Outdated, hurtful historical language now comes with a warning at Manitoba archival institutions

Archival organizations guard the historical record, protecting documents that detail the path society has travelled, but what happens when that content is rife with outdated terms and distasteful labels damaging to Indigenous people?

How do they move forward in a time of reconciliation when their duty is to preserve that past and make it publicly available?

With respect and collaboration, says Heather Bidzinski, head of archives and special collections at the University of Manitoba and chair of the Association for Manitoba Archives, which represents more than 50 archival repositories and associated organizations.

"No matter where you go, archives are going to carry the narrative of the dominant voice. In North America it's that of the colonizers, so the voices and the perspective you're going to hear are going to be those of the dominant narrative," she said.

"So as archives have travelled on their journey to learn how we can best respond to the calls to action [stemming from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission] and the calls for justice [from the national inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls], one of the things that we recognize is that our narrative is unbalanced."

On the surface, the easiest solution would be to decolonize the language by replacing references to Eskimo with Inuit, and references to Indian or worse terminology, with First Nation or even specific cultural groups: Anishinaabeg, Cree, Oji-Cree, Dakota, Dene, Métis.

Part of that is already happening, Bidzinski says. The language used to describe the collections is updated.

But the materials themselves — documents, letters, reports — cannot be changed. That would tamper with the historical record, and expunging offensive terms would be a detrimental extreme, Bidzinski says.

"There's an element of importance in documenting that we, as human beings, did that. In our society, this happened. It's important not to lose that documentation of violence and aggression in our history," she said.

"We don't want to continue to contribute to the violence against Indigenous people or racialized people … [but] it's just as important, I think, for archives to see the path we've travelled in terms of making steps towards reconciliation."

To gird people for the fact they might still encounter repellent, even violent, language, archives have started to include warnings on their websites, such as this from the Manitoba Archives:

These records reflect the time period in which they were created and the views of their creators. This means that they can contain outdated, offensive and/or harmful language and content. We do not change the content or language in original records because these records serve as evidence of past actions and attitudes. This allows contemporary users of the archives to assess and question the original records and the context of their creation. However, we acknowledge the harmful impact that this language and content continue to have and we strive to address this harm by revising outdated descriptions, amending listings to include contemporary language, and seeking feedback from archives users to identify problematic language.

"By letting people know that there's harmful language, it reduces the chances of re-traumatizing users," Bidzinski said. "The archival record itself is not changing … because people may still use those terms to search for content."

Sandra Krahn, executive director of the Manitoba Association for Rights and Liberties, fully supports the decision to retain the historical record as it is.