Afterlives of Indigenous Archives: Essays in Honor of “The Occom Circle.” Edited by Ivy Schweitzer and Gordon Henry. Hanover, NH: Dartmouth College Press, 2019. Pp. x+248.

Abstract

These are questions that, for most archivists, rarely come into play. They are questions, however, that continue to trouble investigations into the Indigenous archives, which, after all, have spectral afterlives, resonances and traces that bear the tragic wisdom of enduring four hundred years of settler colonial violence and yet continue to “resist annihilation.” This pertains to the Occom Circle Project as well, for while it is a superbly conceived and executed resource, one of the better digital archives that I have encountered, it remains housed in the halls of Dartmouth, whose official seal still depicts two naked Indians being pulled, as though by tractor beam, toward the shimmering vision of a giant Christian Bible hovering like the sun over the venerable institution. For those who know Occom’s history and the history of the New England tribes, Dartmouth too is a “fraught space.” This collection opens up a poignant conversation about how scholars, entering into both traditional and digital archives, will have to engage with such spaces and arrive at respectful solutions for dealing with the spectral afterlives of Indigenous archives.