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Posts from the ‘Native American and Indigenous Studies’ Category

Sep 27

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@Mukurtu Project Wins Major IMLS Grant

Congratulations to Kim Christen and everyone working on the Mukurtu project on news that the effort has received a major grant from the (U.S.) Institute for Museum and Library Services (announced here). This is a major development for a major project.

As noted on the Mukurtu project site, Mukurtu is “A free and open source community content management system that provides international standards-based tools adaptable to the local cultural protocols and intellectual property systems of Indigenous communities, libraries, archives, and museums.” It is “a flexible archival tool that allows users to protect, preserve and share digital cultural heritage through Mukurtu Core steps and unique Traditional Knowledge licenses.”

Sep 20

Check Out Roy Boney’s Awesome Graphic Feature on Cherokee Language and Literacy

Indian Country Today has just published an awesome graphic feature by Roy Boney on the history of Cherokee literacy from the time of Sequoyah to the time of unicode. I do not need to go on and on and on about it. Its really great and you need to check it out.

Sep 20

Recovering Voices Program Manager

Recovering Voices Program Manager (IS-301-12, $74,872)
Department of Anthropology, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution

We are seeking a program manager for Recovering Voices, an interdisciplinary Smithsonian program that is working with communities to document and sustain endangered languages and knowledge. Read more

Sep 20

Historian Tiya Miles Honored with a 2011 MacArthur Foundation Fellowship

Congratulations to Tiya Miles on being honored with a 2011 MacArthur Foundation Fellowship. It is always fun to see who has been awarded one of these amazing Fellowships and it is great when someone working in the same corners of the world that I do is a recipient. Learn more about the awards and Professor Miles’ work on African and Cherokee history in the American South here.

Aug 31

Oklahoma Native Language and History Projects Making Progress

A round up of some good news Oklahoma.

The team at the Euchee (Yuchi) History Project has published an account of the project’s work in the prestigious journal Native South. Native South is published by the University of Nebraska Press and is made available electronically via Project Muse. The article, by Stephen A. Martin and Adam Recvlohe,  is titled, appropriately enough “The Euchee (Yuchi) History Project.” It is accessible (toll access) here: http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/native_south/v004/4.martin.html

The National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Science Foundation have announced a series of grant awards under the Documenting Endangered Languages program. I would like to highlight the following projects pursued by friends and acquaintances and to congratulate all the grantees. Durbin Feeling (Cherokee Nation) and colleagues have received funding for “Collaborative Research: Documenting Cherokee Tone and Vowel Length.” James Rementer and colleagues at the Delaware Tribe have been awarded a grant for “Lenape Language Database Project.” Mary Linn and Amber Neely have been funded for Amber’s dissertation research on “Speaking Kiowa Today” and Sean O’Neill and Elizabeth Kickham have received support for “Choctaw Language Ideologies and their Impact on Teaching and Learning,” Elizabeth’s doctoral research. Rounding out the good news for Oklahoma language efforts, Mary Linn and Colleen Fitzgerald have received additional support for the ongoing “Oklahoma Breath of Life Workshop and Documentation Project.” Congratulations to all of these language workers and the communities that stand behind them in support! Read the NEH/NSF press release here: http://www.neh.gov/news/archive/20110809.html

Aug 5

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Preprint: The Story of Colonialism, or Rethinking the Ox-hide Purchase in Native North America and Beyond

It will be more than a year and a half before my paper on the ox-hide purchase story is published in the Journal of American Folklore. Since my revisions are now complete, I am happy to temporarily post a preprint here. I am a big advocate for institutional repositories such as IUScholarWorks Repository and my fellow repository boosters may wonder why I have not (as I so often preach) placed the preprint there. In this case, the American Folklore Society is transitioning to a new author agreement that will, when the time comes, allow me to post the final published version to IUSW. For that reason, I am making the preprint available in a way that will be easy to take down once the paper is published.

This is a paper that many great people helped me work on over many years. To all of them, thank you!

Aug 4

Wars and Rumors of Wars @Philbrook Museum of Art

Excited to see this promotional video with my friend Christina Burke, Curator of Native American and Non-Western Art at Philbrook Museum of Art in Tulsa. Christina is a great curator stewarding a great collection in a great museum. This video introduces the new exhibition Wars and Rumors of War. The exhibition is built out of the museum’s fine collection of Native American works on paper. Congratulations Christina, congratulations Philbrook. I hope I make it back to Tulsa in time to see the show.

Jul 23

Colorado College Road Trip to the Denver Museum of Nature and Science and the Denver Art Museum

I have always wanted to visit the Denver Art Museum and the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. Today I had my chance and it was great. As part of my “Introduction to Folklife” course at Colorado College, my class and I had the chance to go north to Denver for the day and to visit both museums. Both are impressive. Both have great collections and deep traditions of excellent work in those areas that matter most to me—world ethnography and Native American studies/Native American art. There was no way we could see more than a small portion of both museums, but what we saw in both institutions was great. Colorado is very lucky.

At DMNH we were generously hosted by Steve Nash, who showed us around behind the scenes in the Department of Anthropology (which he chairs). We also got to see Chip Colwell-Chanthaphonh, who was busy working on the next issue of Museum Anthropology (Steve and Chip took over editing the journal from me in 2009 and are doing great work with it.)

Our focus at DMNS was the Native North American culture halls, where we saw objects relating to our current reading and research project (centered on Daniel C. Swan’s book Peyote Religious Art: Symbols of Faith and Belief) and our next one (focused on Claire Farrer’s Thunder Rides a Black Horse: Mescalero Apaches and the Mythic Present). Organized on the basis of cultural areas, the DMNS exhibitions (which are steadily being updated and improved by Chip and Steve) do a great job of providing an basic orientation to the diversity of Native North America. This was evident when we got to the Denver Art Museum and the students had a better ability to appreciate the contexts for the work that is presented in a art museum mode there.

At DMNH we also had a chance to see the strange and remarkable carved gemstone sculptures made by Vasily Konovalenko to portray aspects of Russian peasant folklife. One could talk and think about them for hours and they were a great conversation point for our class and a great reminder of how complex not only art and material culture are, but how complex issues of cultural representation are, in general and under the banner of folklife in particular.

After short drive downtown and a quick street-side gyro, we hit the art museum. Like DMNS it is huge and impressive and impossible to see properly on a single day trip. Here our foci were the Native American and non-western art halls, as well as the galleries devoted to the art of the Western United States. We saw the galleries for the arts of Oceania, Africa, Asia, and Native North America. DAM was among the first U.S. art museums to get serious about Native American art and their collections are stunning.  In my own area of special interest, the DAM is currently exhibiting 5 (!) beaded bandolier bags from the Southeast. This is simply dumbfounding and a reminder of how deep the collection is.  All the galleries provided rich learning opportunities for me and for the students. I was reminded of how fun it is to teach in the presence of rich collections well-displayed. (I really missed being a curator today.)

The students seemed to have good time. They were easy, engaged, and wonderful travel companions and all the logistics went off without a hitch.

Colorado College and its amazing block plan (which makes such trips possible through its one class at a time format) are at the root of the day’s success. Many people did great behind-the-scenes administrative work to enable me (as a new to CC  visitor) to take this trip with the students. Thanks to everyone who heaped to make it happen.

May 19

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Anthropologist Robert Reeves Solenberger (1916-2006)

In a paper that I published in 2002, I drew upon unpublished ethnographic notes compiled in 1940-1941 by then University of Pennsylvania graduate student Robert R. Solenberger. Solenberger was a student of Frank G. Speck and others on the faculty at Penn. The notes that I drew upon in my paper are part of the Speck Papers at the American Philosophical Society. I have today been working on a new paper that draws upon the same unpublished manuscript by Solenberger. In 2000, when I was working on the paper mentioned above, I was able to track down Professor Solenberger in retirement in Tuscon, AZ and to speak with him on the phone about his graduate studies and the materials that I was then drawing upon.

Taking up work on a new project based on his notes, I went online tonight to see what more I could learn about Solenberger’s career. I learned that he passed away (in his 90s) a few years ago. I found various bits of information on his life, work, and history, but did not find a professional obituary. Based on the information that I pieced together tonight, I offer the following brief sketch.

Robert R. Solenberger (1916-2006) earned a M.A. in anthropology from the University of Pennsylvania in 1940 with a thesis on “An Interpretation of Material on the Anthropology of East Africa Based upon Mediaeval Arabic Writers.” and was on the faculty of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Bloomsburg State College (now Bloomsburg University). He published a prominent series of articles focused on the Marianas Islands, where he worked in the 1950s. (These appeared in Human Organization, Anthropological Linguistics, and Oceania, among other outlets.) During his graduate training, he participated in archaeological research at Clovis, New Mexico in 1937 (under the direction of John L. Cotter). He was a Quaker and a conscientious objector during World War II.

My sources include published works discoverable via Google Scholar and the Internet Archive, as well as the following Google discoveries:

http://www.biblerecords.com/solenberger.html
http://www.fum.org/QL/issues/0709/passages.htm
http://www.upenn.edu/gazette/0302/0302notes.html
http://www.upenn.edu/gazette/0707/obits.html

He appears on the AAA Honor Roll of Donors in the last years of his life, but I could find no professional obituary in a AAA publication or elsewhere. A Society of Friends memorial sketch is available.

It was an honor to speak with this anthropology elder early in 2000. I record here my thanks for his kindness and his interest in my work. I also express appreciation for his work, including the six pages of Southeastern Indian ethnography that he compiled in 1940 while on a road trip with  through Virginia, North Carolina, and Florida.

Rest in Peace.

(Additions and corrections to this sketch are very welcome.)

Mar 22

Collection Manager for Nation American Languages Collection (SNOMNH)

From Mary S. Linn, Curator of Native American Languages, Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History

Hello Friends and Colleagues,

I am writing you to announce the that we are taking applications for the position of Collection Manager (CM) for the Nation American Languages collection at the Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History at the University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK. This is one of only a few digital and physical archives of endangered languages in a museum setting in the US. We are partnering with many different Oklahoma and regional tribes and tribal people as the collection grows, and we are involved in collaborative efforts to make the collection significant to revitalization work. The CM is directly responsible for the processing, care (of both digital and analog collections), and accessibility issues. In addition, we sponsor programming in language documentation, revitalization, and conservation, and the CM makes the collection available and user-friendly to patrons, and makes it up-to-date as technology and user-needs change. A proactive CM will also help shape the future growth areas of the department. So, this position is unique and exciting, and a great opportunity for someone starting their career.

I encourage you to pass this information on to students and others you know with a BA or MA degree and experience in language media.

Here are the instructions to get to the application:

http://hr.ou.edu//

left Quick Links: Job Postings

left: Search Listings

Job Listing Number: 11275 (this is enough to get you the full listing and application)

Title: Curator/Archivist I
For more information on the Sam Noble Museum, please go to : http://www.snomnh.ou.edu/
For a brief introduction to the NAL Collections, please go to: http://www.snomnh.ou.edu/collections-research/nal.htm
You can search our catalog at: http://www.snomnh.ou.edu/db2/nal/index.php

Thank you all,
Mary
Mary S. Linn
Associate Curator, Native American Languages
Associate Professor, Anthropology
Adjunct Associate Professor, Native American Studies

Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History
University of Oklahoma
2401 Chautauqua Avenue
Norman, OK 73072
405-325-7588 (voice) 405-325-7699 (fax)

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