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Resisting Archival Nostalgia

In 2018–2019, well before the pandemic upended our lives, I worked with a team of curators and interns at the American Indian Center of Chicago (AIC) to create the American Indian Center Community Archives (AICCA), a digital collection of photographs taken by and of members of Chicago’s Native American community. The project was supported by an National Endowment for the Humanities Common Heritage Grant, which provided funding to hire interns from the community and to support purchases for a physical archival infrastructure at the Center (archive-quality storage boxes, shelving, scanners, etc.). The photographs represent AIC community members participating in Centersponsored events across a history spanning from the 1950s to the 2000s. We created the digital archive through a collaborative process of selecting photos to be digitized, creating metadata for each photo, building digital exhibits of powwow photos, senior citizen events, and more. The digital archive launched in the winter of 2019, along with an exhibit held at the American Indian Center Gallery, which highlighted the AIC’s rich archives and stories about its history. As I reflected on the project in 2020, I gave a presentation for the Society of American Archivists conference with Heather Miller (Wyandotte Nation from Oklahoma), then executive director of the American Indian Center. I wrote in that presentation that archives are places, and they are sets of relations. I wanted to evoke how the digital archive was the manifestation of many forms and acts of relation: how the two young Native women who were the project interns brought their knowledge of Center events and members through their experiences growing up in Chicago and participating in Center activities. I thought as well of the photo identification sessions AIC curator and arts coordinator Dave Spencer (Mississippi Chata/Dine) organized, in which people shared meals and looked through photos from the archives, identifying and reminiscing about the people represented – relatives, friends, younger versions of themselves. As a non-Native scholar and a newcomer to Chicago, my role was one of working to be a respectful participant in and supporter of those relationships. My experiences with