From Wednesday, June 29th to Friday, July 1st, Yale Indian Papers Project hosted an NEH-sponsored Digital Native American & Indigenous Studies workshop at Yale Divinity School and the Institute for the Preservation of Cultural Heritage. The three-day event was designed to educate participants on issues of access, preservation, and methodology related to the use of digitized cultural heritage materials in the context of tribal communities and cultures from the territories east of the Mississippi River.
Among the many participants were tribal members, tribal historical preservation officers, tribal museum administrators, and members of the academy. Some of the communities represented were Ojibway, Passamaquoddy, Chickasaw, Stockbridge-Munsee, Schaghticoke, Narragansett, Nipmuc, and Ardoch Algonquin First Nation (Canada).
A Yale presence was definitely felt. Presentations highlighted the innovative digital humanities work being done at the University: the Yale Indian Papers Project, the Jonathan Edwards Center’s Online Archives and Sermon Editing Project (Ken Minkema), the Beinecke Library’s Trancribe@Yale (Lisa Conathan), the Library’s Digital Humanities Lab‘s various projects (Cathy De Rose and Doug Duhaime). Check out some of these great initiatives!
YIPP editors, Paul Grant-Costa and Tobias Glaza, Project consultant Ruth Garby Torres, with Yale faculty Birgit Brander Rassmussen (American Studies, Ethnicity, Race, & Migration) and Claire Bowern (Linguistics) participated in the often lively discussions.
Conversations centered on how work in the new field of digital humanities interfaced with Native and Indigenous Studies, especially in terms of establishing a set of ethical practices for scholars wishing to research Native communities.
Thanks to the efforts of Jim Hackney, Suzanne Estelle-Holmer, Stefan Simon, Laurie Batza, and the staff at West Campus’ Institute for the Preservation of Cultural Heritage, workshop attendees toured the Divinity School Quad and Library and visited the IPCH’s labs. And afterwards, many folks enjoyed the offerings of New Haven’s many restaurants and night life.
Feedback is still coming in, but one of our favorites from the Twitterverse is the following:
Badass. Thanks, Siobhan. We like it!