Digitization and Description of Boas/Hunt Collections

FAIN: PW-259054-18

Bard College (Annandale-on-Hudson, NY 12504-9800)
Aaron Glass (Project Director: July 2017 to November 2021)

The digitization of 6,000 pages of texts, 200 photographs, 272 objects, and 212 sound recordings representing the core research materials used in the preparation of the monograph The Social Organization and Secret Societies of the Kwakiutl Indians, authored by Franz Boas and George Hunt in 1897.

This Humanities Collections and Reference Resources grant will support digitization of invaluable primary source materials relating to the Kwakwa_ka_’wakw (Kwakiutl), compiled by Franz Boas and George Hunt during the years 1886-1939 and now dispersed over a wide array of institutions, along with their indexing and description in accordance with nationally recognized metadata standards. The proposed work will develop new reference resources describing the larger Boas-Hunt collections, their historical origins, and their cultural significance; contribute significant digital content to the various holding institutions; prepare digital assets for a planned preservation repository at the University of British Columbia; and create an open-access online interface that allows discovery of the newly digitized and described content, thereby providing integrated public access while repatriating long inaccessible cultural heritage to its indigenous inheritors.