This 3-year, $334,000 Mellon and CLIR funded collaborative curation project, extends 5 years of work between four institutions (American Philosophical Society, National Museum of the American Indian, University of Washington, Washington State University) and nine partner Tribes and Nations: Coeur d’Alene Tribe (ID); Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation (WA); Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes (MT); Spokane Tribe of Indians (WA); Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs (OR); Nimíipuu (Nez Perce) Tribe (ID); Quinault Indian Nation (WA); Snoqualmie Indian Tribe (WA); Yakama Nation (WA). During this time, in-depth research and culturally responsive digital tools and workflows aim to reconnect Native communities with collections at non-Native repositories.

The proposed project will now digitize the collections already identified by Tribal partners at multiple repositories and return them to the Native American partners via the Plateau Peoples’ Web Portal and the Native Northwest Portal (TBD). Using Mukurtu CMS and the Mukurtu Metadata Transformation Toolkit, each Native partner will review, update metadata, assign protocols for access and Traditional Knowledge Labels to digitized content. This information will be shared with the non-Native repositories via Mukurtu’s Roundtrip thereby, providing a direct and sustainable pathway for ongoing digital returns, and culturally enhanced public records.

Kimberly Christen, WSU Professor and the Director of the Digital Technology and Culture Program, is PI for the grant. 

Contact John Vallier with questions about UW's portion of the project.