Preservation should not strip a person, family or community of context, dignity, authority or connection to what they have entrusted to us.
A photograph may be physically held by one person while carrying meaning for many others. A story may be legally publishable yet still require cultural care. A recording may be preserved without being appropriate for unrestricted public access.
WAIIVPA therefore treats copyright, privacy, attribution, consent, community authority and cultural responsibility as related — but not interchangeable — questions.
Before public use, we aim to identify the relevant contributor, rights holder, participant and — where the material carries wider cultural authority — the appropriate community or knowledge holder. Possession of a file does not necessarily answer this question.
We aim not to sensationalise grief, migration, hardship, sacred knowledge, family conflict or community history. Editing should not knowingly distort the meaning of a contribution or remove context in a way that changes what a person intended to communicate.
Where credit is appropriate, contributors and creators should be attributed in the agreed form. Where anonymity, pseudonymity or non-identification is safer or culturally appropriate, that choice should be considered before publication.
Preservation can coexist with limits. A record may be public, community-only, restricted to named people, embargoed for a period, or preserved without online display. Access settings should reflect the rights, risks and cultural meaning of the material.
Restoration, reconstruction and AI-assisted interpretation can help audiences understand inaccessible history, but they can also create false certainty. WAIIVPA aims to preserve provenance, label interventions clearly, avoid inventing identity or cultural detail as fact, and seek appropriate authority before transforming sensitive material.
Where practical, communities and contributors should receive meaningful access to records created with them. If new evidence emerges, attribution is wrong, cultural restrictions change, or a contributor raises a serious concern, the record should be capable of review rather than treated as permanently untouchable.
Submitting a story to WAIIVPA does not, by itself, transfer copyright, cultural authority or an unrestricted right to publish.
A cultural record is strongest when the people behind it can still recognise themselves in the way it has been carried forward.
