OU Researchers Win Prestigious NEH Grant to Develop Indigenous Media Portal
Researchers working with the University of Oklahoma Libraries and the Native Nations Center won a prestigious grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to develop an Indigenous Media Portal at OU.
The award is one of only three from NEH given to Oklahoma researchers this year. All three grants were given to OU researchers.
“OU is an important hub for Indigenous media as well as Indigenous archival collections,” the project’s leadership said. “The proposal developed over the past four years through close dialogue among people working in these areas, to try to bridge the gap between OU collections and Tribal heritage communities. We are humbled and excited to have an opportunity to work with Tribal partners to select items for the digital platform and to foster cultural reconnection through new media production."
The Indigenous Media Portal will incorporate historical photographs, radio, and other audio media, starting with the OU Western History Collections, which contain invaluable oral histories, traditional singing, and photographs from nearly forty Tribes across the state. The Portal will also include new videos that contextualize the archival collections through the voices of Indigenous knowledge holders.
The project is a partnership between OU Libraries and the Native Nations Center, in collaboration with a Tribal Advisory Committee and a University Advisory Committee. In this stage of development, representatives from nine Tribal Nations, eight OU departments, and several areas of OU Libraries will bring a wealth of expertise and novel perspectives to the project.
The current project leadership is composed of Amanda Minks, associate professor in the Honors College and affiliate faculty, Native American Studies; Amanda Cobb-Greetham, professor of Native American Studies in the Dodge Family College of Arts and Sciences and citizen of the Chickasaw Nation; Joshua Nelson, associate professor of English, affiliate faculty in Native American Studies in the Dodge Family College of Arts and Sciences, and citizen of the Cherokee Nation; and Lina Ortega, associate curator of the Western History Collections, Native American Studies Librarian for OU Libraries, and citizen of the Sac and Fox Nation.
Tribal partners and project leaders will choose materials appropriate for sharing in a publicly accessible platform and present them in ways that support community interests and broader public understanding. The Indigenous Media Portal will prioritize the self-representation of Oklahoma Tribal communities through their own voices, music, and audiovisual media.
“In the early 1900s, institutional archives often collected photographs, audio recordings, and oral histories of Indigenous peoples because they believed Indigenous peoples were losing their cultures and distinctive identities,” said the project leaders. “In reality, Iindigenous peoples have maintained their cultural practices and identities, but they have often been cut off from the institutional collections that hold the images and voices of their ancestors.”
“Engaging with these songs, stories, and images will have profound effects on these family and community members. The Indigenous Media Portal will bring together old and new media to make archival collections more accessible to Tribal heritage communities.”
This stage of the project will be funded by the NEH Humanities Collections and Reference Resources Foundations grant, along with generous support from OU Libraries, the Office of the Vice President for Research and Partnerships, and the Institute for Community and Social Transformation.
The team plans to launch a pilot website by the end of 2024. In the next stage of development, they intend to expand the number of Tribes involved and the range of materials in the Indigenous Media Portal. A link to the Indigenous Media Portal will be made available on the OU Libraries website, among other places.
About the grant:
The Humanities Collections and Reference Resources program advances scholarship, education, and public engagement in the humanities by helping libraries, archives, museums, and historical organizations across the country steward important collections of books and manuscripts, photographs, sound recordings, and moving images, archaeological and ethnographic artifacts, art and material culture, and digital objects. The program strengthens efforts to extend the reach of such materials and make their intellectual content widely accessible. Awards also support the creation of reference resources that facilitate the use of cultural materials, from works that provide basic information quickly to tools that synthesize and codify knowledge of a subject for in-depth investigation.
About the Native Nations Center:
Established in 2015, the Native Nations Center works to foster respectful and mutually productive relationships between the University of Oklahoma and Native Nations within the state of Oklahoma and beyond. Through its three-pronged focus of Research and Scholarship, Student Leadership/Student Research, and Community/Tribal Engagement, the Native Nations Center seeks to open communications and strengthen institution-to-institution relationships, and provide opportunities and resources regarding Native and Indigenous cultures and sovereignty throughout OU’s three campuses for tribes within and outside the state of Oklahoma, students, staff, faculty, researchers, scholars, key stakeholders, and those interested in Native and Indigenous initiatives.
This article was originally published by OU Libraries.
