The MacDonald Collection
The George and Joanne MacDonald Northwest Coast Collection (the MacDonald Collection) was assembled by Dr. George MacDonald and Joanne MacDonald over their long careers in Canadian museology, archaeology, and anthropology. The collection reflects the MacDonalds' admiration and respect for the cultures of the Northwest Coast, their work with communities along the coast, as well as their relationships with museums, archives, universities and colleges. Images in the MacDonald Collection are made available here for research and educational purposes. Other uses may require permission; users are responsible for contacting copyright holders to obtain such permission.
Local Contexts
The BRC is proud to attribute the “Open to Collaborate” CI Notice to our entire digital collection. This notice indicates a commitment to collaborate with Indigenous communities as we continue our important work of decolonizing and reconciling at Simon Fraser University.
Local Contexts is an initiative that supports Indigenous communities as they manage their cultural heritage and intellectual and cultural property in digital environments. The project is grounded in the recognition of the inherent sovereignty that Indigenous communities have over knowledge and data that comes from their lands, territories, and waters.
The colonial collecting process was a destructive force in which Indigenous cultural materials were removed from communities and detached from their local knowledge systems. Visual materials, such as those held by the Bill Reid Centre, remain dispersed and physically distant from the people and places they represent. These important links to family and community are similarly lodged within the legal systems of colonizing nation-states that do not account for third-party ownership, local claims of stewardship, or cultural protocols that dictate how things circulate within Indigenous contexts.
The Local Contexts project has examined the use of digital collections and the circulation of digital content to reimagine the intellectual property needs of Indigenous communities as they seek to manage, preserve, and reuse their digital cultural heritage. In response to the above concerns, Local Contexts has developed Cultural Institution (CI) Notices. CI Notices are icons and associated descriptions designed to be used by collecting institution who are engaged in processes of collaboration and trust building with Indigenous communities.
The CI Notice is one way for the Bill Reid Centre to signal to those who use the collection that we are actively working to improve our Indigenous collections, and that we welcome collaborations with Indigenous communities in this work.