Waking our Stories

Lisa Ndejuru, Provost Post-Doctoral Fellow, University of Toronto, School of Information
Kristen Young, Community Archivist, Independent
 

Waking our Stories is a work of resistance against the erasure wrought by colonization. Using archives, art, storytelling, theatre, performance, conversations, and many other avenues, the project aims to bring to the forefront the ways history, memory, and community are intertwined and can build road maps for the future. Working in collaboration with the Rwanda Cultural Heritage Academy | Inteko y'Umuco, the National Archives in Rwanda, historians, archivists, and artists, the project hopes to bring to life the Vansina collection. Particularly, the project team is interested in the manuscripts and oral history collected about Rwanda and its pre-colonial history by Jan Vansina. These stories detail a history and oral tradition unique to Rwanda but were collected by those external to Rwanda, and therefore situating them in the current Rwandan archival tradition allows us to explore issues of language, colonisation, repatriation, copyright, and much more. Using a postcolonial archival approach, Waking our Stories will be activating the archive and asking the following: What are the existing archival networks surrounding the Vansina collection? How were/are they influenced by colonial powers? How do they influence the understanding and work of the archives in Rwanda? What are the implications of the difference between the historical manual tradition and the public records tradition, when it comes to archival practice? How does activating the archive and waking the stories connect with and spark healing? How can we activate the archive in ways that bring the stories back to the community? In what ways, can a postcolonial archival framework influence this work? This project also includes a conversation series called, Ibitekerezo. From the verb gutekereza (to think), ibitekerezo, are to us, stories to think and create with, they are a context and a pretext for conversations with elders, scholars, young and old interested in thinking about the past and their relationship to it, it’s relationship to the present and the future. We imagine Waking our stories as a creative and evolving space for learning and thinking and making together. In this exploratory project we hope to bring the archives to life by working with, creating with, storytelling with, and learning from the archives and each other. Through interviews, symposiums, translations, creation, we’re livening the archives and exploring what that means. This presentation will briefly describe the archival collection and the theoretical framework we’re using before delving into the ways collaboration with our various partners are awakening the stories within the archives as well as the ways this awakening has sparked change.

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