Recent writing here has been about Quaker records, and about our relationships with the Native peoples of this land — or the lack of them. That is the point of this series: to get you to look into your own records. Arriving informed is a form of respect, and every question you can answer with your own research is a question you don’t spend on a relationship. There is a saying in oppressed communities that “it is not our job to educate you.”
Your own research
Yesterday’s post named four things a record can be: RECORDED, LEFT OUT, NEVER OPENED, or OPENED AT LAST. The classification matters because it tells you what kind of work is in front of you. A record that was left out calls for you to research what is missing. A record nobody opened calls only for someone to open it.
Interactive
It takes some practice to sort real documents this way, so I wrote an interactive to practice on. Nine actual records, and you decide what each one is: Sorting the Record
What is missing?
One goal of this research is to find what was LEFT OUT — the disease, the deaths, the objections and the grief that the ledgers do not mention. You find those by reading what is there against what is missing.
Of course you need some records in the first place to practice this classification. What has been RECORDED might need to be uncovered. At my Quaker meeting many historical documents were in a safe in the meetinghouse. But for many years we could not access those documents because we couldn’t unlock the safe. Recently, the safe was unlocked, revealing a treasure trove of documents. These documents could be considered NEVER OPENED (in recent times).
Part of the impetus to get the safe open was so we could discover the past history of the relationships among Friends and Native peoples.
The papers in that safe have been waiting a long time. This is a chance to make them OPENED AT LAST.
To the clerk of ___________Friends Meeting,
I am writing to ask three questions about our own records.
1. Where are this meeting’s historical records held, and who is responsible for them?
2. Which of them have been cataloged, and which have never been read? I am asking particularly about any material touching Indian boarding schools, Indian affairs committees, or schools operated by Friends.
3. If any of it has never been read, may I read it, and may I report what I find to this meeting?
NOTE: For Iowa Yearly Meeting (Conservative) Friends, many of our yearly meeting’s documents are in the Iowa State Historical Society’s archives. There is some concern about the recent decision to close the Iowa City archives and send them to Des Moines. There is ongoing litigation to try to prevent that.
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