TEAM UPDATE: Official Press Release for Mellon Grant!

A while back, we made a casual announcement of our $3.6 million grant from the Mellon Foundation. We are happy to share the official press release from Maryland Today!

https://today.umd.edu/umd-awarded-3-6m-mellon-foundation-grant-to-advance-indigenous-archives

The press release features key problem statements and goals for the IndigenizeSNAC project over the next 3 years, and also features Dr. Shelbi Nahwilet Meissner, our Co-PI, adding Indigenous visibility and inclusion to UMD’s faculty and overall campus community. Dr. Meissner is quoted, “More than once, I’ve found pictures of my relatives in archives, and their names aren’t listed,” and shared that she once found an ancestor’s photograph labeled “artifact number 47.”

This is more common than some may think, and this sentiment can be echoed with at least one of UMD’s archival collections in which there are hundreds of photos of Indigenous individuals from across the United States, particularly of protests and occupations during the American Indian Movement in the late 1960s to early 1970s, in which people are unnamed, and perhaps mis-identified or mis-represented.

“We want this project to demonstrate how Indigenous and non-Native collaborators can work together. By doing so, we can shape archival practices to reflect the needs and aspirations of Indigenous communities striving to reclaim and revitalize their knowledge.”

– Dr. Shelbi Nahwilet Meissner