Archiving auto-documentation recordings: challenges and proposals

Presented by Amina Mettouchi at the Language Documentation and Archiving Conference, Berlin & Online, 4-6 Sept, 2024. Academic-led or collaborative documentation have resulted in several hundreds of documented languages being archived in ELAR or PARADISEC. However, thousands of languages remain virtually undocumented in video format (mostly in Africa, Asia and South America). Scaling-up is needed, and indigenous-led models make this possible. They also are ethically central to how the threat to languages and cultures is tackled. Auto-Documentation is such a model, of entirely indigenous-led documentation. It is defined as: The constitution, by speakers/communities, of a body of recordings of their own language and culture, using methods and tools that do not involve academic institutions or funding, NGOs or other external support, but are accessible to any speaker or community in their local environment. (Mettouchi 2021) Auto-Documentation is currently being implemented in North Africa by us Amazigh speakers, but as a model that does not require outside support, it is suited to many other areas in the world where collaboration with academic institutions or NGOs is extremely difficult or impossible, and/or where national governments are not trusted. Auto-Documentation has resulted, in North Africa, in a number of culturally significant videos recorded entirely independently of national, academic or NGO networks. However, the status of the recordings that result from this documentation is fragile: they are "saved" locally (on smartphones, computers, on social media apps and other servers) but not "archived" (in a way that guarantees their preservation for future generations — crucially, our communities' descendants). After presenting the principles, methods and tools of auto-documentation, along with resulting video documentation from indigenous North Africa (by Amazigh speakers and communities), I suggest achievable and sustainable solutions for the integration of such contemporary indigenous recordings into archives in the Global North, in a way that facilitates deposit and consultation by the communities themselves. These solutions, involving social media as well as semi-automated harvesting, form the last building block of the auto-documentation model, and the only one that actually requires collaboration with technologically-equipped institutions in trusted democratic countries. This is where we need you.