#bringithome Campaign Urges Indigenous Canadians to Connect With Their Heritage
Members of the Tahltan Nation are calling Indigenous Canadians to share visual documents of their heritage online and with their nations.
Dease Lake, British Columbia – March 19, 2024
CONTACT: Abby Perrin, Communications Director and Media Contact, Tahltan Central Government, 778-227-3982, abigailperrin@shaw.ca
ABOUT THE TAHLTAN NATION
- The Tahltan Nation consists of roughly 4,000 members, originating in northwest British Columbia. 90% of its members currently live outside of the territory.
- The Tahltan Central Government (TCG) was started in 1974.
- The TCG quickly opened a culture and heritage department. One of their first initiatives was to create a community archive.
- In 2018, worry of wildfire danger caused the TCG culture and heritage department to begin the process of preserving and digitalizing their documents.
INSTITUTIONAL ARCHIVES
- To begin the process of repatriating Tahltan items in museum possession, the TCG must negotiate with the Royal BC Museum (RCBM) and BC Archives.
- Genevieve Weber, an Archivist at RCBM expressed interest and excitement into entering conversations about repatriating items to Indigenous communities.
- A big advantage of community archives is they can be much more flexible than intuitional archives.
- The Tahltan Nation is still waiting to hear from the RCBM about acting on repatriating their items. RCBM has not indicated any sort of timeline.
ABOUT THE CAMPAIGN
- The TCG has started the #bringithome imitative. The initiative is meant to encourage indigenous peoples to seek out any documents they may have and share any images via social media using the hashtag #bringithome.
- Many indigenous nations lack photo or visual documentation of their history. The social media campaign hopes to connect indigenous peoples together and encourage them to come back to their communities.
- The TCG hopes the spread of this campaign will put pressure on the institutional archives to speed up their processes.