Introduction
For many years, Indigenous people have been fighting for the rights of their lands, languages, and cultures. This is because of the colonial groups and institutions that have, over time, removed these rights and knowledge. Since the 1940s, indigenous people have raised various concerns about declining the right to use their languages and practice their cultures. The 2007 declaration by the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People (UNDRIP) gave several standards that could support the well-being of the indigenous people globally; these included cultural heritage like languages. The year 2019 was considered the year of indigenous languages as it was dedicated to creating awareness about the critical state of these languages. The colonial archives play a huge role in ensuring that the indigenous communities affirm or deny their beliefs.
Main body
A colonial archive refers to any archival repositories created and maintained by the European states to store records of their colonies. The archives function to preserve public and non-public records. Archives organize and store the practices and beliefs of the people who lived in the past, making them products of curation. For many years, these archives have maintained records of only the cultures and values of the colonial masters. However, these colonial institutions have begun to affirm the indigenous people’s beliefs and cultural practices in the past few years, and more archives are rebuilding the relationship with Indigenous communities (Griffith, 2019). An example of such archives is the Hudson’s Bay Company Archives (HBCA) in Canada which has created names and knowledge reciprocals for the indigenous people to connect with their records.
In the 20th century, many surveyors of Eurocentric archives believed that the records they had and the histories recorded were the truth and nothing else. However, archivists have begun to examine their long-held assumptions in the recent past. More scholars have used various theories to analyze the values upon which truth and evidence are built. According to them, evidence and truths are built upon facts and findings and not mere belief in supremacy. They have deconstructed the whiteness, racism, and colonialism that underly the creation of some archival materials. Many indigenous groups have continued to lose their languages; however, several indigenous languages are currently available in various colonial archives (Griffith, 2019). Retaining material in an archive requires its intrinsic value, as it is hard to save material in its original form in the archives.
Two main research approaches are always credible sources for the colonial archive. The findings are based on participant observations and random interviews. Other research methods, including surveys, experiments, and secondary data analysis, also provide credible information in these archives. There are also numerous challenges presented by languages held in colonial archives that have been created by historical practices, which have given privileges to Eurocentric notions (Thorpe, 2019). This has made the western cultures’ knowledge, rights to ownership, and access worth respecting, thus erasing the theft of Indigenous knowledge, agency, and land.
Conclusion
In conclusion, there is a great need to document the indigenous language and cultures in the community-held archives. The colonial archives threaten indigenous beliefs and cultural practices, and overdependence on their documentation may see these cultures lose their values shortly. The continued underfunding and lack of value placed by various colonial governments on indigenous learning have made it difficult for the indigenous people to support their cultures, including languages. Colonial institutions must now move quickly to accept a broader legacy and incorporate indigenous claims into their activities. Colonial archives should work to document indigenous cultures and values to affirm these beliefs.
References
Griffith, J. (2019). Settler colonial archives: some Canadian contexts. Settler Colonial Studies, 9(3), 320-340.
Thorpe, K. (2019). Speaking back to colonial collections: building living Aboriginal archives. Artlink, 39(2), 42-49.