Encouraging the Participation of Archival Institutions in Protecting and Preserving Traditional Knowledge: a Reflection on the Indonesian Case
Encouraging the Participation of Archival Institutions in Protecting and Preserving Traditional Knowledge: a Reflection on the Indonesian Case

Summary/Abstract: The issues about protecting and preserving traditional knowledge have long been an international debate. International archival communities welcomed this issue by bringing up the role of archives in order to protect traditional knowledge. Archival communities in countries such as Australia, Canada and New Zealand, paid special attention to the issue of traditional knowledge. It is the implications of their cultural context as the countries inhabited by indigenous groups. In contrast, issues about the archiving of traditional knowledge in Indonesia have not been popular. Even though Indonesia is a country inhabited by approximately 1,340 indigenous groups, the archival community in Indonesia does not intensively deal with this issue. The involvement of archival institutions in Indonesia on the issue of traditional knowledge is still limited. Actually, the objectives of organizing the archives in Indonesia is to ensure the safety of national assets which are in the form of culture, but until now there has been no comprehensive program related to it. This condition is much different with archival institutions, for example, in Canada, Australia and New Zealand. They take a very active role in protecting and preserving traditional knowledge through the method of archiving. Using qualitative methods through literature review and interview, this paper argues that in order to play a role in the protection and preservation of traditional knowledge, archival institutions in Indonesia cannot be optimized without developing community archives in each cultural community throughout Indonesia.

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