wellcome Library in London, and was a response to the Wellcome Library’s archive and manuscript collections on mental health,3 which predominantly frame mental health from the point of view of the asylum, the medical professional, the psychiatrist, and the psychoanalyst. The Wellcome Library collections include case notes that allow us to gaze in at the individual patients in the system, picking up details about pervading views on behaviour and treatment. However, what we can see, know, and construct about these pasts is heavily filtered through a lens controlled by those with power over the patient. Occasionally there are offerings penned in the hand of the patient, such as letters to family members or pieces of creative work, but these always and only have a place in the case notes because someone other than the patient has decided to put them there. The Archive of Mental Health Recovery Stories aims to show that individuals with lived experience can tell their stories with a potential to shine brighter than those told by the system, the institution, and the medical professional. It aims to value these stories by giving them a permanent space, which is open now as a means of speaking into the present, and influencing the future. The archive4 is based around the personal narratives of Anna Sexton, Dolly Sen, Stuart Baker-Brown, Andrew Voyce, and Peter Bullimore. Anna came to the project as an archivist and PhD researcher with an interest in participatory archives. Dolly, Stuart, Andrew, and Peter came to the project with lived experience of mental health recovery.

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Andrew’s perspective on creating the archive When I was asked by Anna Sexton to get involved in her PhD project with the Wellcome library, I was immediately impressed by the quality of the setting and the ethical approach taken by Anna. From those early exchanges, I could not find any elements of exploitation or working to someone else’s agenda. I felt that the project was one where I could extend my use of personal narrative, something I have found therapeutic and cathartic. For me, the key result from the creation of my personal narrative is that I am imparting my history in my terms, and I am described in my terms, not someone else’s, which so often is a version of me that I do not recognise. It’s great that Anna recognises issues of power relations. After all, it was she who decided on the setting, the media platform used, and even who to include. So there were issues of power, even whose story is it anyway? But for me there was no coercion, no excluding of issues around my time with psychosis and in the mental health system, and no sanitising of my version of who I am. I am not sure of any disconnect between how the archive was set up and me having full control of my story. It certainly did not feel like that. Maybe I am naive to the critical observer, but I believe that I (and other disempowered people) need to take chances when they come along. Jonny Rotten has written as much. So I was given a free hand on what I said and how I presented my narrative, with an opportunity to air my digital cartoons, and I was happy with that, while Anna wrestled with issues of how she could trouble her position as originator. My favourite definitions of recovery include having a meaningful life and getting an identity beyond that of “mental patient.” So the archive we created for the Wellcome Library enabled me to express my identity. As I developed material for the archive, I explored the side effects of medication, my lack of fulfilled potential, my life in the old asylums, Mrs Thatcher’s unlikely role in closing the Victorian institutions, my delusions, and many other aspects of mental illness, and this process of writing, selecting, and exploring added purpose and meaning to my life. It was also a major step forward for me to have a depth of academic involvement in reflecting on the process with Anna. That was something I valued very much, as perhaps had things gone differently for me, I would have more of a mainstream association with academia. It has been good to be in the loop. Did I feel constrained by creating or adding to the archive? Quite the opposite. I found the whole process and its environment to be liberating. From the days out to the Wellcome building in Euston with that essential purpose of liaising with Anna, to the choosing and compiling material for the archive, to discussing the issues around IT and problem solving, right up to the symposium to launch the archive with guests and us contributors giving talks, it was a stimulating time. I would say that there is nothing I refer to in my everyday life that could not be included in my personal section in the archive. I guess

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that there now seems to be a lull, a while after the completion of the project. It would be good to have some feedback on who is using the archive, and what they thought of it. I found the whole project to be formative and developmental.

Stuart’s perspective on creating the archive It was very important for me to be involved with the archive to help promote and share a patient’s perspective on my own condition. I wanted to try and show a different side to schizophrenia, away from the misconceptions unfairly attached to the diagnosis. When I was first diagnosed, I met with horrible and destructive stigma and discrimination from mental health professionals. I was told who and what I was, what I could and couldn’t do. I was being told how I should live my life and that it was likely I would never overcome my symptoms. I felt my true personality had been overlooked and replaced with an assumed personality that I did not recognise. I was being viewed as a potential threat to society. They took away my identity; they took away my beliefs; my life; and replaced it with a profile of a man that suited their own needs and not mine. I felt powerless, voiceless, as though my equal standing as a fellow human being had been swept away. I felt some of my basic human rights had been lost. Recovery was never mentioned and was never promoted. If I tried to challenge the professionals and tell them I can overcome my symptoms and I believed I could live a successful life, I was made to feel that I was deluding myself and I was not wanting to accept and live within the true expectations of my diagnosis. Mental health professionals would often have people believe there is not much hope for someone with a diagnosis of schizophrenia. They would have people believe the condition is full of fear, madness, being out of touch with reality, and so on. But there is so much more to my condition, so much I am proud of. I hope the Mental Health Recovery Archive can help teach people to have a different approach to my diagnosis because I have proved a meaningful life can be achieved. In my personal experience, the medical world has so much to learn from the patient’s perspective and needs to truly respect and understand the patient, as I believe those with “lived experience” can educate and add much needed knowledge towards greater understanding of mental health. I want the archive to show that although my experience with schizophrenia has been devastating, it has also created the man I strive to be. It has also changed my life for the better. I believe those diagnosed with mental ill health should become their own best doctor, their own best motivator, their own best guide, and their own best expert on themselves. Having control of my narrative is extremely important. Only I know me! If someone wanted to read and have understanding about my condition, they

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would very often look towards the mental health professionals for advice. And from personal experience, what the mental health experts would say, does by no means, support or give accurate information about my own true character. Their version of “myself” is full of stigma and misunderstanding. Having control of my narrative takes away the control of those who have labelled me with stigma and fear. I have come across it time after time, I have seen it in my own medical records, the medical interpretation of myself, and my life experience, and I just do not recognise the man they are writing about. I am not the man whom the “official record” would have you believe. In a world where the “patients voice” is so often over-looked and unheard, I believe the “archive” can only help provide invaluable information for the good of all those who may turn to it for greater understanding. It’s extremely important to promote recovery and hope. Recovery, when I was first diagnosed was thought of as near impossible. No one spoke about it. I often said, I was not being allowed to recover. It’s vital that all mental health professionals promote a form of recovery as soon as diagnosis is made. Promotion of hope must always be made. I believe if “hope and recovery” were fully promoted when I was first diagnosed, then my journey with my diagnosis could have been a lot easier. In truth, there should be many more stories on the archive, as I believe recovery is an individual experience and definition. I believe it’s very important for people to see others who are managing their lives, dealing with their symptoms, and still pushing forwards and not giving up. From a personal perspective, I have wondered from the very start of the archive’s creation, if academics/mental health professionals would take the content on board. Would the archive manage to challenge the professional boundaries of understanding in a positive way? Too often, I feel there can be a lack of respect from academics towards those who have a non-academic background. I have been worried the potential reader of the archive may just see the symptoms of the condition and anything unusual being said, that does not fit within their own understanding, could easily be dismissed. So I did feel a level of emotional constraint and wondered if anything that was included on the site that seemed abnormal to the academic world, could potentially be dismissed as psychotic and delusional thinking. Much of the content I have added on the archive, took me many years to speak about freely, because of fear of being classed as mentally ill and deluded. My thoughts and beliefs, and my life experience, does not always “fit in” with what is accepted as normal. I chose to be true to myself and add content about my life in the hope some readers will have an open mind. My reality is my reality, no matter how strange it may seem. So I was honest to myself and gave myself the freedom to say what I wanted to say. However, I have felt the format of the archive has been somewhat limiting, and the format of Omeka5 did constrain my ability to find complete freedom of creation. I feel there are very creative and unique individuals involved

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with creating the archive, who wanted to share their unique life experiences but we had to work within the constraints of a controlled academic format. So perhaps the constraints of a controlled academic format limited my expression at times. Will the archive allow for the reader to see beyond their own understanding of a mental health diagnosis? Will the academic reader or mental health professional allow themselves to accept that a contributor with “lived experience” can be an expert with invaluable insight? Will the reader allow themselves to open their mind? I don’t know, but my participation in the archive is intended to give hope, and I am optimistic that at least some of its readers will find value in what is there.

Dolly’s perspective I wanted to help build the archive for many reasons. I was intrigued by how archives work and what it is like to be part of one. I also wanted my story to have truth in it. Knowing how most non-medical systems take on the pathologisation of psychiatry when it comes to working with or looking at people with mental health difficulties, I was interested to know how much of my truth was allowed to be in my story. The history of mental health is full of silencing, restraining, and punishing for difference. Some archives of the mad, thus far, are full of silenced, restrained, and punished stories. We are only allowed to speak if we don’t tell the truth. I wanted to discover if this was still true. When I first worked with Anna, she had begun sifting through the mental health archives that were already part of the Wellcome Collection, and she discovered the majority of archives were written by professionals, such as psychiatrists, psychoanalysts, and nurses. You were supposed to know people from their medical notes. Professionals may know the climate of madness, and its mountains, but they have never climbed them. They might even know its language, but they will always speak with an accent, and so much is lost in translation. Truth is not in my medical notes. I have over 20 years of medical notes to my name, but if you read them you see nothing of me. I have read a lot of them when researching my autobiographies. Apart from factual inaccuracies such as being anything from 4 ft 8 to 5ft 10, and interchangeable ethnicities, you don’t know my story at all. You get observable data of an unobservable world. Psychiatry has to rewrite and revise itself. Its story has hurt too many people, it needs to rewrite its script, and stop writing crappy sequels. I approached the archive asking myself: who are the audience? I decided it would be for anyone interested in it in the present, but I also wanted to create an archive for people who haven’t been born yet, who hopefully will live in a different world when it comes to mental distress. The hope is to show the people of the future that the bad old days are not their story too. Because if

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everyone gives good trip rating reviews of hell, nothing will change. I took part in the archive to undertake an experiment in truth. Having control of my narrative was essential, and if I had felt it was going to be colonised or appropriated, I would have left the project. Luckily, Anna treated me with respect, dignity, and was kind, self aware, and insightful enough not to bring the painful pathologisation and tainted power dynamics psychiatry is built upon, to the table. She was authentic and shared her life with me. She thought making me the expert in my own story was the proper thing to do, and that made the process possible and so much more rewarding. It became a story from my own words, unmediated, and without the branding and disaffecting touch of psychiatry or the world’s belief that psychiatry knows more about my mental health than I do. Pathology is not just labels of experience, it is framing the experience for the approval of psychiatric professionals and how society looks upon the experience. Pathology is saying the way you think or feel is wrong, so you can’t tell the truth of your experience, we, as professionals, have to do it for you. My story is protest to that pathology, which means it is situated on the defensive stage, so narrative and identity has to play to that drama and song. I would have loved to bring more joy and mischief to the archive but it became a place to rage against the machine, whilst being aware archives are part of that machine. This is what you have to do when your story is seen as sickness. The recovery frame of the archive was one of the major ways the archive was constraining. When Anna wanted to do an archive around recovery, the recovery model was already losing its value amongst people with mental distress. It was becoming contested and used to control people. But I used my position in the archive to look critically at the recovery model. One of the problems with the recovery model is that it has been used to justify withdrawing support and services, and shame people into accepting the road that will force them into being thrown into a world of sharks. The model insists it’s the individual’s responsibility and problem that they have mental health problems. It doesn’t look at social or political determinants of mental health. There is no recovery model for the society of sharks. You can be forced into a stressful job, and be discriminated against because of mental health stigma, and be paid poorly, but any distress arising from that will be your imperfection and lonely defect. I used the archive to say that much at least. One of the other ways I felt constrained was by the attitudes of some archivists and historians, who didn’t understand their power or their protection from the personal. Some stories or experiences elicit shame or emotional pain in the teller. The boundaries in place when working with “vulnerable” people seem to be so one-sided. It assumes some professionals are ensconced and protected by a wall that hides their shame, pain, or vulnerabilities, but the person on the other side stands red raw from their telling. I did not feel this with Anna, but

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because of the archive I got to meet many other historians and archivists who did not want to be on an equal footing with me. I had many an archivist asking me: how can you categorise if there are no labels to hang experiences upon? I was told I could call my experience something else, but if someone were interested in psychosis or named psychiatric disorders, they wouldn’t get to read my story. The problem is words like disorder, pathology, and false beliefs don’t explain my experience or help me to make sense of them. And I have said to many an archivist, your job is to resolve this tension, it’s not mine. I have done too much walking to meet the world; the world needs to begin to walk towards me. All in all, I was happy with the archive of me in 2013, when the archive was created. I have changed since then, and it would be a different archive now. But it does show some of the truth of me at that time. It does show some of the “dollyness” of Dolly. The question is: who will care?

Peter’s perspective I remember when I first met Anna to talk about contributing to the archive, she brought the drinks and we sat and talked and from the outset she didn’t want to push me into anything—that sticks out as important. She talked about archives and wanting to create a different kind of archive that would be our story on our terms, but she didn’t demand my involvement, she suggested I got back in touch with her after I had time to think about it all. I remember the others we were with asking me afterwards what our meeting was about and I said there was something genuine about the project because Anna had been clear about the aims and then left it with me. I don’t like authority and that authoritarianism wasn’t there from the start, and that continued through the process. Anna didn’t demand I worked in a certain way, participating on her terms, she was accommodating even to the extent of travelling to meet me at times so it had the right balance for me from the word go. We opted for an interview approach to creating my part of the archive because that would work best around my other commitments, so I told Anna bits and pieces about my life but she was asking for a reason, there was a purpose. I have many experiences of opening up to journalists and academics. These people go away, write an article, and not even have the gratitude to send you a copy, but I knew we were going to turn it into something, the archive, and I thought we have a great opportunity here to leave a legacy and I wanted to be part of that. It also ties into the fact that I am not ashamed anymore. I want people to know the truth about my experiences long after I am gone. I felt in control of my narrative within the archive. My story is there, being sexually abused as a child, spiralling down into paranoia and hearing voices. How before I got involved in the Hearing Voices Network the general message from services that I was getting was basically—you’ve got this degenerative mental health problem and you will have to take drugs for the rest of your life

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and you will never ever work again. So a very negative, your life is over, attitude. I was basically being told, you are going to be stuck in this system, you are going to be dependent on other people all your life. But through the Hearing Voices Network, I was introduced to a different perspective. Firstly, as I say, in my narrative, the first network meeting I went to, I was bowled over by the fact that there were people who heard voices like me who were articulate, clean shaven, respectable human beings. Not like me at that point, because the system had turned me into the archetypal schizophrenic. I didn’t wash, I didn’t shave, I was a mess. So that in itself was an eye opener. And then I read “Accepting Voices” by Marius Romme and Sandra Escher, and to me that was the most powerful book I read at that time. It normalised voices—they are not the sign of a mental illness, they are a reaction to life events. The voices are messengers, bringing you messages about awful things that have happened, but don’t shoot the messenger because they are talking about things that have happened in your life, things that you haven’t dealt with. The link between trauma and my experience of hearing voices is overwhelming. Understanding that has changed how I see myself and my voices, and so my story is weaved into the Hearing Voices Network and into Marius’ work. In the archive, my narrative has a different political potential, placing my narrative in the archive was about speaking into archives, into history, into the Wellcome Library, and from there back into the mental health system. My story exists in lots of places, and in each place it can have a different affect. The archive used the frame of recovery and I was able to give my perspectives on recovery within my narrative. There is nothing wrong with the notions of recovery and resilience, people have always had the capacity to recover but I think it is wrong when we are telling people how to recover in a prescribed way. People need love, empathy, and compassion not recovery models. Recovery hijacked by services isn’t recovery at all.

Anna’s perspective Andrew is absolutely right in his suggestion that I have spent time seeking to reflect on my role as project originator and the resulting degrees of influence that I have had over the “voice” contained in the narratives of the other contributors. There are multiple facets connected to my centrality in the archive, but here I will focus on exploring the boundaries of freedom and constraint around my choice of “recovery” as an overarching conceptual frame for the archive. There is no such thing as a neutral or static label or frame (Moncrieffe and Eyben 2007). All terminology is both historically contingent and capable of dramatic change in meaning over time. In the context of mental health, this is drawn out by Church (1995) in relation to how the individual with lived experience is described by others, and chooses to describe themselves. “Patient” is used in medical contexts, but has been reclaimed by those with lived experience in the past, and reframed as a means to centre lived experience

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above medical knowledge.6 “Client” has been adopted in certain contexts as a referent indicative of a rehabilitative mindset. “Consumer” was first forged in self-help collectives as a grass-roots term, but remains contested due to connotations of conservative market-orientated politics. “Service user” (an equally market-orientated term) has been a popular alternative label to “patient” with mental health professionals in a United Kingdom, and some individuals with lived experience have also adopted the label. “Survivor” has emerged from grass roots politics, led by those with lived experience, and is used differently to denote “survival” following mental distress but more commonly to indicate “survival” of the mental health system (Sweeney 2009). All these terms are temporal and spatially located in that they emanate from particular contexts and sociohistoric time frames, with definition (including self-definition) shifting over time in relation to broader societal shifts (Crossley 2001). Recovery is no exception. It has a particular “taste” and a “socially charged life” (Bakhtin 1986), and it must be understood within the socio-historical context in which it first emerged and then evolved. Over the course of constructing the archive, I have become more aware of the reasons why the concept of recovery has a double edge. On the one hand, as Andrew and Stuart testify, embracing it can bring many personal benefits. As a process, it involves finding a sense of connectedness. Its cornerstones are hope and optimism about the future. It encourages fostering a positive identity, it is about finding meaning in life, and as such it offers a potential path to empowerment (Le Boutillier et al. 2011). Yet when under scrutiny, it can also be read as a more problematic descriptor, not least because the term recovery immediately indicates that there is something to “recover from,” and however it is conceptualised, the term cannot escape from its basic embodiment of the indication of a “loss” or a “problem” and a need for “reconstitution.” There are two basic ways in which the concept of “recovery” has been taken up in relation to mental health in the United Kingdom. It has been used within a clinical framework to indicate a need to recover from symptoms or in a “social sense” (Spandler et al. 2007) to indicate the need to recover a meaningful life (Secker et al. 2002; Davidson et al. 2005). A contestation therefore emerges as to whether recovery as a concept is primarily connected into a broader biogenetic framing of mental health routed in the “remission of symptoms,” or to a conceptualisation that rejects the biogenetic model adopting a social approach that recognises the need for individuals to regain hope and meaning following or during periods of difficulty, trauma, or distress. Definitions of recovery that initially emanated from the survivor movement tended to conceptualise recovery as a process, rather than orientating it around a narrowly defined sets of outcomes. Survivor definitions have therefore tended to stress the possibility of “recovery in” rather than “recovery from” (Deegan 1988; Nelson, Kloos, and Ornelas 2014). The distinctions between these starting points can often be hard to distinguish in definitions of recovery when the focus becomes orientated around living a meaningful life despite

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mental distress. Here, the focus may not be on the eradication of symptoms but there is still an underlying subscription to a model of illness. This is encapsulated in McManus’ description of recovery as “coping with your illness and having a meaningful life” (McManus et al. 2009, p. 16), as well as in Anthony’s influential professional conceptualisation of the concept: Recovery is described as a deeply personal, unique process of changing one’s attitudes, values, feelings, goals, skills and/or roles. It is a way of living a satisfying, hopeful and contributing life even with the limitations caused by illness. Recovery involves the development of new meaning and purpose in life as one grows beyond the catastrophic effects of mental illness. (1993, p. 15) The lack of consensus across the mental health field in relation to recovery is not only connected to differences of opinion around what people are recovering from, but also extends into differences over what the process of recovery entails, as well as what the outcomes should be (Ralph and Corrigan 2005; Spandler et al. 2007). This lack of consensus has not prevented the uptake of the concept in mental health service provision with what Spandler et al. (2007) refer to as a “recovery approach” (Turner-Crowson and Wallcraft 2002; Nelson, Kloos, and Ornelas 2014). Whereas in the early 1990s, recovery was emerging out of personal accounts of recovery journeys (Deegan 1988), its popular take up by services has inevitably led to the translation of the concept into prescriptive tools. I have struggled with the double edge of recovery and whether it was appropriate to use it as a frame for the archive. Is it a beacon of hope or a deceptively pejorative indictment? Is it a tool for optimism or is this subjugated by its fundamental connection into notions of loss and illness? I have developed an unease with the concept, as my own political perspectives have grown with the process of creating the archive. I have also uncomfortably witnessed the reaction to the recovery frame from some mental health survivors who have expressed anger and hurt at the way they have been treated by services in the hands of the recovery model where it has become synonymous with prescriptive pathways into paid work as part of a neoliberal narrative in which mental health services are increasingly called on to prove their effectiveness “through efficiency models that require community agencies to meet targets, ensure flow-through, and collect evidence-based data on their effectiveness” (Howell & Voronka 2012, p. 1). I certainly have not wanted to contribute to their pain by waving a flag for a process that has had a wounding effect. Where recovery once emerged from grass roots anti-institutionalism, it has been co-opted in mental health policy emerging as a disfigured version of empowerment: Whilst the concepts of resilience and recovery, then, originated in antiinstitutionalization movements, they have increasingly been incorporated into,

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and some would say co-opted by, medical reason and mental health policy. They have thus been re-figured: psychiatric experts now iterate that through recovery and resilience those who are deemed to have disordered minds can live “meaningful lives” despite the ostensible permanence of “illness.” This understanding works to deny the possibility of a kind of recovery that would place patients or “clients” outside the remit of medical authority. Whereas twenty years ago resilience and recovery were harnessed as organized frameworks for psychiatric survivors to avert the medical system through alternate means (including peer knowledge and support), they are now harnessed to incorporate psychiatric survivors into medical systems. They now work in ways that attempt to make psychiatric survivors responsible for their own adherence to prescribed ways of governing their interior lives, while at the same time leaving medical authority intact, since psychologists and psychiatrists have become experts in recovery and resilience. This raises serious questions about the social justice implications of these ostensibly humane approaches to mental health. (Howell and Voronka 2012, p. 2) I have felt increasingly uncomfortable in knowing that within the mental health system, recovery “has become a quantifiable measurable concept, model, and framework that practitioners are now busily receiving grants for and providing evidence based research on, and through which they have found a place where they can remain central professionally” (Howell and Voronka 2012, p. 4). In all of this, I am circling around and unable to finally reach a conclusion on the extent to which my choice of a recovery frame avoids the co-option of the recovery model inherent in mainstream mental health policy and services. Has the archive of mental health recovery stories been a broadly enabling space in which the contributors have been able to push back against the re-figuring of recovery, and control their positioning and resulting knowledge production effectively in relation to the concept? Or should it be troubled as another example of an oppressive framing of experience occurring despite liberatory intentions? In the imposition of recovery as a narrative template have I inadvertently contributed to the erosion of complexity and the perpetuation of oppression? I believe the archive contains rich nuances between the contributors’ narratives and that it has been enabling enough to allow each of them to explore their unique perspective both on the concept of recovery and the broader notions of mental health and illness. However, I sense a missed opportunity in collectively pushing past the concept of recovery into a wider, freer space of exploration of personal experience. In her writings on Palestinian archival memory, Butler (2009 p. 64) draws on Said (1986) to explore the Palestinian “right to a remembered presence.” Said suggests that “no clear and simple narrative is adequate to the complexity of our experience” and asserts that “essentially unconventional, hybrid and fragmentary forms of expression should be used to represent us.” He concludes that a “multifaceted

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vision is essential to any representation of us” (1986, p. 7). Although his words are specific to the Palestinian experience, I sense the transferability to representations of mental health lived experience. Similarly, when I approach Cvetkovich’s (2003) work around the creation of an archive of feeling that deals with trauma in a way that resists pathologising, I more fully recognise how the recovery frame may force the contributors into the production of a particular type of heroic narrative in which their trauma is constrained into declaring itself as resolved. I sense the missed opportunity to push deeper, to problematise further with the contributors in relation to the ways and means in which their mental health experiences might be represented. Cvetkovich (2003) says of her own work: Refusing any quick-fix solution to trauma, such as telling the story as a mode of declaring an identity … the cases that interest me offer the unpredictable forms of politics that emerge when trauma is kept unrelentingly in view. (p. 16) This leads me to trouble my actions in choosing a conventional linear narrative frame orientated around recovery that acted as a mechanism for closing the door of exploration down. bell hooks’ description of voice as an act of resistance leads to further questions around the extent to which the use of the recovery frame has been a means of challenging existing ways of seeing and knowing: To speak as an act of resistance is quite different from ordinary talk … it is easy for the marginal voice striving for a hearing to allow what is said to be over-determined by the needs of that majority group who appears to be listening, to be tuned in. It becomes easy to speak about what the group wants to hear, to describe and define experience in a language compatible with existing images and ways of knowing, constructed within social frameworks that reinforce domination. (hooks 1990, p. 14) Did I constrain the possibility of enabling the contributors to move towards a more complex, richer, multi-faceted vision for the representation of their mental health lived experience than that which the frame of recovery allows for? Yes, is my intuitive response. What could the archive have been if it had more fully enabled the “archival imagination” (Butler 2009, p. 64) of the contributors to take over?

Challenging the psychiatric narrative: some contextual framing for the mental health recovery archive Having opened up questions around the creation of the archive of mental health recovery stories, we now seek to provide a contextual backdrop to its creation. For the remainder of this chapter, we explore the notion of the “psychiatric

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narrative,” and highlight the collective voices of social movements in the United Kingdom that have (and indeed continue to) offer a counter-narrative to the dominant tropes of pathology and diagnosis characterising societal understandings of mental difference and distress. We also point briefly at independent survivor history archives that support the development of such counter-narratives. In doing so, we hope to add more nuance to our exploration of the complex inter-relationships between social justice, activism, archives, voice, and identity construction in the context of mental health.

The formation of the psychiatric narrative The omnipresent psychiatric narrative of mental illness has always had its counter-narrative–the life stories of people labelled mad. The relationship between these two accounts has always been one of domination: mad voices have been–and continue to be–not heard, overwritten, silenced, or even erased (Russo and Beresford 2015, p. 153). As the two mental health survivor researchers, Russo and Beresford (2015), highlight for us, the omnipresent psychiatric narrative that has underpinned the formulation of normative societal visions of mental health and illness has been a system of domination and oppression over the centuries. We begin by drawing on Foucault, who can be historically situated as an important contributor to the anti-psychiatry movement, to highlight the constructed nature of the dominant paradigm that sits around mental health and illness and to explain the emergence of what we (in common with many others) are referring to as the psychiatric narrative. Foucault’s approach is anchored in de-familiarising “supposedly natural objects” by unearthing “the timebound and ‘rare’ practices which made them into objects” (Goldstein 1984, p. 173). He reminds us that there is no such thing as natural or permanent objects where existence, and capability of being spoken of, can be taken for granted. Rather, objects are formed at certain historical moments in response to particular historical conditions that enable a historical break in discourse and practice. These newly constituted objects (and their associated discourse and practice) then persist through certain periods of time (Goldstein 1984, p. 172) “under the positive conditions of a complex group of relations” (Foucault 1972, p. 209). Foucault’s Madness & Civilisation (1989) traces the processes and conditions through which the “insane” became a constituted object through two-inter-related conditions. The first condition is the making and marking of a discursive distinction between rationality and irrationality in the social sphere translated into normality and deviance (“unreason”). The second condition is the translation of the distinction into an object for systematic observation—the aggregation of the deviant on mass—a condition that was fulfilled by the construction of mental asylums. In Foucault’s account of the history of madness, the psychiatric discipline emerges as a culmination of the discourse, methods, and practice that was formed around this newly constituted object—“the insane.” Crossley (2006)

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argues that during the eighteenth century, what we now refer to as the mental health field was characterised by an enacted struggle for control between medical, legal, and religious agents (Crossley 2006, p. 554). The nineteenth century brought with it a move from private to public asylums, and with this move came the dominance of the medical profession, with psychiatry emerging at a recognised field at this time, securing hegemony for its practice and legitimation for its schemas of classification (Crossley 2006). Over the centuries, the psychiatric narrative that emerged from the psychiatric discipline was primarily formulated around the “meticulous control of the operations of the body,” which was aided through the “placement of persons” in “observable, enclosed, partitioned, spaces” (Goldstein 1984, p. 175). Foucault argues that from the nineteenth century, the psychiatrist adopted a strategy of confrontation in relation to patient “delusions,” seeking to interrupt the patient’s own version of reality, with the “actual” realities as known by the outside world. Removed from the “real” world precisely because of a failure to adequately respond to the “real” world, the patient is trained to renounce aspects of their madness so as to persuade their keepers to continue to meet their basic physical needs. In this way, the patients are regulated into accepting their official identity as prescribed by the psychiatrist. Rather than speaking their own truth, their own reality, they are cajoled into “first person recognition of [themselves] in a particular administrative and medical reality” (Foucault 2006, p. 161) as constituted by the disciplinary power of the asylum/psychiatrist. Foucault calls this the “game of reality” wherein “psychiatric power” acts as a “sort of intensifier of reality to madness” (Foucault 2006, p. 143). In this game, the patient’s truths are subjugated by the psychiatrist’s truths, but as Philo suggests the crucial point made by Foucault is that the psychiatrist has no truths, he is no possessor of ‘true’ medical knowledge about madness as illness. In fact his only real truth is that he has worked out a few tactics for cajoling mad people into acting not-mad. (2006, p. 157) In the context of the United Kingdom, the asylum may no longer loom large as the focal point of observation and institutional control over the mad, but what Foucault refers to as “psychiatric power” is still played out from within the mental health system as a dominating force. Over previous centuries, and still today, those that have been labelled as mentally ill have often been manipulated, held, constrained, and oppressed within coercive systems of control that are legitimated, at least in part, in and through psychiatric power. In understanding mental distress, the originating emphasis on control over the operations of the body and the manifesting symptoms of a disturbed mind still prevails in psychiatry’s discourse that foregrounds pathology, diagnosis, and medical treatment. Despite currents and new waves of thinking that have challenged the power of the psychiatric rhetoric in various ways, psychiatry’s

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deeply rooted pathological perspectives have still remained as a primary shaper of societal perceptions of what it means to be “sane” or “insane,” and “mentally well” or “mentally ill.” Consequently, the psychiatric narrative, with its medically orientated emphasis, continues to shape societal understandings of what is mentally “abnormal,” as well as how such “abnormalities” should be understood, treated, and controlled. The power of the psychiatric narrative manifests in tools such as the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). As a classification tool, the DSM is intended to be used in clinical settings to aid diagnosis, but its categories are also used as a primary means for collecting and communicating health statistics. The pervasiveness of its rhetoric is indicated by the fact that its labels have seeped into the public consciousness. We are all well-versed in using and applying its descriptors—Schizophrenia, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, Eating Disorder and so on, and cultural heritage organisations such as museums, libraries, and archives are deeply invested in using its terminology in descriptions, labels, and finding aids. As a consequence, we as a society have come to understand both mental difference and mental distress primarily with re-course to symptoms, and we argue here that classifying people purely on these terms has profound, far-reaching, and (all too often) damaging consequences.

Challenges to the psychiatric narrative through the rise of social movements Crossley (2006) argues that the hegemony of the medical profession over understandings of madness continued on from the nineteenth century (albeit with internal competition between newly forming and emerging psy-disciplines) until the 1960s when “conflicts erupted that burst the boundaries of the mental health field, refusing to play its game and thereby giving rise” to new “psychiatric contention” (p. 554). Crossley (2006) suggests that there were distinct trajectories within what he describes as this psychiatric contention: the foremost of these being the anti-psychiatric trajectory and the survivor trajectory (p. 554). Each of these was represented (at the national level) by a variety of social movement organisations and/or individual agents. The leading protagonists of the anti-psychiatric trajectory, which flourished in the 1960s, were psychiatrists meaning that this strand has been described as a “revolt from above”7 (Crossley 2002, p. 139). The 1970s saw the development of what might be termed collectively as the “survivor trajectory” as a “revolt from below” beginning with the Mental Patients Union who were critical of the “antipsychiatry” movement in a variety of ways, including for affording patients only a marginal space in the struggle.8 The “survivor trajectory” is itself diverse and thrives today in many different forms as a self-led movement, which can be characterised by the centring of the value of lived experience, with a critical view of psychiatry and the pathologising mindset and a focus on the social causes of mental distress rather than the distress signals.

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Offering a detailed and nuanced tracing of the interlocking history between these strands is beyond the scope of this chapter9 but we feel it is important to point to the fact that each trajectory evolved in response to and in tension with each other, with moments of overlap as well as clear separations, conflict, and difference. It is also important to highlight how the whole landscape of “psychiatric contention” was constituted through, and was therefore also historically contingent on, a larger landscape of discourse and activism emerging across a much broader set of civil and human rights movements. The survivor movement, for example, has drawn on the expression of resistance as “pride,” giving rise to the closely aligned “mad pride” movement, which has historical connections with gay pride, along with the related resistance between sexual “disorders” and the DSM.10 Understanding these historical contingencies is important in thinking through not only how the movements have developed at a collective level, but also how terms and labels arising from these movements must be read as reactions against a certain milieu of circumstance as individuals and groups have either sought out or rejected currents of interventions, self-help, independence, and support. Whilst this historic contingency and specificity must be remembered, Crossley and Crossley (2001) surface how activism in the sphere of psychiatric contention, at a collective level has wrought overarching fundamental changes to the tone and language in which individuals with lived experience can now speak. By comparing instances of “voice” from the 1950s and the 1990s, Crossley and Crossley (2001) powerfully demonstrate how the “voice” of those with lived experience has been actively shaped in and through the collective coming together of individuals who share a common identity. Drawing on Crossley and Crossley’s research, and focusing on the survivor movement, Spandler (2006) suggests that the move from an “individualized to a collectivized voice” has brought with it a tangible shift in the language and discourse in and through which survivors can constitute their identity and their experience, moving from “shame to pride” and “plea to rights” and that these shifts have occurred because mental health survivors have moved from “I to we” (Spandler 2006, p. 64).

The difference made by activist challenge to the psychiatric narrative Although there are differences in perspectives across the different groups that collectively make up the mental health survivor movement (and its many broader related counterparts), the unifying threads of criticism over coercive mainstream psychiatric practices and reductionist models of mental illness have led to the development of lived experience-led frameworks that define and understand individual and collective experiences of mental health on very different terms. The Mad Pride Movement,11 for example, has been instrumental in establishing an embrace of mad culture, in which madness is seen as

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a legitimate and positive socio-political identity, which mounts a direct challenge to the notion of mental difference as “deficit” (Howell and Voronka 2012, p .5). In unravelling what lies at the heart of a mad identity, the mad pride movement draws on understandings that identity “is not the structure that creates a person’s inner essence, but the structure by which that person identifies and becomes identified with a set of social narratives, ideas, myths, values and types of knowledge” (Siebers 2008, p. 15 in Schrader, Jones, and Shattell 2013, p. 62). Through mad pride, it has become possible for advocates to be actively involved in a re-claiming over the language of madness away from the shaming tropes that epitomise medicalised visions, towards celebration that connects madness to creativity, art, and spirituality, and recognises madness “as a valuable sensitivity to individual and collective pain” (Schrader, Jones, and Shattell 2013, p. 62). At the heart of Mad Pride lies an affirmation of the value of human difference; and a resistance to the compliance expected from societal visions of normalcy. In this context, identifying as mad is a process of “active and thoughtful positioning of the self with respect to dynamic social narratives regarding mental difference and diversity” (Schrader, Jones, and Shattell 2013, p. 62). The process of transformation of social narratives of madness from negative to positive is bound up in the process of identifying as mad and, therefore, an activist stance is at the very basis of assuming a mad identity. Similar, transformative affirmations have arisen from the Hearing Voices Network (HVN)12 where the identity of “voice hearer” has been actively and collectively constructed by those with lived experience of voice hearing. The creation of a positive identity of “voice hearer” has been bound up in the process of shifting the frameworks in which voice hearing is understood. In stark contrast to medical approaches to hearing voices, rather than seeing voice hearing as a pathological symptom that needs eradicating, the voices are worked with, and are seen as an important aspect of that individual’s means of being in the world. Within the voice hearing community, there is understanding that some voices are never distressing or impairing to the voice hearer, and that where voices are distressing, engagement with the voices alongside psychosocial interventions can transform negative voices over time into neutral or positive interlocutors. Understanding and drawing attention to the social causes of mental distress is fundamental within the Hearing Voices Network, and this is in common with broad understandings across the survivor movement. Bound up in the survivor identity is a commitment to more adequately name and intervene into the root causes of mental distress by targeting social exclusion, poverty, trauma, and abuse. This can be contrasted to a constructed view of mental health that fixates on curing symptoms whilst leaving the social and political triggers unnamed and unchallenged.

Constituting archives testifying to lived experience How and where does the creation of a historical narrative, which testifies to the work of these movements and the individual lives within them, fit into the

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emerging landscape of activism and transformation of identities and frameworks for understanding mental health? The work of the grassroots Survivor History Group (SHG)13 is an example of the deliberate creation of a space in which mental health survivors have voice and ownership over their evolving narrative and their archive. Their ethos is summarised in their manifesto as seeking to: Highlight the diversity and creativity of the service user/survivor contribution through personal accounts, writings, poetry, art, music, drama, photography, campaigning, speaking influencing … [We intend to] collect, collate and preserve service user/survivor history, make service user/survivor history accessible to all who are interested in or studying mental health, use our history to inform and improve the future, [and] operate as an independent group. The independence of any archive we set up is necessary to prevent limited access to such a resource and to expose the deliberate loss of history—in particular the lived experience of psychiatric system survivors … .Our basic founding principle is that service users own their own history. (Survivor History Group 2006) Running through the group’s online presentation of their own history and activities is a strong sense of the ways in which their history has suffered when written in the hands of others. The group sees their history as an opposition to narrative written by non-survivors (mainly academics). It is a vehicle that simultaneously points to, and redresses, the lack of acknowledgement by the academic community of the existence of survivor-led historical research. Further, insight into survivor perspectives on the importance of survivor control over survivor history can be traced through the SHG’s documentation of the 750th anniversary of Bedlam. This anniversary took place in 1997, and was marked by the creation of an institutionally curated exhibition on the hospital’s history, exhibited at the Museum of London along with three days of associated celebrations at Bethlem Hospital. These celebrations included a staff ball, a family fun day (family spectacular), and a separate thanksgivings service at St Paul’s Cathedral which all took place in the summer of 1997. Peter Beresford offers an insightful critique of the exhibition, first published in OpenMind in May/June 1998, reproduced by the SHG in their online archive. His critique points to how the inquiries, scandals, abuse, and inhumanity of past treatment of those labelled mad are erased through an exhibition that has more to do with selling commemorative mugs, keyrings, and paper clips in a celebratory rhetoric of medical progression. He goes on to say that: … The commemoration and exhibition are disturbing snapshots of how powerful dominant versions of psychiatry remain, despite the emergence of survivors organizations and movements … One of the good things that has come out of the commemoration has been the direct action by

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survivors, and the news coverage that it has sparked. This is just one expression of a much bigger survivors’ culture which has flowered in recent years, reflected in our own poetry, art, photography and creative writing, our own accounts and biographies, our own analyses, evaluations and training materials—and our own histories of ourselves and our movement. But the Bedlam revival … is a reminder of just how much more survivors still have to do, with less power, credibility and money than the psychiatric system. (Beresford 1998 reproduced in the Survivor History Group Online Archive 1998) We are therefore mindful of the strength of feeling that surrounds survivor experience and its re-telling in different spaces, and the power dynamics inherent in creating, collecting, and curating. We give this account of the emergence of counter movements to the psychiatric narrative and the development of survivorled movements and survivor history as a backdrop for the critical reflections we individually offered at the start of this chapter, and as a way of opening up further questions around our collective attempt to create an archive of mental health lived experience.

Conclusions To what extent can the archive of mental health recovery stories be envisioned as a form of social justice? We certainly believe that it stands in opposition to any straightforward belief in the authority of the psychiatric narrative, and offers a subversion to the bio-medical model that classifies the boundaries of normalcy. It also offers a challenge to society’s tendency to perpetuate visions of “sanism” which in itself reflects “the same kinds of irrational, unconscious bias-driven stereotypes and prejudices that are exhibited in racist, sexist, homophobic and religiously-and ethnically-bigoted decision making” (Perlin and Dorfman 1993, p. 49). We are also convinced that the archive powerfully illustrates that those who have been subjected to diagnosis are best placed to be the sense makers of their experiences and are “rightfully able to make choices about their engagements—or disengagements—with systems of mental health care, as well as medical and other authorities” (Howell and Voronka 2012, p. 4). In all of these ways, the archive fulfils its remit as a tool for the realisation of social justice. Yet at the same time there are deep complexities with this assertion. In this chapter, we have focused on teasing out the role of recovery as a frame for the archive, and have troubled the degree to which it acts as a tool of liberation or oppression in this context. Fundamental to an active stance on social justice, in which it is recognised that social justice is always in the process of becoming, is the need to continually reflect on when and where oppression hides amidst liberatory intentions. In the use of the recovery frame, it has been vital to be

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alive to the possibility that as a technology it focuses too much attention inward into the experience of the person who has had to overcome mental distress; rather than outwards to the societal causes of that distress. It is vital to think carefully about the ways in which the approach might draw attention away from the political imperative to tackle the austerity, social deprivation, abuse, marginalisation, and stigma where mental distress lies. There are no absolutes in social justice: no action, approach, or moment is wholly “good” for “everyone” all of the time. Social justice follows a complex trajectory tied up in the difficulty of defining exactly what is “just” in our messy and imperfect world. When Duff et al. (2013, p. 326) define social justice in terms of: full human recognition, fair and just (re) distribution, and full and equal participation (italics added); how is this resolvable in the complexity of humanity when benefit/deficit across our intersectional identities plays out? “Full” and “equal” can surely only be achieved in a framework that refuses to acknowledge conflict and difference? If we work towards “full” and “equal,” knowing they can never be fully achieved, what does that mean and how we do measure what is better? Dunbar’s (2006) conceptualisation of an archival social justice framework avoids the use of absolutes. This is precisely because Dunbar’s epistemological understandings are drawn from critical race theory, and this is in itself structured around and in an acknowledgement of deficit and its consequences. Dunbar explains social justice in relation to definable goals including “a vision of society in which the distribution of resources is more equitable” (2006, p. 117 emphasis added). In our work in creating the archive, we have sought to proceed together in a shared commitment to create a platform for those with lived experience of mental health to express their own agency and reality as a means of transformation for those involved, and also with the political intention of challenging how mental health is represented in official archive collections such as that held at the Wellcome Library. We have also sought to push back against the systems of oppression within the mental health field. Yet whilst doing this, one of the most valuable things about the process has been collectively reflecting and analysing how oppression can still operate at an individual, cultural, and institutional level as we have come together. This can be in terms of the subtleties surrounding the choice of frame for the narratives as we have drawn out here, but also in other ways due to our unequal positionalities and starting points within the project. It is through a collective analysis that we have been able to push deeper into a richer, nuanced, and more personally transformative understanding of the process we have shared and how we should proceed into the future. As we move into a new phase of knowledge production about the archive through academic writing, we have been mindful to co-construct our narrative as much as possible to counter the tendency within academia to reinstate the dichotomy between “researcher” and “researched” by shutting down the possibility of co-constructing outputs and therefore also negating the

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possibility of sharing the hegemonic rewards. We are mindful to avoid what Russo and Beresford eloquently describe: In the psychiatric encounter: you give your story, you receive a diagnosis. This unequal, often non-transparent and also dishonest exchange goes beyond individual treatment situations and persists in most academic research work about us and our narratives. We often find ourselves giving not just our story but also the knowledge that has emerged from our experiences only to have it re-framed, serving various purposes and different agendas, and ultimately alienated from us. The fact that these encounters with interested academics happen outside treatment, and that the new interpretation usually makes more sense than the psychiatric one, hardly prevents us from feeling like somebody’s case again. (2015, pp. 153–154) This highlights that efforts to enact social justice are never fully in the past but are always ongoing, always reaching into the future, always part of a wider bigger endeavour to find ways to enact more equal, more fair, less exploitative means of being in the world.

Notes 1 We met after Anna read a book of mental health recovery stories edited by Jerome Carson. Anna contacted Jerome and explained that she was interested in creating an archive of personal stories similar to those featured in the book. Jerome put Anna in touch with Dolly, Stuart, Andrew, and Peter who were all contributors to his volume. 2 The mental health recovery archive can be viewed online at: http://www.mentalheal threcovery.omeka.net. 3 For background information on the Wellcome Library, see http://www.wellcomeli brary.org. 4 There is much that we could say to theorise and problematise both “archive” as a concept, and “archives” as a process, practice, and output. We recognise the relevance and importance of doing this, and are seeking to collectively write together on this subject, however, it falls beyond the scope of this chapter. 5 Omeka is a web-publishing platform for sharing digital collections and creating media-rich online exhibits (https://www.omeka.net/). Although it had its constraining features, it did enable us, as a group of individuals with access to limited resource, to create our archive relatively easily. 6 In a UK context, the Medical Patients Union (MPU) emerging in the 1970s to provide a collective voice for those with lived experience seeking to speak back to professionals within the mental health system exemplifies this. 7 Crossley (2002) describes the leading protagonists as Ronald Laing, David Cooper and a small clique of psychiatrists and psychotherapists who formed around them. However, he also points out that ‘the support base of anti-psychiatry extended much wider than the psychiatric or even the medical field, however, to include a range of academics, artists, writers and left-wing groups. Indeed, Laing and Cooper became celebrated figures in the emerging counter-culture of the late 1960s’ (p. 139).

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8 Crossley (2002) traces the links from the Mental Patients Union in the 1970s through to the 1980s survivor movements including Survivors Speak Out, through to 1990s survivor movements including the Hearing Voices Network. 9 For a deeper look into the history of these trajectories, see Helen Spandler (Spandler 2006, 2009). 10 There are many ways to trace the interconnectedness of the survivor movement to broader resistance and civil rights movements. Survivors have also drawn on linguistic associations with the Holocaust, and have historically connected this past to both persecution and a denial of collective human rights (see Sander Gillman’s scholarship in this area). 11 For a brief history of the UK Mad Pride movement, see: https://www.vice.com/ en_uk/article/7bxqxa/mad-pride-remembering-the-uks-mental-health-pride-movement. For recent mainstream permutations, see: https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/ 7bxqxa/mad-pride-remembering-the-uks-mental-health-pride-movement. 12 For further information on the Hearing Voices Network, see: http://www.hearingvoices.org/. 13 For the Survivor History Group’s online archive (organised as a timeline), see: http://studymore.org.uk/MPU.HTM.

References Anthony, William A. 1993. “Recovery from Mental Illness: Guiding Vision of Mental Health Service Systems in 1990s.” Psychosocial Rehabilitation Journal 16(4): 11–23. Bakhtin, Mikhail 1986. The Dialogic Imagination. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. Beresford, Peter. 1998. “Past Tense.” Openmind 91: 12–13. Butler, Beverley. 2009. “‘Othering’ the Archive—From Exile to Inclusion and Heritage Dignity: The Case of Palestinian Archival Memory.” Archival Science 9(1–2): 57–69. Church, Kathryn. 1995. Forbidden Narratives: Critical Autobiography as Social Science. London and New York: Taylor & Francis Publishing. Crossley, Michele L., and Nick Crossley. 2001. “‘Patient’ Voices, Social Movements and the Habitus; How Psychiatric Survivors ‘Speak Out’.” Social Science & Medicine 52 (10): 1477–1489. Crossley, Nick. 2001. The Social Body: Habit, Identity and Desire. London: Sage. Crossley, Nick. 2002. “Mental Health, Resistance and Social Movements: The Collective-Confrontational Dimension.” Health Education Journal 61(2): 138–152. Crossley, Nick. 2006. “The Field of Psychiatric Contention in the UK, 1960–2000.” Social Science & Medicine 62(3): 552–563. Cvetkovich, Ann. 2003. An Archive of Feeling: Trauma, Sexuality, and Lesbian Public Cultures. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Davidson, Larry, Maria J. O’Connell, Janis Tondora, Martha Staeheli, and Arthur C. Evans. 2005. “Recovery in Serious Mental Illness: A New Wine or Just a New Bottle?” Professional Psychology: Research and Practice 36(5): 480–487. Deegan, Patricia E. 1988. “Recovery: The Lived Experience of Rehabilitation.” Psychosocial Rehabilitation Journal 11(4): 11–19. Duff, Wendy M., Andrew Flinn, Karen Emily Suurtamm, and David A. Wallace. 2013. “Social Justice Impact of Archives: A Preliminary Investigation.” Archival Science 13(4): 317–348. Dunbar, Anthony W. 2006. “Introducing Critical Race Theory to Archival Discourse: Getting the Conversation Started.” Archival Science 6(1): 109–129.

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Foucault, Michel. 1972. The Archaeology of Knowledge. Trans. A.M. Sheridan Smith. London: Tavistock Publications. Foucault, Michel. 1989. Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason. Trans. Richard Howard. London: Routledge. Foucault, Michel. 2006. Psychiatric Power. Lectures at the College de France 1973–1974. Trans. Graham. Burchell. New York: Palgrave MacMillan. Goldstein, Jan. 1984. “Foucault among the Sociologists: The ‘Disciplines’ and the History of the Professions.” History and Theory 32(2): 170–192. hooks, bell. 1990. “Choosing the Margin as a Space of Radical Openness.” In Yearning: Race, Gender and Cultural Politics, edited by b. hooks, 145–153. Boston, MA: South End Press. Howell, Alison, and Jijian Voronka. 2012. “Introduction: The Politics of Resilience and Recovery in Mental Health Care.” Studies in Social Justice 6(1): 1–7. Le Boutillier, Clair, Mary Leamy, Victoria J. Bird, Larry Davidson, Julie Williams, and Mike Slade. 2011. “What Does Recovery Mean in Practice? A Qualitative Analysis of International Recovery-Oriented Practice Guidance.” Psychiatric Services 62(12): 1470–1476. McManus, Gordon, Sarah Morgan, Jane Fradgley, and Jerome Carson. 2009. “Recovery Heroes—A Profile of Gordon McManus.” A Life in the Day 13(4): 16–19. https://doi. org/10.1108/13666282200900037. Moncrieffe, Joy, and Rosalind Eyben. 2007. “The Power of Labelling: How People Are Categorized and Why It Matters.” In The Power of Labelling: How People Are Categorized and Why It Matters, edited by Joy Moncrieffe and Rosalind Eyben, 810–812. London: Earthscan. Nelson, Geoffrey, Brett Kloos, and Jose Ornelas. 2014. Community Psychology and Community Mental Health: Towards Transformative Change. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Perlin, Michael L., and Deborah A. Dorfman. 1993. “Sanism, Social Science, and the Development of Mental Disability Law Jurisprudence.” Behavioral Sciences & The Law 11(1): 47–66. Ralph, Ruth O., and Patrick W. Corrigan, eds. 2005. Recovery in Mental Illness: Broadening Our Understanding of Wellness. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. Russo, Jasna, and Peter Beresford. 2015. “Between Exclusion and Colonisation: Seeking a Place for Mad People’s Knowledge in Academia.” Disability & Society 30(1): 153–157. Said, Edward. 1986. After the Last Sky. New York: Columbia University Press. Schrader, Summer, Nev Jones, and Mona Shattell. 2013. “Mad Pride: Reflections on Sociopolitical Identity and Mental Diversity in the Context of Culturally Competent Psychiatric Care.” Issues in Mental Health Nursing 34(1): 62–64. Secker, Jenny, Helen Membrey, Bob Grove, and Patience Seebohm. 2002. “Recovering from Illness or Recovering Your Life? Implications of Clinical versus Social Models of Recovery from Mental Health Problems for Employment Support Services.” Disability & Society 17(4): 403–418. Siebers, Tobin. 2008. Disability theory. Ann Arbor, MI: The University of Michigan Press. Spandler, Helen. 2006. Asylum to Action: Paddington Day Hospital, Therapeutic Communities and Beyond. London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers.

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Spandler, Helen, Jenny Secker, L. Kent, Suzanne Hacking, and J. Shenton. 2007. “Catching Life: The Contribution of Arts Initiatives to Recovery Approaches in Mental Health.” Journal of Psychiatric and Mental Health Nursing 14(8): 791–799. Survivor History Group. 2006. “Manifesto.” Accessed 17 February 2020. http://study more.org.uk/MPU.HTM#ManifestoLong2006. Sweeney, Angela. 2009. “So What Is Survivor Research?” In This Is Survivor Research, edited by Angela. Sweeney, Peter. Beresford. et al., 22–37. Ross-on-Wye: PCCS Books. Turner-Crowson, Judy, and Jan Wallcraft. 2002. “The Recovery Vision for Mental Health Services and Research: A British Perspective.” Psychiatric Rehabilitation Journal 25: 245–254.

Chapter 12

Archives “act back” Re-configuring Palestinian archival constellations and visions of social justice Beverley Butler

I still remain optimistic. I think of we Palestinians as being like stars in the sky. I can look up and know that wherever we are in the world, we are still there, we still exist and we are still connected. (Mohammad Al-Tijani, Palestinian living in Jordan, interview with author, author’s personal fieldnotes)

What has happened and continues to happen to the Palestinian people is unjust. You cannot cover up injustice forever—it remains an injustice—and in the future this will be recognised. (Adel Yahya, Palestinian activist/academic, Ramallah, interview with author, author’s personal fieldnotes)

Introduction In this paper, I wish to pursue the dynamic of how archives implicitly and explicitly “act back” and to engage with the intimacies that such a critically reconfigured perspective on archives as “activated” and “empowered” agencies have in terms of demands for social justice. I take as my point of departure the opening and following quotations that were activated in my own mind when embarking on this paper: Archive fever is spreading among Palestinians everywhere. Whether in Ramallah or London, Haifa or San Francisco, Beirut or Riyadh … The expansion in lines of inquiry from the land to the state to society has resulted in a broadening of the concept of archive to include a highly diverse constellation of sources. (Doumani 2009, p. 3) As I write this essay, 425 Palestinians expelled by the state of Israel … the no-man’s-land in which they are refugees has already started from this very moment to act back onto the territory of the state of Israel by perforating it

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and altering it in such a way that the image of that snowy mountain has become more internal to it than any other region of Eretz Israel. (Agamben 2000, p. 25) These quotes themselves “act” in providing connectivities between theoreticalacademic and ethnographic-fieldwork contexts. They put into circulation salient analogies, metaphors, images, ideas, and also fundamental paradoxes that similarly connect us to the “realpolitik” of extremis and to the related responses and responsibilities regarding social and political activisms. At the level of academic-intellectual interventionism, my critical objective is to bring into dialogue Doumani’s quest to “reconfigure the archive” with that of Agamben’s quest to “reconfigure the refugee.” Significantly both authors centre the Palestinian experience and the underlying agendas of injustice that continue to predominate within this context. My particular interest is in the parallels between Doumani and Agamben’s theses that “act” by challenging the “sovereignty of power” synonymous with the “old trinity of state-nationterritory” (Agamben 2000, p. 21) that in turn dominates the historical configuration of the respective domains of modernity’s “formal archives” (typically produced by settler-colonial forces claiming sovereign power) and of the refugee as modernity’s “other.” Doumani, for example, achieves this by drawing on Derrida’s work with the objective of diagnosing a particular strain of “Palestinian archive fever” active in the contemporary moment that has “altered the very idea of what constitutes an archive.” Thus, “broadening out of the concept of archive to include a highly diverse constellation of sources” and thereby implicitly and explicitly problematising older archival forms and their exclusionary politics (Doumani 2009, pp. 3, 9). In a similar way, Agamben reconfigures the refugee in order to apprehend the “state of exception” that marginalises and thus transforms them into “non-persons” in a “non-place.” Here resides the paradox that despite and/or because of this the refugee is simultaneously implicitly and explicitly invested as subversive. Agamben uses on-going examples of the capacity of displaced persons/refugees to “act back” in a way that fundamentally “alters,” “perforates,” and thereby “unhinges” (2000, p. 21) the historical and contemporary nation-state and its sovereign powers. Both Doumani and Agamben then can therefore be seen to employ the motif of “acting back” to fundamentally transform our understanding of the respective phenomena of archives and refugees. Crucially too their critical projects converge in terms of the “foundational moments” they critique being inextricably linked to the configuration of “rights culture.” Moreover, for both writers, there are crucial implications for how we perceive objects-persons-place as either “external” or “internal” to sovereignty, power, citizenship, and to archives, to justice, and ultimately to being human. The new subversive trinity “non-state-non-nationnon-territory” thus acts back to “unhinge” the “old trinity of state-nation-territory” (Agamben 2000, p. 21).

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At the level of fieldwork synonymous with the Palestinian “refugee” contexts, my inclusion of the above quotes from informants are vital in centring the actual testimony of those experiencing on-going extremis. They put into play further salient analogies and agendas in terms of “acting back” that again have significant parallels with Doumani and Agamben’s work while taking forward and expanding our understanding of such contexts and thereby highlighting additional emergent agendas. Here, for example, in taking up Doumani’s call for “archival and ethnographic” aspects of research to be brought together one can create new critical synergies1 that in turn build on his findings: notably, that contemporary archival expansionism has “pushed the meanings of archive horizontally, to include any possible trace of the past, as well as vertically to include the present itself” (Doumani 2009, p. 3). Here, I would argue that alternative forms of horizontal and vertical expansionism—perhaps better expressed as extra-territorial and subterranean-archaeological—are also articulated in more affective terms in the above interlocutors’ comments vis-à-vis the vision of Palestinians as “being like stars in the sky” and in the belief that “you cannot cover up injustice forever.” The former vision has obvious overlaps with the “stellar” imagery synonymous with the analogy of “constellations” and has the potency to chart out extraterritorial connectivities that see persons and archives “act back” via dynamic and diverse “virtual” and “real” worlds. Crucially here I would add that these are bound up in powerful networks synonymous with popular “cosmologies of care and protection” that are ritualised in everyday life and in contexts of extremis (Butler 2016, p. 117). The analogy of the “cover up,” as a consequence therefore of attempts (presumably) to bury, ignore, deny, etc., acts of injustice, similarly extends the aforementioned “cosmologies of care and protection” to more explicitly activate the moral-ethical and activist agendas. These are figuratively associated with the “beneath” “subterranean” and/or “archaeological” layers where the “remains” or “traces” of “injustice” reside and yet again despite and/or because of this “act back” in the sense of agitating for recognition in order to achieve future political and social justice. This analogy I argue has parallels with Agamben’s “image of that snowy mountain” synonymous with the presence of Palestinian refugees in “nonman’s land” whose very presence similarly and simultaneously creates “real” and “figurative” moments for subversively “acting back” on sovereign power that again both implicitly and explicitly are formed out of foundational acts of injustice (2000, p. 21). As such what Agamben develops then in this potent topological analogy is to powerfully reconfigure the refugee as an animate and activated agent whose very presence has “already started from this very moment to act back onto the territory of the state … [in this case Israel] by perforating it and altering it” (2000, p. 24). Similarly I argue constellations of both “virtual” and “real” sites/forms/concepts (whether buried or exposed, topological, subterranean, and/or celestial) “already” in their moment of formation agitate for justice to be recognised and to be articulated both in visions of

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future justice and crucially too as a means to grasp agency and forms of empowerment in the contemporary moment. Finally, I would argue that the above quotes in different ways—particularly those of the fieldwork informants—concern the need to connect and offer those in extremis a means to grasp a sense of “wholeness” in “displacement.” Yet again despite and/or because of the underlying catastrophic acts of “displacement,” these “cosmologies of care and protection” thus acquire a “factness.” This “factness of presence” is thus synonymous with “proof of existence” and thus offers a potent means to “act back” against a double threat that returns us to the efficacies of the archive and of social justice. It is reiterated as a means to “unhinge” and challenge infamous statements such as those denying Palestinian existence (and as such the Palestinian right to a past) and also to combat the on-going fear that, “Palestine and the Palestinians are an endangered species about to become extinct” (and as such the right to have a future) (Doumani 2009, p. 5). The paradox in turn is fed by Palestinian “pessoptimism” (Habiby 1974) that is intimately linked to attempts to take sovereignty over the self/selfgroup and future. In what follows, I wish to give more critical depth, detail, and illustration to the above dynamics. Perhaps the most salient aspect underpinning these issues is the recurring motif of paradox expressed variously as—“despite and/or because” and “similarly and simultaneously”—which in turn activates and gives efficacy and agency to diverse modes of “acting back.” Crucially here these powerfully and subversively unite “imaginative” and “real worlds,” and amongst other genres, create potent acts of “magical/catastrophic-thinking” and of “factness” that iterate ways in which “fact-seekers” who turn to the archive oft become “fact makers” (Butler and Al-Nammari 2016). Here then the crisis and promise of nation-state/refugee and social justice is the very crisis and promise of the archive itself. As such to go forward with our own critical trinity of “archive-refugee/Palestinianism-social justice” a means to pursue mutual transformation and reconfiguration of these phenomena.

Unhinging modernity’s sovereign archives There are usually at least two key moments of archive formation: The moment of production of the text itself, such as the keeping of a legal register by a scribe, and the moment of deployment of that text by a scholar at some future point as an archival source. In modern times, both moments are usually forms of producing nations and collectivities, and the power relations within and between them. … From the late nineteenth century to the present, the state (in the records of its many bureaucratic institutions) becomes the primary archive for stories about the destiny of peoples and nations. (Doumani 2009, p. 7) The first stage of our “quest” concerns the critical reconfiguration of the “archive.” This requires a critical return to and further in-depth exploration of the historical

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configuration of the key “moments” of “archival formation” synonymous with modernity’s centring of “state-nation-territory.” This quest not only involves identifying the configurations and reconfigurations synonymous with “old-new” archival “constellations” but opens these up to apprehend wider “cosmologies of care and protection” (both “sovereign” and “popular”) that “act” and “act back” as potent webs of affiliation and efficacy. In Doumani’s work (and that of Derrida), one can draw out a splitting in terms of the initial dual-personas that form modernity’s archival impulse and associated modes of authorisation. We can see how modernity’s “acts” of sovereignty are authenticated with reference to an archival scientism based on facts, records, truth, singularity, objectivity, data, secularity, bureaucracy, linear history, progress, law, and therefore by extension rights culture. Alongside this “rational” mode, the “state” is similarly and simultaneously authenticated as the “primary archive for stories about the destiny of peoples and nations” (2009, p. 7). The latter of which can be conceived of as an expression of the more explicit and implicit fevered archival impulses that in turn reveal prophetic, sacred, religious, messianic impulses, and the embrace of “cosmologies of care and protection” synonymous with “magical/catastrophic-thinking” (Butler 2016, p. 116) and “wishfulfillment” that again in turn “act” to create “realities” and/as “facts on the ground.” Located here is Doumani’s challenge vis-à-vis “unhinging” the archive as “a self-evident concept” in order to take on the biases, exclusions, and implications these have for archival story-telling (2009, p. 5). As such archives are “subjected to specific regimes of access and organized into different sets of components, pre-suggesting specific relationships, themes, and temporalities— thus making certain topics and approaches both inevitable and highly desirable” (Doumani 2009, p. 12n10).2 The extreme scenarios when the archival impulse aligns with crude reductionism are thus highlighted, “Nationalist ideologies fetishize the notion of archives, eager as they are to prove that there is a ‘scientific’ basis for the claims they make” (Doumani 2009, p. 12n10). Moreover, in the “foundational moments” of archival “formation,” we can see certain convergences and connectivities with wider practices of state sovereignty in the form of colonial-settler powers. Here, Doumani iterates how the dominant “formal archival collections” pertaining to Palestine are “spread all over the world” and include “the central Ottoman archives, the British Public Records office, the registers of local Islamic courts, the papers of monasteries and churches, and the Zionist Archives” (Doumani 2009, p. 3). Interestingly then these “sovereign archives”—both secular and religious—pertaining to Palestine repeat the motif of “wholeness in dispersal.” Doumani emphasises the “hard data” of Ottoman and Mandate Palestine that in turn authorise and essentialise archival impulses of “counting,” “governance,” and “law” (2009, p. 8). However, one can see how modernity’s archival story-telling concerning the future “destiny” of certain “peoples and nations” similarly and simultaneously is a potent mix of rational archival scientism and

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the deployment/fetishisation of messianic claims to land, nation, and futures (Doumani 2009, p. 8). Archival formation and deployment Writ larger still Doumani posits key moments vis-à-vis “archive formation and deployment in modern times” that are synonymous with “shifts from Palestine to the Palestinians” and the “expansion in lines of inquiry from the land to the state to society” (Doumani 2009, pp. 7, 9). Thus, he begins by articulating a “clear shift in the archival base from the Biblical landscape to the state. People, largely absent in the first, appear in the second mostly as objects to be counted and governed” (Doumani 2009, p. 8). The “first” and perhaps most salient archival possession then is that which can be couched within its own specific trinity of “orientalism, scientism and the messianic” that, as Doumani demonstrates, was “largely dominant from the 18th to early twentieth centuries” yet crucially “still very much in play today” (2009, p. 7). Here, the “archival base” as “biblical landscape” is deployed that “focused on Holy Land and The Holy Book as the primary archives in order to tell stories, in the name of God and civilisation, about the place of Europe and the Christians in the world.” Doumani adds, “this involved literally tracing the footsteps of Jesus Christ and documenting that itinerary using the Bible as the story frame, with the latest technological gadgets, such as the camera and new surveying techniques, as the tools” (2009, p. 7). This archival fusion of state-colonialism and biblical-scientism thus authorising “The scientific discovery of Biblical narratives led, over the decades, to the formation of new disciplines and textual genres, such as Biblical geography and archaeology” (Doumani 2009, p. 7). With implications of wider “archivalheritage” constellations Doumani argues, “A useful metaphor for the many genres that would later become archives in their own right, are the tripod, the shovel, and the notebook” to sum up “the dominant form of representing and measuring Palestine as the Holy land” (2009, p. 7). It is worth highlighting too that this orientalist-colonial archival impulse is “almost universally associated in the works of scholars with Western/capitalist penetration/integration as the original external stimulus” (Doumani 2009, p. 8). Here, external sovereignty is thus authorised, essentialised, and incorporated as internal. Moreover, it is another trinity—that of the aforementioned “counting, governance and law”—that “acts” as “hard data.” Counting thus includes, “population census, … taxation records, … imports and exports” and “governance” expressed in “new administrative institutions including educational and military” and “new forms of communication and transportation” (2009, p. 8). Doumani emphasises that the latter “produced paperwork by the kilo” (2009, p. 8). Crucially important to this paper is the archival authorisation given to what Doumani dubs as the “legal fabrication of property and notions of right” and as this forms the archival base pertaining to configurations and reconfigurations of justice (2009, p. 8).

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“Buried treasure” and “archival rain drops” Given that Doumani’s two key moments of archival formation bring together the originary “act” of the “scribe,” but also by the subsequent “acts” of archival work that bring into view acts of interpretation and “story-telling,” it is important to problematise these dynamics to further unhinge the archive as a “self-evident concept” and its “underlying assumptions” (2009, p. 7). Deploying more analogies and metaphors Doumani argues that the assumption that archives, “are akin to buried treasures that can be unearthed through patient detective work” thus “acts” to authenticate the related assumption archives “are a singular product of historical processes that do not repeat themselves” and as such “constitute a one-of-a-kind ‘raw material’ waiting to be discovered and processed in order to tell factual stories about the past” (Doumani 2009, p. 5). Assumed to be “inert and frozen in time,” they are therefore “seen as pre-existing the collector/researcher and outside of him/her” (2009, p. 5). Here, we can see how the aforementioned archival “baptism” of Palestine as “Holy Land and its later archaeological authentication as ‘Zion’ deploys the motif of ‘buried treasure.’” Discoveries and/as destiny Significantly, the efficacy of this motif continues in “announcements of archival finds (or losses) among Palestinian individuals and organizations” (Doumani 2009, p. 5). Creatively mixing metaphors and imagery Doumani highlights how, “Stories of ‘discoveries’ now abound as the patter of archival raindrops that held steady until the early 1990s has turned into a heavy downpour in recent years” (2009, p. 5). Interestingly, those “archival treasure hunts” enacted with the “explicit purpose of affirming the existence of a sophisticated Palestinian society prior to its destruction in 1948 and to demonstrate the ways that Palestinians are tied to and belong to the land of Palestine” (2009, p. 5) repeat the archival paradigm as an “act” of repossession that primarily acts back and unhinges to allow the authorising of one’s own narrative stories “about the destiny of peoples and nations” (Doumani 2009, p. 8). An overriding motivation and ambition being to deploy the “archival base” to both claim proof of one’s own sovereignty and to substantiate and agitate for social and political justice and significantly the “right of return.” It is then useful to engage with Doumani’s thesis of archival reconfiguration in which he argues the need to “think of the notion of archives as product of a relationship between scholars and textual genres in specific historical contexts” (2009, p. 6). Referencing Foucault he subsequently asserts: We can think of an archive as a “system that governs the appearance of statements as unique events.” In this sense, the archive is an authorizing discursive field that naturalizes some stories about the past and, by implication, silences others. A critical reading of documents deemed, as a collectivity, to

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constitute a distinct archive, requires deconstructing the language and structure of the text itself in order to expose its epistemological genealogy. (Doumani 2009, p. 6) He gives the example of “travel literature” synonymous with the “rediscovery of Palestine as the Holy Land in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries” arguing some scholars depend heavily on this literature as an accurate description of contemporary realities, while others subject it to a post–colonialist reading as evidence not of native realities, but of the Orientalist perspective. Still other scholars consider it completely unreliable and refuse to grant this literature the rank of archive to begin with. (2009, p. 6) Sovereign and popular archival cosmologies At the level of the archive and “archival base” as synonymous with the deployment of historical narratives, significant interventions, reconfigurations, and “acting back” have come in the form of “contrapuntal readings” (Said 1994, p. 62) of the aforementioned sovereign archives (notably Mandate, Zionist, Israeli-state, associated military archives, and related photographic and correspondence collections) by activists and revisionist historians (notably including Palestinians and Israelis) (Butler 2009a, pp. 64–65). As the Israeli historian Ilan Pappe argues, we should not be slaves of our history and memory … in order to perform this liberation act in Israel and Palestine, you need first to rewrite, indeed salvage, a history that was erased and forgotten. The violent symbolic and real exclusion of people from the hegemonic narrative of the past is the source of violence in the present. (Pappe 2004, p. xx) These “New Historians” have re-examined archives, particularly the decommissioned and declassified Zionist and Haganah archives and “have been instrumental in approaching the topic of foundational events such as the Nakba from a critical perspective and for problematising official Israeli terminology of the Zionist ‘transfer’ policy” (Butler 2009a, pp. 64–65). As previously argued (Butler 2009a, 2009b), these alternative “post-Zionist-narratives” have also offered Pappe and other critical voices a means to articulate an alternative vocabulary capable of recasting Israel’s defensive, militarised Zionist policies as part of more pro-active acts of “ethnic cleansing,” “apartheid,” and “racism” organised under the banner of “tanks and torah” (Pappe 2004). These “academic-archival” narratives have “extended their influence beyond the academy to become accessible at popular level, while also becoming a key force in

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transforming public history and media debates” and calls for justice (Butler 2009b, pp. 253–254). Activated archives In terms of Palestinians in the occupied territories not only is “archive fever” underpinned by the historical experience of the originary trauma of the 1948 Nakba/Catastrophe and “on-going Nakba” but more specifically related to the “destructive process moved to the Occupied Territories in 1967” which “picked up speed since Oslo” resulting in the “strangulation of a social formation and the radical transformation of a landscape” (Doumani 2009, p. 5). Moreover, the lack of formal archival structures have led to popular archivism; chief amongst these are a number of web-based “Nakba” archives (www.pales tineremembered.com and www.nakba-archive.org). These archives enable the uploading of source material like maps and collections of images allowing users to digitally reconstitute maps of pre-1948 Palestinian villages and landscapes. The testimonies and oral histories of displaced persons world-wide continue to be collected, including testimonies of those now living in refugee camps and with displaced Palestinians inside and outside Israel and not least those within the occupied Palestinian territories. “Such sentiments informing these archival impulses are part of the politics of recognition and the project of memorialising the ‘Nakba.’ This focus on web-based archival reconstruction within Palestine and in the diaspora” is a crucial means by which communities can gain a sense “wholeness-in-dispersal” and the impulse the maintain connectivity in diaspora (Butler 2009a, p. 65). Meta archival efficacies Underpinning these above archival “acts” are archival dramas that operate on a symbolic, perhaps psychodynamic and/or metaphysical level. As Derrida’s “Freudian impressions” argue, the archive is similarly and simultaneously “activated” and/or revealed as a potent synonym for origin/home/ancestor/refuge/ wholeness. Thus, reiterating the originary “diasporic character” of the archive and the founding archival impulse: to give shelter to “memory-in-exile” (Derrida 1996, pp. 2–3). It is here that modernity and the archive are credited with metaphysical-messianic attachments to redemptive qualities (Huyssen 1995; Maleuvre 1999; Butler 2007) and as a privileged medium for not only for reflecting upon the human condition but also to potentially “grasp” and thus “fulfil” the desire for transcendence and/or communion with the divine/sovereignty. This exposes in turn a crucial aspect of archival dramas by which those desiring the archive are defining themselves in the position of exiles: the cure for which is return. There is also a tension here “between metaphysical and literal worlds: the objectification of the quest for home, origin, refuge as memory and as ‘facts on the ground’ providing the literalisation and territorialisation of these desires in the

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homeland” (Butler 2009a, p. 61). Or, as Said has it, modernity’s “exiles” are required to engage in the reclamation of a “triumphant ideology,” and, by these means to locate a template to work through the alienations of exile (Said 2000, p. 177). It is, however, the Zionist identification with the “proverbial people of exile” that has dominated archival discourse vis-à-vis Palestine (Said 2000, p. 178).

Archival “acting back” in the occupied territories [T]he refugee represents such a disquieting element in the order of the nation-state … it brings the originary fiction of sovereignty to crisis. What is new in our time is that growing sections of humankind are no longer representable inside the nation-state—and this novelty threatens the very foundations of the latter. In as much as the refugee, an apparently marginal figure, unhinges the old trinity of state-nation-territory, it deserves instead to be regarded as the central figure of our political history. (Agamben 2000, pp. 21–21) Whatever we Palestinians are, we are not in our Palestine, which no longer exists. (Mahmoud Darwish quoted in Said 1986, p. 11) In this section, our quest for reconfiguration “centres” the complex figure of the “refugee” vis-à-vis the specificities of “Palestinanisms.” Writ larger still, these in turn form part of “acts” to widen the “archival base” to include “sections of humankind [who] are no longer representable inside the nation-state” and interventions that bring “novelty” to the archival domain that in turn are inextricably linked to urgent demands for social and political justice (Agamben 2000, p. 20). In what follows, I focus firstly on diverse critical contrapuntal readings of “formal settler-colonial archives” and secondly on the situation in the Palestinian Occupied Territories (OT) and the efficacies fuelled by popular “Palestinian archive fever” that again similarly and simultaneously “acts back.” Here again implicit/explicit acts “perforate,” “alter,” and thereby “unhinge” sovereign power—including the violent powers authoring occupation—and by extension, Agamben would argue, bring the “originary fiction of sovereignty to crisis” (2000, p. 20). Taken together, these “new” archive fevers and impulses thus feature strategic repossession and paradoxical repetitions of “old” fevers while bringing subversive “novelty” to bear. Diverse activations of both traditional and alternative archival analogies, metaphors, practices, and story-telling and “truth-value” are deployed in diverse constellations and cosmologies of protection and care. Thus, like any other archival context: fact, fantasy, creativity, “data,” “destiny,” history, even irony, to name but a few, can be mapped which crucially too produce new “realities” and possibilities “on the ground” and or to articulate various modes of “truth-value.”

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“Old” in/and “new” archival constellations The project of “acting back” has been taken on by highly effective cultural NGOs, for example, in the Occupied Territories. RIWAQ, Palestinian Association for Cultural Exchange (PACE), Open Bethlehem, and the Hebron Rehabilitation Committee (HRC), for example, are “actively creating their own ‘heritage archives’ in order to similarly and simultaneously highlight the cultural identity of Palestinians (past and present) and the massive cultural destruction wrought both historically and in the present day” (see www.pace.ps; www.riwaq.org; www.hebronrc.ps; www.openbethlehem.org) (Butler 2009a, p. 66). Critical causes of contemporary heritage destruction and suffering are the diverse technologies of occupation: including checkpoints, the “Separation-Apartheid” Wall, on-going conflict, and the creation of settlements amongst over violently destructive forces. PACE, RIWAQ, and the HRC “are organisations active in ‘acting’ on such issues in combination with strategies for preservation, cultural revivalism in the present and creating a more peaceful future for Palestinians” (Butler 2009a, p. 66). Further paradoxes return in the project of representing such constituencies. For example, crucial to many new archival initiatives have been a similar and simultaneous return to the “archival base” of the “land” and to foundational practices of mapping/scoping and of the creation of inventories and databases. Such strategies rework the “old” settler-colonial trinity of “tripod, shovel/notebook” for contemporary agendas typically concerned with the urgent need to survey the current status of the Occupied Territories. While colonial-settler archival forms actively erased people from the archive, in contrast, contemporary Palestinian projects have sought to involve locals in the new “archival-heritage democracy.” For example, RIWAQ’s first “phase of documentation” notably produced the Registry of Historic Buildings (1994–2007), which comprises of “detailed histories, maps and photos of approximately 420 villages in sixteen districts across the West Bank, Jerusalem, and Gaza”; these included GIS technologies too. RIWAQ’s strategy thus “engages entire communities” in constellations and cosmologies of protection and care that crucially are part of “job creation” schemes (NEPTO). Of significance is RIWAQ’s capacity to respond “to the absence of a formal legal framework by creating protection plans and by-laws that safeguard our projects and communities” (NEPTO). The HRC developed similar projects that operate out of their base in Hebron—a city that is marked by Israeli settler violences against local people (HRC). This motif of the archive as a point of contemporary revivalism is found too in PACE. This cultural initiative was founded and directed by Director Adel Yayeh, a pioneer of oral histories notably as a means to give representation to Palestinians living in refugee camps. PACE has further developed this motif of rehabilitation and job creation to revive heritage skills synonymous with traditional crafts of embroidery, pottery, and to transmit these as “heritage pride” for the future. Part of PACE’s mission is to establish its own archive that bring together these strands (PACE 2017).

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Other expressions of archival fevers and impulses have led to other novel projects. Open Bethlehem’s approach to the increasingly besieged situation in Bethlehem has been to create both local cultural initiatives and a global webbased campaign that offers “honorary citizenship” to this “iconic” city that is symbolically objectified in the gifting of a Bethlehem passport (Open Bethlehem 2019). The constituency of virtual Bethlehemites thus bear witness to the historical and contemporary injustices taking place in a symbolic/activist mode of solidarity. The heavily ironic motif of the “passport” in turn problematises Palestinian statelessness, the identity card situation (a key part of the apparatus of occupation), and the restrictions and suffering this brings. Thus, this project “acts back” in centring marginalised groups and making them representable. In this case, magical-thinking and wish-fulfilment find a potent place in archivework and/as social justice. This ironic and powerfully subversive use of the archive perhaps finds its extremes in a “fictional archive” created by the artist Khalil Rabah’s Palestinian Museum of Natural History and Humankind (PMNHH). As a conceptual space, it has led to “real” activist interventions while using its own status as “non-place” and “exception” to communicate salient “truth-value” from its fictive “archival base.” Rabah states, The PMNHH is cubist in its impossibility; it is occupied, exiled at home, and everywhere abroad. An entirely new place, it rests nowhere while waiting for our return. Four centuries behind the times, as unpatriotic as it is inefficient, it is the stupid obstinacy of the refugee, and the subject of a natural contempt. The museum is greedy, existing in such abject poverty that opinion is an impossible luxury. The PMNHH is the observance of accursed ignorance, insists on the infinity of traces and persists irrespective of fragmentation. It is a local rehabilitation of the future. (Rabah 2019) Writ large a chief outcome of this context is to recognise that “the archive” embraces more than just “records” and to repossess wider dimensions of heritage and archaeological forms including: objects, landscapes, and intangible performative traditions. Alongside the documentary archival re-constitution is an increasingly pro-active reclamation and recasting of Palestinian identity through the media of film-making, photography, literature, and arts. Included here is the graffiti artist Banksy’s creation of “Santa’s Ghetto” in Bethlehem which encompasses the Separation Wall as part of its canvas (Butler 2009a, p. 66). Larger plans have been developed to address the reinterpretation and representation of Palestinian cultural heritage sites and collections and to re-position these as iconic archival spaces. A central aspect of this process has been the nomination of Palestinian heritage sites for listing on the UNESCO World Heritage

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List, including the town of Bethlehem. A traditional form of Palestinian storytelling, the “Hikaye,” has also been inscribed as part of UNESCO’s intangible heritage programme (Butler 2009b, pp. 245–245). Moreover, “folklore” collections such as that of the “nativist-intellectual” Dr Tawiq Canaan’s collection of amulets has become centred as an important contemporary archival hub (Tamari 2009). Canaan, a medical doctor, polymath, and pioneer researcher of “Palestinian popular heritage,” collected over 1,400 amulets, which were gifted to Birzeit University by his family in 1983 (al-Ju’beh 2005). This collection “acts back” under the banner of “Heritage Magic” and testifies to a long tradition of popular heritage in Palestine vis-à-vis the creation of “cosmologies of protection and care” including materialised talismanic forms. The motif of dispersed constellations can be identified too in attempts by Israeli archivists to “unhinge” sovereign narrative via some similarly inspired projects. Notable here is Zochrot (the title of which is the Hebrew feminine form of “remembering” or “those who remember”), which consists of a group of Israelis “working to raise awareness of the Nakba, the Palestinian catastrophe of 1948” and to publicly “engage Jews and Palestinians in an open recounting of our painful common history. … [and to assert] … equal rights for all the peoples of this land, including the right of Palestinians to return to their homes” (Zochrot 2009). The placing of “original Palestinian town names in Israeli territory is just one part of the strategies used by Zochrot to draw out the ever-present Palestinian culture and heritage” (Butler 2009a, p. 67). Other archival spaces tied to demands for political and social justice include the site of the former Palestinian village of Deir Yasin, which has become synonymous with Nakba violence and destruction and which lies within the same area as the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum in West Jerusalem. This site is one for which many Palestinians and their supporters are campaigning to see it gain some form of recognition and commemoration. The activities of “Alternative Heritage” at the contested site of Silwan are also notable projects of “acting back” (Shaveh). Perhaps coming “full-circle” in terms of “acting back” is the redeployment of sovereign-archives as “open ground” in order to represent those made marginal. Here, for example, the Petrie Palestinian collection has sought to decentre the colonial archaeologist Sir Flinders Petrie by giving representation to the local dig workers thus challenging the thesis of “empty land” and giving continuity to such presence (Quirke 2010). Interestingly, “old” and “new” archival fevers converged when in a particular intervention the PMNHH and RIWAQ’s “50,320 Names” installations were performed and exhibited at the Brunei Gallery at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London (SOAS). The exhibition was placed alongside a display of Palestinian archaeology excavated by Petrie, which is currently held at University College

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London. Part of the installation was a subversive “acting back” vis-à-vis the claim that the PMNHH had acquired the Petrie Palestinian Collection for its own “collection” (Butler 2009, p. 66).

Beyond “rights cultures”—archives and/as social repair The concept of the refugee must be resolutely separated from the concept of ‘human rights,’ and the right of asylum (which in any case is by now in the process of being drastically restricted in the legislation of the European states) must no longer be considered as the conceptual category. (Agamben 2000, p. 21) In this concluding part of our quest, we focus on the reconfiguration of the last of our trinity: social justice. In doing so, we are confronted with moments of “acting back” as a series of paradoxes, connectivities, and also “separations.” Writ large, our critical journey takes us into the wider framings of sovereign power synonymous with legal “rights discourse” and with the sovereign power institutionalised by means of a further trinity of “humanitarianism-bio-politicsrights culture.” Here, I take Agamben’s call for “refugees” to be reconfigured “beyond” the concept of “human rights” and the implications this has for “social justice”—and crucially too we can add for the “archive”—as my point of departure. As such it is important to “unhinge” key assumptions that pervade these concepts and discourses by perforating and altering top-down constellations and power-led “regimes of protection and cure.” The task being to centre in their stead “acting back” in terms of the “activation” of popular rites of social repair—expressed as care, comfort, and cure and action—that yet again are not representable within existing sovereign structures. Sovereign rites of passage Moreover, just as we had the splitting of the “archival persona” and that of the “nation-state” into the “rational” verses the “fevered”—we are similarly and simultaneously, confronted by contradictory co-existent “configurations” of the refugee, refugee camp, and of the wider “rights culture.” In configuring the “refugee” as “exception,” critics seek to convey the way in which sovereign power and associated “bio-political rites of passage” and interpolation into humanitarian domains and discourse actively reduce human beings to “passive victim,” “homo sacer,” and “bare life” (Agamben 2000; see also Hanafi 2009). Similarly, the camps themselves and more specifically still Palestinian refugee camps are characterised from this perspective as “non-spaces,” “spaces of exception,” and “laboratories” of “control and surveillance.” Here, Agamben reiterates, “We should not forget that the first camps were built in Europe as spaces for controlling refugees, and that the succession of internment camps – concentration camps – extermination camps

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represents a perfectly real filiation” (Agamben 2000, p. 21). Nor should we forget that part of the paradox of the trinity of “humanitarianism-bio-politics-rights culture” along with the “peace industry” make the occupation possible by being complicit with nation state/United Nations sovereignty. However, by way of contrast, and yet again similarly and simultaneously, we have Arendt’s “figure of the refugee” who as “vanguard” connects to alternative yet co-existent characterisations of refugees and refugee camps with the latter as potent “little Palestines” and as “spaces of resistance” and “refusal” (Arendt 1973, pp. 295–296; Agamben 2000, p. 15). Here, we can take forward Misselwitz’s (2012) characterisation of refugee camps as multi-layered spaces of “attachment and belonging” functioning as both “symbol and archive” and as everyday spaces for “living,” “work,” “shelter,” and “services” (see Al-Qutub 1989; al-Nammari 2014). Popular rites of social repair In research terms, the “reconfiguration of the refugee” and of the “refugee camp” is best achieved in co-ethnographies founded upon the “lived experiences” and the intimacies this has with a genre of “archival acting back” in refugee camps. Crucial here is the co-presence of “activated” archival-heritage forms and powerful ritual acts that operate within and across the multilayers articulated above and span material-transcendent worlds that often issue a challenge and counter weight to the aforementioned “bio-political” “rites de passage.” The encompassing efficacies of these popular rites also lead me to argue the crucial role of social repair. In many senses, the literal spaces cf. “snowy mountains” thus reconfigure “non-spaces” to become activated as amuletic sites where identity becomes intensified. We see “social repair” activated and thus emerge as powerful ritual acts of communion, magical thinking, and wish-fulfilment that create new “factness” and “realities” on the ground as well as keep in play aspirations for the future. This genre of “acting back” is articulated through objects (domestic-personal mementoes and souvenirs) that repair by connecting people to the Palestinian “lost homeland” as cosmic centre/axis mundi. They are manifest in dispersed collections of records (identity cards, land rights, title deeds to homes and businesses) that are typically kept in domestic spaces and in the ownership of keys to houses long since destroyed or appropriated. They are animated via public art/murals that particularise camps as “little Palestines” and rename locales after originary “lost” neighbourhoods, villages, and cities. They also act as sensoria synonymous with the preparation and ingestion of traditional food. Not only do traditional performances of dabke dancing but new media of rap and film-making form a fundamental part of this complex context. In ethnographic fieldwork, the “thobe”—embroidered Palestinian dress—is particularly potent in “acting-back” and as best encompassing the social efficacy of popular archival and heritage rites to “clothe” “bare life,” and thus to empower

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persons not just in the future but in the present, and thereby take on the complexities and paradoxes that being human means especially in conditions of extremis (see Butler and Al-Nammari 2016). Vanguards and whose justice, whose cure? Agamben returns to Arendt’s “figure of the refugee” as “the vanguard of their people” and crucially too to the Palestinian experience to cast what might be regarded as his alternative vision of the “promised land” (2000, pp. 15, 24–25). Here, Agamben’s reconfigured Palestinian refugee is cast as “vanguard” but one that may “not necessarily or not merely” hinge on being the “nucleus of a future national state” but, he argues, symbolises the very crisis of nation state itself. In his vision, the refugee presence like a “snowcovered hill” thus renders the nation state “perforated and topologically deformed” and allows “the citizen … to recognize the refugee that he or she is” crucially adding “only in such a world is the political survival of humankind today thinkable” (Agamben 2000, pp. 24–25). His ultimate solutional model in which we recognise ourselves as similarly and simultaneously as “internal-external” object within contextual specificity is Agamben’s imaginative scenario in which (far from today’s reality) the iconic site of Jerusalem is recognised as yet again similarly and simultaneously a place of “exodus and exile.” Perhaps this is Agamben’s own utopian exercise in magical-thinking and wish-fulfilment? However, such solutions remain unworkable when still operating under the sign of the “nation-state” in which “so-called sacred and inalienable human rights are revealed to be without any protection precisely when it is no longer possible to conceive of them as rights of the citizens of a state” (Agamben 2000, p. 19). I argue this context demands us to recognise “the general corrosion of traditional political-juridical categories” that themselves require radical transformation and reconfiguration (Agamben 2000, p. 15). In response, wider archival-heritage constellations must resist becoming further encompassed by bio-political discourse and increasingly enmeshed in top-down power-led sovereignty rites, agendas, and respresentational modalities that in turn encompass rights culture. We also must recognise and respond to the fact that the social dynamics that underpin “what it is to be human” extend beyond “rights” as sovereign legal framing to draw in wider acts of social repair not represented and which are demonstrated to be capable of creative and transformative engagements. These are deeply felt and often magical acts that fully locate new strategies of humanisation within theories of subjectivity and recognise the efficacies that empower persons not just in the future but in the present, and thereby take on the complexities and paradoxes that being human means. This also means that in conditions of extremis, the desire to be more than “bare life” leads to desires and demands to live a “good life.”

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Perhaps then this is a small but important step in not only creating new “factness” and new “realities” that challenge the impulse for archives-heritage to remain harnessed purely to national identity and affiliation. Equally, it demands that academic and professional archival-heritage critics and policy makers recognise their own paradoxical thinking and their obligations in terms of this imperative. Moreover, there is significant potential to reconfigure the foundational archival impulse that authorises that the first originary response and responsibility of the archive is to “re-house” and “give refuge” to “memory-in-exile.” Thus, to see dispossessed communities as a priority in terms of giving recognition to a re-worked popular discourse of archival care that takes heed of Arendt’s warning, “The comity of European peoples went to pieces when, and because, it allowed its weakest members to be excluded and persecuted” (Arendt 1943, p. 77).

Acknowledgements Dedicated to Dr Adel Yayeh, Palestinian activist/academic and Founder and Director of PACE.

Notes 1 As Doumani argues “The current archival fever, therefore, puts too much emphasis on discoveries of sources as external objects and not enough on the relationship between persons and texts that can make archives speak” (2009, p. 6). 2 Doumani adds “This is especially the case when the past is subject to contestation between competing nationalist groups. This is why archives can easily become a theatre for aggressive interventions. Archival collections are raided, stolen and sometimes destroyed.”

References Agamben, Giorgio. 2000. Means without End: Notes on Politics. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. al-Ju’beh, Baha. 2005. “Magic and Talismans: The Tawfiq Canaan Collection of Palestinian Amulets.” Jerusalem Quarterly 22–23: 103–110. al-Nammari, Fatima. 2014. “Talbiyeh Camp Improvement Project and the Challenges of Community Participation: Between Empowerment and Conflict.” In UNRWA and Palestinian Refugees: From Relief and Works to Human Development, edited by Sari Hanafi, Leila Hilal, and Lex Takkenberg, 206–220. London: Routledge. Al-Qutub, Ishaq Y. 1989. “The Challenge for Urban Development Policies: The Case of Refugee Camp-Cities in the Middle East.” Journal of Arab Affairs 8(2): 207–228. Arendt, Hannah. 1943. “We, Refugees.” The Menorah Journal 31: 69–77. Arendt, Hannah. 1973. The Origins of Totalitarianism. Fort Washington, PA: Harvest Books. Butler, Beverley. 2007. Return to Alexandria: An Ethnography of Cultural Heritage Revivalism and Museum Memory. Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press.

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Butler, Beverley. 2009a. “‘Othering’ the Archive—From Exile to Inclusion and Heritage Dignity: The Case of Palestinian Archival Memory.” Archival Science 9(1–2): 57–69. Butler, Beverley. 2009b. “Palestinian Heritage ‘to the Moment’: Archival Memory and the Representation of Heritage in Conflict.” Conservation and Management of Archaeological Sites 11(3–4): 236–261. Butler, Beverley. 2016. “The Efficacies of Heritage: Syndromes, Magics, and Possessional Acts.” Public Archaeology 15(2–3): 113–135. Butler, Beverley, and Fatima Al-Nammari. 2016. “‘We Palestinian Refugees’—Heritage Rites and/as the Clothing of Bare Life: Reconfiguring Paradox, Obligation, and Imperative in Palestinian Refugee Camps in Jordan.” Journal of Contemporary Archaeology 3(2): 147–158. Equinox Publishing Ltd. Derrida, Jacques. 1996. Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Doumani, Beshara. 2009. “Archiving Palestine and the Palestinians: The Patrimony of Ihsan Nimr.” Jerusalem Quarterly 36: 3–12. Habiby, Emile. 1974. The Secret Life of Saeed: The Pessoptimist. Northampton, MA: Interlink. Hanafi, Sari. 2009. “Spacio-Cide: Colonial Politics, Invisibility and Rezoning in Palestinian Territory.” Contemporary Arab Affairs 2(1): 106–121. Hebron Rehabilitation Committee (HRC). “Mission and Objectives.” www.hebronrc.ps/ index.php/en/about-hrc/mission-and-objectives. Huyssen, Andreas. 1995. Twilight Memories: Marking Time in a Culture of Amnesia. London: Routledge. Maleuvre, Didier. 1999. Museum Memories: History Technology Art. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Misselwitz, Philipp, ed. 2012. Space, Time, Dignity, Rights: Improving Palestinian Refugee Camps. Stuttgart: University of Stuttgart and UNRWA. Network for Experiential Palestinian Tourism Organization (NEPTO). “Riwaq Center for Architectural Conservation.” Accessed 3 May 2019. https://web.archive.org/web/ 20190503195156/https://nepto.ps/member/riwaq/. Open Bethlehem. “About Open Bethlehem.” Accessed 12 May 2019. web.archive.org/web/ 20190512072830/www.openbethlehem.org/. Palestinian Association for Cultural Exchange (PACE). “About Pace.” Accessed 8 April 2017. https://web.archive.org/web/20170408212613/http://pace.ps/index.php/about/. Palestinian Museum of Natural History and Humankind (PMNHH). www.global-activ ism.de/directory/khalil-rabah-palestinian-museum-natural-history-and-humankind. Pappe, Ilan. 2004. A History of Modern Palestine: One Land, Two Peoples. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Quirke, Stephen. 2010. Hidden Hands: Egyptian Workforces in Petrie Excavation Archives, 1880–1924. Duckworth Egyptology. London: Duckworth. Rabah, Khalil. 2019. “The Palestinian Museum of Natural History and Humankind.” Accessed 13 May 2019. web.archive.org/web/20190513215045/www.thepalestinianmu seumofnaturalhistoryandhumankind.org/home-about/statement/. Said, Edward. 1986. After the Last Sky. New York: Columbia University Press. Said, Edward. 1994. Culture and Imperialism. New York: Vintage Books. Said, Edward. 2000. Reflections on Exile and Other Essays. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

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“Santa’s Ghetto.” web.archive.org/web/*/www.santasghetto.com. [See various versions of the site]. Shaveh, Emek. “Alternative Heritage.” https://alt-arch.org/en. SOAS University of London. “50,320 Names.” SOAS University of London. www.soas. ac.uk/gallery/50320names/. Tamari, Salim. 2009. “Lepers, Lunatics and Saints: The Nativist Ethnography of Tawfiq Canaan and His Jerusalem Circle.” In Mountain against the Sea: Essays on Palestinian Society and Culture, edited by Salim Tamari, 93–112. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Zochrot. 2009. “Annual Report.” www.zochrot.org.

Chapter 13

Conclusion David A. Wallace, Wendy M. Duff, and Andrew Flinn

The central assertion and organising principle posed by this volume has been that recordmaking, recordkeeping, and archiving help shape and reflect social relations and, as a result, become agents of varying impact in social justice struggles. These issues play out in contests over what gets recorded and how what gets recorded is controlled, preserved, made accessible, and activated. The past and how we construct it, understand it, and relay it remains a potent force in the present and offers a signpost to alternative futures. Records and archives, as source materials that provide a fragmentary portal to the past, contain powerful empathetic and other properties and lessons that can inform, strengthen, and embolden ongoing struggles for social justice and social change. Records and archives can provide saliency to the present in that contemporary struggles can engage in their own recordmaking to fill documentary gaps and absences of those who are experiencing domination and oppression. “Good” and “poor” recordmaking, recordkeeping, and archiving do not default into simple relationships in regards to struggles for social justice. Good recordmaking, recordkeeping, and archiving can be a fundamental tool of injustice, while poor recordmaking, recordkeeping, and archiving can harm social justice endeavours by inadequately documenting and even misrecording injustices. Across time, the records produced and preserved by recordmaking, recordkeeping, and archiving processes that helped enact injustices can be re-examined with new eyes and motivations as an activist strategy to surface those injustices and aid justice seeking pursuits, including intangible outcomes such as reshaped public discourses and transformed individual psychologies and beliefs. Intangible outcomes can often be a critical precursor to more tangible and perhaps more substantial impacts. It is important to note that recordmaking, recordkeeping, and archiving does not happen in one space only, or under one power structure. One of their formidable attributes is that they are available as praxis to any social actor as a justice-seeking stratagem. Where, for example, hegemonic state narratives misrepresent or make invisible certain other histories and accounts, different agents can create, collect, and establish counter-archives, often making use of non-traditional record types and memory carriers, including oral testimony and, increasingly, the Internet and social media.

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Whether focused on the past or the present, struggles for social justice centre on power and power imbalances whose shaping influence on impact is often obscured. These relationships are complex and multifaceted. They can play out across time spans ranging from months to centuries, impact both individuals and broader social aggregations, and have different consequences for different actors. As demonstrated time and again in the case studies chapters in this volume, social justice strivings are often open ended and continue to unfold without definitive closure, reflecting that struggles for social justice are dynamic and characterised by prolonged stasis and both incremental and abrupt change. These changes, however, can and do run counter to social justice objectives. So, while other futures are possible, and are imagined and prefigured in these archival endeavours, in many instances, these futures are not yet achieved and struggles for social justice, like the records that support them, are always becoming. They are, in the words of Hall (2001), critical archival interventions in already contested and contestory fields. We see these dynamics play out in: Josias and Frogner’s chapters on land restitution processes in settler colonial societies; Evans et al. and Flinn and Duff’s chapters on activist struggles to access full records of perpetrated injustices; Blanco-Rivera and Pell’s chapters on ongoing access struggles and creation of counter-archives; and Sheffield, Sexton et al., and Butler’s chapters on alternative archives’ efforts to activate records outside of status quo channels. While varying, and in most instances ongoing, in their success in pushing towards social justice, these cases do lend a sense that, with the passage of time, they bend towards the arc of social justice. This suggests an optimistic long-term trend despite the very real wreckage, pain, trauma, and unresolved injustices left in their wakes. It is important to recognise, however, that a different set of cases could have readily demonstrated more pessimistic outcomes and forecasts. While this selection of cases intentionally offers narratives that can be considered broadly progressive and social justice oriented, other similar, equally effective and impactful use of archives and recordkeeping by campaigns and social movements that could be characterised differently, as non-progressive or non-social justice oriented, are just as observable and describable. To reiterate, the use (and impact) of records and recordkeeping systems is always multifaceted and not in one (progressive) direction. These cases also demonstrate that the activation, mobilisation, promotion, and use of records and archives can serve as critical apparatus in social justice conflicts. It is perhaps felt most substantively in contests over access to records, whether as a legal right or through other means to open up contemporary records and otherwise closed archives. Despite this potency, it is essential to realise that records and archives are but only one component in the complex social web of contestation over the shape and direction of society. They interact with other contextual factors and can play lesser or greater impact roles. They become salient through activism, advocacy, and interventions for social change to overcome domination and oppression and on occasion they can be

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the central objects struggled over in shaping new narratives and concrete outcomes for those experiencing injustice. Records and archives are rich in potential to acknowledge and support the rectification of injustices from the past and once engaged with and activated can help generate more just outcomes in the present, impacts that can then pass into the future and across generations. Intangible impacts, especially when experienced by an individual, are often hard to discern and describe in terms of the positive outcome engendering healing or satisfaction to those still living who endured or inherited injustices. For the dead who suffered injustices, we can certainly offer no relief or value. Only by honouring them and their struggles and seeking transformation can we hope to have an impact on the still living and those yet to be born. Acknowledging injustices to past members of communities who suffered helps ensure that the dead are not left in the past but are very much alive and felt in the community in the present, especially in cultural contexts where a linear notion of the past to the present is not fixed and where those past injustices are felt and experienced in very present and real senses. As noted in Chapter 1, the people best able to assess impact are usually those who have experienced the injustice and social justice impacts. Their assessments and testimonies on impact are oftentimes the only reliable evaluations of social justice impact and, unfortunately, their perspectives are often missing or very difficult to surface and/or include. However, we should note that in the cases of social movement and community-led social justice struggles, those most actively involved in the campaigns and archival activations are also often part of the same communities who experience the injustices most keenly. In recognising this, we are seeking to unsettle a sometime unhelpful assumption of a distinction between those engaged in struggles and those who are the focus of those struggles, when in fact they can and often are one and the same. For instance, in two of the cases in this volume, Evans et al. and Sexton et al., the individuals who have experienced injustices created community archives to make “accessible the history of their particular group and/ or locality on their own terms” (Flinn, Stevens, and Shepherd 2009, p. 73). In these cases, these individuals have also been actively involved in the assessment of the archives impact. While not all members of the community have been consulted, and in the case described by Sexton et al. the scope of the community archives was partially determined by external funders, the community is involved in creating and in this case specifically evaluating the impact of the archives. In other cases, one member of the community, for example, the cases by Sheffield and Pell have assessed the impact of archival interventions supporting a fight for justice. These cases align well with transformative evaluations as discussed in Chapter 3. As noted there, transformative evaluation eschews the idea of so-called “neutral evaluators,” choosing instead to build supportive relationships between researchers and community members that seek knowledge to empower the community. In these studies, the researchers, the activists, the archivists, and the community members are often

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one and the same or at the very least very close and equitable collaborators. These cases show that trying to sustain mutually exclusive distinctions between activists, researchers, and archivists is reductive and blinds us to the more complex and multifaceted roles that individuals and groups of individuals play when collaborating on social justice endeavours. The merging of roles as researcher/ activist/archivist/community member are most readily apparent in the literature discussing community archives and social movement led archivally informed endeavours. We contend that transformative evaluation approaches can be fruitfully applied in studies investigating social justice impact in other recordmaking, recordkeeping, and archiving contexts. Other approaches, such as historical or narrative methods including collecting oral histories and testimonies, as used by Blanco-Rivera, Frogner, Josias, and Flinn and Duff, are also able to consider the voices of the people affected by the injustices when investigating the impact of recordmaking, recordkeeping, and archiving. A further note of nuance and critically reflective practice however is that, especially in the context of challenging power, those members of the community who feel able or empowered to do so, are not always representative of all members of the community, and other voices should also be included in wider and more participatory impact evaluation. Finally, a critical aspect of archival social justice is that none of the authors of the chapters in this volume strove for some notion of objective neutrality. Case study chapters reinforce the political nature of archives as well as spotlight the agency of archivists (professional and non-professional) to endeavour to strive (or not) for social justice. These motivations align with Zinn’s (2009, pp. 555–561) admonition to “humaniz[e]” archives work by rejecting systems of “social control” incompatible with a just society that promotes “human values of peace, equality, and justice.” This orientation of archival social justice seeks to overcome injustice, domination, and oppression as it is widely experienced and enacted across the globe. Though some chapters were written by outsiders and others by insiders, every author has assessed the impact of recordmaking, recordkeeping, and archiving interventions from the lens of an agent advocating for increased social justice and the use of records and archives in this fight. This orientation well reflects what we discovered in Chapter 2 reviewing the archival academic literature, where authors overwhelmingly mobilise their efforts towards a social justice ethic in areas of archival activism, Indigeneity, community archiving, professional education, practices, and ethics. These trends and commitments evidence awareness of the power and politics of memory and history as a tool utilised across the political spectrum, from progressive and reactionary struggles and political movements. Archival social justice struggles deliberately work against both nostalgic and false history narratives and their concrete outcomes and manifestations, as well as against contemporary deployment of information tools and technologies for domination and oppression. The analytical lens and tangible lessons and cautions discussed above offers new

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insights on how to better understand, articulate, and enhance social justice impact through recordmaking, recordkeeping, and archiving. It is our hope that future work will build upon this work and add texture, nuance, new knowledge, and inspiration to continuing struggles for social justice.

References Flinn, Andrew, Mary Stevens, and Elizabeth Shepherd. 2009. “Whose Memories, Whose Archives? Independent Community Archives, Autonomy and the Mainstream.” Archival Science 9(1–2): 71–86. Hall, Stuart. 2001. “Constituting an Archive.” Third Text 15(54): 89–92. Zinn, Howard. 2009. The Zinn Reader: Writings on Disobedience and Democracy. New York: Seven Stories Press.

Index

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children (Stolen Generations) 111–112 “Accepting Voices” (Romme/Escher) 206 access to records: absence of records and 114–115; access to information legislation and 142–143; activist archiving and 72; and archival justice 15; archival practices and 159–160; archivists’ role in 146; in birth of nation-state archives 23; care leavers and 13–14, 106–109, 113–115, 118–119, 122; of Chilean armed forces/police 156, 160; of Chilean detention centre (Colonia Dignidad) 160; of Chilean National Archives 156; CNVR and 154, 155; contests over 243–244; courts and 154–156; difficulties of 106–108, 112–113, 118–119; digital archives and 142–143; directories/guides to records, and 111–112; Find and Connect Web Resource and 113–114, 116–117; Freedom of Information (FOI) laws and 106–107; Hillsborough victims’ families and 14–15; and human rights 164; impact of restrictions 13–14; INDH and 155, 161–162; and information asymmetry 14, 106; information rights and 159; and land restitution claims 81, 84; LGBTQ+ archives 17; name indexing and 111; No Más Archivos Secretos and 160–161; and oppositional histories 23; organisational/institutional vs. Care Leavers’ rights of 105; in post-dictatorship Chile 15–16, 150; power redistribution and 71; on request vs. court order 162; and social justice 15, 156; social movements and 15; and transitional justice 151; truth

commissions and 149, 154, 160; Valech I/II and 155, 161, 162; by victims of human rights violations 149 accountability: anti-gentrification campaigns and 178; archival social justice and 36; for Chilean human rights abuses 15; for Hillsborough disaster 14; for human rights violations 163; neoliberalism and 147; patronising disposition and 146–147; power and 147, 150; of public consultations 178 activism: archiving as 16–17, 173; impact of 56; LBGTQ people and 192–193; psychiatric lived experience and 214–215; and psychiatric narrative 213–214; and public inquiries 108; see also activist archives/archiving archival activism activist archives/archiving: aim to impact present and future 174; and alternative public spheres/radical spaces 181; within anti-gentrification campaigns 175–179; and archival social justice impact 170; archive formation 176–178; counter-histories in 173; as counter-public spheres 173; and creation of counter-archives 72; defined 32; evidential value 178; 56a Infoshop as 174–175; and gentrification 170; in Heygate redevelopment 16; as knowledge-action network 173; mobilisation in public sphere 178–179; and power/knowledge-power 170–171; and redevelopment 170; and social injustice 72; and social justice 16; use of 174 advocacy: archival 8; archival practices and 157; for care leavers 109, 111; care

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leavers and 14; and debate over archival social justice 37–38; definition of 117; Find and Connect Program as example 118; goal setting 118; and human rights 157; for LBGTQ people 192–193; Londres 38 and 157–161; power vs. 150; and public inquiries 108; for social change 243–244; and social justice 160–161, 163; through No More Secret Archives 160–161; transitional justice and 156–163; value-based evaluation of 117–118 African people see Indigenous people (South Africa) Agamben, Giorgi 18, 224, 225, 232, 236–237, 238 Alexander, Ben 34–35 Allende, Salvador 157 alternative archives see independent archives American Evaluation Association (AEA) 59 Anderson, Boyd 184 Anglican Church of South Africa 84 Anglican Diocese of Ballarat Archives 114 Anthony, William A. 208 anti-gentrification campaigns: and accountability 178; activist archiving/ archival activism within 170, 175–179, 180–181; archival social justice impact in 179–181; archive formation 176–178; collection of redevelopment documents 177; counter-narratives in 177; digital archives in 180; evidence in 179; 56a Infoshop and 174–175; Freedom of Information (FOI) requests in 177; independent archives in 180–181; mobilisation of archive in 178–179; residents’ stories in 178–179; “The Siege of the Elephant” Convergence in 176–177; SNAG 176; Staying Put 178–179; and transparency 178; walks 176; see also gentrification apartheid 12, 74–75 Appeals Court of Rancagua 156 appraisal systems: absence of records and 114–115; and land restitution 83, 84–85 ARC Linkage Who am I? 114; Pathways Victoria 113 archival activism: and access to information 82–83; as activist-archive

building 170; advocacy for 8; in anti-gentrification campaign 170, 180–181; blogs/websites 172; and collective self-education/learning 172; and counter-narratives 170; defined 32; and independent archives 171; Occupy Wall Street, Activist Archivist 172; and preservation through use 172; see also activist archives/archiving archival advocacy see advocacy archival custody: about 89; and authenticity 90–91; colonialism and 89; defined 90–91; history of document 89; and rights 89; of Vancouver Island Treaties 89, 90, 91, 93–101 archival dramas 231–232 archival education see education, archival archival impact: tangible vs. intangible 169, 244; types of 54–58; see also archival social justice impact(s) archival justice: access to records and 15; archival/recordkeeping profession and 121; care leaver campaigning for 108–109; defined 71; Find and Connect Program and 118–119; and power structures 71; redress for childhood abuse/neglect and 105; see also archival social justice Archival Metrics project 55, 61 archival practice(s): and access to records 159–160; and advocacy 8, 157; archival social justice in 35–36; colonialism and 90; and evidence 90; Indigenous people in 35, 36; as multifaceted 243; and understanding of record 90; see also recordkeeping archival profession see archival/ recordkeeping profession archival social justice: about 6–8, 38; advocacy 37–38; in archival education 35; and archive as political 36; The ArQuives and 193; and biases 38; and community archiving 35; debate regarding 37–38; defined 11; domination and 6; feminist ethics and 37; Hillsborough victims’ families and 14–15; and historical accountability 36; and historical justice/injustice 6–7; humanisation of archives and 245; Indigenous people in 35; nostalgic/false history narratives vs. 245; obligations of 6–7; and professional ethics/identity 36,

Index 37, 38; professional neutrality and 37–38; in professional practices 35–36; rise of 31–38; and social change 38, 39 archival social justice impact(s) 8–10; activist archiving and 170; in anti-gentrification campaigns 179–181; defined 11, 53–54; in Hillsborough disaster 127; measurement of 169–170; as public space 169; timing/ temporalities and 141; and urban struggles 170 archival turn 89–90 archival/recordkeeping profession: and archival/recordkeeping justice 121; archivists as interpreters vs. neutral gatekeepers of records 90; archivists’ attitudes in mental health archives 204–205; archivists’ role in access to records 146; and care leavers 109, 111–113; and care leavers’ access to records 14; impact of care leavers on 119–121; and LBGTQ archives 191; and power structures 105, 113; professional associations, codes of ethics 36; professional self-representation 7–8; self-reflection/self-awareness 7–8; and social justice 119–121 archive fever 223, 231, 232, 233–236 Archives of Sexuality and Gender (GALE Cengage Learning) 193 archives/records: as “acting back” 18–19, 223, 224, 232; archival practices, and understanding of 90; broadening of 18; as “buried treasure” 229; and claiming citizens’ rights 159; as constellations 18–19, 224, 225, 227, 228, 233; contrapuntal readings of 230–231; discoveries of 89, 229–230; as empowered agencies 223; as evidence 90, 157; and factness 18, 226; fictional 234; formal vs. informal 18–19; formation of 226, 227; hard data of 228; Holy Land/Book in 228; and knowledge 89–90; in land restitution 12, 79–82; as multifaceted 243; and Nakba 230, 231; non-traditional records/incomplete documentation in 193; Palestine as Holy Land in 229, 230; political nature of 245; quantitative evaluation and 60–61; reconfiguration of 18, 224, 226–232; as

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social repair 236–239; sovereignty and 224, 227–228, 229, 232; Zionist/ Haganah 230 archiving: as activism 16–17; defined 4; as form of activism 173; as site of social justice/injustice 4–5 archiving/archivist activism: and access to information 82–83; defined 31–32; and information asymmetry 83; in land restitution 82–83 Archivists without Borders Chile 159 Arendt, Hannah 237, 238, 239 The ArQuives 185, 187, 188–189, 191, 192; AIDS collection 192; criticism against 194–195; marginalisation and 195; and shared heritage 193, 194–195; and social justice 193; as social movement 194 Aspinall, Margaret 145 “Assessing the Use of Community Archives” (UCLA Community Archives Lab) 58 Association for Marriage and the Family 192 Association for Social Knowledge (ASK) 189 Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL): “Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education” 60; standards 55, 60 Association of Relatives of the Disappeared and Detained 159 Aylwin, Patricio 151, 152, 153 Bachelet, Michelle 152, 153 Bahde, Anne 55 Baker-Brown, Stuart 17–18, 199, 201–203, 207 Balance Value Impact Model 53 Banksy, “Santa’s Ghetto” 234 Bantu Authorities Act (South Africa 1951) 74 Barclay, Archibald 91–92 Barriault, Marcel 193 Beavan, Robert 95–96 Bébout, Rick 189, 191 Beinart, William 74, 80 Beresford, Peter 211, 216–217, 219 Berger, Thomas 99–100 Betancourt Hardy, Beatriz 34–35, 56 Bethlem Hospital (Bedlam) 216–217

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Bettinson, Sir Norman 144 Bill C-150 (Canadian Criminal Code) 189 Bill of Rights (South Africa) 75 Blanco-Rivera, Joel A. 10, 15–16, 72, 243, 245 The Body Politic 189–190 Bohlin, Anna 78, 84 Boric, Gabriel 160, 163–164 Bravo, Paulina 158, 159–160 Brillinger v. Brockie 192 Bringing Them Home 109, 111 British North America Act (1867) 94 Brockie, Scott 192 Brophy, Peter 53, 54, 61 Brothman, Brien 34 Bullimore, Peter 17–18, 199, 205–206 Burnham, Andy 131, 137 Burns Owens Partnership 56 Butler, Beverley 18–19, 209–210, 243 Cail, Robert E. 93 Cameron, David 140, 144 Campbell, Topher 193 Canaan, Tawiq 235 Canadian Centre for Truth and Reconciliation 100 Canadian Gay Archives (CGA) 191 Canadian Gay Liberation Movement Archives (CGLMA) 190, 191 Canadian Lesbian and Gay Archives (CLGA) 185, 191 Canadian Women’s Movement Archives (CWMA) 191 care leavers: about 105; and absence of records 114–115; access to records 109, 113–115, 118–119, 122; advocacy by 14; affective impact and 58; amendment of records 122; archival advocacy for 109, 111; archival/recordkeeping profession and 109, 111–113; campaigning for archival/social justice 108–109; experience with child welfare system 106; Find and Connect Web Resource and 113–114; “forgotten Australians” vs. 122n1; Freedom of Information (FOI) laws and 106–107; impact on archival/recordkeeping community 119–121; impacts on 105; and narrative in impact assessment 61; national apology to 109; organisational/

institutional rights vs. rights of 105, 115; power structures and 14, 105, 112, 113; public inquiries into 108; quest for records 106–108; record holders’ attitudes toward 107–108; and redactions in records 107; Redress Scheme for 122; restricted access to records 13–14; social injustices and 14; Who am I? Project and 113–114 Care Leavers Australasia Network (CLAN) 108 Carney, Peter 143–144 Carnovale, Cathy 58 Carson, Jerome 219n1 Carter, Elena 34–35 Caswell, Michelle 3, 37, 57–58, 60, 186, 193 Césaire, Aimé 24 Charter of Grant of Vancouver’s Island 91 Cheddie, Janice 185 Cherry, Joan 55 Child and Family Services (CAFS) Ballarat 115 child care leavers see care leavers Chouinard, Jill Anne 63 Church, Kathryn 206 Cifor, Marika 37, 57–58, 60–61, 186 Cline, Scott 33, 37 CNVR see National Commission for Truth and Reconciliation (CNVR) (Chile) collective identity: and human rights 186; LBGTQ people and 188; marginalisation and 195; and shared heritage 194 Colonia Dignidad (Chilean detention centre) 160 Colonial Office 91, 93 colonialism: and archival custody 89; and archival practices 90; and archivalisation of knowledge 91; and human rights of Indigenous people 100; and Indigenous knowledge/culture 90; and Indigenous people 35; and land rights 12–13, 71, 74; and land settlement 92; and land title 92–93; and quantitative assessment 61; and recordkeeping 23, 71; and social injustice 24 Commission on the Restitution of Land Rights (CRLR) 12, 75–77, 79, 80 common law 89; and discoveries of archives 89; and land distribution/title 92, 93; oral history vs. 98; and value of

Index Indigenous treaties 91; Vancouver Island Treaties and 91 community archives: about 244–245; merging of roles in 245; see also independent archives Community Archives Development Group 55–56 Community Archives Lab (UCLA) 58; “Assessing the Use of Community Archives” 58 community archives/archiving: affective impact of 58; cultural heritage collections 57; digitised ethnographic holdings 57; economic impact assessment 55; and empowerment 57; impact of 56–57; Indigenous peoples and 56–57; and land restitution claims 84; and lived experience 58; marginalisation and 186; and minoritised communities 58; representational belonging and 186; social inclusion in 185–186; and social justice 8, 35, 185–186; see also independent archives Connecting Kin (New South Wales Department of Community Services) 111 constellations, archives as 18–19, 224, 225, 227, 228, 233 Consultative Commission for the Qualification of Disappeared, Political Executions and Victims of political Detention and Torture (Valech II) (Chile) see Valech II (Consultative Commission on the Qualification of Disappeared, Political Executions, and Victims of Political Detention and Torture) (Chile) Cooper, Christine 147 Cooper, David 219n7 counter-archives see independent archives Cousins, Ben 77, 81 Craib, Raymond 82 Crooke, Elizabeth 185 Crossley, Michele L. 214 Crossley, Nick 211–212, 213, 214 Cvetkovich, Ann 210 Daniels, Morgan 55 Daughters of Bilitis 188 David, Johnny (Maxlaxlex) 101n1 Dayman, Ron 190 de Ramón Acevedo, Emma 163

251

Delgamuukw v. British Columbia 101n1 Delius, Peter 74, 80 Denton, Donald 139 Department of Education (U.S.), “Scientifically Based Evaluation Methods: Notice” 59 Department of Rural Development and Land Reform (South Africa) 75, 76, 77 Derrida, Jacques 224, 227, 231 Desclasificación Popular (Popular Declassification) 161, 162, 163 Desert of the Hearts (Rule) 189 Dhupelia-Mesthrie, Uma 78 Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) 213 digital archives: in anti-gentrification campaigns 180; expertise in finding/ interpreting 143; Heygate Was Home 179; in Hillsborough disaster 142–143, 146; Hillsborough Independent Panel and 15; impact assessment of 53; Londres 38 and 158 Directorate of Libraries, Archives and Museums (DIBAM) 156 displaced persons see refugees/displaced persons Dodge-Francis, Carolee 63 do-it-yourself (DIY) archives see independent archives Douglas, James 91–93, 97, 98, 99 Douglas (Vancouver Island) Treaties see Vancouver Island Treaties Doumani, Beshara 18, 224, 225, 226–230, 231 Du Toit, Andries 78–79 Duckenfield, David 128, 129, 130, 131, 133, 134, 144 Duff, Wendy M. 3, 14–15, 55, 91, 243, 245 Dunbar, Anthony W. 33, 218 education, archival: archival social justice in 35; impact assessment 55; and Indigenous people 35; neoliberalism and 25–26; and professional neutrality 35 EGALE Canada 192 Eichhorn, Kate 172, 173, 187 Eisenhower, Cathy 59 Elephant Amenities Charter 176 Elephant and Castle neighbourhood, gentrification of 16, 170, 175, 176, 179

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Index

Elliott, R. Douglas 192 empowerment: community archives and 57; evaluation and 52, 65; recovery and 207, 208–209; see also power Escher, Sandra, “Accepting Voices” 206 ethics, professional: advocacy for 8; archival social justice and 38; archival social justice in 36, 37; and ethics of care approach 28–29 evaluation: collaborative 63; critiques of experimental methods 59; culturally responsive 62–63; democratic 64–65; dialogue in 64–65; empirical data in 52; and empowerment 52, 65; history of 54; imperialism and 62; Indigenous practices 63–64; neoliberalism and 52; power dynamics and 63; qualitative vs. quantitative 59–61; and social justice 52, 65; within socio-cultural system 62; theoretical constructs of 62–65; transformative 65, 244–245; worldviews and 62, 64 Evans, Joanne 13–14, 71, 243, 244 Fay, Derick 80 feminist ethics 28–29, 37 Feminist Library 181 Fetterman, David M. 65 “50,320 Names” 235 56a Infoshop Archive: about 174–175; activist uses of 180; and antigentrification walks 176; creation/ purpose of 16; location 181; mentioned 170, 171, 178; scope of collection 174–175, 180 Find and Connect: about 121; Access Principles and Best Practice Guidelines 116–117, 118; and archival justice 118–119; development of 109; effectiveness of 121; evaluation of social justice impact of 117–121; evaluation report 118–119; highlights section 115; image policy for web resource 115; mapping to social justice 118, 119; mentioned 105; and social justice 120; as social justice advocacy example 118; web resource 113–115, 116 Fisher, Robin 95 Flinn, Andrew 14–15, 33, 34–35, 185–186, 243, 245

Forgotten Australians (Senate Community Affairs References Committee (Australia)) 108–109, 116 Foster, Hamar 89 Foucault, Michel 211–213, 229; Madness and Civilization 211–212 “Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education” (ACRL) 60 Freedom of Information (FOI): laws, and Australian care leavers 106–107; requests in Hillsborough disaster 16, 141 Fries, Julia Lorena 156 Frogner, Raymond 13, 71, 243, 245 Galassi, Monica 56–57 GALE Cengage Learning 193 Gaotlhobogwe, Michael 62 Garretón, Manuel 152 Garretón, Roberto 152 GAY 188–189 gentrification: about 170; activist archives and 170; and anti-gentrification campaigns 170; as battle over information 179; of Elephant and Castle neighbourhood 16, 170, 175–176, 179; and radical spaces 181; results of 170; use of term 175; see also anti-gentrification campaigns; redevelopment Geuss, Raymond 38 Gifford, Christine 137, 142 Gilligan, Carol 28 Gilliland, Anne J. 33 Glad Day Books 190 Golding, Frank 13–14 Gosnell, R.E. 92 Greene, Mark 33, 37 Group Areas Act (South Africa 1950) 74, 78 Gutiérrez, Hugo 162 Guy, Sharon 115 Hall, Stuart 243 Harris, Verne S. 36, 54 Harvey, David 65n1 Hastings, Emiko 34 Haugen, Jaimie Sticki 63 Hay, Michelle 80 HBC (Hudson’s Bay Company) 91, 92, 93, 94

Index Hearing Voices Network (HVN) 205–206, 215 Hebron Rehabilitation Committee (HRC) 18, 233 Held, Virginia 28–29 Heygate Council Estate, redevelopment of 16, 170, 171, 175–176, 179–181 Heygate Was Home 178, 179 Hillsborough (docudrama) 131, 135, 143 Hillsborough disaster: about 14, 127, 128–129; archival social justice impact in 127; challenges to verdicts 135; court cases 131; digital archives 142–143; disclosure of records regarding 141, 142–143, 145–146; emergency response 132–133, 138–139; impact of 140; information access 142–143; inquests 133–135, 138–139, 140, 144, 145; justice in 127, 144–145; media and 130, 140, 143; overturning of verdicts 140, 144; police and 127, 132–133, 136–137, 138, 139–140, 145, 146; preliminary hearings/mini-inquests 130–131; rescue operations 129–130; shift in public opinion regarding 143; Stuart-Smith scrutiny 135–137, 139, 141; Taylor Inquiry into 130, 132–133, 136, 137, 139, 140; 3:15 pm cut off 138–139, 143; victim blaming for 127, 130, 133, 140, 146, 147 Hillsborough Family Support Group (HFSG) 14, 131, 137, 143, 145 Hillsborough Independent Panel (HIP): and digital archive 146; establishment of 14; frame of reference 141; mandate 131, 137–138; membership 141; and records 142; Report 14–15, 127, 138–140, 141, 144; shift in public opinion and establishment of 143 Hillsborough Justice Campaign (HJC) 14, 131, 137, 143–144 Hillsborough Stadium 14, 128 Hillsborough Voices: The Real Story Told by the People Themselves 143–144 Hirschfeld, Magnus 190 Hogan, Mél 191 Holocaust 190 hooks, bell 6, 210 Houdek, Matthew 34 House, Ernest R. 64 Howe, Kenneth R. 64–65

253

Huizenga, Daniel 82, 84 human rights: access to records and 164; accountability for violations of 163; advocacy and 157; archival custody and 89; collective identity and 186; evidentiary value of archival records in violations of 157; of Indigenous people in British Empire 100; LBGTQ people and 188, 189, 192; mental illness and 201; power struggles over record access/ control and 150; refugees and 236; sexual orientation and 184 Human Rights Commission (Chile Chamber of Deputies) 160 Humphreys, Cathy 58 Imaging Excellence 192 impact assessment: of digital resources 53; environmental 53; importance of 10; of information services 53, 54, 59–61; in library and information science (LIS) 59–61; lived experiences and 244–245; narrative methodologies 10, 61–62, 245; neoliberalism and 10, 59–60; qualitative vs. quantitative 10, 59–61 impact(s): of activism 56; affective 57–58; on Care Leavers 105; of community archives 56–57; defined 11; definitions 52–53; economic 55; educational 55; of Hillsborough disaster 140; LBGTQ+ archives and 17; levels of 54–55; origins of archival social justice 8–10; “poor” recordkeeping and 13–14; of restricted access to records 13–14; and shift from harm to repair 13; social 56–57; see also archival impact; archival social justice impact(s); social justice impact(s) imperialism: and evaluation 62; and Palestinian people 18; see also colonialism independent archives: about 171–172; activist creation of counter-archives 72; in anti-gentrification campaigns 180–181; archival activism and 171; benefits to groups 169–170; collection/ management of own 169; counterarchives 242; creation of 15; 56a Infoshop 174–175; growth in 169; and knowledge production 172; and land restitution claims 83–84; marginalised groups and 171–172; in mental health recovery 17–18; Palestinian 18, 231,

254

Index

233–236; as pedagogical space 180; and power inequalities 72; social justice impacts 16; see also community archives/archiving Independent Police Complaints Commission 144 INDH (National Human Rights Institute) (Chile) 152, 153, 155–156, 161–162, 163, 164 Indigenous people: archival education and 35; archival practice and 35, 36; colonialism and 35, 90, 100; common law, and value of treaties with 91; and community archives 56–57; and digitised ethnographic holdings 57; evaluation practices 63–64; human rights 100; knowledge/ culture 90 Indigenous people (Canada): oral history 13; see also land rights Indigenous people (South Africa): forced removal of 74–75; see also reserve systems for Indigenous people; and under headings beginning land Indigenous people (Vancouver Island): and Indigenous rights in R. v. White and Bob 100; land conveyancing and 93; oral agreements with 92; purchase of lands from 91–92; see also reserve systems for Indigenous people; Vancouver Island Treaties Indigenous title see land rights inequalities: anti-colonial liberation movements and 24–25; counter-archives and 72; Enlightenment and 23; gentrification and 179–180; neoliberalism and 25; see also social injustice(s) information: access legislation, and access to records 142–143; archival activism, and access to 82–83; gentrification as battle over 179; impact assessment of services 50–61; literacy 59–60; rights to, and access to records 159; see also Freedom of Information (FOI) “Information and documentation” (ISO) 53 information asymmetry: archivist activism and 83; and land restitution 83; restricted access to records and 14, 106 information studies/library and information science (LIS): and experimental methods of evaluation 59; impact

assessment in 59–61; shared heritage in 185 informational justice 6 injustice(s) see social injustice(s) Inquiry into Child Migration (Australia), Lost Innocents 109, 111 Inquiry into Children in Institutional Care 108 Institute for Sexual Science 190 Interference Archive 172 International Archives Day 159 International Center for Transitional Justice 151 International Standard Organization (ISO), “Information and documentation” 53 Ireland, Willard 99–100 Jackson, Ed 190, 191 James, Deborah 80 Jelin, Elizabeth 158 Jerusalem 238 Jimenez, Tucapel 160, 163–164 Jimerson, Randall C. 33, 36–37 Johnson, Alan 131 Johnson, Brian 132 Joint Indian Land Commission 97, 99 Jones, James 137, 145; The Patronising Disposition of Unaccountable Power 146–147 Josias, Anthea 12, 71, 243, 245 Justice: archival social justice and 6–7; configurations/reconfigurations of 228; distributive 5–6; forms of 5–6; in Hillsborough disaster 127, 144–145, 146; inclusionary/exclusionary 5–6; informational 6; procedural 5; reparative 6; requirements for 147; restorative 6, 15; retributive 6, 15, 150; Transitional (see also transitional justice); see also social justice Kaplan, Elisabeth 193 Kawakami, Alice J. 64 Kepner, Jim 188 Kertesz, Margaret 58 Kirkhart, Karen 62–63 Kittay, Eva 29 Klugman, Barbara 117–118, 120, 121 knowledge: archives as sites of retrieval, vs. producers of 89–90; independent archives and production of 172; Indigenous 90; organisation in/through

Index archives 171; and politics of society 171; power, and alternative forms of production 171 Krause, Magia G. 55 Krever Commission 192 Kuehn, Robert R. 6 Lagos, Ricard 152, 153, 154, 155 Laing, Ronald 219n7 land claims see land restitution claims Land Claims Commission (South Africa) 12, 80 Land Claims Court (South Africa) 75, 79 Land Commissions (British Columbia) 97–98, 99 land dispossession: history of 73, 74; of Palestinians 18–19; in South Africa 12 land redistribution (South Africa) 75, 77 land reserves see reserve systems for Indigenous people land restitution (South Africa): access to records and 81, 84; appraisal systems and 83; archives/records in 73, 79–82; archivist activism in 82–83; community archives and 84; community boundaries and 82; community interviews for 80; CRLR and 75–76; defined 75; different forms of evidence for claims 81; examples of successful claims 79; gaps in records collection and 83; independent archives and 83–84; information asymmetry and 83; local knowledge/ memories and 84; meanings of 78–79; and monetary payments 78; Natives Land Act (1913) and 73–74; numbers of claims 76–77; person-related records and 83; public opinion regarding 77; recordkeeping and 12, 80–81, 84; Restitution of Land Rights Act (1994) 12, 75, 78; Restitution of Land Rights Amendment Act (2014) 76–77; and social justice 76, 77–79; and underrepresentation of women in records 82; weakness in archival collections and 84–85 land rights: archival evidence 90; in BNA Act 94; in Canada 12–13, 89, 90, 94; colonialism and 12–13, 71, 92–93; legal campaigns for 89; manipulation of evidence regarding 92; recordkeeping

255

and 71; in South Africa 71, 74; on Vancouver Island 92–93 Langevin, Sir Hector, Report of the Hon. H.L. Langevin 94 Lapsley, Irvine 147 Latin American Transitional Justice Network (RLAJT) 150 LBGTQ+ archives 190–195; about 187; archival profession and 191; Body Politic and 189–190; and community building 187; emergence of 188; gay press and 188–189; gender imbalance in 192; impacts 17; and representational belonging 187; and shared heritage 187, 194; and shared vs. mainstream heritage systems 17; and social movements 184, 185; as social movements 184, 186–187 LBGTQ+ people: activism 192–193; archiving as activism in 16–17; and collective identity 188; of colour 195; communication networks 188–191; as community archives 16–17; fascism and 190–191; gay liberation movement 189, 190, 191; gay press 188–190; and human rights 188, 189, 192; as minority class 187–188; Pulse shooting and 183, 184, 195; shared heritage, and movement 186; and social movements 17; UpStairs Lounge fire and 183–184 Lee, Jamie 60–61 Legal Resources Centre (South Africa) 82, 84 Legassick, Martin 80, 81 Legg, Dorr 188 Lend Lease 175, 176, 178 library and information science (LIS) see information studies/library and information science (LIS) Listening to No End (SNAG) 178 lived experience(s): in anti-gentrification campaigns 178–179; community archives and 58; educational role 201; and impact assessment 244–245; of mental health recovery 199; and Mental Health Recovery Archive 199, 215–217; in narrative methodologies of impact assessment 61; and psychiatric activism 214–215; and survivor trajectory 213; terms describing individuals with 206–207

256

Index

London Tenants Federation, Staying Put: An Anti-Gentrification Handbook for Council Estates in London 178–179 Londres 38, espacio de memorias (Londres 38, A Space of Memories) 15, 149, 150, 157–161, 163 Lost Innocents (Inquiry into Child Migration (Australia)) 109, 111 Mackrell, Graham 144 MacNeil, Heather 61 Mad Pride Movement 214–215 Madness and Civilization (Foucault) 211–212 Malahat First Nation 92 Mandela Dialogues on Memory Work 7 marginalisation: and The ArQuives 195; and collective identities 195; and community archives 58, 186; gentrification and 170; and independent archives 171–172; and redeployment of sovereign archives 235–236; and shared heritage 185 Marsh, Diana E. 57, 59, 61–62 Mattachine Society 188 Maunder, Leonard 132 Mayday Rooms 172 Mbembe, Achille 82, 84 McBride, Dominica F. 62 McBride, Sir Richard 98 McCarthy, John D. 187 McCarthyism 187–188 McCaskell, Tim 195 McCowan, Lord Justice 131 McGovern, Jimmy, Hillsborough (docudrama) 131, 135, 143 McKemmish, Sue 34 McKenna, J.A.S. 98 McKinney, Cait 188 McLeod, Donald 188–189 McManus, Gordon 208 Melucci, Alberto 187 mental asylums 211, 212 mental health: pathologisation of 18; patients’ stories 199; professional framing of 199; see also psychiatry mental health challenges: counternarratives in archive construction 17–18; hearing voices 205–206, 215; and human rights 201; the “insane” 211–212; lived experiences

17–18; power dynamics and survivors of 217; and power imbalance 17–18; schizophrenia 201–203; social causes vs. distress signals 213; social causes vs. personal experiences 218; stigma/ discrimination by mental health professionals 201; survivor vs. non-survivor narratives 216 mental health recovery: alternative archive construction in 17–18; association of recovery with illness 208; definitions 200; double edge of 207–209; empowerment and 207, 208–209; lived experience of 199; models 204, 206, 208, 209; recovery as concept in Mental Health Recovery Archive 206–211; role, in Mental Health Recovery Archive 217–218; socio-cultural context 207; Survivor History Group (SHG) 216–217; survivor movement 207, 214, 215 Mental Health Recovery Archive: about 17–18, 199, 218–219; Andrew’s perspective 200–201; Anna’s perspective 206–210; building of 199; Dolly’s perspective 203–205; lived experience and 199, 215–217; Peter’s perspective 205–206; power relations in creation of 200; psychiatric narrative and 210–211; recovery as concept in 206–211; and role of recovery 217–218; and social justice 217–218; Stuart’s perspective 201–203 Mental Patients Union 213 Merritt, Thomas 188 Mertens, Donna M. 63 Metcalf, Peter 139 Millar, Laura 159 Misselwitz, Philipp 237 Moldenhauer, Jearld 189–190 Mole, Brian 128 Moore, Shauna 186 Mossop, Brian 190–191 Murray, Andrew 108 Murray, Bernard 131, 134 Museum of Memory and Human Rights 159 Musgrove, Neil 58 Namhila, Ellen Ndeshi 83 National Archives (Chile) 15–16, 160, 163

Index National Archives (Australia), Tracking Family Guide to Aboriginal Records Relating to the Northern Territory 111–112 National Archives and Records Service (South Africa) 80, 83 National Commission for Truth and Reconciliation (CNVR) (Chile) 149, 152, 153, 154, 155, 156 National Commission on Political Imprisonment and Torture (Valech I) (Chile) see Valech I (National Commission on Political Imprisonment and Torture) National Corporation for Reparations and Reconciliation 154 National Defense Commission (Chile Chamber of Deputies) 160 National Human Rights Institute (INDH) (Chile) see INDH (National Human Rights Institute (Chile) National Monuments Council (Chile) 158 nation-states: birth of archives 23; and human rights 238; and nation/state/ territory trinity 18, 224, 227, 232; refugees and 226, 232; refugees as “acting back,” and 224 Native Laws Amendment Act (South Africa 1952) 74 Natives Land Act (South Africa 1913) 73–74, 75, 78 neoliberalism: about 25; and accountability 147; and archival funding 25–26; and archival institutions 60–61; and archival practice 25–26; defined 65–66n1; and equality 25; and evaluation 52; and impact assessment 10, 59–60; and mental health services 208; and radical spaces 181 neutrality, professional: archival education and 35; and archival social justice 37–38 New South Wales Department of Community Services, Connecting Kin 111 Nishga’a First Nation 92 No Más Archivos Secretos (No More Secret Archives) 15, 149, 157, 160–161, 162 Noddings, Nel 29 Norris, Justice 98, 100

257

Obama, Barack 183 Occupied Territories: and archive fever 231; NGOs as “acting back” in 233–236; see also Palestine Occupy Wall Street, Activist Archivist 172 OECD-DAC 52–53 O’Higgins, Bernardo 158 O’Higgins Institute 157–158 One, Inc. v. Olesen 188 ONE Institute for Homophile Studies 188 ONE Magazine 188 ONE National Gay and Lesbian Archives 188 One Orlando Collection 194 O’Neill, Cate 13–14 Ontario Human Rights Commission 192 Open Bethlehem 18, 233, 234 oral history/-ies: common law vs. 98; in courts of law 13; of Hillsborough disaster 143–144; refugees and 231; of Vancouver Island Treaties 98 Orlando 49 Project (We Are Orlando) 194 O’Toole, James 36, 186 Palestine: cultural heritage sites/collections 234–235; formal archival collections 227–228; as Holy Land 228, 229, 230 Palestinian Association for Cultural Exchange (PACE) 18, 233 Palestinian Museum of Natural History and Humankind (PMNHH) 234; “50,320 Names” 235; and Petrie Palestinian Collection 236 Palestinians: archive creation 233–236; archive fever 223, 231, 232, 233–236; expulsion of 223–224; and independent archives 231; as refugees 223–224; right to remembered presence 209; and social justice 226; storytelling 234–235 Papas Fritas, Francisco 161 Papers Connected with the Indian Land Question (British Columbia) 97 Pappe, Ilan 230 Parliamentary Monitoring Group (PMG) 76 Pathways Victoria (ARC Linkage Who am I? Project) 113 The Patronising Disposition of Unaccountable Power (Jones) 146–147 Pearse, Benjamin 93–95, 96; “Return of all Indian Reserves (etc)” 95

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Index

Pearson, Lester B. 189 Pell, Susan 16, 34–35, 72, 186, 243, 244 Pemberton, J.D. 93–94 Petrie, Sir Flinders 235 Petrie Palestinian Collection 235–236 Piñera, Sebastián 154 Pinochet, Augusto 15, 149, 151, 152, 156, 157–158 Pirra Girls’ Home (Victoria, Australia) 114 Popper, Stefan 134–135 Powell, Israel Wood 96, 97; Report of the Superintendent of Indian Affairs for British Columbia 95 power: and accountability 147; activist archive formation and 170–171; archival advocacy vs. 150; archival justice structures of 71; archival social justice and structures of 37; archival/recordkeeping profession and 105, 113; and archives-social justice relationship 150; and care leavers 14, 105, 112, 113; community representation in challenging 245; counter-archives and inequalities in 72; disempowerment of those with mental health challenges 17–18; distribution, and social justice 13; and evaluation 63; Hillsborough disaster and 146; and information literacy 60; knowledge- 170–171; psychiatric 212–213; redistribution, and access to records 71; relations, in creation of Mental Health Recovery Archive 200; and social injustice 22; social justice and 243; and survivor experience 217 practice, archival see archival practice(s) Prado dos Santos, Shana Marques 150 Prevention of Illegal Squatting Act (South Africa 1951) 74 psychiatric narrative: activism against 213–214; and anti-psychiatric trajectory 213–214; counter-narratives to 211; formation of 211–213; Mental Health Recovery Archive and 210–211; power of 213; social movements and 213–214; and survivor trajectory 213–214 psychiatry: emergence as discipline 211–212; pathologisation of 203, 204, 213; power of 212–213; and recordkeeping for those with mental health challenges 17–18; see also mental health

public sphere(s): activist archives as counter- 173; alternative 181; mobilisation of activist/antigentrification archive in 178–179 Pulse nightclub shooting 183, 184, 194, 195 Punzalan, Ricardo 57, 60 R. v. White and Bob 99–100 Rabah, Khalil 234 Ramirez, Mario H. 57, 186 Randomised Control General Trials (RCGTs) 59 Rayside, David 189 Reagan, Ronald 54 recordkeeping: care leavers’ advocacy and 14; in Chile 159; colonialism and 23, 71; contestations over, and social justice 160; defined 4; “good” 8; and land restitution claims 12, 73, 80–81, 84; and land rights 71; as multifaceted 243; “poor,” impact on care leavers 13–14; record disposal by Chilean armed forces/police 160, 164; record holders’ attitudes in 107–108; recordkeepers as embedded in social injustice structures 71; recordmaking, defined 4; and recordmaking as site of social justice/injustice 4–5; and redactions in records 107; as site of social justice/injustice 4–5; for those with mental health challenges 17–18; see also archival practice(s) Records Access Working Group 116 redevelopment: activist archives and 170; archives as resource for challenging 170; collection/repurposing of official documents regarding 177; discourses of 175; of Heygate Council Estate 170, 171, 175–176, 179–181; Heygate Was Home 179; and public consultations/fora 170, 176; as regeneration 175; residents’ stories in 178–179; Staying Put 178–179; see also gentrification Reed, Barbara 34 refugees/displaced persons: as acting back 224, 225; and human rights 236; and nation-states 232; oral histories 231; Palestinians as 223–224; reconfiguring of 18, 224, 225, 232; and sovereignty 232; as subversive 224 Reisch, Michael 39 renaming 18

Index representational belonging: affective impact of 57; and community archives 186; lack of 18; LBGTQ archives and 187 representations, multifaceted visions in 209–210 reserve systems for Indigenous people: in British Columbia 94–95, 97–98; in South Africa(homelands) 74; on Vancouver Island 94–95, 96–98 restorative justice 6, 15 Rethinking the Gay and Lesbian Movement (Stein) 187–188 retributive justice 6, 15, 150 “Return of all Indian Reserves (etc)” (Pearse) 95 Riwaq Centre for the Preservation of West Bank Architecture 18, 233; “50,320 Names” 235; Registry of Historic Buildings 233 Romme, Marius, “Accepting Voices” 206 Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse (RCIRCSA) 108, 109, 112–113, 115, 122 Royal Commission of Inquiry on the Blood System of Canada (Krever Commission) 192 Royal Commission on Indian Affairs (1912) 98 Royal Proclamation Act (1763) 91 Rule, Jane, Desert of the Hearts 189 Russo, Jasna 211, 219 Saanich Pioneer Museum Society 98–99 Said, Edward 209–210, 232 Sampson, Kevin 143 Sandell, Richard 185 “Santa’s Ghetto” (Banksy) 234 Saunders, Mark 184, 192–193 School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) 235 “Scientifically Based Evaluation Methods: Notice” (Department of Education (U.S.)) 59 Scraton, Phil 134, 136, 137, 141, 142, 143, 146 Scriven, Michael 54 Seale, Maura 60 Sellie, Alycia 173 Sen, Dolly 4, 17–18, 199, 203–205

259

Senate Community Affairs References Committee (Australia) 108–109; Forgotten Australians 108–109, 116 Setting the Record Straight for the Rights of the Child Initiative 120 Sexton, Anna 17–18, 34–35, 72, 199, 206–210, 243, 244 shared heritage: The ArQuives and 193, 194–195; collective identity and 194; defined 185–186; in information studies 185; LBGTQ archives and 187, 194; and LBGTQ movement 186; marginalisation and 185; and social change 190; and social movements 186 Shaveh, Emek 235 Sheedy, Leonie 115 Sheffield, Rebecka Taves 16–17, 72, 243, 244 Sheffield Wednesday Football Club 127, 134, 144 Shepherd, Elizabeth 33, 186 “The Siege of the Elephant: A Convergence Against the Gentrification of the Elephant and Castle” 176–177 Smedberg, Heather 55 Smith, Dolsy 59 Smith, Nick L. 59 Smithe, William 95–96 social advocacy see advocacy social change: advocacy for 243–244; archival social justice and 38, 39; shared heritage and 190; and social justice/ injustice 29 social injustice(s): acknowledgment of 244; archival social justice and 6–7; archiving as site of 4–5; archivists and 72; and care leavers 14; colonialism and 24; feminist ethical scholarship and 28–29; “good” vs. “poor” recordmaking/keeping and 8, 242; hierarchies and 22; historical justice/injustice as structural 7; history of 22–26; as inherited structural injustice 7; liberalism and 23; power and 22; recordkeepers as embedded in structures of 71; recordkeeping/recordmaking as site of 4–5; rectification of 244; retributive/ restorative/reparative justice and 6; social consequences 27; and social/political legitimacy 29; spheres of 26–27; subjectivity vs. objectivity and 28–29;

260

Index

and transformation of institutions/processes 7 social justice: about 39; access to records and 15, 156; across social aggregational tiers 27–28; advocacy and 160–161, 163; approaches to mental health and 209; archival/recordkeeping community and 119–121; in archives periodicals 32–35; archiving as site of 4–5; The ArQuives and 192; care leaver campaigning for 108–109; characterisation by striving toward vs. against 30–31; collaboration on 245; community archives and 185–186; contestations over recordkeeping and 160; continuing struggles for 26; cultural/social change and 29; definitions 10, 30–31, 218; difficulties in identifying/promoting 38–39; disciplinary perspectives 26; Enlightenment and 23; evaluation and 52, 65; feminist ethical scholarship and 28–29; Find and Connect Program mapping to 118, 119; forms of 26; “good” vs. “poor” recordmaking/keeping and 242; Great Society and 24; history of 22–26; institutional design and 27; lack of absolutes in 218; land restitution and 76, 77–79; liberalism and 23; Mental Health Recovery Archive and 217–218; motivations 26; New Deal and 24; as open ended 243; Palestinian archival constellations and 18–19; Palestinians and 226; paradox of 71; policy/praxis 26; and power 243; power distribution and 13; power struggles over record access/control and 150; as process 151; as in process of becoming 217; psychological approach to 27–28; recognition of “social” in 150; recordkeeping as site of 4–5; recordmaking as site of 4–5; rediscovery of Vancouver Island Treaties and 101; rise within archival discourse 31–38; social democracy and 24; social interactions and 27; and social/political legitimacy 29; societal conditions/ conditionality and 27; sociological approach to 27; spheres of 26–27; subjectivity vs. objectivity and 28–29; tangible vs. intangible outcomes 54, 244; truth commissions and 151; as unfinished business 85; see also archival social justice

social justice impact(s): activist archives and 16; and care leavers 61; contextual factors/frameworks and 19; description narrative approach 11–12; difficulty of ascertaining 12; of Find and Connect Program 117–121; in Heygate redevelopment 16; independent archives and 16; inequitable distribution of 17; LGBTQ+ archives and 17; lived experience and 11–12; transformative approaches and 11–12; see also archival social justice impact(s) social movements: and access to records 15; The ArQuives as 194; biases/ silences within 17; LBGTQ+ archives and 17, 184, 185; LBGTQ+ archives as 184, 186–187; merging of roles in 245; psychiatric narrative and 213–214; shared heritage and 186; as transformations of social norms 29 social repair, archives as 236–239 Soto, Laura 154–155 Soundings 176 South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) 76, 81, 83 South African Native Affairs Commission 74 South Yorkshire Metropolitan Ambulances Service (SYSAM) 129–130, 138 South Yorkshire Police (SYP) 127, 132–133, 136–137, 138, 139–140, 141, 145, 146 Southwark Council 175, 176 Southwark Notes 174, 178 Southwark Notes Archive Group (SNAG) 16, 176; Listening to No End 178 sovereign power: and archival scientism 227–228; and archives 229; challenging 224; redeployment of archives against 229, 235; refugees and 232; refugees as “acting back,” and 224, 235 Spandler, Helen 208, 214 Sproat, Gilbert Malcolm 97, 98 St Cuthbert’s Boys’ Home 114 Staying Put: An Anti-Gentrification Handbook for Council Estates in London 178–179 Steakley, James 190–191 Stein, Marc 186; Rethinking the Gay and Lesbian Movement 187–188 Stevens, Mary 33, 186, 193

Index Stonewall Inn 184, 188, 189 Stonewall National Museum and Archives 194 storytelling: archival 227–228; in impact assessment 61; Palestinian 18, 234–235 Strauss, Amanda 34–35, 156–157 Straw, Jack 131, 135 Stuart-Smith, Lord Justice 131, 136–137, 139, 141 Surplus Peoples Project (SPP) 74–75 Suurtam, Karen 8 Swain, Shurlee 58, 114 Tanner, Simon 61; Balance Value Impact Model 53 Taylor, Lord Justice 130, 132–133, 137, 139 35% Campaign 178 Thorpe, Kristen 56–57 Tolmie, William 95, 98–99 Toronto: 1981 bathhouse raids 184, 193; Police Service 192–193; Pride 183, 184 Townsend, Johnny 184 Tracking Family Guide to Aboriginal Records Relating to the Northern Territory (National Archives of Australia) 111–112 transitional justice: access to records and 151; and archival advocacy 156–163; centrality of victim in 151; in Chile 149; defined 151 Tropea, Rachel 13–14 Trutch, Joseph 96 Truth and Reconciliation Report (South Africa) 78 truth commissions (Chile) 149, 151, 152–154, 160 Tuma, Eugenio 154–155 Tyacke, Sarah 137, 143, 146 UNESCO World Heritage List 234 UpStairs Lounge fire 183–184, 194 Upward, Frank 34 Valderhaug, Gudmund 83, 112 Valech, Sergio 152, 154 Valech I (National Commission on Political Imprisonment and Torture) 149, 152, 153, 154–155, 157, 161, 162, 163

261

Valech II (Consultative Commission for the Qualification of Disappeared, Political Executions and Victims of Political Detention and Torture) (Chile) 149, 152, 153, 154, 155–156 Valech secret 154–155, 161, 162, 163 Valenzuela Valladares, Fabiola 161–162 Valladares, Rosaura 161 Vancouver Island Treaties 13; and agreements to purchase land vs. recognition of Indigenous land rights 100; archival custody of 89, 91, 93–101; and BC in confederation 94; and common law 91; contents 92; custodial history 90; discovery/rediscovery of 89, 91, 101; and Indigenous title 92; and land reserve programme 96–97; land surveys in 93–94; in Lands Office 93–94, 97; location of 98–99; and manipulation of evidence 92; as oral agreements 92; oral histories regarding 98; in Provincial Archives 98–99, 100; public references to 94–95; publication of 95–96; in R. v. White and Bob 99–100; and reserve lands 95, 97–98; and social justice 101; text added to 92; see also Indigenous people (Vancouver Island) victim blaming 14, 15, 127, 130, 133, 140, 146, 147 victims of human rights violations: access to records 149; centrality, in transitional justice 151 Voyce, Andrew 17–18, 199, 200–201, 206, 207 Waapalaneexkweew (N. Bowman) 63 Walkem, George Anthony 95–96 Walker, Cherryl 76, 77, 80, 81 Wallace, David A. 3 Wavell, Caroline 52 We Demand protest 189 Wellcome Collection/Library 199, 203 White, Douglas 99–100 Who am I? Project (ARC Linkage) 113–114, 115 Whoahkum, Dick 98 Wisser, Katherine M. 10 Wits University Historical Papers Archive 83–84 women’s liberation movement 191–192 writing systems 23

262

Index

X, Ajamu 193 Ya’ari, Elizabeth 185 Yaco, Sonia 34–35, 56 Yakel, Elizabeth 55

Yayeh, Adel 233 Young, Iris Marion 7, 30 Zald, Mayer N. 187 Zinn, Howard 38, 245