The Indigenous Program at MOA was developed by six Indigenous partners: the Musqueam Indian Band, the Squamish Lil’wat Cultural Centre, the Haida Gwaii Museum, the U’mista Cultural Society, the Nlaka’pamux Nation, the Coqualeetza Cultural Society, and the Museum of Anthropology at UBC. The program provides training opportunities for Indigenous people working in museums or Indigenous people who would like to do this kind of work. Funding for the Indigenous Internship Program is provided by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
Our latest series of MOA Stories feature the fascinating research conducted by members of the Fall 2024 cohort during their internship.
Becoming My Family’s Historian
By Nicole Johnston
Ha7lh skwáyel (good day)! I am Nicole Johnston from the Squamish Nation, which is situated in the Greater Vancouver area. I dedicate this article and my newfound love for archives and collections management to my grandmother, Lila.
My journey into learning about archives began with me asking my grandmother, who we call Ma, if she has any old photos of my dad. She told me to give her time to look around and to gather some together. A few days later I came home to about 900 negatives waiting for me! There was also a sticky note attached: “Nicole – negatives from 1950 and on, Ma.” My father, Jerry Johnston, is one of nine children and is the second eldest, meaning that among these negatives are many more childhood photos of him than I could have wished for.
As an intern in the Fall 2024 cohort of MOA’s Indigenous Internship Program, I thought I would bring with me this project of learning to be my family’s historian in order to continue to build new skills. When I embarked on my educational journey here, I was fortunate to have the support of all the staff and be able to learn proper museum protocol.
As interns, we were introduced to archival materials that are acid-free, and were taught how to hand-build boxes that will safely store objects. I was excited to learn aspects of preservation, such as care and handling. It was also beneficial learning about off-gassing and the damage that materials such as newspaper and cardboard boxes can cause to photographs in the long run. I used these teachings to build and rehouse Ma’s negatives and clippings in a more suitable environment.
My main goal, however, was to learn to digitally scan my grandmother’s collection to ensure that these images are preserved for future generations. Therefore, I made sure to watch plenty of review videos and to research different brands of scanners, which led me to the one that best suited my need to scan documents and negatives. I became fascinated with some of the features the scanner provides, especially colour-correcting faded or orange images and fixing small details such as scratch marks.
Ma—also known as Lila Johnston, née Lewis—has a strong passion for documenting the world around her. The family collection that she has lent me to scan is built on a foundation of some images she inherited from my late grandfather, Ivan “Tom” Johnston, as well as Ma’s mother, the late Eva Lewis. Ma’s collection creates a portal into what she values in her life: from family portraits to hanging out with her friends, from celebrations to beautifully composed self-portraits. Digitizing this collection is not only important for my family to have easier access to the images, but it is also valuable for the larger community.
Through my work, I have been able to connect with many Squamish Nation members to share images that Ma took of their relatives. The process of gathering the collection together, digitizing the images, and interviewing family has been profoundly beneficial for me, as a visual learner, to help put faces to names and locations. Living in a digital age, it is easier for me to share this large size of collection online rather than printing the images for the whole family. I am grateful to have this opportunity to go through this process with my grandmother, have her share stories and the names of relatives who I never had the chance to meet, and see how our community changed over the years.
One example of change to the community that is documented through Ma’s photos, and that was upsetting for me to witness as I digitized the collection, is the disruption and removal of the shoreline on Eslha7an, now known as Lower Lonsdale, to create a clearing for the railway system. Seeing how much time my family spent occupying the shoreline and how that is no longer available is deeply heartbreaking. The shoreline disruption now creates a barrier between the reserve and the water, creates more pollution to the local flora and fauna, and causes disturbance to Nation members.
Gee, we spent a lot of hours down there. You’d think we’d be tired of that dock.
~Ma, talking about Eslah7an village beach
As I proceeded with my digitizing project and learned new tips for proper archival levels of preservation, I learned how to individually scan negatives and ensure the settings are at the right level depending on film size. I am pleased that my grandmother held onto all of her negatives—many are even kept in their original envelopes with dated receipts attached. With time, prints will often change colour, whereas negatives have a less likely chance of degrading. While scanning at a standard level can be adequate for some purposes, I know my scanner can produce a higher quality and that it is worth putting in the extra bit of work to preserve my family’s collection. By the end of my internship I had already scanned just over 900 of the images, and gained about 600 more from Ma to add to my pile.
I was wondering what happened to that picture!
~Ma
To be able to share moments with my grandmother, connecting over the deep care of these family memories, is special to me. Learning to be my family’s historian, and beginning with this enormous scanning project, is still a long process. It continues to demand lots of my patience as I gather the negatives, digitize them, and find a time when my grandmother would like to look through each photo. It can be emotionally and mentally taxing for Ma to try to remember each person, place, and time, so I try to break up each section of images to not cause any strain. I also want to be as patient as possible as it can be emotional seeing photographs of loved ones who have passed. It is meaningful for me to build relationships with community members as well as strengthen my relationships with my family through the storytelling inspired by the images.
I forgot his name now, I haven’t seen him for 30 years.
~Ma
Banner image: My grandmother, Lila Johnston, poses glamorously as a young woman, circa 1945-1950.