Learning Takes More Than One Way of Knowing: Embedding Indigenous and Queer of Color Theory within Knowledge Organization Resources

Archives, libraries, and cultural information institutions influence and contextualize our cultural knowledge. Embedded in these practices are white supremacist, colonial legacies that have excluded crucial cultural knowledges and contexts, particularly for BIPOC and LGBTQ1 communities. While momentum is building to create space for other knowledge frameworks, the scholarship broadly has yet to address how archival professionals and students are taught about these concepts, particularly in relation to archival description. Through a critical discourse analysis, we identify the ways in which white supremacist heteronormative practices are upheld within archival description education and training. To highlight interventions, we look at the ways in which scholars are already engaging with alternative or disruptive practices. By applying these approaches more intentionally within these frameworks allows for a more robust and critical archival practice that provides the ability to support the diverse user needs of these communities to create and perpetuate reparative justice.