at the FIRST NATIONS, FIRST THOUGHTS CONFERENCE

• Main Authors: Leslie Mccartney, Leslie J. Mccartney
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: 2005
• Subjects: Canada; Northwest Territories; Rat River; First Nations; Gwich’in
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.125.976; http://www.cst.ed.ac.uk/2005conference/papers/mccartney_paper.pdf

Two Issues Using the example of the story of Albert Johnson, the Mad Trapper of Rat River, this paper will discuss two related issues: the lack of recorded oral history by Canada’s First Nations in Canadian archives and once deposited into the archival holdings, the inadequacies of the current categorization and copyright laws pertaining to the recordings. Many archives in Canada house document versions of the Johnson story as created by the RCMP and popular media. Few if any Johnson stories can be found in the archives as told by the Gwich’in people who also participated in the events. Issues arise however as to how oral stories opposed to those in literary form can be given the same protection and respect. There are two purposes in this paper I wish to present today: the first is to address the lack of recorded oral history by Canada’s First Nations in Canadian archives of past events perceived, witnessed and experienced by them and how important it is for these records to be included in our archives; the second is that once these oral histories are deposited into the archives, attention needs to be drawn to the inadequacies of the current categorization under the Copyright Act pertaining to them. The question I wish to leave you with today is how can these oral forms of history as opposed to literary forms be given the same protection and respect that literary works receive? Let me state at the outset that I am neither a lawyer nor archivist yet I have worked in both fields. For two years I was the Executive Director of the Gwich’in Social and Cultural Institute in the Northwest Territories. The GSCI has an extensive archival collection including at least one thousand hours of oral history audio-tape. In future, the GSCI hopes to operate a publicly accessible archive. While working with the GSCI and thinking about its future, the issues I raise in this paper were and continue to be very real ones that this or any organization collecting First Nations oral history must grapple with.