Special Interest Section for Indigenous Archives

Dear SISIA Members,

Welcome to the 2025 September start of SISIA. My name is Natasha. I am a member of ACA and SISIA. It is an honour and pleasure to return to the SISIA. My role will be to continue to provide support by setting up the meetings and holding space for conversations that are hopefully meaningful and generative for your professional and personal archival selves. I am looking forward to meeting each of you and seeing some you again. 

Similar to previous years, the goal of the SISIA is to establish an informal meeting space for members interested or working with Indigenous collections. The meetings are often open dialogue for members to discuss any topic related to Indigenous perspectives, experience, and interests generally but also regarding archive. We are very open to discuss whatever is of interest to you in the present moment on these topics and hope that we can be of support to each other on our varying paths of learning and unlearning both within and external to the archive. Below is a meeting schedule. Similar to last year, the group will meet bi-monthly, the generally on last Friday of the month from 2 pm-3 pm EST. 

Last year, some of the topics we covered in conversation include:
•    ACA Reconciliation Framework, the work and goals of the Indigenous Matters Committee (IMC)
•    challenges, priorities, and resources for Indigenous community-based archival practice 
•    content management systems for Indigenous-based archives
•    pre and post ACA conference topics and discussions
•    HBC bankruptcy and ACA open letter
•    an ACA Indigenous-only SISIA group

Throughout all of this discussion, a number of resources and links were provided in the chat and documented in the meeting minutes. Currently, we are in the process establishing a list of those shared resources to be posted on the SISIA webpage of ACA.

2025 Meeting Schedule
Friday September 12th, 2-3 pm EST
Friday November 28 , 2-3 pm EST

2026 Meeting Schedule 
Friday January 30, 2-3 pm EST
Friday March 27, 2-3 pm EST
Friday May 29, 2-3 pm EST
Friday July 31, 2-3 pm EST



I will be working on the agenda for the first meeting over in the coming weeks. If you have any questions or there is an item you would like to discuss in the next meeting or subsequent meetings, please contact me and I would be happy to include. Please know, we are always happy revisit previous discussed topics.

Thank you! Have a lovely day and I look forward to meeting you on September 12th.
Natasha