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The People’s Archives: Communities on the Margins Preserving Their Own Histories

Session Submission Type: Roundtable

Session Abstract

Archives are the foundation of history, and they shape the way histories are written and told. For our history to be responsive and beneficial to communities, a key factor will be dialogue with and support for community-centered and -rooted archives. This roundtable brings together historians and archivists from 5 such entities in the American West: the International Gay Rodeo Association archives, built by individuals within a network of state organizations to preserve a cultural history; the Community Library, founded to serve Idaho’s Wood River Valley, including a strong focus on regional history, ski history, and Ernest Hemingway; the Southern California Library began as a collection of endangered leftist/labor materials and continues to document and support social action; the Southeast Asian Archive (SEAA, at UC-Irvine) documents the experiences of refugees and immigrants from Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam to the U.S., especially California; and the Sherman Indian Museum archives document the lives of students at a federal boarding school over more than a century of its existence. The representatives of these collections will discuss not only the value of their remarkable collections but also the complexities and challenges. Small institutions are building new frameworks of practice—an example is the SEAA’s “community-centered archives” approach, partnering with organizations, employing “post-custodial” archival models, and diversifying archival and academic professions. Issues of funding, cultural restrictions, and privacy further complicate the work for these crucial institutions. They must also consider where local stories converge with broader histories.