May 23, 2000
Northwest Coast Indian information available on Web
A unique collection of information about the Northwest Coast Indians is now available on the Web as a result of a University of Washington Libraries-led project, under a grant from the Library of Congress and Ameritech.
The American Memory project, which was recently completed, involved the translation of 2,350 images into digital form. UW’s Special Collections supplied images of Northwest coast cultural groups, while the Eastern Washington Historical Society supplied information from the Plateau Indians. The Museum of History and Industry supplied 130 images from its collections. And the entire project used a database system developed by the UW Department of Electrical Engineering.
More than 7,500 pages of text from the UW Libraries’ Manuscripts, Special Collections and University Archives Division supplement the images. Documents of particular interest include reports of the U.S. Commissioner of Indian Affairs, treaties between tribes and the U.S. government and UW anthropological publications and articles from the Pacific Northwest Quarterly.
Ten original essays, written by anthropologists, historians and teachers are intended to guide classroom teachers in organizing and presenting this material.
“The essays are intended to be the ‘raw material’ for teachers doing lesson plans. The essays will lhelp teachers doing lesson plans by providing some context for the primary and secondary sources of information contained on the site,” says Gary Menges, preservation administrator at UW Libraries and project director.
“The collection brings together in one place a tremendous amount of material on native peoples,” says John Findlay, professor of history and editor of Pacific Northwest Quarterly. For students in my classes, who are required to do research papers, the logistics of research just got a lot easier. Moreover, the project is valuable because in addition to collecting a tremendous amount of information it also commissioned new scholarship by experts on a host of interesting topics.”
Ann Renker, a teacher at Neah Bay and the author of one of the essays, says the website will help classroom teachers, who may have difficulty finding enough time to research topics such as this. “This site will allow students to conduct their own research on a website that is reputable, current and accurate. There is a lot of junk on the Internet, and students cannot always tell the difference on their own. The site also will allow students and faculty to deal with information about Native Americans that is not fraught with stereotypes, racism or condescension.”
Renker says writing her essay posed some special challenges. “The biggest one was trying to use language that was intelligible for a seventh grade reading level, which was our instructions. I discovered that I could write very easily in anthropological and legal jargon, but that clear, common language was a challenge.” A second challenge was writing about the contemporary Makah in a way that would withstand the scrutiny of both the tribal members and the academic community. “I am thankful to 20 years of involvement with the Makah community, Makah elders, and the Makah Cultural and Research Center for help with this issue.”
David Buerge, a teacher who has written extensively about regional history, says the site is “big , deep and thick” enough to allow even middle school students to construct ambitious projects on their own. “It’s a wonderful way to promote education. Still, it touches the surface of what is a huge topic, providing a guide of where to go for more information.” Buerge contributed two essays to the project.
The project URL is: http://memory.loc.gov:8081/ammem/award98/wauhtml/aipnhome.html. The UW’s American Indians of the Pacific Northwest site is: http://content.lib.washington.edu/aipnw/index.html.
