Posted on November 19, 2010
The WITNESS Blog is an ongoing conversation about the effective use of video in human rights campaigns to create policy, behavior, or practice changes. In recognition of Archives Month (October) and UNESCO World Day for Audiovisual Heritage (October 27) one of their blog categories, Archiving Human Rights, explored the theme of activism, in its myriad word forms and meanings, as it relates to archives and archivists.
Grace Lile opens the Witness Blog Archives Month series with a post on entitled Archives for Change: Activist Archives, Archival Activism. Lile, an archivist with 20 years experience working with film and video collections, and expertise in digital asset management, preservation-oriented production, and documentary film was awarded the 2010 Archival Achievement Award by the Archivists Round Table of Metropolitan New York.
Catherine Kennedy, Director of the South African History Archive (SAHA) discusses the work of the Documentation Affinity Group (DAG). Operating within the context of transitional justice, the organizational members of the DAG are generally working in societies battling against or emerging from repressive rule or armed conflict, as well as in newly established democracies where historical injustices remain unresolved, including Cambodia, Guatemala, Burma, Iraq, Serbia, Lebanon, Ethiopia, Zimbabwe, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), and South Africa. The DAG network has attempted to share best practices in documentation and archival work so as to support victims of human rights abuse, promote their right to truth, justice and reparations, and provide the basis for reconciliation, recovery and the creation of a more open and just society.
Taz Morgan, a Witness intern interviews Kate Doyle Senior Analyst of U.S. policy in Latin America at the National Security Archive (NSA). Doyle speaks about the Guatemala Project, the notion of the activist archivist and how archives can advocate for open societies. She describes how archivists can be at the heart of accountability and relates how, in her experience, archival records can and do directly create change.
Michell Caswell, a doctoral student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, focuses on the role of archives in fosering accountability. Drawing on research for her dissertation on the use of archival records and function of nongovernmental archival organizations in holding the Kmer Rouge accountable for the deaths of nearly two million Cambodians, Caswell also shares insights from an interview she conducted with Youk Chhang, Director of the Documentation Center of Cambodia (DC-Cam), in Phnom Penh in 2010.
A second post by Grace Lile focuses on Nelson Mandela, Archivist Activist and makes references to Mandela's new book, Conversations with Myself, a publication Lile describes as being, "a collaboration based on unfettered access to archives to portray a still-living hero in a direct, frank, unvarnished light".
Teague Sheitner, in a post on a related site includes a wealth of information about sites and resources associated with the role of archives in human rights. It's a wonderful resource and I spent hours exploring the links!
Jo-Anne Duggan
November 2010