The Right to Privacy: A Call for a More Inclusive Heritage Practice

Abstract

This treatise calls on heritage practitioners to craft a more inclusive preservation practice by first becoming aware of, and then staying attuned to, the need for privacy amongst individuals from underrepresented communities. For decades our field has been committed to creating a more inclusive and diverse practice, focusing on increasing the visibility of historically marginalized groups and telling “all Americans’ stories.” I suggest that – despite our best intentions – this drive to increase visibility has worked against the needs of some members of underrepresented groups, for whom privacy means safety and even survival. There are reasons why some individuals and communities may not feel comfortable making their histories and the places associated with them available to the “general public,” or making them public at all. I argue that our field should be flexible enough to take these needs and desires into consideration if we are to take seriously a commitment to a people-centered practice that values a sense of well-being. I suggest that privacy and publicity are not like on/off switches, with either complete privacy or complete publicity as the only options; rather, I propose a more nuanced middle ground, with different dimensions of both privacy and publicity, including the possibility for what I call “limited publics,” with groups getting to decide what specific publics have access to documents, photographs, recordings, narratives, or physical spaces.

Throughout the treatise, I consider how we might attempt to undo some of the colonizing methodologies and structures that are embedded within our profession, which can work against the best intentions of practitioners, and how we can empower those who have historically been harmed or overlooked by heritage work in protecting the stories and places that matter to them. By examining how the field currently handles Indigenous knowledge as well as information deemed “sensitive” in fields such as archaeology, cultural anthropology, folklore, oral history, and archival studies, I offer an assessment of what “affordances” there are and could be made for limited publics within heritage work. I explore issues of privacy and publicity around historical trauma, and how “first line community work” might offer one template for working with underrepresented communities in interpreting their histories and stories. Finally, I present the idea of heritage “communities of practice” as a means of decentering expertise and as a way for groups to think through issues of privacy and publicity together. I present a pamphlet and infographic that heritage workers and laypersons can hopefully draw on as part of their practice moving forwards.