Thread by @amaliasl

A thread on erasures and #archivalsilences.

How can we 'see' people whose culture was meant to be suppressed in the historical record?

Wet plate photography in the 1800s made tattoos disappear. This photographic method "used by European settlers served to erase this cultural marker" and Māori intangible heritage. 1/
petapixel.com/2018/07/09/wet…

When women are erased from the historical record because "historically it has been assumed that uncredited [books] were made by men," their bodies tell a different story. #gender #archivalsilences 2/
atlasobscura.com/articles/medie…

We can't easily find marginalized stories bc #LGBTQ love was criminalized and personal papers were confiscated as evidence, and preserved in police cases. #archivalsilences 3/
blog.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ernie-and-geof…

Meant to be schooled and 'civilized', 2,800 named (and 100s more unnamed, disappeared) #indigenous children who died plucked away from their families commemorated in a list, the product of years-long research. #archivalsilences 4/
ctvnews.ca/canada/names-o…

Do not privilege groups of people based on abundance of existing archival material and don't ignore what little is out there for the marginalized, but deliberately seek for it. 5/ #slavery #archivalsilences
processhistory.org/pete-antonio-f…

To locate the women who helped make scientific history look into the footnotes. 6/ #archivalsilences
theatlantic.com/science/archiv…

Do not learn about people from their conquerors judgments and misconceptions.

"Until we have heard people speak for themselves...we don’t really know them." 7/ #archivalsilences #indigenous
time.com/5715476/aztec-…

Too often material are destroyed before they make it into archives. #archivalsilences #LGBTQ 8/

https://twitter.com/nataliereed84/status/1221265388081516545

Intentional #ArchivalSilences.

"Historical documents record almost nothing about life in the independent Maya capitals. Sac Balam is a particular mystery, because it was founded to stay hidden." 9/
sciencemag.org/news/2019/09/s…

Silences in the record are not due to the absence of voices, but to our own limitations in 'seeing' them, hearing them, feeling them--sometimes unconsciously, other times because we do not want to. 10/10 #archivalsilences