The National Indian Boarding School Digital Archive (NIBSDA)
At a recent professional conference I learned about the work that is currently happening with the National National Indian Boarding School Digital Archive (NIBSDA) and found it incredibly important and inspiring. As they say in their mission statement:
As part of truth-telling around boarding school history, access to boarding school records is paramount. The National Indian Boarding School Digital Archive (NIBSDA) was conceptualized early on to serve as a national digital platform and digital repository for boarding school archival collections throughout the United States. Making boarding school records more accessible to boarding school survivors and their descendants in a digital archive is essential to understanding this history and its consequences on Tribal Nations. Through cultivating historical insights, NIBSDA supports community-led healing initiatives throughout American Indian and Alaska Native Nations and towards restored Indigenous cultural sovereignty.
The emphasis that is being placed on documenting othered voices, confronting difficult history, and seeking to heal through the truth of a more complete (if painful) understanding of history are the noblest of goals and reason we should keep (and always try to broaden) archives and our collective memory.