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by Jennifer Vallee
The basis of the Ktunaxa-Kinbasket Tribal Council Archives is the administrative records of the Tribal Council. Today, I would like to set aside this administrative function and instead examine the archives' present and future rule within the wider community. The greatest challenge for the Archives comes in serving the heritage needs of a Nation rooted in oral tradition. In a culture where knowledge is to be passed orally from the old to the young, the use of written records for research assumes a back seat. However, with the atrophy of the oral tradition and the increase in a literate tradition, it is apparent that the heritage of the Ktunaxa Nation is a kaleidoscope of coexisting, but more often colliding, linguistic backgrounds, communication media and forms, and cultural interactions. Because of the resulting blend of heritage identities, the Archives serves as an intersection along the heritage continuum where oral and written elements converge to reflect a heritage reality.
Traditionally, the Ktunaxa heritage continuum placed people on one end and the land on the other, with an oral tradition tethering the two. Within this oral tradition, the elders assumed a vital leadership role in passing on those cultural traditions and knowledge that comprised their heritage. For a variety of social, political, cultural and historical reasons outside the purview of this paper, the role of the elders in the heritage continuum has diminished. As a response to this development, there is an attempt being made by many First Nations, including the Ktunaxa Nation, to re-establish the heritage role of elders by documenting their knowledge, skills, stories and experiences in literate and post-literate forms. Largely due to this response, the Archives finds a spot along the heritage continuum by preserving and making accessible this documentation.
To assess the Archives' spot along the continuum, it is essential to recognize the strengths and limitations of operating within an oral tradition. Despite acting as an intersection where written and oral elements of heritage converge, the Archives does not become the primary focal point of Ktunaxa heritage research, which would otherwise displace the role of people in the continuum. Instead, the Archives acts as a point of departure, from which a researcher will be led to both materials and non-material heritage sources. This containment of the Archives' role is reflected in its reference policy, a policy that has been moulded by the elders' input. The elders advise that if a Ktunaxa citizen wishes to consult archival documents concerning heritage, then that person should first be directed to an elder so that information can be passed via traditional oral mechanisms. The policy not only indicates an attempt to revitalize the oral tradition, but it also reveals a notion of heritage authority. In non-Native historical research, oral sources are often only used when a written record does not exist, or when a particular genre of history is employed, such as memoirs. But here, the oral record is preferred, even if a written record exists in the Archives. In the view of the Ktunaxa Nation, archival records are only useful for providing some context to and comparison with oral sources and are not to be used as an authority on their own. The knowledge held by the elders is deemed to be the ultimate record of heritage, and so the cross-checking of oral sources with textual sources in the Archives is not meant to throw the authority of the elders into a questionable light. Rather, this use of the Archives within the oral tradition occurs only when the informational content is used for purposes other than traditional Ktunaxa activities (communications with the federal and provincial governments or transactions with a forestry company, for example). By constrictions the use of textual records in this manner and by redirecting patrons to the elders, the Archives help to strengthen the tether of the oral tradition along the heritage continuum. But the doing so, the Archives reduces its own legitimacy as a heritage authority.
Another limitation arises from problems associated with media transfer. Although "freezing" the speech of an elder on audio or video tape preserves the content of the information being conveyed, it removes that content from the context of the oral tradition. just as we speak of the context of textual records, the oral tradition also provides a particular context that contributes to reliability. This reliability results, in part, from circumstantial guarantees (that the relevant regalia was worn, the family crest displayed, the proper witnesses present. etc.) and from perceptions which factor the record's reliability upon the reliability of the creator. But more than this, I think we can speak of a reliability in the oral record which, like that of the textual record, is based on form. In archival theory, reliability is associated with the process of a record's creation and arises form the completeness of form. Form in the oral tradition includes rote-learned, frozen forms such as poetry and lists, rote-learned, free-forms such as formulae (names, proverbs, etc.), non-rote-learned, frozen-form epics and non-rote-learned, free form narratives. At varying degrees, the rules for these forms are strictly defined and are reflected in the wording, rhythm, and intonation. So although removing any record from its context depletes it of its original nature, the preservation of the intrinsic from of oral record preserves some measure of reliability in the post-literate material found in the Archives. These three aspects of reliability--circumstantial guarantee, the nature of the creator, and the near-completeness of form--enables the Archives' audio and audio-visual records to stand for the facts of which they purport to be evidence. In this way, the Archives achieves a tangible, albeit limited link to the rest of the heritage continuum.
The other way the oral tradition makes its way into the Archives is through the transcription of the oral to the written record. The transferability of the Ktunaxa language medium is deficient since Ktunaxa is primarily an oral language and an attempt to develop a written language has only occurred in the least twenty-five years. Therefore, most transcriptions are also translations. These translated textual records not only reveal the influence of cultural interaction on a once self-contained heritage, but also illustrate a clash between traditional elements of Ktunaxa heritage and material media written in English. It is difficult to discern which promotes this clash the most though-the use of a material media to record a heritage which exists largely in an oral tradition, or the use of a language other than the traditional Ktunaxa. Which extrinsic element is more able to shape perceptions of heritage: medium or language? If we agree that language does not simply label an objective world, but that it also interprets what constitutes the world, then it is evident that the audio and audio-visual records expressed in Ktunaxa reflects different heritage reality than that of the audio and textual record expressed in English. This is particularly obvious if we stretch to the contention that different languages have different worlds. What constitutes the "objective world" then, is largely the result of the heritages that are associated with English and with Ktunaxa are equally meaningful and valid, it is essential that the Archives encapsulate the relationships between these perceptions and identities in order to reflect the whole of the Ktunaxa heritage. To simplify the picture, there are traces of an oral tradition spoken in Ktunaxa, there is a oral tradition spoken in English, there is a literate tradition written in English, and the beginnings of a literate tradition written in Ktunaxa. Each of these media and languages make their way along the heritage continuum and intersect at the Archives.
A clear example of this intersection is illustrated by some of the place name/traditional use maps held by the Ktunaxa Nation. In a culture which relates everything to the land, maps are an extensive and integral part of the heritage record. Because subjects such as certain kinds of ceremonies or rites and their locations are sensitive and not te be spoken of in public, only the initials of the person who provided that information for the mapping are recorded on the map. Therefore, if a researcher consulted the map in the Archives and wished to know the cultural information related to that area, they would see the "LW" marked there, for example, and would have to consult Elder Leo Williams for that information. These types of cartographic and other similar textual records are inextricably tied to the oral tradition and only serve as a record that there is existing information which can only be channeled through oral mechanisms. By using a slightly skewed analogy, it may be said that many of the Archives' records take on the qualities and purpose of a kind of inter-media hypertext, with the exception that the data represented by these reference points must be reached by walking or driving and engaging in dialogue rather than by clicking a mouse. In this way, the Archives often serves as a record that heritage exists, but it cannot reveal the precise content of that heritage.
There are notions of public and private within the Ktunaxa Nations that affect the use of the Archives. Heritage in general has a utilitarian foundation so that people (usually from other realities) can experience and better understand a particular heritage. But the Ktunaxa heritage presents a stalemate in this regard. The Ktunaxa concept of what is public and what is private stems from the oral tradition and serves to uphold their special relationship to the land. Dialogue between two people or a group of people becomes the only forum for the expression of certain subjects of heritage. Therefore, subjects such as religion which are not to be spoken of in public will never, in any form, be researchable through the Archives since any material record has the potential for being made public. We often speak of personal privacy issues and the use of records in the Archives. But here, the privacy being protected is the privacy of the community, rather than a privacy of individuals. So when making Ktunaxa heritage services available, the Archives inevitably hits an impassable wall which surrounds those parts of the heritage experienced only by its participants.
The use of heritage sources in the Archives is also restricted for those records which relate to the Ktunaxa's special relationship to the land. For example, if the precise location of the site which contains evil supernatural forces is made available to a researcher in the Archives, then the Ktunaxa Nation may feel accountable if the researcher ignores warnings and explores that place, resulting in a horrible accident. Or, if archaeological records are made available, there is the fear that an amateur archaeologist will go "pothunting." Archaeological records are extensive in the Archives and these records will link the Archives to the proposed Ecomuseum. Because the Ktunaxa's relationship to the land touches every aspect of their heritage, and because this relationship can only be protected through a control over heritage information, the Archives' role in the continuum becomes a bit of a paradox.
The physical environment is an irremovable element in the Ktunaxa oral tradition and hence in the Ktunaxa heritage, and as such, the Archives also has an intimate link to the land. Although this can be said about any type of heritage institution--that its ultimate context is the environment that surrounds it--this has a more perceivable impact for the Ktunaxa Archives. For the Ktunaxa Nation, the land is the culture and as a cultual institution, the Archives is an archives of the land. This can be compared to a non-native community Archives which operates within a strictly social environment. The result of this wide context for the Ktunaxa Archives is a different definition of what constitutes "heritage" than that guiding non-Native archives. The problem this raises is that much of the stuff that comprises Ktunaxa heritage is nonmaterial (or, when it is in a material form such as a artifacts and structures, it is either not immediately visible or it is in a form unfamiliar to the usual concepts of heritage) and that this largely non-material heritage can only be accessed adequately through oral transmission. When reading about heritage, I have stumbled across many phrases that summarize a particular tendency in heritage, such as "The object's the thing" or "The object is the subject of heritage." And indeed, heritage institutions do centre on objects-archives with their records, museums with their collections, and landmark organizations with their buildings. What then is the "object" of the oral tradition and does it in fact have an object that can be targeted in the same way that records, collections, and buildings are targeted? This is the question I would like to leave you with when considering the heritage continuum and the relationship between an archives and an oral tradition.
1 Paper presented at the annual conference of the Archives Association of British Columbia for the session "Archives and the Heritage Continuum," Vancouver, B.C., 25 April 1997.
Jennifer Vallee is the Archivist for the Ktunaxa-Kinbasket Tribal Council.
Reprinted from the AABC Newsletter, Fall 1997, Vol. 7, No. 4.
© 1997 Archives Association of British Columbia