This is worth naming directly: Ada Blackjack’s own diary is held by an American academic institution in a collection named for the man whose negligence put her in the situation the diary documents. She did not deposit it there. She did not choose Dartmouth as the custodian of her papers. The documents she produced on Wrangel Island — her diary, her photographs, the typed messages she left for rescuers — were taken without her consent by Harold Noice, passed through the channels of the expedition’s aftermath, and eventually came to rest in a collection that is named for the person who organized and ultimately profited from the expedition.
The diaries are accessible to researchers, which has made possible the biographical and historical work that has restored Ada’s reputation and told her story accurately. Jennifer Niven used the Dartmouth collection to research her biography. The scholarship that has corrected the historical record depends, in part, on access to documents that are held in the Dartmouth archive.
These two things are both true: the archive’s custody of the documents has enabled important historical work, and the documents were held in that archive without Ada Blackjack’s consent, in ways that reflect the power dynamics of the expedition’s aftermath. The situation does not have a simple resolution, and the most intellectually honest position is to acknowledge both dimensions without collapsing one into the other.
Archival institutions in the contemporary moment are increasingly grappling with questions of Indigenous stewardship — of who has the right to hold, access, and control records that document Indigenous peoples’ lives and experiences. These conversations are active in the archival profession and are not settled. The Dartmouth collection’s custody of Ada Blackjack’s papers is one example of a circumstance that these conversations are designed to address.