The role of archives in our communities
They helped Jesse Thistle turn his life around: He’ll tell all at a special event on Tuesday
The first full week in April is Archives Awareness Week across Ontario.
Waterloo Region is rich in archival resources:
Among the 175 organizations mapped out on the Archives Association of Ontario website, about a dozen are located here — including the Township of Wilmot’s Sir Adam Beck Archives, the Historical Society of St. Boniface and Maryhill Community, and the archives at University of Waterloo, Wilfrid Laurier and St. Jerome’s University.
The list of “local archive sites and resources” on the Region of Waterloo website has more than double that number.
Special events have been happening across the province in conjunction with the week — which, strictly speaking, ends tomorrow, but is being extended by a couple of days here:
The Region of Waterloo Archives is celebrating with a special event on Tuesday, April 11 entitled “An Evening with Jesse Thistle — Archives as Good Medicine.”
Before turning to details of this event, I want offer some personal testimony on the role of archives in our communities:
My appreciation for what archives do deepened significantly just over five years ago, when the Region of Waterloo Archives graciously accepted a vanload of boxes from the Waterloo Regional Arts Council when we cleared out the office after 30-plus years of operations.
They were able to accept what seemed like a massive amount of material as is, without any cleaning or sorting.
The Arts Council was always solvent, so we were able to make a modest donation to help cover the cost of organizing these holdings in accordance with professional standards, but this help felt gracious to me — a bright spot in an otherwise joyless task.
Today, it is immensely satisfying to be able to go to the “Archives Online” feature of the Region of Waterloo Archives website and find an indexed list of all the key documents in the WRAC collection, along with material related to organizations such as the Kitchener-Waterloo Field Naturalists, Doors Open Waterloo Region, the Region of Waterloo Arts Fund, and the Elmira Maple Sugar Festival.
A precursor to WRAC called the K-W Arts Council Steering Committee is treated separately.
Now that the organization that replaced the Arts Council in some respects has also wound up operations, it is hoped that material related to the Creative Enterprise Initiative and the Prosperity Council of Waterloo Region Task Force on Creative Enterprise also becomes part of the region’s archival records.
Jesse Thistle is Cree-Métis on his mother’s side and Algonquin-Scot on his father’s side.
He will talk about how he used archives to unravel his family history, which he then applied to healing himself and his family.
Thistle is currently working on a PhD in history at York University.
“Archives as Good Medicine: Rediscovering Our Ancestors and Understanding the Root Causes of Intergenerational Trauma” is the title of an award-winning paper he wrote as an undergraduate.
He will talk about how more than a century of trauma over several generations are part of what led him to a life that included homelessness, addiction and incarceration as a young man.
When he found himself hiding from police in a garbage dumpster after a botched robbery attempt, he realized he’d hit bottom.
That was just over 10 years ago. What’s pertinent about Thistle’s journey from homeless drug addict to scholar is the role that archives played in the story of how he turned his life around.
The event is being co-sponsored by the Waterloo Region Crime Prevention Council and Region of Waterloo Housing Services.