"Throughout the history of Euro-American contact with indigenous peoples in North America, the interests of anthropologists, museums, and American Indians have often conflicted. For example, under the authority of recent federal laws, tribal governments and Indian communities are seeking the repatriation of many objects held by museums and anthropologists, who have often been held in low-esteem in Indian communities for well-deserved reasons.

“Building Partnerships between Archives and Indian Communities,” a conference held May 20 – 21 at the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia, illuminated some of the ways that tribal and Indian interests can benefit from a new openness on the part of archives and museums, and demonstrated how modern-day Indian societies can benefit from collections held by institutions far from their communities.

The APS is the oldest learned society in the United States and was created by Benjamin Franklin in 1743 to “promote useful knowledge.” Thomas Jefferson started its Native American collection in 1791. He later served simultaneously as president of the APS and president of the United States. The first item collected by Jefferson, a word list, was recently used by the Unkechaug to help revitalize their language, long considered to be “extinct.” Today, the APS holds hundreds of thousands of items related to American Indians, tribal governments and their histories, languages and cultures.

The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation sponsored the conference, and also provided a grant that allowed APS to build a digital archive of endangered Native American languages, which includes more than 1,000 hours of language materials from 54 indigenous languages. APS also recently received a Getty Foundation grant that enabled the institution to review its collection of more than 110,000 images of American Indians and to digitize more than 1,000 images (a few can be found online). APS worked with a Native American advisory board on both of these grant projects."

Get the Story:
Robert J. Miller: Tribal nations and museums working in partnership (Indian Country Today 6/7)