Reclaiming Cultural Stewardship and Decolonizing the Archives. Thursday, February 25th, 2021. 7:00 p.m. Online Event.

What does it mean to approach the practice of archiving through a justice-centered lens? Archivists play a critical role in the preservation of our history, how we interpret the current moment, and what evidence is left behind in order to help us understand and shape our future.  Whose story is deemed valuable? Whose life is seen as important enough to be remembered?  What cultural lenses will we use to look at our experiences? In this talk, Bekezela Mguni examines how archives can be both sites of powerful memory keeping as well as oppression and violence.

Bekezela Mguni is a queer Trinidadian artist, librarian, and educator. She has over 15 years of community organizing experience in the Reproductive Justice movement and holds an MLIS from the University of Pittsburgh. She was a 2015-2016 member of the Penn Ave Creative Accelerator Program with the Kelly-Strayhorn Theater and launched the Black Unicorn Library and Archive Project, a Black feminist community library and archive. She is currently an artist-in-residence at Artist Image Resource and the librarian-in-residence at the Pittsburgh International Airport.