Demographic

Age: 26

Gender identity: Female

Race: Indigenous/Squamish

Indigenous: Yes/Coast Salish

Class: Middle class

Other identity (e.g. linguistic, religious): N/A

Education: Enrolled in graduate school

Language: English/Squamish

Personal responsibilities: Single

Location: Relationship to Lower Mainland (from here, were from here, from elsewhere). Lisa was born and raised in Vancouver and attended UBC as an undergraduate student. She is now enrolled in the anthropology master’s program at SFU’s Burnaby Campus. She continues to live in Vancouver.

Widgets: Tools & Platforms

• Collaborative Annotation – Annotator, Annotorius, Textus
• Crowdsourcing – Text Thresher
• Flagging harmful language – Description-Audit
• IIIF – Mirador

Brief Biography

Lisa is an Indigenous masters student in SFU’s Anthropology Department. She lives in Vancouver, but attends classes at SFU’s Burnaby Campus. She is researching Coast Salish land claims and is looking for archival records that document traditional boundaries and land occupation over time. She is an earnest student and she is comfortable using a variety of technologies and she is eager to learn new ones if it supports her work.

Character description

Lisa is an earnest graduate student who feels passionately about her research topic. She’s energetic and doesn’t let the search for relevant materials and the dispersed nature of the records impede her work. She is willing to travel to multiple repositories and put the hours in to locate records that support her work.

Interest in archives & Life experience

Why interested in archives: Lisa is interested in archives because she is studying the boundaries of the ancestral lands of the Coast Salish Peoples. She is particularly interested in the land claims associated with Burnaby Mountain on which the University’s primary campus is located.

Community affiliations: Lisa is active in SFU’s First Nations Student Association.

Represented in archives: Most of the records in the Archives were made and received by university departments. SFU was founded 1965 and there are few if any records documenting land claims prior to the establishment of the University.

Professional affiliations: Canadian Anthropology Society.

Access needs and mobility: Unknown

Motivations

Why: Lisa wants to complete her masters degree and she needs access to records documenting land claims disputes and ownership to do so. As a member of the Squamish Nation her interests are not only academic, but personal.

Frustrations

Barriers: Lisa is frustrated that the University Archives does not hold more records on land claim issues and disputes. There was little to no thought or mention of these issues recorded in the university record when SFU was founded in 1965. SFU only began placing an emphasis on reconciliation over the last 5 or 6 years.

Info and Tech Access & Experience

Hardware: Lisa uses a laptop and cell phone in the Archives.

Software: Lisa is conversant in the MS Office suite of products.

Network connectivity: Lisa has home Internet and access to SFU’s wifi network when working on campus.

Experience with archival tools: Lisa has visited many archives throughout British Columbia, including municipal, university, and provincial archives. She has experience using descriptive access tools which vary from repository to repository.

Experience with archival frameworks: Lisa is familiar with archival frameworks, but her understanding of archival jargon and concepts is largely limited to how finding aids are structured.

Comfort with learning technology: Lisa is comfortable learning new technologies if it will support her research interests.

Goals

What do they want to do: Lisa’s research is focused on Coast Salish land claims. This work forms the focus of her masters thesis.

What relationship do they want to the archives: Lisa is looking for any letters, claims, contracts, and meetings with university officials regarding any possible claims, lawsuits, etc.