Modernization
Learn more about government’s intention to modernize the museum to protect our historic holdings and provide better access to our collections.
The Royal BC Museum and Archives is prioritizing materials with Indigenous content for digitization. The focus is on digitizing linguistic tapes in order to support language revitalization programs within communities. Additionally, the museum’s collection of more than 25,000 photographs, mostly early images of communities, will be scanned as part of a multi-year digitization project.
The BC Archives is reviewing their descriptive standards and consulting both internally and externally to create a plan to incorporate traditional knowledge, cultural restrictions and Indigenous language diacritics into archives catalogue entries.
In 2017 the Royal BC Museum and Archives was gifted with translations of three of the original Vancouver Island Treaties. Two of the treaties were translated into Lekwungen and one into SENĆOŦEN. These translations are available online and provided whenever researchers ask to view the English-language versions, encouraging users to consider the different versions and languages involved at their time of creation.
The Learning Portal is a digital tool for learners of all ages. The Our Living Languages pathway offers a new understanding of the diverse languages of First Nations communities in British Columbia.