What was the initiative?

Dominique’s Pathy Project focused on creating the building blocks of a community archive for the Waban-Aki Nation that would help the community gather, on their own terms, all the information pertaining to their collective memories. This center brought together the community’s knowledge and history into a tangible form that could easily be shared and reused by present-day members and select outside researchers.

What was the community connection?

Dominique has worked with the Waban-Aki Nation as an archivist and record manager since 2019. She helped create fundamental tools and software to facilitate data retention, knowledge sharing, and archives preservation. For the first two years, she served the community as a consultant and knowledge expert, however, she found that over the course of the Fellowship, her ties with the community further solidified. Dominique is honoured that some members of the community now see her not only as an archivist, but as a trustworthy friend.

How was it innovative?

The practice of archiving, as we know it today, is historically entrenched in Western cultures. Today, most available content pertaining to First Nations are archives rendered by scholars, explorers, and missionaries: all outsiders from these communities. One could argue that what we find in archives centers does not bring First Nations’ histories to the forefront, but rather presents us with the “other’s” perceptions of First Nations throughout history.

The Waban-Aki Nation, like many First Nations, has the desire to safeguard and recount its collective memories, to salvage its narrative for future generations. A community archive can be a space where stories and knowledge can be stored, shared, and subsequently defy one’s pre-conceived understanding of what it is to be a Waban-Aki.

What is Dominique doing now?

Upon completion of her Fellowship, Dominique gave birth to her first child and took a few months to fully enjoy and embrace motherhood. She then returned to her job as an information science consultant in a Vice-President position, and remains a facilitator for the new archivist and the Grand Council in Odanak and Wolinak. She has made it a priority to connect the Waban-Aki and other First Nations communities that she has had the pleasure of working with to the Association of Canadian Archivists’ Indigenous Matters Working Group, which she is a member of.