Relationships, Reciprocity, and Responsibilities: Indigenous Studies in Archives and Beyond
Building on the collaborative, community-engaged work of the American Philosophical Society’s Center for Native American and Indigenous Research (CNAIR), the APS Library & Museum launched The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Native American Scholars Initiative (NASI) in 2016 to foster the development of the next generation of Indigenous and allied students and scholars. As part of its NASI initiative, CNAIR hosted an online conference in September 2020. The conference reflected new and emerging scholarship in Native American and Indigenous Studies and allied fields.
"Relationships, Reciprocity, and Responsibilities: Indigenous Studies in Archives and Beyond" was held online September 21-25, 2020. The conference was part of The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Native American Scholars Initiative (NASI) and reflected new and emerging scholarship in Native American and Indigenous Studies and allied fields. NASI complements the collaborative, community-engaged work of the American Philosophical Society’s Center for Native American and Indigenous Research (CNAIR), which works with Indigenous communities throughout the continent and with scholars and researchers in many disciplines. The goal of CNAIR is to assist people in discovering and utilizing the American Philosophical Society Library & Museum’s extensive archival collections in innovative ways that honor Indigenous knowledge, cultivate scholarship, and strengthen languages and cultural traditions.
The conference was free and open to all. The full program may be found below, along with links to the recordings on the Society's YouTube Channel.
Opening Plenary
Opening plenary speakers Lisa Brooks, Amos Key, Jr, and Jennifer O'Neal. Images courtesy the speakers.
The conference's opening plenary, "Strengthening Indigenous Scholarship, Archives, and Education," was held on September 21st at 1PM ET. The plenary featured a discussion with Lisa Brooks, Amos Key, Jr. [unable to attend], and Jennifer O'Neal.
This plenary event featured a conversation touching upon a range of themes central to the conference, such as Indigenous communities’ and Indigenous scholars’ current and long-standing efforts to strengthen and build capacity in the furtherance of Indigenous knowledge systems through such initiatives as language programs, establishment of archives, collaborations with non-Native institutions, and the cultivation of new generations of Indigenous scholars in many fields of higher education.
Lisa Brooks is an Abenaki writer and scholar who lives and works in the Kwinitekw (Connecticut River) Valley. She is Professor of English and American Studies at Amherst College and a faculty advisor in the Five College Native American and Indigenous Studies Program. Her first book, The Common Pot: The Recovery of Native Space in the Northeast received the Media Ecology Association's Dorothy Lee Award for Outstanding Scholarship in the Ecology of Culture in 2011. Her second book, Our Beloved Kin: A New History of King Philip’s War received numerous awards, including the Bancroft Prize for American History and Diplomacy in 2019. Currently a Guggenheim Fellow, she is working on a new book focused on her side project, “Tracking Molsemsis: An Indigenous and Environmental History of Eastern Coyote.”
Tae ho węhs, a.k.a. Amos Key Jr., was born into the Onkwehonweh Civilization, and is a member of Mohawk Nation, gifted into the Turtle Clan of his Mother and conferred to the Sacred Circle of Faith Keepers of the Longhouse, at Six Nations of Grand River Territory. He is founder of the Gawęni:yo Bilingual Immersion School System at Six Nations of Grand River (1985-present). He served for 35 years as the First Nations Language Director at the Woodland Cultural Centre in Brantford, Ontario, where he established the “Save the Evidence” campaign to honour the legacy of innocence and grace of the 15,000 students who attended the Mohawk Institute Indian Residential School for 150 years, and where he also established the world’s largest archive of Onkwehoweh Civilization’s Orations, Music, and Ceremonies of the Longhouse. He now serves as the inaugural Vice-Provost, Indigenous Engagement, at Brock University in Ontario.
Jennifer R. O'Neal is Assistant Professor in the Department of Indigenous, Race, and Ethnic Studies at the University of Oregon, and affiliated faculty with the History Department and Robert D. Clark Honors College. Over the past fifteen years she has led the implementation of best practices, frameworks, and protocols for Native American archival materials in non-tribal repositories in the United States through the development of the Protocols for Native American Archival Materials. She is an enrolled member of The Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde in Oregon.
Conference Program
"Relationships, Reciprocity, and Responsibilities: Indigenous Studies in Archives and Beyond" Symposium Program September 21-25, 2020
All sessions were held via Zoom Webinar (times listed in EDT).
Opening Welcome from Robert M. Hauser, Executive Officer, American Philosophical Society
Welcome from Curtis Zunigha, Cultural Resources Director, Delaware Tribe of Indians
Conference Background and Overview of the Proceedings, Patrick Spero, Librarian & Director, American Philosophical Society Library & Museum
Introduction to The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Native American Scholars Initiative (NASI), Alyssa Mt. Pleasant, Program Director, NASI
Honoring those who have passed, Brian Carpenter, Curator of Native American Materials, American Philosophical Society Library & Museum
Keynote Conversation on "Strengthening Indigenous Scholarship, Archives, and Education” a discussion with Lisa Brooks, Amos Key, Jr., and Jennifer O'Neal, moderated by Brian Carpenter
"All Stories Have More Than One Voice: Telling Native History Today in the 21st Century"
Eric Hemenway (Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians)
"Building a Discourse of Reciprocity in Archival Science: Making a Case from Research on Ethnographic Archives"
Diana E. Marsh (University of Maryland)
Ricardo Punzalan (University of Michigan)
"Revisiting the 'Returning Forgotten Voices' Project, Oaxaca, Mexico"
Danny Zborover (Mexico-Pacific Rim Project)
Aaron Huey Sonnenschein (California State University, Los Angeles)
Salvador Galindo Llaguno (Zapotec) (CEDELIO, Oaxaca)
Comment: Kimberly Christen (Washington State University)
"Consult, Collaborate, and Listen: Decolonizing Archival Research"
Kelsey Grimm (Indiana University)
Krystiana Krupa (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign)
"Putting Indigenous priorities first: consultation and Residential School records at the BC Archives"
Genevieve Weber (Royal BC Museum and Archives)
Margaret Teneese (Ktunaxa Nation) Extended Q&A with Genevieve
"REACHing for Community-Based Scholarship & Partnerships in the Humanities"
Jamie Mize (University of North Carolina, Pembroke)
Comment: Stephen Curley (Diné/Navajo Nation)(National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition)
"Being in the Archive: Indigenous Research Methodologies and the Allure of Archives"
Johannah Bird (McMaster University) Extended Q&A with Johannah
"Stories, Language, and the Archives: Haudenosaunee Community Work"
Kevin White (Akwesasne Mohawk) (University of Toronto)
"Knowledge in Poems, Knowledge in Archives: The Historical (Re)shaping Possibilities of Native Women's Poetry"
Liandra Skenandore (Oneida Nation of Wisconsin) (Independent Scholar)
Comment: Marge Bruchac (Abenaki) (University of Pennsylvania)
"Rowinatahina Kashi, Teti Nisa: Original Notebooks, New Path - Mary R. Haas notebooks and Tunica Language Revitalization"
Patricia Anderson (Tunica Language Project)
Elisabeth Pierite-Mora (Tunica-Biloxi Tribe of Louisiana Language and Culture Revitalization Program)
"Tuscarora language revitalization"
Montgomery Hill (McMaster University)
"Utilizing Online Technology to Improve Access to Indigenous Language and Use"
X̱'unei Lance Twitchell (Tlingit, Haida, Yup'ik) (University of Alaska Southeast)
Comment: Jenny Davis (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign)
"Telling Our Stories Together: Historical Literacy, Choctaw Archives and Community Research"
Megan Baker (Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma) (University of California, Los Angeles)
"How Tribal Archives Foster Reciprocal Relationships and Activism"
Rose Miron (Newberry Library)
Heather Bruegl (Stockbridge-Munsee Community) Extended Q&A with Rose and Heather
"Preserving the Aaniiih-Gros Ventre Narrative Tradition: The Collected Writings of Fred P. Gone ('Many Plumes')"
Joseph P. Gone (Harvard University)
"Revitalization at a distance: Engaging digital archives for language reclamation"
Claire Bowern (Yale University) [presenting]
George Hayden (Noongar Boodjar Language Cultural Aboriginal Corporation)
Denise Smith-Ali (Noongar Boodjar Language Cultural Aboriginal Corporation)
Sue Hanson (Goldfields Aboriginal Language Centre Aboriginal Corporation (GALCAC)) Extended Q&A with Claire
"Maya Testimonies in the Visual History Archive: Violence, Linguistics, and Self-Determination"
Brigittine French (Grinnell College)
Lolmay Pedro Oscar García Matzar (Maya-Kaqchikel) (Independent Scholar)
"Rowasu'u: A Xavante Community Archive"
Lori Jahnke (Emory University)
Rosanna Dent (New Jersey Institute of Technology)
James Welch (Fundação Oswaldo Cruz (FIOCRUZ))
Comment: Jorge Emilio Rosés Labrada (University of Alberta)
4:30 - 6:00 p.m.: Tour of Indigenous Collections Highlights and the Center for Native American and Indigenous Research (CNAIR), followed by a social hour
Patrick Burtt (Washoe Tribe of Nevada and California (Waší∙šiw)) (University of Arizona) Brandon Graham (Chippewas of the Thames) Hilary Leathem (University of Chicago), Pedro Guillermo Ramon Celis (Indiana University, Bloomington), with Marco Antonio Méndez Juárez (Pitao Bezelao Cultural Center) Anna Naruta-Moya (The Museum of Indian Arts and Culture) Cassandra Smith (University of Illinois, Chicago) Edward Noel Smyth (University of California, Santa Cruz)
Ashton Dunkley (Nanticoke Lenni-Lenape) (University of Minnesota) Holly Miowak Guise (Iñupiaq) (University of New Mexico) Tiffanie Hardbarger (Cherokee) (Northeastern State University) Candy Martinez (University of California, Santa Cruz) Ian McAlpin (Gadua Cherokee) (University of Oklahoma) Morgan Ridgway (African American and Nanticoke Lenni-Lenape) (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign) Liandra Skenandore (Oneida Nation of Wisconsin) (Independent Scholar) Angela Tapia (Quechua) (University of Texas, Austin)
Conference papers are available for download to registered participants prior to the conference. You will be required to enter a password provided by conference organizers to access them.
Papers are not to be cited or circulated without the written permission of the author.
Land Acknowledgment
The American Philosophical Society resides in Lenapehoking, the homeland of the Lenape people, whose historical relationships with the land continue to this day. The APS acknowledges with respect their continued presence and perseverance, and expresses its sincere thanks for the past and ongoing generosity of numerous Indigenous communities and individuals who have offered their guidance, expertise, and opportunities for collaboration.
