Welcome to Our New Tribal Intern

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YIPP editors would like to welcome Eric Maynard to the editorial staff.

Eric is a recent graduate of the University of Rhode Island, with a Masters in Library and Information Studies. He is a member of the Mohegan Tribe of Connecticut, where he is also employed. Eric’s experiences as a graduate student have included an internship with the University of Arizona to research and create metadata files for the associated American Indian Film Gallery. Eric presented on his academic work with the University of Arizona at the 46th Algonquin Conference in 2014. He was also a member of the New England Archivist (NEA) Diversity Task Force in 2013. In addition, Eric has been involved with the historic preservation and archival communities for over 10 years, volunteering and participating in several projects.

Supported by funds from Mellon/CLIR and the National Historical Publications and Records Commission, Eric will be assisting editors with document transcription and metadata extraction.

Indian Papers Project Receives Three-Year Grant From the National Endowment for the Humanities

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YIPP editors are happy to announce that the Project has been awarded a National Endowment for the Humanities’ Scholarly Editing grant that will extend their work in Massachusetts for three more years.  Taken together with the Mellon/CLIR and National Archives grants, the editorial efforts will last more than four years, adding 1,650 documents to the New England Indian Papers Series.

The Massachusetts Collection will create a critical base of historical documentation assembled from primary source materials on the Native Americans who lived within the geographical limits of the colonies of Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay, their history, culture, and long interactions with Euro-Americans in what is now the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.  The documents range from first contact to 1869.

The NEH effort will produce several thousand high-quality images, 900 typographical facsimile transcriptions, and regularized annotated transcriptions of Massachusetts Native community primary source documents from The Massachusetts Archives, Harvard University Library, Connecticut State Library, The National Archives of the United Kingdom, and Yale University Library.

The sequence of the CLIR/NHPRC/NEH grants allows editors to build productive relationships with Indian communities throughout the Commonwealth by laying the groundwork for a process that includes Native participation in the selection, annotation, discussion, and presentation of Project materials.

New Grant Award from the National Archives

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profile-image-500YIPP editors are proud to announce that the Indian Papers Project received a Publishing Historical Records in Documentary Editions grant from The National Archives‘ National Historical Publications and Records Commission.

The award will fund the editorial preparation and electronic publication of 300 documents in the Massachusetts Archives written by and about Massachusetts Native communities from 1649 to 1870.  The resulting product will include high-quality images, typographical facsimile and text-regularized transcriptions, with robust annotations and biographies.

Assisting in the editorial effort will be Hassanamisco Nipmuc tribal chief Cheryll Holley, librarian Eric Maynard (Mohegan), Cedric Woods (Lumbee) of the Institute for New England Native Studies, and several members of the Wampanoag communities.

Building upon the recent Mellon/CLR Digitizing Hidden Collections grant, the NHPRC award represents the first of a multi-year effort to reach out to Native communities in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.  Similar in many ways to YIPP’s earlier work in Connecticut, this NHPRC funded effort will allow editors to engage with Native scholars and historians, and this collaboration will result in enhanced metadata and the sharing of very important Native perspectives.

Mashpee_1753An example of the materials that may be included is a December 1753 petition by Mashpee proprietors Isaac Simon and Daniel Sonkausinin, empowering Ely Moses and Phillip Wepquish to represent the community’s interests before the Massachusetts General Court about claims of longstanding encroachment by English settlers. Other Mashpees mentioned are Isaac Natompom, Richard Simon, and Daniel Saukasin.

(Massachusetts Archives, Volume 32:447).

 

 

Digital Native American & Indigenous Studies Workshop at Yale

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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).

DNAIS PhotoA 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.

IPCHThanks 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:

Twitter YIPP

Badass.  Thanks, Siobhan.  We like it!

 

 

 

Marcia Jones Flowers (1946-2016)

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marciaflowersWe share the sad news of the passing of our friend, colleague, and mentor, Marcia Jones Flowers (Dreaming Spirits). The former chairwoman of the Eastern Pequot Tribal Nation and the community’s genealogist and historian, she spearheaded one of the federal recognition efforts that lead to a preliminary positive decision from the BIA. As tribal chair, she was instrumental in unifying the two groups of Eastern Pequot into one vibrant tribal community.

Marcia served as a consultant for the Yale Indian Papers Project, especially in its early conceptual stages. Some of her ideas live on in the design of our work. She was an advocate for us presenting typographical facsimile transcriptions (Scholars Transcriptions) as a research option.

Her energy, compassion, and devotion to her community and to recovering the Eastern Pequot historical presence had no equal. Neither did her smile and her laugh.

We will miss her greatly.

Our condolences to her family and to the Eastern Pequot community.

Paul & Toby