Volume 8, Number 1, 2025

EN:

Through analysis of data from interviews with people who shared their stories with two community archives, Texas After Violence Project (TAVP) and South Asian American Digital Archive (SAADA), this article examines how records creators imagine future use and users. Our findings reveal that people create records with concrete ideas of who might access their record and how they might use it. In keeping with community archives research that troubles the sharp delineation between record creator and user, we find that community archives creators are motivated by the need for representational belonging, radical empathy for their communities, and reciprocal archival imaginaries. Many of the participants in our research also describe their story's potential use as a tool for activism and advocacy. Sharing their stories with these uses in mind, participants in our research engaged in what we call prefigurative record creation, a term we use to describe how participants enacted the future they imagine for their communities by sharing their story in the present. Prefigurative record creation constitutes a political act in opposition to the misrepresentation, erasure, and violence that marginalized communities encounter in society. Recognition of prefigurative records creation as such is crucial to helping community archives understand and meet the expectations of their donors.

EN:

This commentary begins with the author's background, which leads into explaining Indigenous Ways of Knowing, Knowledges, and Sciences. It examines the significance of Indigenous kinship perspectives offering a sustainable way to live, inherent in many Indigenous cultures. It then explores colonial epistemicide, evolving knowledge pluralism, and how to co-produce knowledge needed for evidence-based decision-making. It concludes with a discussion of the transformative role of Indigenous youth in demanding epistemic justice by serving as Indigenous Science Diplomats, promoting knowledge pluralism in evidence-based policy. These young leaders bridge ways of knowing and span power structures and cultural, epistemological, and disciplinary divides, fostering a more inclusive sustainability in the face of climate change. The commentary underscores the importance of empowering Indigenous youth as key actors in creating a sustainable future and advocates for greater recognition and integration of Indigenous Knowledges and Sciences in policy and practice, promoting a path toward epistemic justice and a sustainable planet.