Native American Studies: Digital Collections

By Joe D. Horse Capture, Vice President of Native Collections and Ahmanson Curator
For every name that was signed into the book there is a story. A family story of activism, community, and determination. A story that we can share to honor those that set the standard for us and serve as an inspiration to continue to move forward.

Calisphere provides free access to unique and historically important artifacts for research, teaching, and curious exploration. Discover over 400,000 photographs, documents, letters, artwork, diaries, oral histories, films, advertisements, musical recordings, and more.
The collections on Calisphere have been digitized and contributed by all ten campuses of the University of California and other important libraries, archives, and museums throughout the state.

This is a gateway to publicly-accessible data and images for all objects held at the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology, University of California, Berkeley. We invite you to explore and discover our collections. Please note that the information provided herein comes from a variety of sources and represents our best effort to provide accurate information. Records for many objects include their original catalog cards, which often date to the early 1900s. These cards may include tribal names and terminology that are today considered unacceptable or offensive, or that may prove inaccurate with further analysis. They have been included to illustrate the information that originally accompanied the objects.

Collection consists of some personalia and correspondence, extensive field notes, writings, and records relating to the American Indian Film Project, dating primarily from the early and late years of Barrett's working life. Biographical information contains course notes, diaries of trips to Africa, Hawaii, the American Southwest, national parks in the Western United States, and the Yucatan Peninsula. Correspondence includes letters to and from Alfred Kroeber, George G. Heye, Frederick J. Dockstadter, and other anthropologists, Milwaukee Public Museum colleagues W.C. McKren, Robert E. Ritzenthaler, and Stephan F. De Borhegyi, and with various Barrett family members. Writings are articles, monographs, speeches, and book reviews. Field notes date from 1896 and reflect Barrett's work with the Pomoan peoples, the Cayapa Indians of Ecuador, the Hopi, Kwakiutl, and Sierra Miwok Indians, as well as information about the Chippewa, Menominee, Piute, Washo, Wintun, and Yuki Indians.

The Plateau Peoples' Web Portal is a collaboration between the Spokane Tribe of Indians, the Confederated Tribes Of The Colville Reservation, the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation, the Coeur d'Alene Tribe of Indians, the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs, the Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakama Nation, the Center for Digital Scholarship and Curation and Native Programs at Washington State University. This Portal is a gateway to Plateau peoples' cultural materials held in multiple repositories including WSU's Manuscripts, Archives and Special Collections, the Northwest Museum of Art and Culture, the National Anthropological Archives and the National Museum of the American Indian at the Smithsonian Institution. The materials in the Portal have been chosen and curated by tribal representatives. Each item has one or more records associated with it as well as added traditional knowledge and cultural narratives to enhance and enrich understanding to many audiences.

The Indian Peoples of the Northern Great Plains Collection includes photographs, paintings, ledger drawings, documents, serigraphs, and stereographs from 1874 through the 1940's. In 1998, the images were digitized and drawn from the library collections of three of the Montana State University campuses (Billings, Bozeman and Havre), the Museum of the Rockies in Bozeman, and Little Big Horn College in Crow Agency, Montana.

We can learn from the images and writings of the time...This site provides an extensive digital collection of original photographs and documents about the Northwest Coast and Plateau Indian cultures, complemented by essays written by anthropologists, historians, and teachers about both particular tribes and cross-cultural topics.

The American Indian History Project is a digital cooperative whose purpose is to recover and preserve rare indigenous materials, documents, and records from all over Native North America. The database's goal is to increase access to indigenous and tribal historical content in order to promote accurate and responsible Indigenous research. It seeks to build further partnerships with Tribal governments, Native Nations, Indigenous communities, and archives to build a digital repository for Indigenous Peoples.

Edward Sheriff Curtis published The North American Indian between 1907 and 1930 with the intent to record traditional Indian cultures. The work comprises twenty volumes of narrative text and photogravure images. Each volume is accompanied by a portfolio of large photogravure plates.

The portraits in this web presentation were collected by four Bostonians during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Charles W. Jenks and Francis Parkman collected carte de visite and tintype portraits of American Indians during the 1860s as historical records of tribal groups and their role in contemporary American politics. After a visit to southern California, Boston collector Kingsmill Marrs brought home platinotypes of southwestern Indians taken by Adam Clark Vroman in the late 1890s.

Provides free access to over 690,000 resources from universities, colleges, public libraries, museums, historical societies, and government agencies, counties, and municipalities in Utah, Nevada, Idaho, Montana, Hawaii, and other parts of the U.S. West.

New Mexico Digital Collections is the central search portal for digital collections about New Mexico. A service of the University of New Mexico Libraries, they provide access to digitized photographs, manuscripts, posters, oral histories, videos, maps, and books from libraries, museums, and cultural centers across the state.

A digital collection of the final texts of 366 of the 375 American Indian treaties recognized by the United States Department of State

The site features the full text—almost five thousand pages—of the journals. Also included are a gallery of images, important supplemental texts, and audio files of selected passages plus Native American perspectives. With a focus on full-text searchability and ease of navigation, the Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition Online is intended to be both a useful tool for scholars and an engaging website for the general public.

Planning for the website began early in 2005 at the McNickle Center at the Newberry Library. Dr. Brian Hosmer, Director of the McNickle Center, and Dr. Loretta Fowler, Scholar-in-Residence, developed the idea of using the Newberry Library’s collections to highlight recent scholarship on Native peoples of the Midwest and to make this information available on an educational website designed for the general public. The Newberry Library received a planning grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities Public Programs division in spring 2006 and a three-year implementation grant for 2009-11. The project began in January 2009, at which time Dr. Scott Stevens became the director of the McNickle Center.

The Native Writers Digital Text Project brings the works of Native poets and writers of fiction and other prose to readers world wide. Featuring out-of-print literary efforts of American Indians, Alaska Natives, and First Nations people of Canada, the project seeks to broaden the definition of “Native Writing” not only by focusing on writers who are not ordinarily anthologized, but also by publishing works which originally appeared in “ephemeral” sources and the periodical press, especially in those publications edited and produced by Natives.

The Center for Native American and Indigenous Research (CNAIR) works with indigenous communities throughout North America and with scholars in many disciplines. The goal of CNAIR is to assist people in discovering and utilizing the American Philosophical Society Library’s extensive archival collections in innovative ways that honor indigenous knowledge, cultivate scholarship, and strengthen languages and cultural traditions.

This guide provides comprehensive coverage of the Native American and Indigenous archival collections at the Library of the American Philosophical Society. These materials date from 1553 to the present and include manuscript, audio, and visual materials relating to indigenous peoples throughout the Americas.

The phrase "Indian rolling" -- assault or murder of Native Americans by non-natives -- came into use in the spring of 1974 when three Navajos were beaten and killed by white teenagers in the town of Farmington, New Mexico. The perpetrators were sent to reform school for the crime. Organized and led by American Indian Movement (AIM) members, protests by tribal members were intense but nonviolent. Demonstrations became more confrontational when march permits were revoked or refused. In May 1974 Bob Fitch investigated and documented the murders and protests, having learned about them from Santa Fe investigative journalist Don Devereaux. Farmington is located in the southwest "four corners" region, near the conjunction of four states -- Colorado, Nevada, Arizona and New Mexico. Most of the region belongs to the Hopi, Ute, Zuni & Navajo nations. Border town racism and violent incidents continue today.