Spotlight: Primary Sources and Special Collections at BU
Basket made by the Mississippi Band of the Choctaw and presented as a gift to Wheelock from chief Phillip Martin, 1998, on display at Pickering Educational Resource Library.
Contact the Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center, archives@bu.edu, 617-353-3696, for assistance with BU Special Collections, many of which are not indexed online. Examples include materials on the public health on reservations from 1925–1935 and rare books such as Thomas L. McKenney and James Hall's 1838 book History of the Indian Tribes of North America, with Biographical Sketches and Anecdotes of the Principal Chiefs. Embellished with One Hundred and Twenty Portraits, from the Indian Gallery in the Department of War, at Washington.
Examples of relevant collections:
- Beals, Carleton (1893-1979)
Manuscripts, photographs, correspondence, and many other items from the groundbreaking American journalist and historian, including manuscripts for his books John Eliot: The Man Who Loved the Indians (Messner, 1958), Nomads and Empire Builders: Native Peoples and Cultures of South America (Chilton, 1961), Land of the Mayas: Yesterday and Today (Abelard, 1967), Stories Told by the Aztecs Before the Spaniards Came (Abelard, 1970), and The Incredible Incas: Yesterday and Today (Abelard, 1973); and documents from his research on Latin America. - Berger, Thomas (1924-2014)Manuscripts, journals, correspondence, audio, and other material from the recognized American author, known for his surreal, satirical novels; including his research material regarding American Indians for his book Little Big Man (1964).
- Gregg, Elinor D. (1886-1970)
Reports, correspondence, photographs, and other material regarding American Indians and the Bureau of Indian Affairs, from the noted public health nurse and Supervisor of Public Health Nursing in the Medical Division of the Bureau of Indian Affairs from 1924 to 1939. - Keil, Charles M. H. (1939- )
Manuscripts, research material, correspondence, journals and diaries, printed material, audio, memorabilia, and other material from the renowned American musicologist. Material for his book Tiv Song (University of Chicago Press, 1979) includes interviews, autobiographies, translation notebooks and dictionaries (for the Yoruba, Dzar, Loho and other languages), photographs, drawings, transcribed myths and folk tales, and other items. - Norman, Howard (1949- )
Manuscripts, correspondence, memorabilia, printed materials, research materials, video, audio, and other materials from the acclaimed American writer, educator, and translator, including translations by Norman of stories and poems in the Cree language dated between 1970 and 1972. - Wyman, Leland (1897-1988)
Manuscripts, printed material, correspondence, research material, and other material from the physiologist, ethnologist, and Boston University professor, including his extensive manuscripts and research regarding Navaho history, art and culture.
Spotlight: Arts & Culture
- North American Indian Drama This link opens in a new windowIncludes plays by American Indian and First Nation playwrights of the 20th century, information about the plays and their production, and biographical data. Also includes issues of the Native Playwrights' Newsletter.
Encyclopedia of Native American Music of North America by
This book is a one-stop reference resource for the vast variety of musical expressions of the First Peoples' cultures of North America, both past and present.Encyclopedia of Native American Music of North America documents the surprisingly varied musical practices among North America's First Peoples, both historically and in the modern context. It supplies a detailed yet accessible and approachable overview of the substantial contributions and influence of First Peoples that can be appreciated by both native and nonnative audiences, regardless of their familiarity with musical theory.The entries address how ethnomusicologists with Native American heritage are revolutionizing approaches to the discipline, and showcase how musicians with First Peoples' heritage are influencing modern musical forms including native flute, orchestral string playing, gospel, and hip hop. The work represents a much-needed academic study of First Peoples' musical cultures--a subject that is of growing interest to Native Americans as well as nonnative students and readers.
Location: OnlineISBN: 9780313055065Publication Date: 2013
Decolonizing the Lens of Power by
This is the first book that comprehensively examines Indigenous filmmaking in North America, as it analyzes in detail a variety of representative films by Canadian and US-American Indigenous filmmakers: two films that contextualize the oral tradition, three short films, and four dramatic films. The book explores how members of colonized groups use the medium of film as a means for cultural and political expression and thus enter the dominant colonial film discourse and create an answering discourse. The theoretical framework is developed as an interdisciplinary approach, combining postcolonialism, Indigenous studies, and film studies. As Indigenous people are gradually taking control over the imagemaking process in the area of film and video, they cease being studied and described objects and become subjects who create self-controlled images of Indigenous cultures.
Location: OnlineISBN: 9789042025431Publication Date: 2008
The Routledge Introduction to Native American Literature by
This Introduction makes available for both student, instructor, and affcianado a refined set of tools for decolonizing our approaches prior to entering the unfamiliar landscape of Native American literatures. This book will introduce indigenous perspectives and traditions as articulated by indigenous authors whose voices have been a vital, if often overlooked, component of the American dialogue for more than 400 years. Paramount to this consideration of Native-centered reading is the understanding that literature was not something bestowed upon Native peoples by the settler culture, either through benevolent interventions or violent programs of forced assimilation. Native literature precedes colonization, and Native stories and traditions have their roots in both the precolonized and the decolonizing worlds. As this far-reaching survey of Native literary contributions will demostrate, almost without fail, when indigenous writers elected to enter into the world of western letters, they did so with the intention of maintaining indigenous culture and community. Writing was and always remains a strategy for survival.
Location: OnlineISBN: 9781351807500Publication Date: 2020
Shifting Grounds by
Foregrounds the importance of landscape within twenty-first-century Indigenous art A distinctly Indigenous form of landscape representation is emerging among contemporary Indigenous artists from North America. For centuries, landscape painting in European art typically used representational strategies such as single-point perspective to lure viewers--and settlers--into the territories of the old and new worlds. In the twentieth century, abstract expressionism transformed painting to encompass something beyond the visual world, and, later, minimalism and the Land Art movement broadened the genre of landscape art to include sculptural forms and site-specific installations. In Shifting Grounds, art historian Kate Morris argues that Indigenous artists are expanding and reconceptualizing the forms of the genre, expressing Indigenous attitudes toward land and belonging even as they draw upon mainstream art practices. The resulting works evoke all five senses: from the overt sensuality of Kay WalkingStick's tactile paintings to the eerie soundscapes of Alan Michelson's videos to the immersive environments of Kent Monkman's dioramas, this art resonates with a fully embodied and embedded subjectivity. Shifting Grounds explores themes of presence and absence, survival and vulnerability, memory and commemoration, and power and resistance, illuminating the artists' engagement not only with land and landscape but also with the history of representation itself.
Location: OnlineISBN: 9780295744827Publication Date: 2019
Navajo Textiles by
Navajo Textiles provides a nuanced account the Navajo weavings in the Crane Collection at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science--one of the largest collections of Navajo textiles in the world. Bringing together the work of anthropologists and indigenous artists, the book explores the Navajo rug trade in the mid-nineteenth century and changes in the Navajo textile market while highlighting the museum's important, though still relatively unknown, collection of Navajo textiles. In this unique collaboration among anthropologists, museums, and Navajo weavers, the authors provide a narrative of the acquisition of the Crane Collection and a history of Navajo weaving. Personal reflections and insights from foremost Navajo weavers D. Y. Begay and Lynda Teller Pete are also featured, and more than one hundred stunning full-color photographs of the textiles in the collection are accompanied by technical information about the materials and techniques used in their creation. An introduction by Ann Lane Hedlund documents the growing collaboration between Navajo weavers and museums in Navajo textile research. The legacy of Navajo weaving is complex and intertwined with the history of the Diné themselves. Navajo Textiles makes the history and practice of Navajo weaving accessible to an audience of scholars and laypeople both within and outside the Diné community.
ISBN: 9781607326731Publication Date: 2017
Indigenous Dance and Dancing Indian by
Focusing on the enactment of identity in dance, Indigenous Dance and Dancing Indian is a cross-cultural, cross-ethnic, and cross-national comparison of indigenous dance practices.
Location: OnlineISBN: 9781607320968Publication Date: 2011
