Restor(y)ing community identity through the archive of Ken Saro-Wiwa

Abstract

This study draws on recent research into the social function of archives and their web-based delivery to explore how a community-based archive project in Nigeria might provide a site of collective trauma healing and contribute to existing community-based development programs. The Ken Saro-Wiwa Digital Archive project aims to catalogue and make available the digitized personal papers of executed Niger Delta activist-author Ken Saro-Wiwa, who spoke out internationally against government mistreatment of his native community. The digital archive project seeks to provide an online community space as well as an internationally accessible exhibition of the archive. After an exploration of the relevant challenges facing community identity, it is argued that the interactive, online and community-based nature of the Ken Saro-Wiwa Digital Archive presents a unique opportunity for a disadvantaged ethnic minority group to take back ownership of their own story in the present, as well as shape their future, via a deliberate ‘restor(y)ing’ of their past. The archive of a prominent executed community activist, which documents the injustice and trauma experienced by that community, might in this way become a source of positive identity formation and empowerment by documenting the assertion of community autonomy and identity in the face of opposition.