Beausoleil First Nation to create a digital legacy

By Rick Garrick

BEAUSOLEIL FIRST NATION — The Beausoleil First Nation Public Library is planning to create permanent copies of artifacts and recordings of Elders through a $25,000 Our Legacy – Our Home (Digitizing Project) funded by the federal government. The artifacts are stored in the library from archeological digs and the recordings include videos and audios of Elders who attended Indian Residential Schools that were collected by youth on DVDs.

“We’re turning those into a permanent document that can be retrieved whenever in the future, and what we are hoping to do is to provide training to people in our community from each age bracket, so someone under the 20s, someone in their 30s or 40s or 50s or 60s,” says Kathleen Copegog, librarian/CEO at Beausoleil First Nation Public Library. “As time goes by there will always be somebody in the community that is able to digitize any new artifacts or audio recordings that come into our community, so we will have a lasting collection of things that occur or have happened in our community for the future, and nothing will be lost. We have lost so many things already.”

Copegog says the digitizing equipment will be housed at the library and will be open to the public.

“So if they have photos they need to digitize, we can do that for them as well, and teach them how to do it,” Copegog says. “And if there is a bigger project, say in the future there is another archeological dig or something that the Band does, then we will have the means to record everything.”

Copegog says the library is the “hub of the community.”

“We provide lifelong learning, we’re a safe environment for the community if people just need to come in and just have a place to sit and relax and unwind and just take a moment in their time to just breathe,” Copegog says. “We actually have an adult program that runs every Friday night — it’s a create and destress program. I noticed that a few people in the community had started expressing the fact that they were stressed out, that life was getting hard and they wished they had somewhere to go, and I thought why not take that but also take crafting and add it to the scenario because then you’re actually creating.”

Copegog says that she believes reading and creating are things that help people to destress in their lives.

“This group has worked tremendously with the people that come to that group and it’s allowed them to continue on with life and not deflate like a lot of people are doing during COVID-19,” Copegog says. “So it’s a really excellent program and we’re looking to continue on with this one for the long-term.”

The $25,000 in funding was part of $739,305 provided through Library and Archives Canada’s Listen, Hear our Voices initiative to 19 Indigenous organizations across the country to digitize and make accessible their existing audio and video heritage for future generations. The Listen, Hear Our Voices initiative was part of the Indigenous documentary heritage initiatives that were developed in 2017 to increase access to Indigenous-related content in collections in Library and Archives Canada’s care and to support Indigenous communities to preserve First Nations, Inuit and Métis Nation culture and language recordings.

“As we are walking the path of reconciliation with Indigenous peoples and acknowledging the tragic impact of colonialism and erasure of Indigenous peoples, initiatives such as this important one reinforces our mandate — and even more so, our obligation — to support Indigenous communities in their efforts to reclaim their cultural heritage and identity,” says Steven Guilbeault, minister of Canadian Heritage.