Beyond Noblesse Oblige

Abstract:The article advocates for moving “beyond the idea of archival access itself,” which the author suggests is an outdated form of noblesse oblige, to consider a new archival model, “a community right,” to engage archives and their many publics. Noting that Indigenous communities are sometimes unable to access the very documents and objects they have originally created, and which are now removed from the communities as well as inadequately described and preserved by non-native-language-based (often English) archival enclosures, the author defines the community right as “first, the right to see, hear, reuse, and make derivative works from the archival record and, second, respect for cultural sovereignty, autonomy, and tradition.” Archives, then, as such, can become active sites of social justice as opposed to passive repositories “that reproduce exclusion and oppression.”