Indigenous people should decide on matters of access to archival information

A ccess to information and protection of personal privacy are enshrined as two pillars of a democratic society. However, a critical examination of who has access to information, why they have access to that information and who has the decision-making authority to determine what is released through a lens of Indigenous rights, self-determination and sovereignty reveals that for many years, Indigenous peoples have been excluded from determining who controls access to information about them. While Canada has amassed close to twenty kilometers of paper records detailing the relationship between the state and Indigenous people through the ''Indian Affairs'' files at Library and Archives Canada, Indigenous peoples have had little to no say regarding the use, disclosure or access to that information. The National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation (NCTR) is tasked with honouring, sharing and preserving a sacred collection of materials that was amassed through the work of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) and the mandatory obligation placed on parties to the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement to share their documents with the TRC. The resulting archive, now housed at the NCTR, consists of millions of records, many of which contain sensitive personal information on a range of matters related to health, schooling, interactions with police and other matters. The transfer of these records from the control of the church and government archives into an institution governed and led by Indigenous peoples represents a fundamental shift in the balance of power regarding who has access, the reasons for access and concepts of ethical and respectful stewardship. Some of the materials collected by the TRC Á such as the school files from the RG10 series at Library and Archives Canada Á are currently in the public domain. Microfilmed in the 1960s, distributed across the country and later digitized and placed online, these records contain personal information about students and their families. These records were made public in an era before present day concepts of privacy and access were developed in this country. The NCTR too has placed many of these records online in an effort to fulfil our mandate to broadly inform the Canadian public and to make the records collected by the TRC ''as accessible as possible.'' However, just as the authors of this paper are left with a sense of unease about the ready and free availability of materials that would ordinarily be protected under privacy legislation, so …