A New Approach to Digital Preservation
iPRES 2025 in Aotearoa New Zealand showed the impact of centering Indigenous perspectives and cultural values in digital preservation. The conference used te reo Māori concepts (Haerenga, Tūtaki, Tūhono) as themes, opened with Hon. Simon Kofe's keynote on Tuvalu's Digital Nation project, and closed with Peter-Lucas Jones discussing te reo Māori preservation. The event included ceremonial welcomes, an all-BIPOC early-career panel, and focused on sustainability and accessibility.
This wasn't a typical security incident. It highlighted what most digital preservation programs overlook: engaging the communities whose materials they're preserving.
Key Events and Insights
Conference Design Phase: Organizers prioritized Māori concepts and Indigenous keynote speakers, embedding cultural engagement from the outset.
Opening (Nov. 4): Hon. Kofe redefined digital preservation as self-determination for Tuvalu, emphasizing sovereignty through a Digital Nation initiative. The opening included a mihi whakatau and cultural performance.
Mid-Conference: An all-BIPOC panel shared early-career experiences, the Bake-Off showcased practical tools, and the Digital POWRR team won Best Paper for highlighting "connection as a framework for sustainability."
Closing: Jones warned of the potential disappearance of 50% of the world's languages by 2050, stressing that misinterpretation can harm languages more than colonization.
Post-Conference: The event concluded with exclusive access to Te Papa Tongarewa on World Digital Preservation Day.
Missing Controls in Preservation Programs
Most digital preservation programs lack these essential controls:
Community Consultation: You're preserving materials without structured input from their originating communities. Your appraisal criteria prioritize institutional needs over community values.
Cultural Competency: Your team lacks training in Indigenous knowledge systems. Western archival principles are applied universally, ignoring different cultural views on memory, ownership, and access.
Representation in Decision-Making: Your advisory boards and project teams lack members from the communities whose materials you hold. You're making preservation decisions without their input.
Sovereignty Acknowledgment: Your access policies don't recognize community rights over their cultural materials. You treat all records as equally accessible, disregarding cultural protocols around sensitive knowledge.
Language Preservation Infrastructure: If you're preserving materials in endangered languages, you lack connections with native speakers or language revitalization programs. You can preserve data but not ensure its interpretability.
Standards and Requirements
ISO 14721 (OAIS) defines a Designated Community as "an identified group of potential consumers who should be able to understand a particular set of information." Your Submission Information Package must include enough Preservation Description Information for that community to understand the content.
Most programs miss this: the standard requires identifying and understanding your designated community. For Indigenous materials, your community isn't just "future researchers." It's the creators, their descendants, and language speakers.
The Generally Accepted Recordkeeping Principles include the Principle of Accountability: "A senior executive shall oversee the records and information management program and delegate program responsibility to appropriate individuals." When materials come from specific cultural communities, accountability extends to those communities. Your oversight should include community representatives.
ISO 30300 requires your management system to address stakeholder needs. If stakeholders include Indigenous communities, your system must incorporate their knowledge systems and cultural protocols, not just institutional policies.
Action Items for Your Team
Audit Your Designated Communities: List every collection or record series you maintain. Identify the originating community for each. If you can't, your OAIS implementation is incomplete.
Integrate Consultation: Before appraising, accessioning, or setting access policies for culturally significant materials, establish a consultation mechanism. This is essential for authentic preservation.
Hire for Cultural Competency: Your next hire should have experience working with diverse communities. Technical skills alone aren't enough for preserving culturally significant materials.
Document Sovereignty Decisions: Create a policy framework acknowledging community rights to control access to their materials. Document community requests for access restrictions and reasons. This documentation is part of your Preservation Description Information.
Engage with Language Preservation Efforts: If you hold materials in endangered languages, build relationships with language revitalization programs. Your fixity checks are meaningless if no one can interpret the content.
Revise Appraisal Criteria: Your Records Control Schedule should include community value as an appraisal factor, not just administrative, legal, or historical value.
Test Access Policies Against Cultural Protocols: Review your Dissemination Information Package procedures. Can you honor requests to restrict access to ceremonial knowledge or sensitive cultural information? If not, you're violating the trust implicit in accepting those materials.
The iPRES 2025 conference showed that centering Indigenous perspectives isn't about adding cultural content to an existing program. It's about recognizing that preservation without community engagement is just storage. Your fixity checks and format migrations aren't preservation if the communities who created the materials have no voice in their management.
Ask yourself: who are we preserving this for? If you can't name specific communities and describe their needs, you're not doing digital preservation. You're just managing bits.
