Acknowledging Limitations of Colonial Descriptions and Stewardship of Indigenous Material: Challenges and Opportunities for Libraries, Archives and Cataloguing

 “…if a record cannot be perfect, it should at least be present.  Better for it to exist than for it to be perfect and only in your mind.” (p. 90, Vo, N. (2020). The Empress of Salt and Fortune. Tor Books.)

I came to this dataset as a library student in my last month of my Master of Information studies at the University of Toronto, hired to help expand the scope of the then-existing version of the dataset. I later joined the committee in my capacity as librarian at the University of Calgary after the completion of the research contract.  We all bring our identities, personalities, experience, and education to our work, and for me a few aspects of my own positionality have been relevant in working with this data: I am a White woman, my library studies path came from curiosity of the new and not from previous library work, my MI coursework was steeped in critical librarianship and included a half-semester course on Indigenous Librarianship (the extent of the Indigenous-specific course options at the time). In some ways I was able to bring a fresh perspective, particularly amongst information specialists: I was not interacting with library records with the familiarity of a seasoned professional and was able to consider details like descriptive terminology and controlled vocabulary with naive scrutiny.  I was also accessing information publicly available through WorldCat, responding to information presented to a general public, not requiring technical knowledge.  In other ways, I was bringing the exact perspective of the status quo: White, cisgender, English monolingual, conventionally and highly educated.  I would like to think that my awareness of and sensitivity to aspects of colonial and White supremacist library history minimized overlooking aspects of my bias, but of course I would inevitably be informed by my lived realities.  This post aims to share how aspects of the data complicated decisions in building the set that will impact the use of this resource for users from any background.  Noting the data as complicated or challenging is meant to implicate the historical hubris of colonial cataloging standards and not to frame Indigenous data as inherently challenging.  The challenges are not in the data itself resisting accurate description or categorization, but in indication of the intended and unintended gatekeeping power of cataloging decisions guiding or obscuring access to material, and supports movements towards descriptions being done by workers able to bring accuracy and nuance to material, whatever the content, language, format. 

As is often the case in library and archival work, categorization or defining scope may seem conceptually staid, clear, and definite but in the process of application and interaction with materials one is quickly reminded that creative and knowledge output rarely fit into tidy boxes.  When there is an additional layer of historical distance and information filtered through the biased and racist lenses embedded in systems, the tangle for description and access is only further revealed.  For the recent iteration of the Indigenous Historical Publications dataset, these challenges were present through the research process and thus influenced the outcome.  This dataset represents a large variety of publications and publication standards, including community-led media, which have been catalogued in a context of inaccuracies and misunderstandings of Indigenous histories and cultures, most likely by White library professionals. As described in previous blog posts connected to this project, the imperfection of this process has been made as explicit as possible, with the intention of this living document being a start of an exchange and not a rigid imposed etching meant to be imposed. Although there is understandable and necessary care taken in recent decolonial reconciliation efforts within libraries and archives, the fear of imperfection and desire to ‘get it right’ can also produce a paralysis to any momentum that ultimately results in choosing nothing rather than an imperfect something. 

Most of the search was conducted through or in conjunction with WorldCat records which allowed for ease of accessing metadata but also revealed aspects of the cataloguing of these materials, common to COPPUL institutions and beyond, that make meaningful understanding and engagement with these materials challenging, and for the purposes of this dataset, impacted decisions of inclusion or exclusion.  This generally included inconsistent labeling of languages, overlapping records, subject headings, and placing of government and church documents within series of Indigenous material.  

The scope of this dataset was meant for publications made by and written for Indigenous communities, and the search was conducted with a generous and inclusive lens, with the columns for notes and scope indicating information to provide further context. Although I knew that this would mean the risk of including material out of scope, I felt that if metadata indicated some potential for inclusion it met scope criteria even if the decision felt tentative. Clear and confident decisions regarding inclusion or exclusion were difficult for many reasons:

1. Problematic cataloguing of Indigenous materials due to colonial institutional historical contexts, limited knowledge, and embedded structural biases within libraries has resulted in inconsistencies in data connected to a particular title (including languages, spellings of title and/or publisher, controlled vocabulary).  
2. Publications connected to religiously-affiliated institutions or initiatives have potential complexity.  On a large scale, these institutions have certainly been sources of trauma and violence towards Indigenous communities but have also made mixed contributions to some Indigenous communities (Catholic church and Métis history and culture, for example). To understand the relevance of such titles will require further local context to understand the history of a particular community.
3. The breadth of geography, Community affiliation, languages, communities represented in these titles require a multiplicity of definitions of inclusion.  As this research is meant to be a tool for further work and not a definitive end point, it was decided that providing information that could ultimately be discarded was preferable than omitting information that could have been useful.

To holistically contend with these descriptive inconsistencies and assess accuracy would require access and knowledge beyond library professionals. This is both a barrier and an opportunity for repositories to connect with Indigenous Studies researchers and Indigenous communities.  Critical engagement with problematic subject headings has been present for some time and although there have been promising shifts in decolonizing and updating subject heading terminology, researchers and library workers must engage with language and terms that are offensive, inaccurate, and potentially harmful.  Inaccuracies and vagaries in the metadata, although not necessarily inevitable, are understandable when acknowledging the embedded biases and context of descriptive structures within libraries and archives: ignorance and disinformation regarding Indigenous histories, lack of established relationship building between libraries and archives and Indigenous communities, and the barriers resulting in underrepresentation of Indigenous information professionals.

The context of the description of this data has impacted the dataset for the general user and for libraries, archives, and other stewards of Indigenous data.  For researchers, previous description has influenced the content, access, and interactions with the dataset.  For repositories, identifying and acknowledging these challenges is a valuable outcome that both provides tangible examples of the status quo but should validate the ongoing labour of corrective description efforts and improved current standards, and encourage more resources allocated to this important work.  Theoretical interactions and philosophical considerations can only bring us so far, but through active engagement with material we can identify practical needs, contend with difficult decisions, and ground further theory.  Just as the dataset document itself is meant as a start to a conversation, an opening, the documentation challenges articulated here are not presented as definitive.  The hope is to encourage attention and care towards institutional documentation and stewardship of Indigenous materials within libraries and archives to inform steps on a more respectful, empathetic, and culturally informed path forward.