Conceptualisation and recontextualisation of indigenous archival constructs

The subjugation of Africans through colonialism by Western nations such as Britain, Portugal, Germany, Belgium, France, Italy, and Spain disrupted the entire system of African people, thus affecting their educational, scientific, cultural, legal, political, religious, economic, and social lives. This resulted in the obliteration of African values and philosophies, leading colonisers to regard the continent as barbaric, backward, a blank slate, and dark, devoid of technology. The indigenous archiving system was also not spared by these disruptions, which made way for a Eurocentric way of managing and preserving memory. There is consensus that the dominant Western epistemology has failed to embrace indigenous systems of archives, memory, and evidence. This chapter justifies the need to recall the past by exploring indigenous archives in a postcolonial context through the discussion of concepts such as oral history, murals, and rock art paintings, and their practices as archives in the indigenous knowledge system. This is done to reassert the primacy of indigenous archival praxis. We believe that if indigenous memories are included in the definition of archives in legislation, policy documents, and standards, it may offer an opportunity not to be missed to build an inclusive participatory archive in the African context. Indigenous archives should be included as part of mainstream archives to contribute to solving grand societal problems, as well as reconstructing the past of marginalised communities and nations by creating alternative archives that were previously unimaginable. Therefore, it is necessary that the definition of a record be revisited to include indigenous archives.