LOVE ETHIC ARCHIVAL PRACTICE

 

A community-centered framework for healing, dignity, and reconnection. Grounded in bell hooks's philosophy of love as action.

 

WHAT IS LOVE ETHIC?

The Love Ethic Framework transforms archival practice from institutional control to community partnership. Rooted in bell hooks's understanding of love as care, commitment, trust, responsibility, respect, and knowledge, this methodology centers the needs, safety, and agency of those whose stories are held in the archives. It recognizes that authentic connection requires intentional space-making, and that healing happens when people are met with dignity rather than extraction. This is not simply about being "nice" to research participants. It is a fundamental restructuring of power dynamics in archival relationships—moving from gatekeeping to stewardship, from ownership to trusteeship, from academic authority to shared wisdom.

 

THE SIX PRINCIPLES

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CARE

Every interaction prioritizes emotional safety and trauma-informed approaches. We recognize that archival materials are not neutral documents. They carry pain, loss, joy, and identity. Care means creating containers where people can engage with complex histories at their own pace, with full support.

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COMMITMENT

Authentic relationships cannot be transactional. We commit to ongoing presence with communities, not extractive one-time engagements. This means being available for the long term, showing up consistently, and honoring the work even when it's difficult or slow. TRUST Trust is earned through transparency, accountability, and demonstrated integrity over time. We build trust by sharing power, honoring boundaries, keeping promises, and being honest about what we can and cannot do. Trust means the community knows we will protect what is sacred.

 

RESPONSIBILITY

We hold ourselves accountable to the communities we serve, not institutional metrics or academic prestige. Responsibility means centering adoptee needs over researcher convenience, prioritizing reunion over publication, and acknowledging when our actions cause harm—then making repair.

 

RESPECT

Communities are the experts of their own experiences. Respect means honoring how people want their stories told, recognizing the validity of emotional knowledge alongside academic knowledge, and understanding that scholarship serves the community—not the other way around.

 

KNOWLEDGE

True knowledge comes from deep listening and a genuine relationship. We seek to understand not just the archival content, but the living context—the generational trauma, the cultural complexity, the ongoing impact. Knowledge means honoring multiple ways of knowing and learning from the community.

 

APPLICATION TO OPERATION BABYLIFT

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Why Love Ethic Matters for This Collection

The Operation Babylift Collection holds 33+ boxes of original documents from the 1975 Vietnamese child evacuation, including medical records, immigration files, orphanage documents, and government correspondence. These materials are not historical curiosities. They are living documents that hold answers adoptees have been seeking for fifty years. They contain names of birth mothers, medical histories, arrival details, and evidence of what really happened during those chaotic final days in Saigon. Traditional archival approaches would prioritize institutional access, academic research, and preservation protocols.

 

The Love Ethic Framework reverses this: the primary purpose of this collection is repair and reunion. Every decision from digitization priorities to access policies to collaboration choices centers on one question:  How does this serve the adoptees and their families?

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How the Framework is Applied

→ Trauma-informed digitization: Materials are scanned based on adoptees' most urgent needs (medical records, arrival documents), not on what academics request or what's easiest to process.

→ Direct access pathways: Adoptees and Vietnamese families can request records without navigating institutional bureaucracy. The archives serve them first.

→ Therapeutic partnerships: Working with cultural consultants like Huyen Friendlander ensures emotional safety measures are woven throughout all processes.

→ Community consent: Research proposals are evaluated based on whether they center on adoptee wellbeing and community benefit—not academic merit alone.

→ Cultural humility: Recognizing that Western archival standards don't automatically serve Vietnamese values around family, memory, and belonging.

→ Long-term commitment: This is not a project with an endpoint. The stewardship continues as long as adoptees need support in reunion, healing, and identity reclamation.

 

SERVING MULTIPLE COMMUNITIES, ADOPTEES & FAMILIES

The Love Ethic Framework ensures adoptees are never treated as research subjects or data points. Instead, they are recognized as the rightful owners of their own stories and histories.

• Reunion support: Connecting adoptees with records that name their birth families, medical histories, and arrival details—essential information for search and reunion efforts.

• Identity reclamation: Providing access to documentation that helps adoptees understand their origins, medical histories, and the circumstances of their adoption.

• Emotional safety: Creating trauma-informed processes where adoptees can engage with difficult materials with full therapeutic support available.

• Community connection: Building networks where adoptees can share experiences, support each other, and process collective trauma together.

 

ADOPTEE COMMUNITY BUILDING

While each adoptee's journey is deeply personal, the Love Ethic Framework recognizes that collective healing happens when individuals can connect within a community. The framework creates space for both individual needs and community strength.

• Individual agency: Every adoptee decides their own level of engagement—from private record retrieval to public storytelling—with full autonomy honored throughout.

• Peer support networks: Creating spaces where adoptees can connect with others who share similar experiences, building relationships grounded in understanding rather than explanation.

• Diverse experiences: Recognizing that Operation Babylift adoptees have vastly different relationships to their adoption—some searching, some content, some ambivalent—and honoring all positions.

• Intergenerational connection: Facilitating relationships between adoptees and the network of people connected to Operation Babylift—veterans, caregivers, flight crews—who carry their own complex histories with the evacuation.

 

STRATEGIC COMMUNITY PARTNERSHIPS

The Love Ethic Framework extends through partnerships with organizations that share a commitment to adoptee-centered work and the Vietnamese diaspora connection. These collaborations amplify reach while maintaining ethical integrity.

 

• Con Tím Mẹ (Mother's Purple Heart): Partnership with this Vietnamese adoptee-led organization ensures culturally grounded support for adoptees navigating identity, reunion, and connection to Vietnamese heritage. Their expertise in Vietnamese adoptee experiences informs our approach to records access and community care.

• Vietnamese Boat People: Collaboration with this organization connects Operation Babylift history to broader Vietnamese refugee narratives, honoring the complexity of displacement, diaspora, and survival. Their work helps contextualize the evacuation within larger patterns of Vietnamese migration and resettlement.

• Network stewardship: These partnerships model how archival work can serve as connective tissue between different aspects of Vietnamese American experience—adoption, refugee resettlement, diaspora identity, and intergenerational healing—while keeping adoptees at the center.

 

EDUCATION

The Love Ethic Framework offers a teaching model that demonstrates how historical inquiry can serve justice and healing rather than perpetuating harm.

• Methodology training: Teaching archival students and professionals how to implement trauma-informed, community-centered practices.

• Critical examination: Exploring how adoption, war, and humanitarian intervention intersect in complex and problematic ways.

• Ethical frameworks: Demonstrating how to navigate competing interests (academic freedom vs. community protection) with integrity.

• Case study development: Providing documented examples of what changes when the archives center community's needs overrule institutional priorities.

 

SERVICE

This framework redefines what service means in archival contexts—moving from passive preservation to active repair work.

• Repair over preservation: Prioritizing actions that heal relationships and restore dignity over simply maintaining documents.

• Accessibility design: Removing barriers that prevent adoptees and families from accessing their own information.

• Advocacy work: Using the collection to support policy changes around adoption records access and adoptee rights.

• Community organizing: Creating spaces for collective action around shared experiences and systemic issues.

 

SCHOLARSHIP

The Love Ethic Framework challenges traditional research paradigms while producing rigorous, impactful scholarship.

• Measurable outcomes: Demonstrating that community-centered methods produce better results—more successful reunions, deeper historical understanding, and broader impact.

• Methodological innovation: Developing new approaches to archival research that other collections can adapt and implement.

• Interdisciplinary collaboration: Bridging archival science, trauma studies, adoption research, and Vietnamese diaspora studies.

• Public scholarship: Creating research that serves communities directly rather than remaining locked in academic journals.

• Evidence-based advocacy: Building documentation that supports policy changes and systemic reform around adoption practices.

 

"The moment we choose to love, we begin to move against domination, against oppression. The moment we choose to love, we begin to move towards freedom, to act in ways that liberate ourselves and others." — bell hooks, All About Love.

 

CREATING SPACE FOR MAGIC TO HAPPEN. 

The Love Ethic Framework doesn't make archival work easier. It makes it better. It requires more time, greater vulnerability, and greater accountability. But the outcomes speak for themselves: reunions happen, healing begins, communities build power, and scholarship serves justice. This is what becomes possible when we choose love as our methodology—not as sentiment, but as practice, not as feeling, but as action. 

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