Amelia Schafer
ICT
The state of California filed a federal lawsuit against the National Archives and Records Administration Oct. 14 seeking to keep open a facility whose closure was abruptly announced with no tribal, state or local consultation.
In late September, the records administration announced the closing of two locations, the San Francisco and Chicago National Archives. Tribal governments depend on the National Archives for records relating to the Bureau of Indian Affairs including enrollment records, land records and deeds, federal boarding school records and more.
“Closing the National Archives at San Francisco … would irreparably harm California and its interests,” the lawsuit, filed in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California, reads. “Indeed, transferring the records … would not only take them away from the communities that rely on them most, but also would risk damage and loss of the items altogether, given their age and fragility. At the very least, transferring the records means they would be inaccessible for an unknown period of time, which could last years, during transit and processing.”
California is home to 109 federally recognized tribes.
California’s lawsuit asks the court to force the archives to halt the San Francisco facility closure. It was filed the same day as major national Native advocacy organizations slammed the planned closures in a letter sent to Ed Forst, the acting archivist of the archive administration.
“Decisions concerning the location, accessibility, and stewardship of federal Indian records should not be made without direct communication and meaningful consultation with affected Tribal Nations and Native communities,” the letter states. It was drafted on behalf of the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition, Native Organizers Alliance, the National Congress of American Indians and the Native American Rights Fund.
Both the San Francisco Archives, which is located in neighboring San Bruno, and Chicago National Archives locations are slated to close at an unspecified date, though records could begin to move to other locations as early as next week, said California Attorney General Rob Bonta during a press conference Wednesday.
The National Archives and Records Administration did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Tribal leaders and historic preservation officers said they’ve been continuously left in the dark regarding the closures and that they were not consulted on the plans. Since the announced closures, however, the archive administration held two virtual “consultations,” one on Oct. 13 and one on Oct. 15.
The virtual tribal consultations were structured more like a “listening session,” said Sokaogon Chippewa Community Tribal Historic Preservation Officer Michael LaRonge, who added that a consultation is an important first step, and shouldn’t be substituted with a listening session.
LaRonge and others in attendance said they felt that the closure decisions were already finalized.
“I’m getting a lot of non-answers,” Fallon Carey, digital archives director for the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition to ICT. “It feels a lot like lip service.”
Carey, a citizen of the Cherokee Nation, attended the virtual meeting on Thursday, Oct. 15.
“I think there’s a transparency issue here and there’s a lack of trust, from what I gather,” Carey said. “Tribal leaders and community members are really concerned.”
For communities looking to heal from the trauma of the Federal Indian Boarding School era, losing access to these records is a major concern, Carey said. Many survivors are elders who don’t have the time to wait for the records to become available again or the resources to travel and see them in person before they’re inaccessible, she said.
“I have seen it with my own eyes, I’ve experienced it in my own life. Having access to these records can be deeply healing, having access to your own histories,” Carey said.
Both LaRonge and Carey said National Archives leaders agreed to move the Bureau of Indian Affairs records last, but LaRonge said that doesn’t change the fact that it is moving.
“[That’s] great if you work for a tribe who has funds to send people down there, but we don’t,” LaRonge said. “They just kept dangling that carrot, like ‘Oh, well, if you can just come to the reading room, the research room is open, you can just make an appointment.’ But no, I can’t… It doesn’t feel like a good victory.”
Additionally, leaders were told the BIA records are not a priority for digitization as they contain private information, LaRonge said.
“You have a responsibility to digitize these records – it’s part of your fiduciary responsibility to tribes under treaty law, a right to make those things available to us if we need them, and you’re telling us that it’s not a priority for you,” LaRonge said. “How many times do the tribes have to be told this isn’t a priority for us.”
LaRonge said the Sokaogon Band submitted a letter to Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s office to express its concern over the closure. Unlike California, there are no federally recognized tribes within Illinois. The state of Illinois has not filed any lawsuit against the National Archives.
“For Illinois, it feels like the tribes have been kind of left behind,” LaRonge said.
Both affected archives locations contain records that could be crucial to federally terminated tribes seeking restoration or unrecognized tribes seeking recognition. In one case, the Chicago National Archives contains documents from the former Green Bay Agency which may be crucial in the ongoing fight to restore the Brothertown Nation of Wisconsin’s federal recognition status, Chairwoman Phylis Tousey told ICT. The tribe was federally terminated by an act of Congress in 1839.
