“The Archive Is Ours": Rethinking Possession of the Historical Record

This article is based on the “California Indian Studies and the Archive” panel from the Bad Indians Symposium which celebrated the 10th anniversary of Deborah Miranda’s Bad Indians. After a decade, Miranda’s engagement with the archive is still palpable and inspired a panel of three historians to discuss how California Indian scholars navigate the archive. Especially as these are often repositories that were not created by Native people or with them in mind. Nonetheless, Native people have made the archive their own. This article argues for a California Indian methodology to interrogate, learn from and disrupt the archive.