"The inalienable right to know"

Abstract

In the wake of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), the government of Canada compelled Library and Archives Canada to better facilitate Indigenous archival access. Yet, Indigenous peoples continue to face a variety of barriers to archival access and document retrieval. This paper argues that there are still many problems of Indigenous access to the archive and that the best remedy to these problems is to fundamentally change long-standing colonial ideas of record keeping. For true access and collaboration to begin, archivists must be enabled to act beyond traditional archival structures and policies. The paper begins by outlining the archival responses to the TRC’s report, addressing Indigenous rights to knowledge and continuing barriers to archival access, and offering suggestions to mitigate issues of access. In addition, this paper advocates that Indigenous considerations be reworked in existing archives and that Indigenous community archives be better supported.