Archival description is often treated as a neutral or technical task—summarizing contents, assigning subject headings, and organizing metadata for retrieval. However, description is actually far from neutral. It shapes how users interpret records, which narratives are centered, and whose voices are made visible or erased.
Why Description is Never Neutral
In colonial archival traditions, descriptive practices have long reflected the priorities and assumptions of dominant institutions. For Indigenous peoples and other historically marginalized communities, these practices have resulted in misrepresentation, erasure, and harm.
Indigenous and decolonial approaches to archives call for critical rethinking of archival description. They challenge the notion that records speak for themselves or that describing them is objective. Instead, these approaches place the social, political, and cultural power embedded in language and classification systems in the foreground.
They advocate for community-led description, relational metadata, and the inclusion of multiple perspectives, especially those excluded by settler-colonial recordkeeping practices. Rethinking description through decolonial lenses opens rich territory for accountability, truth-telling, and reparative work.
The Problem with Traditional Archival Description
In many institutions, archival descriptions are guided by professional standards developed in Euro-American contexts, such as Describing Archives: A Content Standard (DACS) or Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH). While these frameworks offer consistency, they often embed colonial assumptions about authority, identity, and ownership. Indigenous peoples are frequently described through the lens of settler governments, missionaries, anthropologists, or extractive researchers. Communities may be misnamed, cultural materials mislabeled, and records contextualized in ways that reflect colonial narratives rather than Indigenous ones.
Moreover, these systems prioritize hierarchical and linear structures, such as arrangement by provenance, which can be incompatible with Indigenous knowledge systems that may emphasize cyclical time, relationality, or shared custodianship. This technical and epistemological mismatch reflects a disconnect between Western archival logic and Indigenous worldviews.
The language used in archival description also carries immense weight. Terms like “discovery,” “conquest,” or “civilization” often appear when finding aids are developed without critical reflection. Descriptions may downplay the violence of colonial encounters or fail to note the coercive contexts under which records were created. These practices obscure Indigenous agencies and reinforce settler-centric histories.
Decolonial Approaches to Description
Decolonial archival description begins by acknowledging that archives are active sites of interpretation, often shaped by power and exclusion. To decolonize description, archivists must examine their roles as narrators and gatekeepers and ask whose voices are being prioritized, omitted, or misrepresented.
1. Use Community-Centered Language
One of the central principles of decolonial description is community-centered language. Indigenous communities should be empowered to define how they are named, what terminology is used, and how their records are contextualized. This approach includes using Indigenous place names, respecting clan or kinship structures, and allowing for the inclusion of Indigenous languages in metadata fields. Descriptive work should involve collaboration, consultation, and, when possible, co-authorship with community members.
2. Include Multiple Voices and Perspectives
Another important strategy is the inclusion of layered or multi-vocal descriptions. Rather than presenting a single institutional narrative, finding aids and catalog records can include multiple perspectives, such as commentary from Indigenous knowledge holders, oral histories, or community-generated content. This approach recognizes that records have many meanings depending on who engages with them and that authority over interpretation should be shared.
3. Follow Culturally-Specific Metadata Practices
Archivists can also make space for protocol-driven description, allowing for culturally specific metadata practices. Honoring cultural protocols might include redacting or restricting access to sacred materials, flagging culturally sensitive content, or embedding protocols directly into digital systems. Tools like Traditional Knowledge (TK) Labels from Local Contexts can signal to users that materials are subject to community-defined permissions and responsibilities.
Repairing Descriptive Harm
Decolonizing description is not only about future practice but also about confronting past harm. Many institutions are revisiting legacy finding aids and catalog records to identify offensive language, inaccurate terms, and colonial framing. This work is painstaking but essential for building trust and accountability.
Correction does not mean erasure. Sometimes, original descriptions can be retained but contextualized, annotated, or supplemented with more accurate and respectful language. Transparency about changes and acknowledging historical bias can help institutions model humility and foster more honest engagement with the archival record.
Reparative description can also be part of broader initiatives for truth-telling and redress. When records are recontextualized with community input, they can serve as powerful tools for reclaiming history, supporting land claims, and challenging dominant narratives.
A Living, Evolving Practice
Rethinking archival description through decolonial lenses is an ongoing, iterative process. It requires archivists to listen, reflect, and remain accountable to the communities whose histories are held in their collections. It demands an institutional willingness to revise workflows, reallocate resources, and embrace new ways of knowing.
Decolonial description transforms how we understand the purpose of archives. Rather than merely describing what is, archivists can participate in imagining what could be: archives that reflect the full complexity of history, honor Indigenous sovereignty, and support collective memory grounded in justice and respect.
In this vision, description is a tool for discovery and a site of relationship, resistance, and renewal.
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