Writing of Indigenous New England: Building Partnerships for the Preservation of Regional Native American Literature

FAIN: PW-51549-14

University of New Hampshire (Durham, NH 03824-2620)
Siobhan Senier (Project Director: July 2013 to August 2016)

Collaborative planning for creating access, through an online portal, to regional Native American writings held by small tribal archives across New England. Three pilot projects to test workflow for digitizing these materials would be undertaken and protocols and agreements for future collaborative work would be drafted.

The project will convene a group of regional Native American knowledge keepers, humanities scholars, and digitization and intellectual property experts for project and planning activities associated with the online portal, "Writing of Indigenous New England." At present our growing collaboration includes scholars, librarians, web developers and tribal historians from New Hampshire, Maine, Massachusetts and Rhode Island. We seek NEH funding to accomplish three initial goals: (1) convene a 2-day editorial board meeting and planning session, from which we will (2) write up our editorial guidelines and priorities, agree on culturally-sensitive intellectual property protocols, and establish technical specifications for the website; and (3) run three pilot projects at the Tomaquag Museum (RI), Indigenous Resource Collaborative (MA), and Passmaquoddy Heritage Center (ME), to help us establish workflow, clarify budget and staffing expectations, and begin drafting some larger funding proposals.