Introducing Uncommon Bonds

Moravian missionaries first arrived in northern Labrador in 1752. Over the course of 250-plus years, these missionaries and the Labrador Inuit they worked with created tens of thousands of textual and visual records. Historically, many of those records were maintained in the Moravian stations of Killinek, Hebron, Nutak, Okak, Ramah, Nain, Hopedale, Zoar and Makkovik. Today, many of those records are in archives far-removed from Labrador.

Since 1959, archivists, librarians, historians, missionaries and Labrador Inuit have tried different approaches to get reproductions of those records in closer range to the communities in which they originated. Those first experiments in microfilm meant a wide range of reproductions could be accessible within the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador. But that access never practically extended to Labrador. In the early to mid-aughts, Memorial University, Laval University and University of Toronto were the first experiment with digital return. Now dormant, Labrador Inuit Through Moravian Eyes curated a selection of records for a general audience. With no low-bandwidth option for viewing, though, it was slow to load in the communities of northern Labrador.

The SSHRC-funded research partnership between Memorial University and Nunatsiavut Government, Tradition and Transition Among the Labrador Inuit provided support for some of the first experiments in local digital return of Moravian as well as other records by and concerning Labrador Inuit. All of the organizations that are part of this project worked together on Tradition and Transition. What we realized during that work was that meaningful access means broad access to these records. In addition to developing a regional, locally-accessible digital repository, we are working to publish records with partners outside the region that can both help to digitize and publish content. Memorial University Libraries and its Digital Archives Initiative have been important allies here. So too has the Moravian Archives Bethlehem.

During Tradition and Transition, we focussed our attention on digitizing and publishing high impact, easy-to-use records. In other words, published textual records and visual imagery. On the Digital Archives Initiative, users can now search Moravian publications like Periodical Accounts and Moravian Missions by keywords and quickly learn about the history of Moravian stations in Labrador. The photos we digitized at partnering organizations like the Moravian Archives and the Moravian Historical Society are also making their way onto external platforms. All materials are coming back to the local, digital repository.

Uncommon Bonds is the next step in the larger goal of ensuring Labrador Inuit are able to access their documentary heritage. The physical records we are digitizing in this project were removed from northern Labrador in 1959, a request made by Moravian missionaries to Memorial University. William Whiteley, the Archivist-Historian for Memorial at the time, devised a project to microfilm the records at the Public Archives of Canada (now Library and Archives Canada). Copies of those microfilms were deposited at LAC and Memorial and the original records sent to the Moravian Archives Bethlehem.

Of course, digitization is only one aspect of the project. Management, governance, ensuring access to these records are central to our work. We will be using this blog to profile components of the project; i.e. to discuss issues arising from description, management, access, translation of these records. As we communicate about our work, we hope to hear back from you, whether that comes in the form of a word of encouragement, correction, or sustained discussion. We are very keen to learn about people doing similar work and developing management strategies for similar types of records.

We do want to point out that this website is not the digital archive. While we will be drawing from records in the collection in our blog posts, the digital repositories will be hosted elsewhere. We will provide more details as they take shape. We also want to point out that this project centres upon the digitization of the “MissLabrador” collection at the Moravian Archives in Bethlehem, PA, USA. There are many, many other collections of Moravian records concerning Labrador Inuit in North America and Europe. We will refer to those from time-to-time here, but we will not be digitizing those records as part of this project.

We are looking forward to communicating with you about our work over the coming months and look forward to hearing from you. We are very grateful to the Council on Library and Information Resources for making this project possible as well as Katherine Timms at Library and Archives Canada for helping us to develop our project.

Nakummek.

Mark David Turner, Co-PI