Organizers: Professional Standards and Ethics Committee, NCPH (David Neufeld, Rebecca Conard, Claudia Orange, Diane Britton)

Session Objectives: This session is designed for public historians who would like to share and discuss controversial or challenging situations from their personal experience that have wider implications for the practice of public history. These situations might turn on:
- the public historian’s integrity in field practice among established groups and communities;
- the public historian’s integrity in relation to colleagues in complex institutional or organizational environments;
- the public historian’s responsibilities to the larger discipline;
- the public historian’s responsibilities to clients, governing bodies, and/or funders;
- the inclusion of marginal/under represented groups/work by focusing discussion on shared issues rather than unique products;
- the role of professional organizations/networks in supporting or guiding practitioners in their work.

Topics and discussion will be framed within the four primary responsibilities noted in the NCPH Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct:
- to the Public, professional standards to ensure public trust in and access to the record of the past in all its forms,
- to Clients/Employers, respect for provided objectives, professional service and confidentiality (within limits)
- to Profession/Colleagues, respect, support for and input to professional discourse and practice
- to Self, professional currency, differentiating social conscience issues from ethical practice

The committee seeks a broad range of real-life situations that can be discussed in an open forum setting. Possible topics include, but certainly are not limited to:
- Social Conscience or Ethical Practice, responsibility to record of the past. The fate of Indigenous cultural heritage in settler societies.
- Historians as expert witnesses – the intersection of ethical practice and legal advocacy.
- Difficult History – the ethical challenges of interpreting complex stories or a contested past.
- Respectfully treading the unstable ground of mythic history and cherished legend.
- Respecting and protecting intellectual property when public agencies or private sources fund the production of history.
- E-bay and the new realities/ethics of acquiring, protecting, and disposing of collections.

Please contact the session organizer with proposals to participate by October 1, 2007:

David Neufeld
Adjunct Faculty - Yukon College
Yukon Historian - Parks Canada
#205 - 300 Main St.
Whitehorse, Yukon Y1A 2B5
ph (867) 667-3913
dave.neufeld@pc.gc.ca