Strategic pathways for Indigenous heritages

Purpose

Library and Archives Canada (LAC) is committed to reconciliation as a principle of all that we do. We recognize that our roles and responsibilities in this work are unique.

These strategic pathways set out LAC’s long-term principles in relation to Indigenous Heritages and in carrying out our acquisition, preservation, and access mandate while respecting Indigenous Rights and Indigenous Data Sovereignty. They build on our experience, ongoing learning, and steady steps forward, especially LAC’s first Indigenous Heritage Action Plan (2019), which publicly affirmed LAC’s commitment to supporting reconciliation.

Relationship-building

Reconciliation is about long-term, generational relationships of respect, healing, and trust—past, present, and future. It is also a return to the intentions and spirit of foundational relationship agreements, like the Two Row Wampum and the Treaties, as articulated, taught, and passed down by the original and perpetual caretakers of these lands.

LAC’s vision and mission can be reframed around the concept of relationships that is at the core of this work. Our role rests on stewarding and facilitating the relationships between users and records. We are the custodian of countless stories and truths that reflect past relationships and inform future relationships on these lands. Our holdings include millions of items that are about, by, and of significance to Indigenous Peoples—ranging from cultural belongings of foundational importance, like the Treaties, to countless pages of government records containing the truths of colonial systems, including the Residential School and the Day School systems. Many of these records document harm, but they are also the basis of living truth upon which healing, reconciliation, and changed relationships rest.

Knowledges and continued learning

We cannot carry out our commitments to Indigenous Peoples and to reconciliation alone. We know that this is a shared journey that depends fully on the knowledges, perspectives, and expertise of Indigenous Peoples. This strategy is one step in formalizing our understanding of our role and of where we hope to go, but it will take life in the shared understandings we develop and with the leadership of Indigenous Peoples.

These pathways exist in a broader context of commitments, especially the recommendations of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (2015) and the Reconciliation Framework for Canadian Archives (2022). In 2016, Canada endorsed the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) without qualification, and in 2021, the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act came into force. With this, Canada confirmed a commitment to honouring inherent Indigenous Rights, including Rights over Indigenous histories, heritages, and stories.

This evergreen strategy provides a framework for how LAC commits to honouring these responsibilities, implementing UNDRIP, and taking up its part in the renewal of relationships of healing and respect. This work, an ongoing journey, will be carried out through successive action plans that reflect on progress and build momentum in the right direction.

LAC is committed to continue working with its Government of Canada partners to build on our common responsibilities toward reconciliation, to address policy, legal, and capacity challenges, and to work to ensure that the necessary changes—and resources—for the success of this undertaking are identified and pursued.

Principles

LAC commits to carrying out its mandate and supporting reconciliation under a common set of mandatory principles. We understand these as responsibilities, which are the basis for everything we do in relation to Indigenous heritages:

Acknowledgement

Acknowledging the truths of the past and present injustices committed by the Government of Canada against Indigenous Peoples, including colonization, Residential and Day Schools, and systemic discrimination. These include the harms done by Eurocentric archival practices to Indigenous Peoples’ own ways of collecting, stewarding, transmitting, and using their histories, their stories, and their data. We acknowledge that LAC has participated in these practices over its history and that, for us, Indigenous Data Sovereignty is a partial redress for past and ongoing harm.

Humility

Practising the ongoing self-awareness and reflection that support a learning journey and renewed relationships. For LAC, this means acknowledging that actions and ways forward will be rooted in relationships rather than in rules and standards and defined through shared understandings that are relational and context specific. It means practising honesty with Indigenous Peoples about our goals, readiness, and barriers and recognizing the limitations of our knowledge and ways of working. And it means naming that LAC’s role should be that of a steward and collaborator, not of an owner or controller of Indigenous stories, records, and data.

Respect

Respecting the knowledge and sovereignty of Indigenous Peoples over their own stories, records, and data, including records created about Indigenous Peoples without their consent. This entails honouring inherent Rights to exercise control over how these records are stewarded, shared, and transmitted through, foremost, recognizing the diverse histories, aspirations, and expectations of First Nations, Inuit, and Métis. It also means situating this work within its current context and forging opportunities for progress to be made.

Strategic pathways

Four strategic pathways define how we will carry out our responsibilities and structure our actions.

1. Fostering cultural proficiencies and cultural safety internally

Carrying out this work depends on people: it depends on all LAC staff, including senior management, continuing our lifelong learning journeys, and it depends on Indigenous staff members feeling valued for their unique professional and lived expertise in a culturally safe environment.

To realize a culturally proficient organization, LAC will strive for Indigenous perspectives to steer key initiatives at high levels, for the recruitment, retention, and promotion of Indigenous staff members to be prioritized, and for all staff to deepen their learning and to build the skills they need to carry out their work.

2. Enhancing our service models with equitable relationships

As a service organization, LAC is responsible for responding to the requests, goals, and aspirations of Indigenous Peoples—both as individuals and as collectivities—with receptiveness and flexibility. This requires us to deepen our understanding of what it means to be in real and long-term relationships with Indigenous communities and governing bodies.

To strengthen our current model, LAC will foster cultural safety for Indigenous users, transform services to meet Indigenous needs and aspirations, and build real relationships with Indigenous governing bodies beyond individual service transactions.

3. Recognizing and honouring collective Indigenous Rights of access

Access to the data in LAC’s holdings is central to our mandate and to our services. When it comes to the Indigenous records that we steward, many of which were created or collected without consent, we recognize an additional responsibility for barrier-free data return to Indigenous Peoples, beyond the mechanisms that exist for all Canadians.

To honour Indigenous Rights to access, LAC will strive toward models of data transfer and digital repatriation. We will work toward maximizing alternative access doorways for Indigenous governing bodies outside of request-based access to information and privacy and service mechanisms and will advocate for the UNDRIP and risk-managed approaches to Indigenous Data Sovereignty to take precedence over restrictive legislative frameworks.

4. Advancing Indigenous governance, control, and authority over Indigenous heritages and stories

LAC’s vast holdings and infrastructure make it unique among institutions in this country and create unique responsibilities for ethical stewardship of records acquired in the past and that will come to us in the future. Above all, this means ensuring that decision-making and authority over the records we steward shifts increasingly to Indigenous Peoples, who know their heritages and stories best.

To realize responsible stewardship of Indigenous heritages, LAC will strive to expand joint control and co-management agreements, apply decision-making and cultural protocols of Indigenous Peoples across archival functions, advance mechanisms for upholding collective privacy rights, and move toward full repatriation where desired.

Roles and responsibilities

This commitment is a shared responsibility, and actions speak louder than words. LAC commits to successive action plans that will carry us forward along the defined pathways in line with the mandatory principles outlined above.

The Librarian and Archivist of Canada and LAC’s Management Team will be responsible for developing, monitoring, and reporting on Indigenous Heritage Action Plans to LAC’s Indigenous Advisory Circle and to the public.

All staff are responsible for putting reconciliation, as understood and set out in this document, as a principle at the core of all their work, especially work pertaining to Indigenous heritages and Indigenous Peoples.

Definitions

These are LAC’s current understandings of these concepts. In practice and in an ongoing way, all definitions depend on agreement and shared understanding with Indigenous Peoples.

These definitions interpret key concepts for the context of a national library and archive.

Indigenous data

Data that is from or about Indigenous communities, cultures, and knowledge.

Indigenous heritages

A subset of Indigenous data referring to publications and archival records that are from or about Indigenous communities, cultures, and knowledges.

Indigenous data sovereignty

The inherent right of Indigenous Peoples to exercise control and ownership over data that is from and about their communities and lands, including Indigenous Heritages. These rights can be expressed in many ways, including as both individual and collective rights to data access and privacy.

Indigenous data governance

The processes, frameworks, policies, and mechanisms that enable Indigenous Peoples to exercise sovereignty and control over Indigenous data.

Collective rights

The inherent authority of an Indigenous community, nation, or governing body to governance over data that is from and about its members or citizens, cultures, and knowledges, particularly in accordance with cultural protocols or traditional forms of decision-making.

Control

The authority—whether exercised or not and regardless of who has custody—to make decisions about publications and records and their management for the purposes of preservation, access, and disposition. LAC control over publications and records may be partial or complete and may be subject to agreements.