The following case study is adapted from the comprehensive Phase 3 (Collections) report prepared for the Public Knowledge program of The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation as part of a larger eighteen-month research project on archives and climate change.
The identification, preservation, and awareness of environmental collections is uneven across American archives. Environmental collections enjoy a wide range of users, and these users work with environmental collections in different ways. One of the most important social justice movements within recent decades–the environmental justice movement–appears to be under-documented within archives.
Ephemerality of Organizations
The environmental justice movement coalesced in the 1980s as communities of color mobilized against the placement of toxic waste sites in their neighborhoods, along with the publication of major reports that demonstrated the extent of environmental hazards near Black and Latino neighborhoods. This led to an increased recognition of environmental racism, meaning the ways in which Black and Latino communities are more likely to be exposed to toxins and pollution. Environmental justice is the recognition that due to systemic racism and economic inequality, communities of color and working class communities face disproportionate environmental harms. In 1991, the first major American environmental conference dedicated to the concerns of people of color took place in Washington DC.1
Environmental justice organizations are often formed in response to a particular issue. For example, a toxic waste site may be proposed for a lower-income neighborhood, or residents of a predominantly Black or Latino community may notice increasing rates of childhood respiratory issues downwind of a factory or refinery. These organizations may dissolve due to the same organizational challenges that afflict other activist groups such as burnout, they may make the transition into a more long-term organization concerned with ongoing or new issues, they may merge into another organization, or they might disband depending on the final outcomes of an event-focused campaign.
As a result, local environmental justice organizations are highly ephemeral. Organizations may have a lifespan of just a few months or a few years. This ephemerality is not unique to environmental justice organizations, and it is common for social justice movement organizations to pop up and fall away for reasons similar to those in the environmental justice movement. Despite the frequent ephemerality of local environmental justice groups, they play a vitally important role in organizing local residents and directing media and legacy environmental nonprofit attention towards local issues that may otherwise be overlooked.
It is not always clear what an obvious destination should be for the preservation of environmental justice collections. Many environmental justice organizations have relationships that range from friendly to hostile with large institutions. Some environmental justice organizations may distrust placing their archives with a university because its scientists are involved with extractive activities that the organization is protesting against, or it may be reluctant to share its records with an archive closely associated with a government entity since environmental justice organizations may often be plaintiffs in lawsuits involving government entities.
It is also unclear to what degree community archives (i.e., those that preserve archives of marginalized communities outside of mainstream archival institutions2) might support the work of environmental justice organization materials. There is not a comprehensive public directory of community archives, and very few community archives participate in finding aid aggregators. Therefore, it is difficult to assess the role community archives currently play in stewarding the collections of environmental justice organizations and activists.
Archivist Outreach Efforts
Archivist outreach efforts have always been critical to developing strong collections. Outreach takes many forms–to existing and potential collection donors, and past and potential archives users. Outreach activities help archivists develop relationships, identify potential archives, learn more about local organizations, and build public awareness of the importance of archives. Like most activities associated with archives, outreach is a labor-intensive activity, but many examples surfaced from the literature and interviews with subject matter experts show how outreach efforts are essential to preserving environmental collections.
Subject matter experts I spoke with from environmental justice organizations with publicly accessible archives explained that it was archivist outreach within their community networks that led to their placement of records in archives. These individuals emphasized what a positive experience they’d had with archivists. They felt that preserving their organization’s records was important, not just for the current issues they’re involved with, but also in inspiring other activists and doing their part to counteract previously lost histories or historical narratives that erased or downplayed community struggles and resistance.
The subject matter experts I spoke with also reinforced the observations of many archivists–that activists are so busy making history that they often do not have the time or capacity to consider their own recordkeeping. This need is becoming especially critical given that so much recordkeeping is now done digitally instead of on paper. The individuals I spoke with indicated interest in donating future records, but they don’t have much clarity on how transferring their born-digital archives would work, and would likely require additional hands-on support from archivists.
In 2003, Brian Keough and Amy Schindler published the results of a survey sent to 115 groups and individuals as part of a study of New York state environmental archives. The study was associated with the University of Albany’s Archives of Public Affairs and Policy (APAP) environmental movement documentation project. The project’s staff found that environmentalists care about preservation, but didn’t know how to manage their own records. The study showed archivists what environmental movement activists consider to be useful records–criteria that are essential to informing archivist appraisal.3 This study also found that while records could often be lost or destroyed, just as often someone in an organization, even from long defunct organizations, had held onto the records. This effort demonstrates that a focused outreach effort can turn up collections that might not have otherwise entered an archive.
The challenges of documenting environmental movement collections shares challenges with other social justice related documentation efforts. Amy McDonald’s survey of the archival practices of nonprofit organizations representing marginalized populations echoes many of the findings of Keough and Schindler’s study. McDonald found that the vast majority of organizations that maintain their own organizational records have not contacted an archive to establish a donor relationship, and the vast majority also report that an archivist has never contacted them to solicit a donation.4
Welch’s study of environmental collections at western archives in the 1990s showed at the time that less than a third of archives reported promoting environmental research through conferences, press releases, and public outreach, often citing “lack of funding and burdensome workloads.”5 Although this study was published in the 1990s, and certainly the awareness of environmental issues has increased in recent decades, the concurrent lack of funding and resources for archives likely has only become worse. This finding was echoed again in an article by historian James Longhurst on the potential opportunities and barriers of increasing access to 1960s-1980s environmental movement records. Longhurst found that in his conversations with archivists, many of them were reluctant to expand their collecting because of resource constraints and existing backlogs.6
Donor Relationship Challenges
Two major issues seem to be sticking points in navigating challenges with donors of environmental collections: distrust of institutions, and provenance of records. Mainstream archives are often located in large institutions, especially universities and governments, that are frequently at odds with the perspective and mission of environmental justice groups. Environmental justice activists often find themselves in opposition to local, state, and/or federal government over issues of pollution control, toxic chemical exposure, and waste siting decisions. Some organizations may also be suspicious of universities that may have real or perceived close links to industry, especially universities in areas with significant extractive activity.
Archivists based in major research universities are also highly sensitive to the larger fundraising and donor context of the universities they work for. This is a challenge of particular concern to public university-based archives, given those universities’ dependence on a mix of funding sources that includes public money and wealthy private donors. While none of the university archivists I spoke with shared experiences about political pressure or administrative discouragement to avoid collecting in certain areas, all raised the theoretical possibility of tension in this area.
Because most mainstream archives are open to the public, both activists and archivists occasionally mentioned issues around access. Educating environmental justice activists about archival practices is important for building trust and transparency, especially for potential donors of collections. Sometimes activists may acquire materials under unclear circumstances, and many archives will not take such materials due to both the potential legal and ethical risks of acquiring collections in which there is not clear ownership or title. Sometimes activists may avoid donating some or all of their collections because there is no way to restrict materials from certain groups of users in an archive mandated to serve the broad public. Activists are sensitive to their records potentially being used by the opposition, whether those are government officials, rival activist organizations, or industry interests. Sometimes, however, making archives publicly available can be a powerful act for an activist organization in asserting its visibility and importance.
The outreach needs and relationship considerations between activists and archivists in the environmental justice context echo other studies of archivists’ work with marginalized groups and movement-based organizations. Archivists who have worked with other communities of activists (particularly campus-based and student activist groups) have noted the challenges associated with preserving these archives. McDonald’s study showed that nonprofit organizations frequently state a preference for working with archives and archivists that share their viewpoints, and around one in five organizations reported they “would not consider donating their records to any archival institution.”7 Many archivists are aware of these tensions, and have often stressed that it is important to them that the records are preserved through some means, even if not at their institution.
- Berndt, “30th Anniversary.” ↩︎
- Jules, “Architecting Sustainable Futures,” 4. ↩︎
- Keough and Schindler, “Thinking Globally, Acting Locally.” ↩︎
- McDonald, “Out of the Hollinger Box and into the Streets: Activists, Archives, and Under-Documented Populations.” ↩︎
- Welch, “‘Green’ Archivism,” 87. ↩︎
- Longhurst, “‘Archival Power’ and the Future of Environmental Movement History.” ↩︎
- McDonald, “Out of the Hollinger Box and into the Streets: Activists, Archives, and Under-Documented Populations,” 62. ↩︎
Sources
Berndt, Brooks. “30th Anniversary: The First National People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit.” United Church of Christ (blog), March 25, 2021. https://www.ucc.org/30th-anniversary-the-first-national-people-of-color-environmental-leadership-summit/
Jules, Bergis. “Architecting Sustainable Futures: Exploring Funding Models in Community-Based Archives.” Shift Collective, 2019. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1mPAHOagseUoQ7dSYytM0ZosvvvEFLz6u/view
Keough, Brian, and Amy C. Schindler. “Thinking Globally, Acting Locally: Documenting Environmental Activism in New York State.” Archival Issues: Journal of the Midwest Archives Conference 28, no. 2 (2003/2004 2003): 121–35.
Longhurst, James. “‘Archival Power’ and the Future of Environmental Movement History.” Pennsylvania History: A Journal of Mid-Atlantic Studies 79, no. 4 (October 1, 2012): 537–49. https://doi.org/10.5325/pennhistory.79.4.0537
McDonald, Amy S. “Out of the Hollinger Box and into the Streets: Activists, Archives, and Under-Documented Populations.” UNC Chapel Hill, 2008. https://ils.unc.edu/MSpapers/3456.pdf
Welch, Todd. “‘Green’ Archivism: The Archival Response to Environmental Research.” American Archivist 62, no. 1 (January 1, 1999): 74–94.