S4, E1- Decolonizing the Archive w/Natalia Fernández

We are joined in this episode by Oregon State University Associate Professor and Special Collections and Archives Research Center (SCARC) Curator, Natalia Fernández. 

How can academic archives confront harmful narratives and create more inclusive records? Fernández shares how SCARC'S Antiracist Description Activities project is challenging biased language, improving finding aids and ensuring collections are represented with dignity, non-prejudice and accuracy.

Date of Interview: February 6, 2025 

Hosts: Joan Vigil & Brittany Young

Transcript

(Intro Music Playing)

Joan Vigil:                          

Hello, and welcome to OVERDUE: Weeding Out Oppression in Libraries, a podcast produced by the Oregon Library Association's Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Anti-Racism Committee. My name is Joan Vigil, and I am a librarian in Oregon.

Brittany Young:               

Hi, my name is Brittany Young, and I am a librarian in Oregon also. My pronouns are she/her/hers. In this episode, we have the pleasure of chatting with Natalia Fernandez:.

Joan Vigil:                           

Natalia Fernandez: is an associate professor and the curator of Oregon Multicultural Archives, OMA, and the OSU Queer Archives, OSQA, at the Oregon State University Special Collections and Archives Research Center. Fernandez's mission for directing the OMA and the OSQA is to work in collaboration with Oregon's African American, Asian American, Latinx, Native American, and OSU's LGBTIAQ+ communities to support them in preserving their histories and sharing their stories.

Fernandez holds an MA in Information Resources and Library Science from the University of Arizona, U of A. She graduated from the University of Arizona Knowledge River program, a program that focuses on community-based librarianship and partnerships with traditionally-underserved communities. Fernandez is a recipient of a 2017 I Love My Librarian Award. Welcome. Thank you for joining us, Natalia.

Natalia Fernandez:           

Thank you for having me.

Brittany Young:                

All right. Let's settle in with an icebreaker question. You can have any fictional character as your imaginary friend. Who do you choose and why?

Natalia Fernandez:           

So a dear friend of mine and a friend of the podcast, a member of the OLA EDIAR committee, Kristen Cure and I were chatting recently. We went to grad school together at the University of Arizona, and we were talking about our love for Lord of the Rings and how much we'd love to live in the Shire. And it'd be amazing to be friends with Sam and Rosie. They'd be incredible friends, so loyal and supportive and we would garden together and do beautiful things together. So that would be my imaginary friendship. As long as I could bring some other friends along too, that would be lovely.

Brittany Young:                

That does sound lovely. And I can definitely imagine you and Kristen out there gardening with other friends too.

Joan Vigil:                           

I imagine all the fun and dancing.

Natalia Fernandez:           

Yes. Yes.

Joan Vigil:                           

Okay, so first question. So our discussion today will bridge a few topics including the intersection of libraries, archives, and equity work. For those that may not be familiar with the anti-racist description activities in the OSU Special Collections and Archives Research Center, can you give the listeners a brief description of the project?

Natalia Fernandez:           

Yes. Maybe it won't be quite brief, but archivists love context, and so I'll give you some background information first. So people might be wondering what is archival description? So archives describe archival collections by writing a document called a finding aid or a collection guide. Because libraries and archives are different in terms of libraries have browsable stacks and archival materials are collected in closed stacks with an invitation for the public to request access, the public needs to know what we have. And so a finding aid is intended to support researchers with context for and access to the collections. A finding aid describes the content of a collection. It includes information about the personal organization who assembled the materials, information about the content, subjects represented. So it gives researchers an idea of what materials are in the collection.

We like to describe it as it's like having the introduction, table of contents, index to a book. And then the archival materials are the book chapters themselves that you could get to request. And they're really significant documents because more often than not, reviewing the finding aid for an archival collection is the first step in understanding the contents to a collection. And the words used in a finding aid are really essential and impactful in how people find information. That's how they're able to then let us know what they need. So with that background, the issues that we're trying to address, it's the question of why are there harmful materials and descriptive terms present in our collections? And that's for a number of reasons. One being that archivists often reuse language provided by the creators or former owners of the materials themselves in part to show their original context, and the context is really important, but that means that can also reflect the creator or former owners biases and prejudices.

And we need to retain that because that's important to understand the context and racism and prejudice within archival collections, but also acknowledge that racism and bigotry is present in our collections. And we as archivists understand that encountering that language can be really challenging for researchers and community members, and so it's important to acknowledge that and make note of it when it's there to let people know. And also past archivists have chosen language to describe some of our collections. Finding aids don't create themselves. We are people with our own biases and flaws. And in the past we've created these finding aids and it's possible that language that was accepted at one time is now outdated and harmful and it's important to update those finding aids. And we also use things like tools like Library of Congress, subject headings, which librarians know are problematic in their own ways.

And so again, it's thinking about the power that we have as archivists and the responsibility that we have in choosing the words to describe the collections that we steward and make accessible. And so it's important for us to think of ways to address those issues and make them known to the public. And SCARC, Special Collections and Archives Research Center, that's our acronym, SCARC, we're part of a larger professional community of archivists and special collections repositories that are actively engaging in this work, so we're one piece of a larger puzzle. And of course, it's the responsibility of all archivists individually and collectively to do this work and to keep up to date with best practices and how we can continue to make changes. So that was my brief description of the project.

Brittany Young:                

Thank you, Natalia. And I appreciated the beginning description about just archives in general, particularly that the difference between archives and a library is that it's a closed collection but with an invitation to view more. So how did you move from unlearning and learning with colleagues at OSU to the action taken with the anti-racist description activities?

Natalia Fernandez:           

So the short answer is not surprising: trainings, webinars, workshops, self-education, self-reflection, being in conversation together, so those were all steps that we took as a department. But I do want to acknowledge that the longer answer is that context matters and the environment in which anti-racist work takes place is really impactful and important to consider. And for us at Oregon State University, we are within the state of Oregon. It's a predominantly white state, but especially within the Willamette Valley, we have progressive and liberal views for the most part, especially being on a university campus that is really dedicated to equity, diversity, and inclusion and anti-racist activities. We have an Office of Institutional Diversity on campus. OSU engaged in a building and place names evaluation and renaming process a number of years ago, which was a university-level example of acknowledging harmful content and reparative description.

There were some namesakes of buildings that we researched and as a larger community we talked about changing names and we did. There were some names of buildings that were renamed, so that's the university context that support for this work. And then at the library level, 2020 was an important year of a transition for many libraries, and that was around the time that we started making more proactive changes. It was around that time that I became interim department head, so that put me in a position of power and leadership that helped move things forward in our department. And then we've been engaging in this work together department-wide since then.

We engaged in this work separately, but 2020 was really a year of transition for us where we started doing things as a department. And as a library in 2021, we hired an organization called DeEtta Jones and Associates, and we engaged in library-wide participation for social justice work. And so all of this context is to demonstrate that we have a lot of administrative support from the library at the university level. We have never received pushback. In fact, the work that we do is both valued, encouraged, and expected. And so I think that's just important to keep in mind when we're talking about this work because I recognize that context matters and not everyone has the same environmental circumstances, so just sharing that context for people to understand where we're coming from in terms of the work that we're doing.

Joan Vigil:                           

I think that's great. It sounds like there was so much support. It sounds like such a good example of like what it can be when everyone just works together. I think that's fantastic. What challenges did the team encounter and how were they overcome?

Natalia Fernandez:          

So our main challenges were where to start and time. And during that year of transition in 2020 when we began to engage in trainings and conversations regarding anti-racist work, we started looking at the context for that work within archives and special collections. So a place to start for us that we found was helpful was to talk about and acknowledge the work that we had already done, discussing what we already knew, what we needed to learn together, acknowledging our own positionalities and educational journeys. We wanted to come together to see, okay, where is everyone individually and then how can we move together as a department moving forward? We had staff meeting, so department-wide meetings. We engaged in research to learn what other institutions were doing. And in some cases in our projects, we've repurposed and used the work of other institutions.

We developed departmental goals as a department and we put them in our work plan. We had a shared understanding that this was everyone's work, that it wasn't specific to certain individuals that as a department we did this work together. Then we started taking some steps. We created a small work group to create a LibGuide, a website for us to update and publish our work. So it was a way for us to document our work and also be transparent with the public of what we were doing. And we attached that to our homepage, to our mission statement. This is very specific to archival collections, but within our back-end system to create finding aids, we created a field called Statement on Description. So that was a place in the finding aid to add our statements and make sure that that was front and center in the finding aid. So we thought about in the context of our work, what can we do in our systems to make the work more visible?

And then for time, one of the things that we did was we updated position descriptions so that language regarding anti-racist work was included in people's position descriptions so that it was part of people's jobs. It wasn't something that was extra or other. This was something that is embedded into everyone's work. And within our position descriptions, we have some template language of the type of work that everyone does in the department. But then we also thought about how can each individual in their specific roles engage in this work so it felt tailored to people and then people could feel like they were part of the puzzle and that their work could move things forward. And then it was just a recognition, too, that this is forever work. This is not a special project. This isn't something that's just for a shortened time period. This is something that is embedded as part of our department now and it's something that we're going to continue moving forward with.

Brittany Young:                

Thank you, Natalia. I love the part of this where everybody was doing their own work, whether it was a university, whether it was the library itself or the department, and then how you all came together and looked at your journeys, and then each of those separate journeys became this larger project. It's really cool to see the learning become action. So the exhibit divides the project into three sections: Reparative Description, Acknowledging Harmful Content and Enhancing Description. Could you share an example from each of these three areas to illustrate effective approaches that might help fellow archivists doing this work?

Natalia Fernandez:           

So for the exhibit, those three sections were a way to help divide our work. It's all coalesced together, but yes, that's how we divided it. So yeah, I'll give some examples. So our decisions are, so we look at maybe terms within a collection or there are terms or issues across collections, and we take our time to consider our options and their implications. And that's part of the process to think things through as a team. So depending on what the circumstances of a collection is or a term that we're trying to address is, then we might address it with reparative description, acknowledging harmful content, for example. So as an example of reparative description, read the definition from the SAA, the Society of American Archivists Dictionary, reparative description is relating to remEDIARRtion of practices or data that exclude silence, harm or mischaracterize marginalized people in the data created or used by archivists to identify or characterize archival resources.

So a really concrete example of that is our addressing the change in language for the incarceration of Japanese and Japanese American people during World War II. So for many years, the terms were relocation or forced removal or internment, and those types of terms are not fully capturing what the community truly experienced. This is an example of us using a resource that another repository put together. So there is a reparative archival description task force at Yale Library that engaged in this work. They worked with community members, they created a table of common terms and then the terms that we should be using, for example, replacing the term internment with incarceration and the replacement of incarceree or detainee. And again, just making sure that we were using terms that truly represented the experiences of those communities, especially in the way that those communities wanted to be represented. And the thing about that reparative description work is that there is complication there.

So sometimes the primary sources themselves use certain terms that we want to reflect because that's what was used in the context. But there are parts of the finding aid that archivists write where it's our words and we have control over what words we choose to use and we can acknowledge the other words used and explain why and give context. So that's all part of the work that we can do to make things more transparent to researchers. And in terms of acknowledging harmful content, in that case, it's to help give context for the terms that are used. So a few projects that we engaged in were acknowledging the R word within the context of disabled communities, the S word in the context of Indigenous women and the N word in the context of the African American community.

And in some cases, we retained those words within the collection because they're part of the sources themselves, but we acknowledge those terms, explain why they're there, explain why we kept them. There might be times where we are able to use a different word. Again, when we're describing the collection, we wouldn't use those terms, that we acknowledge that they're there and why and that they're harmful, but we do retain the original source material. This is something that when I teach classes, I talk about this and when I do one-on-one consults, I talk about this. But when people only have the finding aid, that's the only content that they have, we can't explain that to them in that point. So that's why it's important to include that information in the finding aid itself. And oftentimes, what we'll do is we'll have information in the finding aid that then links to a blog post that has more detailed information. So that's an extra way for us to document and have more information for researchers and community members.

And then enhanced description, that third piece, that's an opportunity for us to highlight communities and content within collections that are perhaps under-described or not described within the finding aid. So an example is a grad student that I worked with was doing research in one of our collections, and she mentioned that she was doing research on Indigenous communities within Mexico, within that area. And she found information pertaining to those communities, but there was no descriptive information in the finding aid that that information was present. And so being able to add that content to the finding aid to make it known for other researchers is a way to enhance that description. And we're also working on a project to highlight OSU's multicultural Greek letter organizations.

We have a lot of information pertaining to sororities and fraternities on campus, but those BIPOC sororities and fraternities aren't necessarily described as such. And that could be such a rich resource for people being able to highlight those, let people know that they exist and where they exist in the collections can help enable researchers in better finding that information. So with all of these projects, it's taking the time to work together to engage and look for the collections that we have, terms that we need to address. And over time, maybe in the next 20 to 25 years, someone will reassess the work we did and move it forward again, which is what we want. We want people to reassess the work, and we also reassess our work and think about how things continue to change.

Joan Vigil:                           

Thank you. I think it sounds like you all are just creating this really great cultural shift at the university. It's just amazing to hear. I was just curious, some terms are just cut and dry that you should not use those, but I'm wondering if in your team, did you ever have any, "Should we use this word or should we use that word?" Did it take a while to come to a consensus on certain terms?

Natalia Fernandez:          

 It depends on the terms. In some cases, we have information, like the Yale library that did their work and we were able to pull from that. In some cases, we have to think about what terms researchers are using and what terms they will search. And that's something, again, that with students, you can talk about how in today's research landscape you would use these terms, but you have to think about in the context of the time period what terms were used and how would you search. So sometimes we include multiple terms or sometimes we will retain certain terms because we know that they're searched for, but then we include updated terms as well.

A big one is Latina, Latinx, Latino, Latina community, Chicano, Chicana, Hispanic, there are lots of different terms that can be used for a community. And so sometimes within finding aids, we have to think about how do we describe collections in a way that is true to the community experience and also helping researchers find the information that they need. So it's all a case-by-case basis and it's something that we discuss together and it's something we take time to discuss. That's another thing. This takes time, and that's okay to really think about the implications of the work that we're doing and the impact that we'll have on communities and researchers as we make those decisions.

Joan Vigil:                           

The team you work with on this project includes members with varying roles. Why was this important to the work and how do you think this dynamic has influenced equity work at the university?

Natalia Fernandez:           

As I shared earlier, the library as a whole, other departments and individuals engage in EDI-AR work, but the work that I'm talking about is specific to our department in the context of archival materials. But even so, within our department, we have about 12 people and our roles differ greatly, but we all contribute to this work, especially because the description of materials impacts all of us. It impacts our public services, instruction, our digital collections, all of our subunits and all the people that work together, description of materials is a general theme, a through line within all of our work. And so it's something that we can engage in together no matter what our position is. And as always, it's about what makes sense for our position and how we can contribute to the larger whole. And so when we develop projects together, we develop little work plans and we decide who can contribute how.

And what's great is that this is the type of work that anyone within our department can contribute to, and we have a team structure to help us do this work. That was one of the big parts of embedding this work into our regular practice was to use our existing team structure. Within our department, we have lots of teams that are organized by different function. And we developed an anti-racist description team that meets once a month for a one-hour meeting, and it's basically a working meeting. And comparing to our other team meetings, our other meetings meet maybe twice a month. So in the context of the bigger picture, once a month may not seem like a lot, but we have six or so other groups that meet, so this is a way for us to be consistent. And we have usually about nine or so people regularly come to those meetings, and it's usually project work time, like a working meeting where we divide into small groups and we also have larger team discussions.

 And sometimes those smaller groups have worked outside of the meetings that they engage in. We've also engaged students, and that's a great thing too, is that students are involved in this work as they're processing collections, they might notice things and then it comes back to the team. And then we've had students work on projects and we have some MLIS grad students that work for us. So helping that next generation just have this be a regular part of their work is really exciting that they're getting that experience as part of their grad school experience. And we have a mix of perspectives, which is really helpful. We have people from the public services side who can help us think about what researchers are looking for. We have people who work in metadata and digital projects who can help us think about what this would look like from their perspective and tools that they bring.

So it's really important for us to have the whole department come together, not only because it shares the load, which is incredibly important, but also because we're bringing a mix of perspectives together and that makes the work stronger. And then as archivists should, we have a lot of documentation, so we document our projects. We write blog posts to make those public, and we're trying to make sure to document the work that we do for ourselves and also for future archivists so that in the future if the people who engage in our work afterwards can look back and understand what we did and why we did it, and then they can use that to make the changes that they need to make as they see fit in their circumstances.

Brittany Young:                

Thank you, Natalia. It's so cool to see how this project has branched out and included everybody. I know I'm saying that again, but it's such a great example, the structure-wise of how somebody might do it, it's like a success story. And to have it be specifically with anti-racist work is even more amazing. Next question is, what has the reception been from the OSU community as a whole about the exhibit?

Natalia Fernandez:           

So back in October, there was a journalist that came to interview me and we have an online newsletter and there's a website, it's called OSU Today. And she did a story about the work and then the Office of Institutional Diversity featured the work as part of their Instagram back in November. And then the exhibit is how we all connected with OLA's EDI-A committee. And so the space that we have in the Valley Library, the exhibit space is up on the fifth floor, so it's a little bit harder to get to. It's not as public, but we have people coming in. It's open to the public Monday through Friday during our daytime hours. The reception so far has been positive, and again, we're very privileged to be in the context of the university that celebrates this work.

Brittany Young:                

I don't think we have a question that mentions this, but it's also really cool, I recommend go visit. But I also recommend because it's like a poster exhibit and that's not a super common thing that you see to this level. And I will say having been there and Natalia giving us a special tour, there are things on the poster which you can also look at online too. It's great to see the examples in person, so I recommend that if you can go visit in person.

Natalia Fernandez:           

It's up through the summer, late summer, it's up for the academic year. And it was actually a challenge thinking about how are we going to create an exhibit about terms that are problematic, but we really wanted to showcase our work. And so I worked with a really great graphic designer, Amber Taylor, I've worked with her before. And yeah, I was really pleased with how the exhibit turned out. It's text heavy, which is not surprising. But another thing we did is we took advantage of those blog posts and there are QR codes as part of the exhibit that link out to the blog posts. So there's introductory information and then if people want to do a deeper dive, they have the opportunity to do so.

Joan Vigil:                           

That's amazing. It's definitely going to be a must-see stop on if you're going to OLA this year. So how can fellow archivists and librarians ensure accountability and responsibility when doing this work?

Natalia Fernandez:           

So within our department, we can hold each other accountable. We can manage our piece of the broader professional puzzle. What's really great within the profession is that we see this type of work discussed in sessions at archival conferences, workshops. It's in the archival literature. The work is supported and encouraged by archival organizations, both national and local. And I think that by sharing our work across the profession, various examples of what has worked for different institutions, the hope is that people will find a process that works for them. And so I think that's part of it, like we just need to keep talking about this work, sharing what we're doing, our challenges and successes. And then also something that I didn't mention but I wanted to note is there's also the accountability and responsibility and also the care for ourselves.

One of the things that we talked about as a department, we were reflecting on our work, that's important to reflect on the work that we've done is colleagues shared with me the once-a-month meetings it helps to have consistency, but it also helps to have time because it can be challenging work to engage in. And so having the time to step away if needed, come back if needed, if people are having a tough time with a particular project, people can step in. That's one of the beautiful things of having a whole department come together is that people can come in and out as they need for their own self-care because they know that a larger group is working on this and still moving things forward. So just another benefit of having a team and lots of people dedicated to the work so it doesn't fall on one person's shoulders or just a couple of people's shoulders, that it's something that everyone is working toward together.

Brittany Young:                

Looking ahead 30 years from now, what lessons on racism will be learned and how will future archivists look at the 2020s?

Natalia Fernandez:           

That will be fascinating to see where the profession is. So part of the reason why this is forever work is because as our language and understanding of history continues to evolve, our descriptions of archival collections may also need to be updated, and that's okay. And that's why it's important for us to document our work so that people in the future can understand how and why we did the work. Considering how quickly terms are changing, even within the last 10 to 15 years and the work that I've done and how people talk about this work and how communities are changing, how they want to be represented and how they identify, that I'm sure will continue to evolve. And so we'll have to see as we continue doing our work and into the future what changes we can make. And that's, I think, an important part to note about this work is that, again, that timepiece, how you choose to prioritize your time and what you choose to do is so significant and representative of your values.

And so for us, once a collection is processed, it's usually like, okay, out of sight, out of mind, that's done. But part of this work is going back and that enhanced description example that I gave, those collections have been processed. But there are ways that we can better describe the collections to better represent and highlight certain communities, and that takes time, but it's important. And that might mean that there are other collections that we don't work on because we're working on prioritizing certain collections. So I think how you choose to use your time is a really significant marker for how you showcase what your values are. And so for us, that's another reason why it's so essential to have administrative support so that when you're choosing to prioritize this work that you have the support to do it. And again, so that it's embedded as part of your day-to-day and not like you're working overtime or doing something extra as a passion project on your own, that it's something that's a part of your job. That's been really important for us.

Joan Vigil:                           

If I'm thinking about 30 years ago, we've come so many leaps and bounds, it's just been amazing to see that progress and how we continue to do that. Remember that saying was, "When you know better, you do better," was it Toni Morrison or Maya Angelou? And I think that definitely keeps applying down the line. Okay. What is next on the horizon for you? Any other special projects you are working on?

Natalia Fernandez:           

In terms of this work, it's been confirmed that I will be presenting on this topic and SCARC's work as part of the April 2025 OLA Conference. So I'm excited to be able to share the work with a broader library audience. I presented on this work with colleagues at the Northwest Archivists Conference last year, and that was before we created the exhibit. Like I said, I'm just excited to share more broadly. And although it's archival specific, I think I'll probably focus on the bigger picture, like how we work together as a department and the management of the project that will hopefully resonate and potentially be applicable to different types of work but the same principles and themes.

Brittany Young:                

As Joan said earlier, this is going to be a must see apparently, at least both for Joan and I for our opinions on what to see, what sessions to go to at the OLA Conference. I think you're right. I think it applies to a lot more than just archivists, although I appreciated your archivist explanation too. Maybe that's just 'cause I'm a librarian.

Natalia Fernandez:           

Hopefully, the framework or maybe pieces of the framework will resonate so that people can think about how it might work best for their department. And again, circumstances are so different in different places and this is what's worked for us, and it's all about hopefully people finding what works for them.

Brittany Young:                

So if someone wanted to be involved in the work SCARC is doing, how would they get involved?

Natalia Fernandez:          

So people are welcome to contact me directly and reach out. At this time, this is something we've discussed, we're currently not proactively seeking community assistance. One of the things as a department that we talked about was our responsibility as archivists to do this work and being mindful of not putting the onus on community members, especially when we know what it is we have to do. We just need to prioritize the time to do it. But if people are interested in learning more or if they see things that they'd like for us to address, then it'd be great to hear about that. As I shared, we have the example of the graduate student who contacted me and expressed her thoughts on what was missing in terms of description in a collection and then we were able to work together on that. So that was a really great opportunity to engage with a community member in that sense. But yeah, I think just reaching out and contacting me, and if people have thoughts to share on what's worked for them as well, that would be great to hear.

We were going to continue engaging in our work. And as another note, we actually have a colleague with us that just started this month and as part of their position description, this work was included. As part of the interview. We asked them about their experience with EDI-A work. It's all part of the ecosystem When you're creating new positions, when you're bringing new people into organizations. It was something that we did. We asked about this work and so now that they've joined us, they are able to join right into that team. And even they even share, "Oh, we did this work at our institution. Oh, my gosh, that'd be amazing. You could work on this with us too." So that's part of it too, the changing from within, but then also as you bring new people into your organization, making sure that this is a priority in terms of what you're asking of folks and what experiences they're bringing in and then also helping them learn as they need based on their journeys.

Brittany Young:              

 I love how this work started in these different segments and then it just grows and it just keeps growing and you all just keep adding different pieces. Like you said, it's like an ecosystem and it seems to be self-sustaining the way that it's structured. And it's a great example for people to put anti-racist action into their own jobs. Whether it's an archival job or not, it's a great example. And I just want to thank you, Natalia, for talking with us today. I have been excited about this project. I believe Joan sent us the OSU Today link to the article, and thank you, Joan, for sending that because we got the opportunity to talk to Natalia and to see the exhibit itself too.

Natalia Fernandez:          

Well, thank you so much. I love talking about this work and I think with the circumstances that we are in as a nation, for us, I know that I feel privileged that I'm in institution that is supportive of this work. So we're going to continue on and help move things forward and continue stepping up when we know that people are in circumstances in which maybe they can't. And so for those of us who can, we need to continue this work.

(Voiceover)
This project was made possible in part by the Institute of Museum and Library Services through the Library Services and Technology Act, administered by the State Library of Oregon. 

Este proyecto ha sido posible en parte por el Instituto de Servicios de Museos y Bibliotecas a través de la Ley de Servicios de Biblioteca y Tecnológia (LSTA), administrada por la Biblioteca Estado de Oregón.

(Voiceover)
We would like to take time to acknowledge historical injustices. We recognize Oregon was established as a white sanctuary state with the intent to exclude African American and Black people on ancestral lands stolen from dispossessed indigenous peoples. We recognize and honor the members of federally recognized tribes and unrecognized tribes of Oregon. We honor Native American ancestors, past, present, and future whose land we still occupy.

This acknowledgement aims to deconstruct false histories, correct the historical record and disrupt genocidal practices by refocusing attention to the original people of the land we inhabit the slave trade and forced labor that built this country, and to the oppressive social systems interwoven into the fabric of our national and regional heritage. We ask that you take a moment to acknowledge and reflect as well.

(Outro Music Playing)