Decolonization, decentralization, and digitization—a Peircean framework for transforming archival practice.
Abstract
This research intertwines Peircean pragmaticism, North American Indigenous traditions, and archival science with the aim of preparing settler institutions, archives, and science for respectful and fruitful engagement with Indigenous nations in both physical and digital places.
Seeking to amend, not replace current reconciliation approaches and rights-based frameworks, the study emphasizes the necessity for serious reevaluation of identities, narratives, and processes within the evolving archival landscape—simultaneously challenged by digital technologies, resurgent community politics, and ecological instability.
Key Arguments
The research investigates Charles Sanders Peirce's community-minded pragmaticism as a bridge between traditional and postmodern archival thought, particularly in digital contexts. It positions archives not just as places for remembering and forgetting, but as potential sources of abductive inspiration—uniquely useful for generating new theories rather than repeatedly testing along known binaries.
Through Mary Parker Follett's integrative democracy and Kenneth Thibodeau's semiotic archival engineering, the work proposes amendments to current top-down decision-making structures that artificially limit archival imagination.
Indigenous Perspectives
The research traces pragmaticist developments to Indigenous worldviews, sovereignty, cultural revitalization, and community engagement. It argues that archives, when approached from a pragmaticist perspective that leaves room for spirituality and community-specific meaning, can serve as a powerful tool for Indigenous communities to interrogate and assert their narratives, histories, and identities.
!A Semiotic Future for North American Archives pdf 1.pdf