Presenter: Rachael Lorna Johnstone, University of Akureyri, Iceland & Ilisimatusarfik, Greenland

60 years ago, the United Nations General Assembly championed the “equal rights and self-determination of all peoples”, “recogniz[ed] the passionate yearning for freedom of all dependent peoples” and “solemnly proclaim[ed] the necessity of bringing to a speedy and unconditional end colonialism in all its forms and manifestations.” Nevertheless, in the Arctic and beyond, one aspect of self-determination remains unrealised and underexplored by international lawyers: the rights of colonised Peoples to possession of archives relating to their own histories. 

While archivists and historians diligently seek restoration of records, the international legal community appears to have lost interest in the issue in the last forty years. The International Law Commission ceased to work on the matter after it submitted the draft articles in 1981 that led to the failed Convention on Succession of States in respect of State Property, Archives and Debts of 1983 (not entered into force). Even that treaty addressed only cases of records in the event of state succession, for example, the case of Icelandic independence from the Kingdom of Denmark. However, there are at least two other categories of claims that merit careful examination by international lawyers and archivists, namely: archives in multijurisdictional states with a colonial history, such as the Kingdom of Denmark in respect of Greenland; and archives pertaining to Indigenous Peoples, such as in Sápmi, Alaska and Arctic Canada. 

This presentation calls for international legal scholars to collaborate with experts in the fields of cultural history, memory studies, transitional justice and archivists on displaced archives and examine the extent to which legal arguments can strengthen political and moral demands of Peoples for control over records pertaining to their own histories and territories. It is a response to James Lowry’s proposal for an international and multilingual research agenda bringing together “practicing archivists, archival studies scholars, historians, jurists and technologists, amongst others.”

Rachael Lorna Johnstone is professor of law at the University of Akureyri. She also holds a part-time professorship at Ilisimatusarfik (University of Greenland). She is a Fulbright Arctic Initiative IV scholar. 

Rachael specialises in Polar law: the governance of the Arctic and the Antarctic under international and domestic law. She has published widely on decolonisation under international law, the rights of Indigenous Peoples, international human rights law, governance of extractive industries in the Arctic, international environmental law, state responsibility and due diligence, and Arctic strategies. Her books include Routledge Handbook of Polar Law (Routledge 2024) with Yoshifumi Tanaka and Vibe Ulfbeck, Regulation of Extractive Industries: Community Engagement in the Arctic (Routledge 2020) with Anne Merrild Hansen, Arctic Governance in a Changing World (Rowman and Littlefield 2019) with Mary Durfee, and Offshore Oil and Gas Development in the Arctic under International Law: Risk and Responsibility (Brill 2015). 

Rachael is an active member of the International Law Association and three thematic networks of the University of the Arctic: on Arctic Law; on Decolonization of Arctic Library and Archives Metadata; and on Sustainable Resources and Social Responsibility. She leads the subgroup of the Thematic Network on Arctic Law on Arctic Archives.