Abstract
The article reviews a digital repatriation project carried out by the Center for Native American and Indigenous Research at the American Philosophical Society over the course of eight years (2008-present). The project focused on building digital archives in four indigenous communities: Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, Penobscot Nation, Tuscarora Nation, and Ojibwe communities in both the United States and Canada. The article features insights from traditional knowledge keepers who helped to create a new system of co-stewarding the APS’ indigenous archival materials and recounts how the APS established protocols for cultural sensitivity. A new model of community-based scholarship is proposed to create a more equal and respectful relationship between indigenous communities, scholars, and archives.
Highlights
The article reviews a digital repatriation project carried out by the Center for Native American and Indigenous Research at the American Philosophical Society over the course of eight years (2008-present)
We are living in a remarkable historical moment when the combination of digital technology and cultural revitalization movements in Indian Country have created an unprecedented opportunity to rethink the stewardship of Native American archival collections
Whereas repatriation efforts between communities and museums have been well documented, less is known about the sharing of archival documents in digital form, even though it has been going on for at least three decades (Gray 1991; Roy and Christal 2000; Christen 2006; Kelty et al 2008; Shankar and Hooee 2013; Reddy and Sonneborn 2013).2. It should be noted at the outset that the sharing of digitized archival documents, photographs, and audio recordings differs significantly from repatriation under the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), collaborations to create museum exhibits, or scholars working in partnership with communities on ethnographic projects
Summary
For the APS, it was fundamentally important to begin the process of partnering with Native communities by first reflecting on the history of its collections of Native American and Indigenous materials, which date back to the early national period and still reflect vestiges of that period’s biases. Long, who worked with James Mooney and Franz Olbrecht, was given the rare honor for an indigenous knowledge keeper of having his obituary published in the American Anthropologist, written by Speck’s student John Witthoft (1948, 358) These relationships are still well remembered by community members and the return of audio recordings and manuscript materials collected by the Boasians constitutes one of the most important resources for supporting land claims, language preservation, and cultural revitalization projects in the communities of origin.. Chief Henry Wallace and tribal linguist Howard Treadwell, collaborating with scholars from Stony Brook University, were working to revitalize a language the APS had considered extinct for more than two centuries (Cohen 2010) This encounter with the tribe who collaborated with Jefferson on the foundational document of the APS Native American collections constituted a crucial turning point, for it helped the APS realize that indigenous communities were researchers, not just objects of research. While we have long recognized the role of the Founding Fathers in the APS’ history, perhaps the time has come when we can fully acknowledge the Founding Mothers
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