Archives & Manuscripts Post #9

This week I wrote my site visit paper based on my experience interviewing archivist Patrick Connelly of the National Archives at Philadelphia and my exploration of the archival facilities. The function of the National Archives is to provide the public access to the documents of the United States government that possess significant research value. Through this access, the National Archives hopes to foster an environment of increased democracy and government accountability. In this sense, the National Archives’ purpose extends well beyond the needs of academic researchers, but also provides valuable information to those pursuing more practical ends such as gathering information for a potential court case. These ideas of archival access and purpose remained on my mind throughout the week.

Yesterday, I listened to a radio broadcast of the California Report that dealt with the restoration of 1911 sound recordings of Native Californian Ishi. While Ishi is less famous in Philadelphia, he remains a well-known, yet myseterious figure of California history. Ishi was the last surviving member of the Yahi tribe, an ethnic group decimated by white settlers in Butte County, California. After Ishi wandered into downtown Oroville, CA naked, unable to speak English, Alfred Kroeber, an anthropologist at UC Berkeley, eventually took him under his wing. Kroeber housed him in UC Berkeley’s anthropology museum where he performed arrow-making demonstrations for tourists during the weekends. It’s a very sad and strange story, really.

However, Kroeber recorded hours of the Yahi songs and stories, creating the only archival recording collection of the now defunct Yahi language in existence. Until recently, the recordings remained so badly damaged that researchers could not listen to them. Yet, UC Berkeley physicists are currently working to restore the recordings. What I found interesting about this story is that when the restoration process is complete, Ishi’s descendants will be consulted as to what material can be used for public research and what should belong to tribal communities. These recordings possess great potential for restoring the songs, stories, and language of the Yahi for other California tribal communities with a common lineage. In my mind, this story communicates how access to archival materials has the potential to facilitate much more than academic research. Archival material can be a tool of community and cultural restoration.

Here is a link to the article:

http://ww2.kqed.org/news/2015/10/25/restoring-the-long-lost-sounds-of-native-california