What TK labeling activates, and the new workflow makes visible, is the already interconnected temporality and histories embedded within these collections. More dialogic and dynamic engagements are initiated that:
- Acknowledge Native/First Nations rights to self-define the access and sharing routes for their cultural heritage;
- Build capacity within institutions that know their own difficulties with these collections to act responsibly and ethically; and,
- Change the way in which users of these collections encounter, consume, interpret, understand Native/First Nations cultural practices as integral elements of living and thriving cultures, not subjects of dead cultures within archives.
The labeling initiative initiates a contemporary presence that legislative intervention in the stewardship of digital cultural heritage would be unable to achieve. Thus as an extra-legal mechanism, new futures for these collections and their inherent relationships to all who interact and engage with them, are made possible. The histories and the contexts behind this new workflow are made present, active and dynamic in ways that were traditionally largely ignored. Local Contexts and the TK Labels offer support for direct change in this area, and in doing so open these collections for new and differentiated use and knowledge production.
