From the library of congress in Washington, DC. [ Silence ] [ Background Sounds ] >> Jennifer Manning: Good morning, can everyone hear me? Good. I'm Jennifer Manning. I'm a librarian with the Congressional Research Service here at the library. On behalf of Native American employees and friends at the library of congress, I'd like to welcome you to this Native American heritage month event. Thank you for coming and celebrating with us on this rather gloomy day. We have a full day ahead of us, so without further ado, it's my pleasure to introduce the library's Chief of Staff, Mr. Robert Newlen. [ Applause ] [ Background Sounds ] >> Robert Newlen: Well thank you and good morning. I have been Chief of Staff here at the library for just about one year. In fact, I've been celebrating several anniversaries in the past week. I have been Chief of Staff for a year and I celebrated my 40th Anniversary of employment with the Library of Congress. And I could-- [applause]-- thank you. Yes, I know it's amazing that I'm still standing. But it's a wonderful institution and a wonderful place to have a career and I'm really looking forward to you learning more about our many resources today. One thing I should note too is, this is my maiden voyage using an iPad for my remarks but, the acting Librarian of Congress, David Mao, uses one all the time and he's very facile with it. So I've seen him speak enough and I kind of got jealous and I thought, well he's making me look like a troglodyte so I'm going to do it. But I just want you to know that I'm also carrying the paper copy in my back pocket because you never know. But it is my pleasure to welcome you to the Library of Congress and today's program showcasing three LC programs and your opportunity to connect with our collections that showcase the great heritage of American Indians who have lived on this land for thousands and thousands of years. The library as you probably know has over-- there I just did it-- has over fifteen million items in all formats. We acquire them, we prepare them, we organize them, and we preserve them. Today's theme is Connecting American Indian and Federal Libraries and our goal for you in the audience, whether you are listening online or viewing this through a webcast, is to learn about Native American Research and Resources at the Library of Congress. But I hope you will also get to know one of our greatest treasures here at the library, and that is the Library of Congress staff. They have incredible knowledge of our collections and are here to help you navigate this marvelous institution. You will find lots of people like me that have been here 35, 40, 45 years and sometimes at this stage I think it takes that long to really get to know the Library of Congress collections and when I look around this room I see so many talented people. Beacher [assumed spelling], Yolanda, Blaine, Jennifer, Eric. All people who have incredible knowledge of this great institution, so today please take advantage of them, and I know they will all share their e-mails with you. Today we are going to have presentations from 3 major programs that further our work with American Indians. In just a few moments we'll learn about the work of the FEDLINK American Library Initiative. At noon, a former Kluge scholar and a panel of cultural experts will talk about federal and regional Native history. And at 2 p.m. the Law Library will present the indigenous tribal law portal which is available online. And in between, you'll be seeing presentations from our curators, from the geography and map division, from prints and photographs, from manuscripts, and from rare books. What we're hoping is, is that what you find here today will wet your appetite to keep coming back again and again. We also hope that it will help you find a place to expand and deepen your understanding of Native American, American Indian and indigenous peoples of the world who link us to a great past and to a great future. We invite you to continue learning about our cooperative web portal nativeamericanhertiagemonth.com I think I got that right. So with that said, it is my pleasure to welcome you here and anything we can do to make your visit more enjoyable, please let us know. I'm hoping to come in and out of the program today. I feel like I'm on the lecture circuit. I'm going directly from here to talk to a management group about our strategic plan. Trust me, I'd rather be here. So with that, thank you so much. [ Applause ] [ Background Sounds ] >> George Franchois: Okay, let's see here. All right. Unfortunately, I don't have an iPad yet. I am keeping my fingers crossed for Christmas, but we shall see what happens. So I'm doing this the old fashion way. My name is George Franchois. I'm the Director of the Department of the Interior Library here in Washington DC and I'm going to talk to you a little bit about the Department of the Interior Library and the Tribal College and University Library Initiative that we are very much involved with. So first I want to tell you a little bit about the Department of the Interior Library. We are located again here in Washington DC in the Stewart Lee Udall Department of the Interior Building, 1849 C Street Northwest, Room 2262. We are open to the public. We're open from 7:45 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday except for federal holidays. We will be closed tomorrow for Veteran's Day. We do provide inner library loan services. We both lend things out to other libraries around the country, and it doesn't matter, public libraries, university libraries, corporate libraries. We will loan things out to you that are circulating materials, and we of course process in our library loan request for our own staff as well. Our website is www.doi.gov/library. We've got a lot of great resources on our website including a lot of great Native American resources on our website, so we invite you to take a look at that site for information about the Department of the Interior, our library, and Native American Resources. Now currently our library is in the midst of a 2-year modernization/renovation project. So we are actually operating out of a much smaller temporary library right now. Most of our popular legal legislative and reference materials are located in our temporary library, but about 90 to 95 percent of our material right now is located in an offsite warehouse in Sterling, Virginia. We do have a courier service that goes back and forth twice a week so if that we need materials from the warehouse we can get them pulled. And we are like I said scheduled to reopen probably late 2016, early 2017. Some of our facilities people are telling me, it could be as early as next October, but I'm not holding my breath on that one knowing our facilities people at DOI. So we shall see what happens there as well. We've got about a one million volume collection all together. Things that we collect include materials published by all the DOI bureaus, offices, and agencies as well as commercial publications that have subject areas that deal with Department of the Interior issues. So we collect things from all of our bureaus. Like I said, the Bureau of Indian Affairs we collect a lot of materials from, National Park Service, Bureau of Land Management, Bureau of Reclamation, Fish and Wildlife Service, USGS, several others as well and it's not just BIA that produces materials that deal with Native American issues. All of the agencies within the Department of the Interior to one extent to another have materials that they published that deal with Native American heritage, history, current events that Native Americans were involved with, etc. So almost everything in our collection in one way or another touches the Native American community. We also have a legal and administrative collection that includes bureau and agency directives and orders, secretarial orders, and executive orders and proclamations. And again many of these items also contain materials related to Native American affairs. So how did this whole movement to try to help Native American libraries, and specifically Tribal College and university libraries get started? It basically had its genesis back in 2002, with Executive Order number 13270, July 3rd 2002, entitled Tribal College and Universities and this said each participating executive department and agency is to develop plans that would address how the agency intends to increase the capacity of tribal colleges to compete effectively for any available grants, contracts, cooperative agreements, and any other federal resources, and to encourage tribal colleges to participate in federal programs. The plans also may emphasize access to high quality educational opportunities for economically disadvantaged Indian students, consistent with requirements of No child Left Behind Act of 2001. So at this point what happened was organizations such as the Institute for Museum and Library Services placed an increased emphasis on providing grants and other opportunities for tribal colleges and university libraries. The Bureau of Indian Education within the Department of the Interior began to work a little more closely with tribal college and university libraries, and the American Indian Higher Education Contortion also started to work a little more closely with tribal colleges and universities on mutually beneficial projects. The one thing though that was going on at that time was a case called the Cobell case, and I think many of you might be familiar with that case where Native American tribes were suing the Department of the Interior for mishandling Indian trust funds. So there was a high degree at that point of mistrust between Native American tribes and the Department of the Interior and not as much really got done on this front as we would've hoped to have gotten done at that point. So because of the suspicions that existed between the Department of the Interior and a lot of Native American tribes, a lot of these initiatives unfortunately were put off a little bit at that time. So we fast forward to February 14th, 2011, Valentine's Day which is a great day for a [inaudible] of understanding, of course. So MOU was signed between the Bureau of Indian Education and the American Indian Higher Education Consortium. By February 14th, 2011 the Cobell case had been settled, and the suspicions were still there a little bit, a lot of those suspicions and a lot of those mistrusts had kind of evaporated as a result of the settlement being reached. So the memorandum of understanding stated that DOI and AIHEC will focus on strengthening the capacities of TCU's and supporting their full integration into DOI's programs and services. This MOU will also promote enriching outdoor experiences and law enforcement and natural resources and other science and technology career pathways. Amongst students attending TCU's and their feeder K-12 schools. Part of the initiative, part of this memorandum of understanding also was to fully integrate TCU's into DOI mission areas and bureau programs, services and resource opportunities and provide linkage and develop partnerships between TCU's and DOI and bureaus and offices. Part of what happened as a result-- let me go back here-- as a result of this as well, it is that the Department of the Interior Library was brought into the process and asked how can the Department of the Interior Library participate and contribute to this initiative, to this MOU that was signed in 2011? And this is when we first heard about getting started with this particular initiative. Soon thereafter, December 2nd, 2011 an executive order was signed improving American Indian and Alaskan Native educational opportunities and strengthening tribal colleges and universities. And what this did was established a formal White House Initiative on American Indian and Alaska Native Education. The Secretary of Education and the Secretary of the Interior are co-chairs of the initiative. Missions of the initiative, service liaison with other executive branch agencies on American Indian and Alaskan Native issues and advise those agencies on how they might help promote American Indian and Alaskan Native educational opportunities. Further tribal sovereignty by supporting efforts, consistent with applicable law, to build the capacity of tribal educational agencies and TCU's to provide high quality education services to American Indian and Alaska Native children and increase college access and completion for American Indian and Alaska Native students through strategies to strengthen the capacity of TCU's. So in early 2002, the Bureau of Indian Education with NDOI met with representatives of other DOI bureaus and agencies to discuss how we can best go about doing this. The office of the secretary again asked DOI's library to help participate in this and asked if we can expand our services and outreach to TCU's through their libraries. Now of course, our budget is not as such that we could expand our budget too dramatically to help with this sort of effort, so it had be something that we could do that wouldn't necessarily cost a lot of money to the library or to the Department of the Interior a lot of ideas were presented to TCU presidents and there was a lot of interest within the TCU community and the library services assistance to their own libraries and their own library communities. So at that point we got together with AIHEC and discussed what the best way to start this project would be. So we received a list of libraries and library leaders at 37 AIHEC member libraries and sent out a survey to all of them asking them a number of different questions. They included questions about high-speed internet access in their library and on campus, electronic databases and e-book subscriptions in their library, and whether or not they had inner library loan services, whether or not they received government documents through the GPO's Federal Depository Library Program. And we asked them about other items, services and resources that they felt they needed to provide quality services to their students and staff. We received responses from 19 AIHEC member libraries as a result of that survey. And some of the things that they told us were that they needed additional staffing, they needed additional funding to purchase to more resources, they need additional funding to offset the increasing prices of databases and print materials. They would like consortium pricing for databases integrated library systems. They were interested in inner library loan reciprocal lending agreements and a possible TCU inner library loan consortium. They wanted more computers in their libraries. They wanted the means to be able to remote library services and resources. They needed better transportation to TCU libraries that weren't centrally located within the communities. They needed additional training for library staff and students and online databases, and many of them need additional or even adequate space for their libraries with new furniture. Some of the things that the Department of the Interior Library took out of that as far as things we would be able to provide the TCU libraries as a result of their survey included: Reciprocal Interlibrary Loan Services where we'd encourage TCU libraries to borrow circulating materials from our collection; reference services where we would encourage TCU students and faculty to contact our library for any reference assistance and instances where they couldn't necessarily have the resources to answer those questions themselves; government document assistance encouraging TCU libraries to contact the DOI library for assistance in locating and obtaining federal government documents, especially documents that were originated from the Department of the Interior; and remote online access to library classes. The DOI library promotes and hosts a lot of training classes and other types of programs and we wanted to encourage them to be able to attend our classes via webinar or some other remote means. So what we did was presented all of these ideas at a FEDLINK meeting soon thereafter and we found that FEDLINK was also very much interested in helping with this project and promoting this project to other FEDLINK member libraries. We were very pleased to hear that and very pleased at the response from many FEDLINK libraries as they also expressed their interest in joining with us on this project and soon thereafter the American Indian library Initiative working group here at Fed link was indeed formed and continues to this day. So with that, I will turn things over to Gary McCone , Gary is with the American Indian Higher Education Consortium and he will tell you a little bit more about AIHECs involvement in this project. Thank you very much. [ Applause ] [ Background Sounds ] >> Gary McCone: Well this is going to be really short because George just gave my speech and so it's more dramatic with paper. I don't know where Robert is but if try doing this with an iPad, it cost you a lot of money so don't do that. I am Gary McCone. I'm with AIHEC. Maybe I should mention, I'm a volunteer. They don't pay me, but it's so much fun so I do it anyway. American Indian-- I don't have to explain what AIHEC is, no, because you already know this. Thank you, George. All this detail, I can skip about 20 slides now, and go right into in case you don't know, I think George said with there were 37 at the time. I think there's 38 now. The Pawnee Nation College has just come on board. Basically they're out in the West as you might know, maybe suspect or maybe not suspect, but they are scattered around essentially the mountain states, a couple in the Southwest. The oldest one is Denay College down in Arizona was formed in 1968. The newest one I think was last week, Pawnee Nation College and there's a couple of others out there that are in the process of getting together, getting facilities, getting accreditation and then once they get accreditation, then they can apply and be part of AIHEC if they want to. And most of them want to. There seems to be a genuine benefit to them for being in AIHEC so, I think, okay I like this. It depends on what version of PowerPoint you use whether your pictures are in the right places or not. So we do have curriculum suppor [phonetic] which is a good thing. And Native studies call so those are two really important issues. Underfunded. I just put that in because everybody's underfunded. Travel colleges and universities are really underfunded. The size of the collection, I mean I've heard from people who are just starting out who have, well we have a bookcase but we don't have any books on it. So that's one level and you have other one's that have maybe 50,000 item collection, something like that, so I'm not counting microphage and all these things that librarians like to count to get their statistics up but real books. They do get funding, the colleges I should say, get funding from the federal government based on enrollment, FDE enrollment. And so there's some fudging of statistics I think on everybody's side, when they start counting this. If they have to pay for something, then they want their enrollment low. Like if you have 2,000 users on a database, that gets you once price. If you have 5,000, that's a different price. But it also effects the amount of money you receive from the federal government. A lot of people think that the tribal colleges because all but 3 of them are on reservation land, and everyone knows reservations all have casino's and so there's lots of money, and there's probably a lot of money but you'd be surprised how little of it, goes to the education system on the reservations. Curriculum suppor [phonetic]. I think there's a T hiding back there. Many of the libraries don't have a materials budget that allows them to buy them anything other than strict curriculum-related materials. They can't branch out and buy other things. They can't get supportive materials, they can't, they just can't do much other than this very specifically support the curriculum which really limits the size of the collection and the use of it. Almost all of them claim to have or try to have a Native Studies Collection. Some of them have, I think, really good Native Studies Collections. Denay has a really good one. I think, Little Big Horn has a really good Native Studies Collection, but for the most part they try. Most of them also serve as a public library, so when you can't buy books except for curriculum, that really limits the public library aspect of it. They serve preschool to elders, not just people who are enrolled in the college so that's an issue. Digital resources, I think George mentioned the number of different, I guess on the survey that they, well he didn't specifics on who had what but a lot of them do have digital resources. And it's sort of interesting because I've tried to get different consortium pricing on different collections of electronic journals or databases, and it's interesting because, of course all of the vendors are willing to give me a price, but the problem is a lot of these colleges, depending on what state there in, they already get a good deal within the state. Minnesota or Wyoming or somebody like that, the state pays for it. They don't have to pay anything to get into this consortium. Other one's provide an entryway into the consortium but they have to pay a really reduced rate, and so that's great for the ones that have that kind of an arrangement, but it seems that most states don't do that. You're on your own. You are in, either is in the state consortium or there is one but you can't get in unless you pay a full percentage or a full ticket, so that's an issue. And when I get a consortial price for all 37 or 38, often the ones that are getting really good deal, so it makes no sense for us to get into this because we are already getting it more cheaply and so almost every one of those has fallen through just because of that. When I go back to ProQuest or whoever and say well, okay, how about for this many? So well then the price per institution goes up as you would expect. I mean, they're in it to make money. Okay, the great book giveaway. This is something that's been going on for a long time now and here's pictures from-- this is something that in conjunction with surplus books programs here at the Library of Congress, National Museum of American Indian, and we've gotten books from DC chapter of the Special Libraries Association, from Fannie Mae, from the Department of Education, and individuals, Maryland Chapter of Mensa. They've all chipped in books to go out to these colleges. So every year we send out about-National Agricultural Library, I should mention since they pay the shipping bill for all the books. I send out a list 4 times a year maybe and let them pick the titles they want. So they don't get one's-it's not just, here's a bunch of books because that doesn't work. They pick the titles, I send them out, and they get what they want. And so that's sort of a fun thing that they like to do. I think maybe, well you can see from the pictures, there's really a wide range, I think of-I guess what I would say is, look at the pictures, they just look like libraries. There not any different from any other public library mainly. There are certainly some things that cater to a pre-k crowd that you can see, but they're basically just like any other library that you think about except for the staffing can run from one part-time person, and that's a number of them, or they can get a student help maybe sometimes. I don't know what the-- I'm going to say that the, if you look at, some of them have multiple branches so if you exclude the multiple branch libraries, I say the most staff that any of them have is probably six. And I may be way off but I can't be off by more than six. So that's basically it, and I thank George for giving such a great background on AIHEC's involvement in all these things because, frankly I didn't know any of this stuff. And so now we'll be able to look at his slides and be able to learn it all. Okay, and now I would like to introduce my twin for the day, Blane Dessey, acting Executive Director of FEDLINK who I have known for several years now. [ Applause ] >> Blane Dessey: Thank you. >> Gary McCone: You notice, we both got the memo? >> Blane Dessey: Exactly, exactly. Twins separated at birth. >> Gary McCone: Exactly. There you go. >>Blane Dessey: Thank you. Let me just-- okay. I think I can do this. Good morning everyone and welcome to the Library of Congress and welcome to this program. I am Blane Dessey. I'm the acting Executive Director of FEDLINK for another few days when we will be welcoming a new director to FEDLINK and I will ensure that one of her priorities is to continue work on this project, but let me try and put some of these puzzle pieces together, especially for those of you who are not familiar with the government as such. So earlier we heard George talk about the efforts of the Department of the Interior. Great effort. And we've just heard Gary talk about the efforts of AIHEC, did I pronounce that correctly? >> AIHEC. >> Blane Dessey: AIHEC, I'm sorry. And I'm here to talk a little bit about FEDLINK and so what is FEDLINK? FEDLINK is the Federal Library and Information Network. It's an organization of federal agencies working together to achieve optimum use of the resources and facilities of federal libraries and information centers. I'm not going to read this slide for you word for word. But here's what I want to bring to your attention. I don't think many people realize the power and the impact that federal libraries could have on this particular issue. When we had tried to do a survey of all the federal libraries, we've determined that there are probably at least 1,500 federal libraries around the world, if not close to closer to 2,000. All right. So if you look at this as some sort of a government enterprise, this is the largest library structure in the world, in the history of man for that matter. I mean that's quite impressive when you began to think of power of that many libraries focusing on a particular issue. It really sort of staggers the imagination. And so what I keep wanting to impress upon people is that, taken collectively, federal libraries can make a huge impact in terms of services, in terms of resources, and in terms of education to the American people. You know, Gary just said that many of the libraries that he works with or like public libraries and many of the libraries that are in the federal government are like public libraries. George works in what is in fact a public library. The Library of Congress, I mention this and people always kind of shudder when I say this, the Library of Congress is a public library just like the National Library of Medicine, just like National Agricultural Library and if we could really harness all this library energy, or all this intellectual energy, to work with tribal colleges and universities or tribal nations, I think there could be huge impacts. So I guess what I'm really saying is I'm committed to working with federal libraries through FEDLINK, and if you're in this room I'm hoping that you would also sort of commit to this cause with us, that the power of all of us to work together can be really quite significant. So that's my soapbox and now I'll move on to other things. So how did FEDLINK, which is this organization, really put tribal colleges and universities on its radar screen? Well it really began back in 2012 when George Franchois, and let me say George is too modest to say this but he has been one of the driving forces behind this entire effort. So George will never tell you that, but much of this would not have happened without George's direct involvement, so kudos to George. The Department of the Interior approached the FEDLINK advisory board to talk about what could be done. George shared with us the results of the survey and he was particularly interested in FEDLINK'S ability to negotiate consortium pricing for services, and we have some legal issues with that, that we're trying to resolve because tribal nations are not considered part of the federal government even though they receive federal funding, but anyway, but there are other things that we can be thinking about too as in education and collaboration and resource sharing. And when George brought this notion to my advisory board, which is comprised of other federal agencies, everyone was very, very supportive of the idea. And they felt that, yes, we as a federal library community do want to have a responsibility in improving the lives of students and faculty at those tribal institutions, that we can really make a contribution especially since so many of us have public mission to begin with, that we have no reason not to make an effort to extend our services and resources to those tribal members. And so that began in 2012 and then we also began to work with one of our favorite external organizations, the Institute for Museum and Library Services. Now, which is known as IMLS, IMLS is, and Mary Alice might tell you this, is a federal organization which awards grants to public schools and other types of libraries around the United States, not federal libraries. We have a very clear delineation between the two. But my contention is that because so many federal libraries have a public library or a school library purpose, there areas of common interest between what we're attempting to do in the federal government and what IMLS is trying to do for the United States. And so we decided to put together a program in 2014, American Indian Libraries Making Connections to highlight the stories of five recent IMLS library grant recipients. This program was a huge success by all accounts and it was really because of the efforts Terry Devoe who is sitting here and also her colleague, Mary Alice Ball, who's sitting next to her. But this was really our first foray into a kind of programing that shows we can work across boundaries to illustrate the issue and to talk about solutions to those issues, so we were very proud of that. And when we saw the kind of response that we got, this just fueled us to continue to discuss what we might do in the federal library community. So at this point we decided, well we've done enough talking, we've done enough thinking, we've experimented with some programs, let's do something a little more formal as a federal library community. And think of this as a community, not just the Library of Congress. This is a community. We decided to create what we normally do, a working group, which is how we work within our community, called AILI, which is the American Indian Library Initiative, as a way to focus our efforts to really work with tribal colleges and universities and tribal nations because we also realized that there is information needs outside of colleges and universities but to really work with a group of federal libraries to bring improvements-- I hope that doesn't sound too judgmental-- to sort of work with Native communities to improve their library resources and initiatives. So we have created this standing working group that meets regularly and several people here are involved in that. And the goals were really quite straight forward but ambitious and that is to build an information culture from local to local and local to national. I think part of our job in FEDLINK is to always be raising awareness and to be advocating for issues. We need to become better advocates for the idea that we in the federal government can provide direct support to these constituencies. We need to make that a priority and we need to keep talking about it. So that's one thing that we need to do. We wanted to create a clearing house of resources. What does George have in his institution that could be of benefit to this community? What does the Library of Congress have? I used to be at the Department of Justice. What do they have that could be of benefit to these communities? And again, when you think that we have over 1,000 libraries that cover every disciplinary area you can imagine, that list of resources can be phenomenal if we could really get that capture and then make it available to these communities. We also wanted to work with American Indian communities in areas like preservation, digitization, cataloging. I recently went to the ATALM conference and there's a great deal of interest among the Native communities about preserving their own cultures. I mean, that just makes sense, preserving their own language, their own artifacts, their own culture, and so for them preservation, digitization where possible or necessary, cataloging comes extremely important to them as they really strive to ensure that their culture remains alive for generations to come. And so that's another area where we could really help these communities. Training opportunities. Well, look around you. We've got a room full of cameras. We could use the same technology to work with those communities. You know, we're already out broadcasting, we could certainly tailor some training efforts. In fact, like let's work on that. I like this idea. It just dawned on me. We should do a series of webinars targeted primarily to the tribal colleges and universities. Maybe we could do that together? That's UIMLS [laughing]. In case you're wondering who I'm pointing at, it's the IMLS people, and Gary, you- [ Inaudible Audience Comment ] Sure. No, no sometimes I just have an idea and I have to just say it to see how it sounds, but I think we could do that. We do lots of training anyway, why couldn't we expand that and really think about how to move this training out to the Native communities? And also promote existing federal resources and legal and STEM knowledge collection of value to America Indian libraries. STEM is the rage, and of course, we know the libraries, as Gary has told us, are under-funded, under-staffed. There are weakened resources. So what if we could bring the power of these 1500 libraries to those libraries in terms of STEM? How remarkable would that be? And later, you'll be hearing about the legal resources because we have Yolanda Goldberg here from the Law Library who is doing tremendous work with her colleagues to create a law portal for Native American Law, so we'll be paying a little bit more attention to that this afternoon. And that's really what I have to say, so let me, again let me just reiterate, not to put too fine a point on it, federal libraries represent the largest collection of intellectual resources the world has ever seen. When we gathered up bibliographic records from other libraries in the federal government, we gathered 30 million bibliographic records. There is no library system in the world that has 30 million bibliographic records. How do we take that and how do we take all the people that support that and begin to really make it available to some of the people who need it the most? And that's the challenge that FEDLINK has in front of it. So, thank you very much, and I will now turn the floor over to Mary Alice Ball, our wonderful colleague from Institute for Museum and Library Services. Mary Alice, welcome. [ Applause ] >> Mary Alice Ball: Good morning everyone. I'm really delighted to be here today to talk to you about the Institute of Museum and Libraries Services and what we are doing to support tribal libraries, whatever the level of clienteles that they are serving. I'll start just by saying we are one of the three cultural heritage agencies within the federal government. The National Endowment for the Arts, National Endowment for the Humanities are better known than IMLS, and I would like to say we are the little engine that could. We really try to make a difference and I feel like we are making a difference on tribal lands. But before I go there, I wanted to mention that related to the work that we are doing, and this both on the library side in the Office of Library Services and on the museum side in the Office of Museum Services and in our Policy Research and Evaluation Department where we are putting survey research out all the time. We have, within OLS Library Services, we have 2 strategic priorities, and when Blaine, Gary and George were talking, I thought how I think these are things that people might want to know about. We have 2 priorities, 1 being the National Digital Platform and the other being Learning in Libraries, which includes a STEM, but particularly National Digital Platform, what we are doing from our grant making is funding initiatives that will provide the broadest range of resources, whatever format those are in, and do it in a way that is free or really open, open access. And so we've funded projects with the Digital Public Library of America, with Internet Archive, with Hotte [phonetic] Trust, with many academic institutions, and I'll talk about them a little bit at the end. But I thought those are things I encourage you to go to our website, to imls.gov, and look at our grant opportunities. You can search awarded grants and sometimes that's a good way to start if you're not sure of what type of idea you should come to us with. It can help to read through what we have funded already. I have my email address on here, so if you do have questions, I'm thinking about folks that are out there in cyberspace today, please feel free to drop me a line. So I thought I would start by talking about our Native American Library Services basic grants. These are non competitive grants and they're designed to support existing library operations and really to support those core library services and collections and there is a broad, we interpret those core services very broadly, and so it might be for building a collection of resources for young children, you know pre-k literacy types of things, or it could be elder resources, working with elders, and we funded things with programs where teens are working with elders, so there is a wide range, but it can also go to things like a dehumidifier, book shelves, tables, we interpret this very broadly, it is a small grant, so this one year grant is $6,000.00 and you can get an extra $1,000.00 for an educational option, and that is education or assessment. So someone can use it to go to a conference, they can use it to hire a consultant to work with them. There is no cost share required for this and it is available to any federally recognized tribe, or Native/Alaskan village or corporation. We fund roughly, I think, somewhere around 220-240 federally recognized tribes right now out of possible 567. We are waiting, I'm looking forward to talking to the representative from the Pulmonkee Tribe later today, because we can start funding them too. We also have a Native American Library Services Enhancement Grant, and so this is really to push out, be more initiative in terms of the services, the programming that these libraries are doing. It can be about workforce development, anything people come to us with, language revitalization , digital literacy skills, cultural heritage preservation. Again, for tribes that are so challenged by circumstances of society around them, this funding can be really critical. To help them, we've got a lot of people right now that are working on preserving their language, and they come to us, and you know, they've got 5 speakers of the language, and they're worried because they know that they could disappear quickly, so we see the urgency of this funding for tribes. Again, it's relatively small compared some of our other grant programs, because there's a ceiling of $150,000.00 and that's up to 2 years, although it could just be a year. Again, cost share is not required. >> I request to read the bottom of that previous slide [inaudible]. >> Mary Alice Ball: It is cut off. Again, this, it talks about eligibility, and if you go to our website, you can find the full details there of eligibility, but any federally recognized tribe or Alaska village or corporation is eligible to apply. Thank you. We have our 2015 fiscal year budget was just over $3,000,800.00. We have requested $4,000,000.00 in our 2016 budget, so we'll see how that works out. But if we look at how it's divided down, there is just one bucket of money, and due to the forethought of Senator Daniel Inouye, there is a percentage, and it comes out to right now roughly just over $550,000.00 for Native Hawaiians grants, and that usually comes out to be maybe somewhere of the range to 3-5 grantees. Our Native American basic grants, it's noncompetitive as I said earlier, everybody gets a piece, it just depends on how many tribes apply. This last year, it came out to roughly $1,400,000.00 for 220 grantees, and then the leftover, the remainder of that funding is what we use to fund the Native American Enhancement Awards, and last year, that turned out to be $1,800,000.00. It generally, we fund somewhere in the range of 10 to 15 grants with that funding. We also and I think it's something that I'm proudest of for the agency, that we move beyond the funding that's designated for tribal libraries, to fund other sources from our National Leadership Grant program and from the Laura Bush 21st Century Librarian program. The second has to deal with education and recruitment into the profession, national leadership grant, programs of national scope more innovative. So we fund the Association of Tribal Archives Libraries and Museums. I think many of you went to the ATALM conference this last September and we fund the workshops that we see as really critical for the continuing education and professional development of tribal librarians, who as we've heard, ya know, it may be a one person shop. We do allow them to use their funds to hire substitutes, so that the library doesn't have to close when they go off to a conference. We fund scholarships. Susan Feller, the CEO of ATALM is very convincing, so each year, she comes back and says, well, we need a little bit more, can you give us a supplement because we need more scholarships? And this year, I think we gave an extra $75,000.00. In the world of grant making, $75,000.00 is chump change, but for that tribal librarian who wants to come from, you know, upper Montana or something, it's huge. We also funded and will fund a neck of subsequent survey, but a study that ATALM did of digital inclusion in Native communities and this is a report, you can find it on the ATALM website, it was huge I would say in informing the Federal Communications Commission and the Department of Commerce's National Telecommunications Information Administration, about the situation on tribal lands in terms of broadband access, adoption, digital literacy skills, all these issues around digital inclusion. We have also funded a project that came out of Washington State University called Mukatu [assumed spelling] which is an indigenous New Zealand or Australian indigenous word. We funded them to the tune of $1,400.00 dollars, and we funded the development of this open source platform, that there are a lot of, or certainly we don't see a paucity of cultural heritage tools that are out there, but this is a tool that was made for ingenious communities and so it understands that not everything needs to be made publically accessible, that Native nations have the need and the right to say we want to restrict these materials, only a man should see them, only a woman should see them, only and elder should see them, only a tribal member, regardless where that tribal member may be because we know so many tribal members have to go to other places to get jobs, but if they are in LA, they should be able to access a collection that is back home in Oklahoma, and we funded quite a bit of training around this, we're continuing, there's a second cohort of 6 tribes, 2 people from each tribe that is just being formed, and these people will learn how to use the tools, and some are already coming to us to get funding for the technology. And I should also say they're developing a kit that will be used and to help train and support people in this. This last year, we gave a grant to Amherst College and it was a collaborative planning grant. They have quite a few partners, but we do know, and I think they are coming to terms with maybe because they do have Native American faculty members who are pushing Amherst to think beyond just having these holdings and keeping them within their own doors. They want to create a digital atlas of Native American Intellectual Traditions and build a national platform so that all people could see these important valuable resources that are held, and they will be able to see them wherever they are. Okay, I'm moving back up because I wrote notes, on the bottom, because I forgot to put on this slide that IMLS also has done a lot of work, at the behest of the administration in different areas, and I think none that I feel is compelled to talk about as our participation in the President's Broadband Opportunity Council. We have highlighted actions that we will take. We also see that what other agencies are doing and we've tried to, how shall I say, like insert ourselves into their initiatives so that we can disseminate what they are doing to libraries around the country. One of those, some of my colleagues here know, my proudest accomplishment as being one of the IMLS representatives on that council was the insertion of a comma in the word libraries into a program that General Services Administration is doing with they've refurbished computers, they have a program called Computers For Learning and so when they had written up the eligible entities, it was educational institutions or other educational-related organizations and think of those of us in the Federal Government know that if it isn't clearly spelled out, then it's in doubt, and so now we have inserted in their libraries that libraries will be able and eligible to get this equipment. The Broadband Opportunity Council came out with a report a couple of months ago. You can find it by Googling White House Broadband Opportunity Council Report and I would encourage you to read it. It has a number of things. I'm concerned about time so I won't go on. Oh, I have time, okay, then I will go on. IMLS has funded 2 things that we're doing that are already underway, one is a grant to Internet2 and some of you may know Internet2 is a network, an association of these largest research and education networks, and we have funded Internet2 to pilot a program where research and education networks will work with Tribal and rural, so rural libraries that are not necessarily tribal libraries, and I think it's going to be in 5 states, working with the Research and Education Network in those states and to go out and develop a network assessment tool. I mean on tribal lands, broadband itself is, you know, in an abysmal state and we are trying to improve that, but we do know that even in institutions that have broadband, quite often their networks aren't configured properly enough for them to get what they're paying for. And so the development of this sort of tool we hope will to enable people to get people higher speed broadband access and then be able to access richer resources online. We are also funding a grant to the Chief Officers of State Library Associations and I should say that both of these grants are done in partnership with ATALM and with the American Library Association, as I look at 2 representatives from it here. But the COSLA proposal and it is underway, yesterday, Marijke Visser had a blog post about the E-rate Clearinghouse that has been done by COSLA and the Georgia Public Library Service and E-rate is something we are trying to get more tribal libraries to use. Some our eligible and yet they may not think they are, so it's definitely worth investigating. There is also a training component and a cross state survey that is being done, related to E-rate and E-rate training needs. So those were our contributions to the report where we weren't piggybacking on other agencies like GSA. Last week, the President held a tribal leadership summit, and then on Friday morning, at the very end of that, the Broadband Opportunity Council had a listening session where we listened to tribal Leaders talk about the state broadband out of Native Nations and what could be done, what should be done, and challenging us as the Federal Administration to make a difference. And I think that's all I have to say. Any questions, Gary? >> Yeah, [inaudible]. >> Mary Alice Ball: Oh, yes, sorry, because we do, we fund a lot, so we also fund and it's Mary Ann Hanson if you're listening, I'll give a shout out to you, the Tribal College Leadership Institute. That we funded for many, many years out in Bozeman and brings tribal librarians together, tribal college librarians together for leadership training. Any other things that I forgotten? Anybody can think of? Another question? >> Next session. >> Mary Alice Ball: Okay, we're moving right along. >> George Franchois: I think we're going to go ahead and get started with this afternoon's programming. My name is George Franchois. I'm the director of the Department of the Interior Library, and once, again I want to welcome everyone here to the Library of Congress for our program this afternoon. Our first program is American Indians in the federal city and regional history and we are very pleased to have Joseph Genetin-Pilawe here with us this afternoon to talk a little bit about the about how Washington D.C., about American Indians in Washington D.C. and how American Indians contributed to the development of this great nation's capital. So with that, Joseph. [ Applause ] >> Joseph Genetin-Pilawe: Hi everyone, thanks for being here. Before I say anything else, it's important to acknowledge that as we think and talk together, we do so not only in the Library of Congress but on the homelands of the Piscataway Nation and a broader region that includes the homelands of the Pamunkey and Monacan Nations as well. It's an absolute pleasure to be here. I'm excited to be on a panel with Gabby, Tara, Ben, and Karen. I'm excited to hear them talk about their work in activism. I'm up first today because I had the honor of being selected as a John W. Kluge Center fellow last year to conduct research on my current book project which is a study of the indigenous histories of Washington DC that I'm calling the Indian's captial city. The Kluge Center supports humanity scholars from around the world and brings them together to stimulate and energize one another, to distill wisdom from the Library of Congress' rich resources and to interact with policy makers and the public. My time at the center was amazing. I think it's important to point out as well that over the course of its 15-year history, the Kluge Center has supported dozens of scholars working in the fields of Native American and indigenous studies. The center has been doing important work in this direction and it, as well as the librarians, archivists, and collection specialists here, have been supporting the field in really important ways. So with the time that I have, I would like to give a brief overview of the project that I worked on as a Kluge fellow and I would like to start with a brief antidote but one more caveat. My work focuses primarily on native diplomats who visited the city from outside this region. Our next speaker, Gabby Tayac, will talk more about the long, deep, and rich indigenous histories of the Potomac and Chesapeake. So here we go. On Saturday, September 29th, 1837, a group of Lakota, Iowa Sac and Fox men and women sat in the National Theater in Washington watching a romantic opera called The Mountain Sylph. They found themselves, as many as the other audience members likely did, mesmerized watching the prima donna, a soprano named Annette Nelson portray the opera's lead character. So impressed by her agility and beauty "appearing and vanishing with the rapidity that reminded them of the fleetness of the deer in their native hunting grounds" wrote one newspaper. The men saluted her right in the middle of the performance. In a show of respect, [inaudible] man through and Eagle-feathered cap at her feet. Pokana [assumed spelling], a Sac Chief offered his cap as well while Tokaka [assumed spelling], another Yankton gave her his white wolf-skinned robe. This was completely unplanned but the actress displaying poise and grace thanked the man saying she would "ever regard them as friends and brethren". Then, she gave each man an ostrich plume from her costume as a return gift. To a modern audience, this appears to be quite unexpected, not just a breach of proper etiquette but actual presence of native folks in an 1830's Washington Theater enjoying an opera seems almost unbelievable. But how unexpected was it though? Despite what some might think, across the 19th Century and beyond, hundreds and thousands of native people travel to and lived in the capital. In reality, seems like this one happened regularly. Well every Indian nation has its own unique and rich history, one thing that unites all of these experiences is a relationship to the Federal Government and Washington D.C. These episodes appear unexpected to us today because of a perceived incongruity of native people in urban spaces. In other words, the idea that Indians and cities cannot coexist and that one must necessarily be eclipsed by the other. This unexpectedness is especially rooted in Washington D.C. due to the creation of a commemorative landscape here centered in the architecture of federal buildings but dispersed around the city as well and here are a few images of the art and artwork. This picture isn't very clear but you can see there are 2 statue groups that used to stand on the east front of the Capital Building. Every president from the early 19th Century until the 1950's was inaugurated between these 2 statue groups. This is actually Lincoln's second inauguration. There's a close up of one of them, the Discovery. Here is the other called the Rescue. These statues were ultimately removed in the 1950's in large part due to a campaign lead by a native woman. She was Omahan named Ledameyer Smart [assumed spelling] who wrote dozens and dozens of letters, garnered support of groups across the country. They are ultimately lifted off the cheap blocks and are now in a warehouse at Fort Meade. I'll leave it back on there for a second, sorry. So the art and architecture of the federal building iterated spatially notions of pacification of a conquest completed and of vanishing Indians. My project argues that unlike the subjects of this art and architecture though, indigenous visitors and inhabitants engaged with non-native individuals and the symbols of settler society in Washington carved out their own spaces within it and claimed or reclaimed ownership of the place. In doing so, indigenous people shaped how the capital came to understand itself ultimately as an imperial center; they were it's looking glass. Washington after all and especially in the early 19th century was a provincial local place first and foremost. It had to learn, it became a national city, and then an imperial capital, and later a global metropolis. I'd like to finish my remarks today with one more anecdote that illustrates the layered histories of indigenous experiences as well as representations of indigenous peoples in the capital, and this one requires a little local knowledge. I'll be talking about the Dumbarton Bridge or as it's known commonly in the city, the Buffalo Bridge. So in 2010, a fellow historian and I were in the city. One day, I went to the archives and he went for a run. When I returned to our room later that day, he asked if I knew anything about a bridge that had 4 gigantic buffalos on it. Well, I'd only just begun the research for this project and I knew nothing about this bridge. I went back to the archives the next day and he took a walk around the city with his camera. When I returned the second evening, he showed me pictures of the 4 buffallos as well as 56 Indian head busts that adorn the bridge. Native people are everywhere in this city he said, I had to learn more. Here is an aerial shot of the bridge. Those Indian head busts that I'm talking about are at the bottom of each one of the smaller arches, on the upper level there, and it's the same person's head over and over again. I'll get to that in a second. Georgetown was formed in 1751, I'll go back to this map for a second, decades before the District of Columbia or the city of Washington, and here you can see it on the left-hand side of the map. But in 1871, it was merged with Washington, residential sprawl over the next few decades and encouraged city leaders to provide a connecting artery between North Georgetown and Dupont Circle. There was one problem. It's pretty obvious in this map and that is the rock creek and the surrounding heights that separated the 2 spaces. The initial plan involved filling the gorge with like boulders and junk and things like that. This was a horrible idea, but the McMillan Commission which was a senate committee whose report continues to guide capital development to this day, selected Q Street as a location for a new bridge instead of filling in the gorge, despite the fact though, interestingly, that Q Street in Georgetown is 185 feet South of Q Street in Dupont Circle, so the bridge would need to be curved and also it came to a dead end at the historic Dumbarton Mansion which would need to be lifted up and moved about 100 feet. So there you can see the curved bridge and the Dumbarton Mansion. Glen Brown, who was a proponent of the McMillan Commission and the City Beautiful Architecture Movement, designed the bridge and the structures features several City Beautiful design elements. For example, you see neoclassical arches, corbel arches, piers and pillars that reminiscent of Roman Acquadox. More obviously, its scale and style were typical of the City Beautiful aesthetic. After all, they couldn't simply built a functional and utilitarian bridge. The use of the Buffalo and Indian head iconography, the most distinctive elements of the bridge, also connect it's design to the City Beautiful movement. The movement got its start in 1893 at Chicago's Columbian Exposition. Unlike the World's Fair itself, the bridge reflects a certain nostalgia for a vanishing frontier. In fact, in an interview, Glen Brown noted, we quote, "naturally determine to give the carvings of the other portions of the structure an American character". In this formulation, it makes sense that the designers chose what seems to be a generic Plains motif and I'm sorry that I don't have closer, up close pictures of the Reliefs and Buffaloes, but buffaloes and an Indian head with prominent cheekbones and a war bonnet, these images are mobile and serve as free-floating stand ins for a constellation of ideas that simultaneously express and excuse settler anxieties and guilt. The problem of course is that these images aren't free floating and that histories aren't metaphors. There's another way to think of this bridge and it's iconography though and the busts that sit below each pillar, these were actually modeled from the life mask of a man named Matho Wanahtake or Kicking Bear. He was a Minneconjou Lakota leader who played a significant role in bringing the Ghost Dance movement to the Plains. In the 1890's, Kicking Bear traveled to Washington to advocate on behalf of the Lakota at the Office of Indian Affairs. This was just following Wounded Knee. Simultaneous to Kicking Bear's visit, archaeologist, William Henry Holmes, who worked for the Smithsonian Bureau of Ethnology and then served as head curator of Anthropology at the US National Museum, conducted significant excavations around Washington. One of the sites his team investigated thoroughly was the Dumbarton Heights, an area just below where the bridge would ultimately be built. There, Holmes and his team found an important stone quarry site where Piscataway people for generations excavated materials and made stone tools. So here it is, all wrapped up in one site. A bridge built in the nineteen-teens using cutting-edge architectural technology and trendy design elements that are meant to memorialize and celebrate a generic and supposedly bygone American past. But the bust the designer used actually commemorates a native leader who challenged US colonialism spiritually and militarily on the Plains as well as politically and diplomatically in the city itself, and they built it atop land that has been significant to indigenous and inhabitants since time and memorial, ancient, modern, vanishing, and ever present. Thank you. [ Applause ] Now I'd like to invite Gabby Tayac from the National Museum of the American Indian up to speak next. [ Silence ] >> Gabrielle Tayac: Hi. I'd really like to greet all of you and a special greeting to my relatives who are here from the other areas of the bay and a little bit further on the mountains. Our people are also Algonkian people so greeting to Tara as well, and to all of you who are in this place that we know as the capital. Like to take you to another capital. I'd like you to imagine going down the Potomac River a bit today to the first capital of these lands. There's a unmarked field and there lies our holiest place. It's a placed called Moyaone. It's a sacred place. It's right on the Potomac and it sits facing Mount Vernon. It just looks like a field and now it's a National Park. There are no signs on it. It's on the National Historic Register, but there are people who are just walking their dogs there every day, playing Frisbee, going by, and then wondering what they're seeing when they see a sweat lodge that's there. They see a red cedar tree that's there. They see a photograph of a man named Turkey Tayac who is my grandfather who is there, and they see offerings, and they see reflections, and they see memories, and traces of a place that are recorded back in time for at least 10,000 years or maybe from the time that Sky Woman came and landed on a turtle's back or maybe from the time that the people sprung out from the hairs of the deer and populated the land. So this is very indicative in this place Moyaone, which is in Accokeek, Maryland, of how you are fully and completely surrounded and enveloped by a very long-term indigenous history that is almost entirely erased from our consciousness. When you go to the Anacostia, the Anacostians where part of our chiefdom, part of the Piscataway chiefdom, their name was the Nacotchtank and it's anglicized and Latinized to sound like Anacostia, but all we know is there's the river, there's the Potomac or Patawomeck which is also a group of people. There are places like Madwomen [assumed spelling] and Zakia [assumed spelling] all sorts of words that we see on the land. And this landscaping itself is formed by the Chesapeake Bay and the Chesapeake meaning great shellfish bay, which is the mother of waters, which has lungs that are formed by vast amounts historically of oysters, and oyster shells, which filter the water pristinely, that have been entirely taken out. So in this interconnected beautiful system that was first mapped for Europeans by John Smith in 1608, and he didn't look like Disney movie guy, okay, and he didn't marry Pocahontas and Pocahontas was a lot cooler than you would ever, ever imagine her to be actually and I've had a love-hate relationship with Pocahontas for my entire life and I've come to respect her greatly. So our people were organized here with Point of Rocks, the quarries that you speak, about being kind of on the edges of it, going into what we call the fall line, all the way down to Point Lookout which is where the Yaocomico people were. And in the heart of it is at this place that I'm describing to you, just about 15 miles south of the DC line in Pascoti National Park today. The way it was organized was we had a central chief who was actually called the Tayac, and my sir name is part of an acknowledgement and an honor to my grandfather who really revitalized that role and decided to take that sir name legally because of the activism that was happening here in the late 1960's and 1970's but he started using it in the 1930's. And so the Tayac was somebody who was able to bring in people from over a dozen towns, each with a leader called a werowance who could also be a woman who was known as a wereowance qua, advised by wisos or peace chiefs, [inaudible] who were considered to be, by an Engilsh system, war chiefs, but in fact these were statesman and that word is linked to the word that we now think about as caucus, so in terms of a negotiation. And that is where we have this system operating in what is often known or thought about prehistory but its history. And so about 13 generations before the arc and the dove came in 1634, there was a man on the eastern shore of Maryland named [inaudible] and he broke off from the Nanticoke and established this governmental polity here on the Western shore and started to basically look at, it's kind of, not really a federal system but not too far out from that in terms of centralized area of power at Moyaone, a town that then would receive tribute and interaction and communication from around the region and they would bring people together through ceremony. So there's a really, there's a very long history and the question is, why do we not know anything about this capital? Why doesn't anybody here speak Piscataway anymore? And that's wrapped up, you know if you really want to know what the language is and what the history is and you want to know well what happened to people, you just have to kind of see all of these things that have been built up over the landscape. So the history here, I'm just going to wrap up because 7 minutes to take you through 400 years is [laughing] especially because, you know, we were chatting a little bit and I was thinking, there's been a lot of silencing and a lot of times we do like to take up our time when we need to speak, but the issue is is that, that question of what happened and why you don't know and why you have to dig so hard in the primary records and then also look through oral histories are extremely essential and so that is what I would want to talk about because the, you know, we'll talk more but really this idea of the merging of the what has remained in terms of oral account, matching it up with what's available in the documentary account because I started my work by listening around the kitchen table, by being involved revitalization of the people and then deciding I wanted to take an academic track to really figure it out and bring those voices forward. So that work, it's long, hard work and it's a puzzle over time and there are very unique things about this region that follow the patterns that we see for native people across the continent but also get wrapped up in something particularly vicious and pervasive on the Atlantic Seaboard and that has to do with race policy. So there's a lot of intertwining here and we'll have a chance to talk more, but in the meantime just to kind of reorient your head space to how to long this history has been going. It's not been since 1800 and it's not been since 1750 and it's not been since 1607. It's been for a very long time. So with that I would like to introduce Tara who will bring is right up into the present. Thank you. [ Applause ] [ Foreign Language Spoken ] >> Tara Houska: My name is Tara Houska My Indian name is the woman who finishes this song and I'm Bear Clan from Couchiching First Nation. So like Gabby said, I think I'm here to represent the present. My perspective is of one of many Native Americans who graduate and move to Washington D.C. to go represent our nations. All of Indian law is federal. It's federal law and tribal law and so this is kind of where everything is decided. This is where all the policies that affect our people are decided. These are the congressional members that control our fates, really, in a lot of ways. So, it's a really different experience being in D.C., for sure. Native Americans are very community based and I think one of the first things you do is find your fellow Native Americans and kind of like, hey guys, I'm here, you know. It's kind of changing group because there's a lot of transplants coming in and out. But that is pretty much the first thing you do when you get here and I think it's important to understand kind of like how it feels to be a Native American in D.C. and to work and live in these spaces beyond just like not having, you know, your own community and being with your own people and your land and all of that. I think one of the very hard things, at least for me, and that's also why I became connected to Joe, was moving here and seeing the Mascot. That was really kind of a shocking experience for me. In Minnesota where I'm from, we actually banned Native Mascots back in 1992. So it just wasn't an issue and something I never really thought about, and you know, I was standing in Subway, I think a couple weeks into work. I work at a Native American Law Firm. We [inaudible] American Law and I was standing in Subway and the guy in front of me was wearing a hat and the guy behind me was wearing a jersey, and the employees are all wearing pins because there was some promotion going on and that name was everywhere and that head was everywhere. And I was shocked, kind of floored at that moment, thinking about what it would be like to be a Native American child here, and to grow up here and to see that and just, you know, know that that's what people really think of you. Today I'm wearing Moccasins. It's Rock your Mocs day and I've already on the way in here got a lot really strange looks, right, because I think it's kind of the issue of the mascot and just kind of the overall sense of Native Americans is that we are vanished people. And so when they see something like this, it kind of shocks them, like oh my goodness, other Native Americans that are here and they exist and they are in Washington D.C. working and living in these places? Yes. Absolutely. We're just aren't walking around in headdresses and painting our faces which is what they expect. So that's kind of-- that really sprung me towards doing a lot of social justice work and becoming heavily involved with the mascot movement and you know kind of doing what I can from D.C. to help the representation of Native Americans across the board and how we're portrayed in the media but also here in D.C. I mean, it is something that, in the work I do, I go and lobby on Capital Hill, and you know we're pushing for we need money for a hospital, we need the right the prosecute individuals on the reservation. These are things that we don't have. They are fundamental things we don't have, and it's hard when you walk in knowing that, you know, the congressional number, depending on how many tribes they have in their region, or maybe they don't have any, is going to kind of have this idea already in their heads before they see you, that you are this old static character and that you know, well we don't really want to give the Indians, you know, the right to do these things because they're not civilized. Right. I mean those are real impacts that really actually really do affect us, and it also, you know, I think the more important thing is really about children but just today or this last week actually, I had the honor of speaking with Bernie Sanders as he was introducing a bill. I do a lot of environmental justice work as well, and it was funny because that morning, he doesn't have any tribes, any federally recognized tribes in Vermont, and that very morning he had actually met with the delegation of Apache people from Oak Flat. Oak Flat is a sacred place that was actually given by the federal government to [inaudible] operation and it's about to be destroyed. That is our congress. So he met with them, and you know, to a guy that has no idea about tribes, I think it was kind of really shocking to him and really inspired and moved him, and then when he was walking out towards me I could just see his eyebrows go up, like, oh my goodness, another Indian. Like. And I'm like, we're everywhere, you know, we're everywhere. And so I think that you know as researchers and, you know, I've been to the Library of Congress several times. I mean a lot of the work we do in federal Indian law is hundreds of years old, right? I mean federal Indian law is a moving body of law but it's also, I mean you're going to be citing a case from 1800 every now and again at a brief. It's a really strange area of law, but you also get to learn a lot of history along the way. So I think it's very important to be cognizant that we are modern people and that we are here, that representation really does matter, that we should be doing everything we possibly can to educate people about the tribal nations that are here and the ones that have been coming here for, I mean since the beginning, right? The very, very beginning. There have been delegations of tribal leaders and the National Congress of American Indians is here in Washington D.C. I am one of many, many people that comes out here as an attorney, as a staffer, as every kind of possible job that you can imagine, that's what we are doing out here in Washington D.C. So I think it's very important for all of you to at least try to make people aware of that. Everyone that I have worked here with at the Library of Congress has been fantastic as far as doing research and understanding and I've gotten to hold treaties and all these really great things, right. And you know I just encourage you to do that and thank you, and it's a little awkward not being on the panel and talking to y'all like this. Hopefully the talk is much better. Thanks. [ Applause ] >> Tara Houska: Oh! Oh, and I'm introducing, this is Karenne. [ Foreign Language Spoken ] >> Karenne Wood: I want to welcome you to our homeland. I'm a Monacan person. My name is Karenne Wood. I direct Virginia Indian Programs at the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities. So in my professional life, I'm a public historian and an educator. All about filling the gaps between the past and the present and so much of that story that's been left out and understanding what's happened to our people. In my not so professional life I'm a poet, so I started out life as a writer and I've written two books of poetry. The second one comes out this spring called, "Weaving the Boundary" and it focuses too on American Indian History because there are so many gaps in the larger story beyond Virginia that many people don't know about. What we do know is that people have been in what we call Virginia for 18,000 years. When I was in school, it was presented as an absolute scientific fact that native people came across the Bering Strait's land bridge carrying spears and hunting Mastodons and wearing fur coats and that happened ten to twelve thousand years ago. So archeologists have had to now call into question everything that they've told us about how we got here. And I found it very interesting and comforting to realize that there are native stories in our area that reference giant bears and giant beavers and giant bison and everybody said, oh isn't that cute, those native legends. And then archeologists found evidence of those creatures in Virginia. So this is the kind of information that I get to encounter every day, and I didn't' start out as a researcher. I started out as a tribal historian. In order to collect the history that we didn't have about our story, I had to become a researcher and so my friend and I, my tribal friend, Diane Shields and I, for about ten years dug into all the records we could find and began to reconstruct that story so that we could develop a petition that would go to the Bureau of Indian Affairs documenting our case for federal recognition. What we now have is a historical chronology that traces the movements of our people and the places in which they appear in historical records, and what I've learned in that process is that people who write history have agendas. It's not absolute objective facts in the way that we were told in school. And I've also learned that whenever you tell a story you decide what to leave in and what to leave out, and in our case an awful lot has been left out. Including most of the voices, I'd like to say maybe 75 percent of the people who participated in history, all of the women, all the people of color, all the poor white people. Their voices were not present in the stories that I learned in school. When we took our elders to Virginia Tech to for the first time to show them what kind of higher education was possible for their grandkids, some of them cried because it wasn't even conceivable that they could attend a university like that. Most of them went to a one room school first through seventh grade up until 1963 in Virginia and if they wanted to go to high school they had to go to a federal Indian boarding school in Muskogee, Oklahoma, which meant they left in September and didn't see their families again until June because they couldn't come home for Christmas. They didn't know their brothers and sisters. They really didn't have the relationship with their parents that most of us have enjoyed without even thinking about it. So we have learned these things about ourselves by studying that history and studying the accounts of people like John Smith. I love John Smith's map. It's remarkably accurate considering how little of that area he actually visited. So what that that tells me is that there were Native people, informants anthropologists called them, [laughing] who were able to translate for him the geography of what's now Virginia on a flat piece of paper, right. Well, this is the way the rivers go and so on. And what I've also realized in looking at these records is that native history is inscribed on the place by the place names that we have given certain areas, and they are many Native place names in the coastal plain where the Piscataway people and other [inaudible] speakers lived, or live, because they did a lot of interacting with the colonial people who did the documenting, not so much with my people. We seem to want to avoid contact, probably for good reason. Maybe we've heard some stories about what happened when those explorers showed up. We called them people faces whose faces grew hair upside down [laughing], but there's not a lot of documentation about the Monacan's and what happened to them in comparison to the Powhatan people and they aren't so many place names, so if you look at the creeks and rivers up in our area you don't' see our language represented in the way that you do, you know Piscataway and Patuxent and Potomac, and I mean almost every river up the [inaudible]. You know, the rivers took the names from the people who lived there, and we don't necessarily know what the native people called them, but I live in my house fifteen minutes from the headquarters of the Monacan nation during colonial times. Where the [inaudible] and James Rivers come together. So I'm home and I like it there. In any event, putting all of this story together has just convinced me that they are so many ways to tell about the past and history is only one of those ways. Native people had broad and beautiful ways of understanding the world and their place in it, and enough of those traces remain to us that we can continue to put ourselves in that web and understand our responsibilities as human beings. Not as care takers, in an Adam and Eve sense, but as relatives. I think that is the most important thing we fail to teach kids is how to be a good relative, how to be a good part of a community. And native people know how to still do that. you know, it's not distinguishing yourself as an individual. And so when I came into the academy I did it for a very specific reason. Someone had said, Kareene Wood is a self-styled historian, because I didn't have a Ph.D. that irritated me so I got one. It took me quite a while. It was also annoying when people said I really admire you for going back to school at your age. But I did it, not because I wanted to change my job but because I wanted the validation to be able to say I'm as much as an expert of my people's story is somebody else is. And when I did it, I didn't' come in as an individual who is supposed to come up with some exciting concept or invent a new term or we like to do that in the academics. You have to do something new and all of your college looks at your work and go rrrrrr and tear you up, you know. When I came in it was a whole community of people on my shoulders who were happy to tell me if I was doing it wrong. I had a responsibly to tell the story in a way that honors those ancestors and that collectively it expands the story that we know. When the elders came to us they said, you young people have to get an education and change what's in those books, because we aren't the people that they describe. We are not savages, you know, and they didn't see themselves in those stories, so it is so important to me to continue the work that I do and to bring more people into the mix to help us. We have a lot of work to do. And I'm honored to be part of it to be able to do that. So thank you. [ Applause ] >> Ben Norman: Then yes, my name is Ben Norman. I come from Pamunkey Tribe which is located in Virginia. If you are familiar, there is the York River that comes into Virginia and it splits into two rivers which is the Pamunkey and the Manipeni Rivers, so there on the left side where were located, right around that Peninsula. So thanks for having me here for all of our co presenters it's really great hearing from them and also hearing language from them. There's a lot of there's some work being done recently with our language and when a person is participating that is Iancustla and through some of his research, he's actually found is the meaning of Pamunkey which is crazy that we don't actually know at this point. But what he's found is that it actually means place where people sweat, that's what it means. It's a place where people come to pray, is what that means, it sounds kind of funny but, yea it's the actual, according to his research that he's done, and it means place where peoples sweat. It was a place that was very well protected so I think that leaders and individuals that needed to come for you know maybe down time and also a way to come pray. So when I first heard of the topic this discussion American Indians in Federal City and Regional History, I thought I kind of fit into both of these ideas from Pamunkey which is within this region and moved here to come work here, here at Washington D.C. at the National Museum of American Indians. So it also made me also think about people from my own families that have come here to D.C. for different reasons, like my father Frank Badbee I remember him telling me about coming here 1678 for the longest walk to help to know to participate in the longest walk and bring attention to treaty rights and things that were going on in the Native Communities. it also made me think of my wife's grandmother her name is Vilma Peters she's from the Opononeo Tono nations Oklahoma. So I remember hearing, always hearing stories of her coming here she was a member of the American Indian movement and remember hearing stories of her coming here for D.C. for different occasions. One of these stories is in 1972 Vilma and her youngest son traveled here to D.C. again to bring attention to standards of living back at home, treaty rights, during that trip things escalated eventually as you may know took over the BIA building, they stayed there for seven days and at her funeral a lot of her things possessions were there for people to come photos, important things to her, artwork that her grandchildren had made, there's even a really awesome American Indian Jacket that is hers, that was there. Political pens things that she kept, one that really stuck out to me, it just said another Indian for Decacus. And also there was a book that was there it looked like a journal that was there on the table, at first I didn't' want to read it. I thought it was kind of an invasion of her privacy, her journal, I saw some other family members reading it so I thought I couldn't' resist. I'll take a look at it, and which I'm really glad I did. It was a journal and it was actually a journal of her times here in Washington D.C. during that trip and it was very detailed journal. So detailed to where she stayed all of the Taxi's that she rode in and where they were picked up where they were dropped off and even the price of the Taxi, it was very, very detailed. So the end of the journal I thought it was really interesting the government and politicians were really wanting them to leave because they actually bought her a plane ticket, her and her son, to fly back to Oklahoma, and the last journal entry she said her and her son, which is name is Thomas Whiteshirt he was seven years old at the time at this trip, they were actually in the air, when she was writing the journal entry, she was thinking about the work they had done here, the attention they have brought to the issues here and she was hopeful in this last entry, and hopeful for the last generations of Native children who would be in a better situation because of their work, so things like this kind of every once in a while will kind of rejuvenate me and the work that we are doing at the museum, trying to educate the public so as you probably guess, we get a lot of crazy questions at work. 99% of the time you know and over feel really good about what we're doing, but sometimes you'll get people just trying to argue and things like that, and sometimes they are kind of funny questions like once we had a question of. Why did the Indians follow the buffalo was it for their milk? That was real question from an adult also, not a child. Another one some of them are kind of heartbreaking to read, one I actually got from a chaperone on a school tour was. How many breeds are American Indians are there? Another one, this was one that I jsut overheard two ladies were going to the restroom and they were the restroom was closed so one of them said I wonder why it's closed and the other one said well you know Indians really don't know about plumbing. So we have questions like that, they really stick with you especially early on when I first started working at the museum, stuck with me, came home with me, thought about it, now that I've been there for a long time it doesn't' affect me as much I just try to take these moments as a learning opportunity to work with the public, and educate them. And also fit into this because I'm from Pumonkey currently may know some of our situation at the moment you may think that we are Federally recognized 567 recognized tribe I think a lot of people heard the news originally that we were federally recognized but not as people know that we were challenged again, which was kind of expected because these don't even want to mention their names who challenged us but they are you know they are in this for a different reason. Some of the things that they are challenging us on basically if we are native Americans and if our if we are a nation, that still continues today there both really ridiculous one of the many amazing things about our community because we have been some of the first people to get basically colonized so we have lost a lot of our ways during this, these hundreds of years but our Government has always continued still to this day, you know, and never stopped. We have minutes recorded of our meetings going back over a hundred years so these, these questions you know of our Indianist or our government continuing are ridiculous so through this independent board that's going to review this hopefully the process will go quickly and we'll be able to continue this really important work that needs to be done in our community and for our future generations. I have a son that's two and one that's on the way right now in January, so I'm really excited for them and the future possibilities for them and for the children from our community. So thanks everyone and I'm sure we'll continue our panel of discussion now so. Thank you. [ Applause ] >> Eric Eldritch: I'm Eric Eldritch I'm a program specialist of the Office of Opportunity of Inclusiveness and Compliance and we were glad to be a co-sponsor of the event today. At this point, I would like to ask our courtiers to come forward and to give a quick overview of the materials that they've brought from the collections and then this is also a good break, if you are a library employee and need to step out, and then we will continue the conversation. So when Mike and others are coming forward I'll let you know that if you look in the back and you get this and you get this book mark with this book mark you get five million pictures in your hands and this is an amazing trove comes from the prints and photographs online catalog and this material is readily available to you 27/7 and we wanted to let you know the prints and photographs has materials up there if American folkway and geography and map if you would come up and tell us a brief synopsis of what's in your collection and then we'll get back to discussion with our panelist. [ Background Sounds ] >> Judith Gray: Hello and greetings. I'm Judith Gray from the American Folk Life Center. Our archive of folk culture holds perhaps the largest collection of one of a kind of field recordings of tribal materials, probably 2,000 hours representing materials from 160-170 communities, just within the U.S. and some slightly boarding some Canadian areas. We also have recordings from indigenous communities in other parts of the world. What I brought, however, is not going to be much of from this immediate area. By the time the audio video recording devices were around, most of the acknowledges and linguists were headed to parts of the country where they were larger concentrations of people living in more traditional ways perhaps at the time so most of the recordings tend to be plains, Southwest, California, also quite a few New York Iroquoian communities from the upper Midwest. Yes, we have [inaudible] from Minnesota, Wisconsin; Menominee people and Iowa people and such, but very, very little from this particular area. So I can't provide you with recordings like that. I do have, however, for example, the earliest of field recording that we are aware of made 125 years ago, March 15th, 1890; two Passamaquoddy men sang songs and spoke narratives to a toy recordist, so please stop and I'll be glad to talk with you further about our resources. [ Applause ] >> Michael Buscher: Good Afternoon, I'm Mike Buscher. I'm the head of Reference Services with the Geography and Map Division. We have the largest map library in the world. We have about 5.5 million maps. Our collections related to Native Americans are actually kind of a hidden collection. We've only cataloged less than half of our collection, so if you sit at home in front of your computer looking for historical maps we might have, you're going to find a very small percentage. The way to actually get into this collection is to make contact with us or actually best of all stop by for a visit. But I would encourage you to take a look at our website we have a lot of our historical materials up, at least some of our key items. I brought the [inaudible] of the 1606 John Smith map if you want to take a look at it, but the way to really look into our collections is to actually come visit us and take a look. There's a lot of great projects and papers hidden in our collections. Monday through Friday, 8:30 - 5, and you can connect with us through our website. Thank you. [ Applause ] >> Barbara Bair : Good afternoon. I'm Barbra Bair. I'm a historian in the Manuscript Division here at the Library of Congress and I've brought a selection of items that are from different parts of the North America, from Canada and the United States, representative of different tribal peoples. In the manuscript division as a whole, we have over 60 million items in more than 11,000 collections and you can find many of our materials online and also in the virtual expedition sites that are available through the Library of Congress website. Today after the discussion is finished, you can come back to see the materials that I brought and they begin with a Micmac Indian prayer book, which is one of the earliest known scripts of Native Americans, and as Karenne pointed out, all documents are subjective. In other words, no history its subjective. They're created with an agenda, created by certain authors and with certain kinds of collaborations, and everything that we have is subject is to interpretation and re-interpretation over time. The next item that I brought was an illustration from an 18th century ship captain's diary of first nations people in the [inaudible] sound off of British Columbia, which is also one of the earlier illustrations that we have and I wanted to say that, you know, one of the problems of course with written sources is that they are very new, they are just tip of the iceberg of actual history as has also been pointed out by today's speakers, that there's a very, very long oral tradition that proceeds this. The next item that I brought is about the Red Stick Rebellion and it's a list of names Creek Indians who served with the Tennessee Militia under Andrew Jackson and it makes the point that it was a Creek civil war, that there were native people's on both sides, the Cherokee and the Choctaw joined in confederation with the lower Creeks against the Red Sticks who were very determined to preserve traditional ways and to work against the encouragement of white culture and of western expansion. Related to that is a letter that Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation, John Ross, wrote to Andrew Jackson along with other delegates from the Cherokee nation protesting the violence and the confiscation of property in Georgia and his long role in the 1830's and reacting against Indian removal. I've brought a few items from the Henry Rowe Schoolcraft Collection which is one of our major collections of Native American material in the Manuscript Division. Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, as you may not know, was an Indian agent in Michigan and became superintendent of Indian Affairs in the Detroit area once Michigan became a state. He married the Native American poet who is now very famed and deservedly so as the first Native American poet who published in the mainstream literary tradition in the United States, Jane Johnston Schoolcraft, and I've brought a manuscript of one of her poems and also an example of one of the many Native American, in this case Chippewa legends and tales that were collected. Henry Rowe Schoolcraft got credit for the vocabularies and legends that were collected, but Jane was instrumental in all of that work, and he could not have done it without her family. It was her family that provided the contacts and introduced the people that told the stories that were transcribed and we have several volumes of those stories if you are interested in the literary tradition of the Chippewa. I also brought a article that Walt Whitman wrote. He wrote it in the 1880's but it's reminiscence of his time serving as a civil servant at the Department of the Interior where he worked in the Department of Indian Affairs. This was very briefly at the end of the Civil War for a few months and he wrote a very paternalistic article about it later in life and we do have the largest collection of Walt Whitman papers in the world here at the Library of Congress and there are also drafts in his collection of poems that mention Native Americans and he did prescribe to a very romanticized vanishing race, noble savage sort of vision of Native American life and the association with the wilderness and I will just note, because it came up in the collection, I mean in the earlier talks, that we also have materials on the beautiful city movement because we have the Fredrick Law Olmsted papers, so there's a great deal there about Native American and other ethnic ideology and symbolism that was replete and that school of architecture and landscape design. The last items that I brought are from are from the C. Hart Merriam Collection. C. Hart Merriam was an ethnologist, archaeologist, zoologist, and he did extensive work in California and Nevada, and I've brought one of his hand colored and labeled map that shows the linguist groups in California and Nevada and also one of his many field work vocabulary forms, which in this case is for the [inaudible]language. One of the things that was interesting about that is that there is a category of names for supernatural beings and one of the things that he added in by hand is the name for mermaid, which was a reference to tails of nymphs who lived in the deep holes of [inaudible] River. So on that note, I'll pass it on. [ Applause ] >> So we do have a bit of time to for some discussion but I want to put this map up which is actually in the Geography and Maps Collection. Gabby, this is the map that I mentioned to you previously. I meant to put this up before I finished up, but this is a map from late 19th century put together by a symposium of archeologists working in the district. It's a map of the District of Columbia showing "ancient village sights" and you can see that triangles and rectangles there indicating sites within the district that have been studied at that point. So I have two sets of questions that I would like to offer to our panelist and I would like to invite any of you to come up after I ask the first set, and that is, you know, we've got a number of students in the room here. Students of mine from George Mason University came today but were also being live cast and a video of this panel will be on the library's website so potentially future students who are interested in the history of this region and working with communities here. All of you have devoted your lives to this research, to this work, to these communities, and so I'd like to ask for those who would like to do the same or would be interested in the same, what is some advice that you would offer to them? What are some things that you would suggest? What are some promises but also what are some potential pitfalls. What are things that researchers wanting to work in this region with communities here might want to avoid, so I would like to open up to whom whoever to actually come up for this. All together. [ Background Sounds ] >> We'll just make a little panel here [laughing]. So pitfalls and opportunities. Yeah so, I would have to say that there are some really obvious issues for research regarding people across the board and in particular in this region is that the material is very early and the ability to understand what the Native point of view on this is also, it's difficult. So you have to go through many different filters and sometimes go to places that you wouldn't think to go, so for example so with Piscataway history, we have the Jesuit relations, we have the Maryland archives, all of this being told in English Colonial voice, sometimes with reporting about how, you know, basically supposed transcriptions of what Native people had to say. The way I started to fill some of this in, this is just a lifelong thing and some of it is just pay attention and start to have people who maybe are doing other work pay attention and sometime they'll start to fill in the gaps so one of the sources I did go to, and it was really hard to get my dissertation committee to accept this all those years ago-- it took me a really long time for them to finally get this-- was that I went to Haudenosaunee to the Iroquois confederacy, because some of our people had ended up because of the pressures here, they ended up in Pennsylvania coming under Haudenosaunee Iroquois jurisdiction and some of our people got adopted into the Cayuga Wolf Clan and ended up in six nations, so this was like, you're talking from about 1701 up through, it was about the year 1987, that I encountered Chief Jacob Thomas Cayuga Wolf Clan chief and I started to talk to him and I said do you know anything, you know, about us because they know us as [inaudible] and he said, yeah I do, and as a matter of fact I have a binder here of written accord of what happened in the Cayuga language and it was like telling it from the other side of what had happened. So there's fragments and weird pieces and having to look around and to do the unexpected and to listen to stories, hear people's names. We have an oral account about the Battle of Fallen Timbers of our people in 1794. We have an oral account of it that has to do with that the people chose a place that lightening hit trees and that's why it's called Fallen Timbers. Fast forward a year to the 1990's [inaudible] there's a guy whose native name is Fallen Timbers. I was like I need to talk to you and so, you know, and so there's a lot, it's just these little fragments and pulling it together, listening to what's involved in terms of like other peoples' quoted in songs, dances, oral account. Sometimes hearing it when we're not doing research but maybe we're all at a protest together and we start chatting, you know, or something. So there's, yeah, there's a lot there. [ Inaudible Comment ] >> So one pitfall I think I would also add is, I would very, very, very strongly encourage, I can't stress enough, when you're looking at these issues of indigenous people, whatever it happens to be, talk to indigenous people. I've been involved in too many situations where the topic is something involving Native Americans, it's a very specific issue too Native American communities, and at the last second a huge group of people, I mean 20-30 people are trying to put together an event, maybe we should include a Native American and they call you the day of or something like or the day before, and you're like, and yeah, you're one. You know, you're like one person, you know, and there's this understanding, yes, Native Americans are 2% of the population, there's not like a whole lot of us, and you know the capacity is not always there, but we are there. And you will find someone that's wiling to come and speak with you about these things and you know there's going to be someone at that Nation or someone that, you know, can connect you to the right person to actually get an indigenous perspective. Only doing it straight from research and, you know, these often biased histories is not the best way to go about things. >> I guess one thing I would like to add having been on the Monacan Tribal Council for about 12 years is that that very often academics and people who want to get PhD's come to us with their projects and say, can you help me, and they want us to help them put this dissertation together, and then they're going to leave and we're never going to see them again. And our attitude over time has become, we really don't have time to help you in the sense that, what are you going to do in return? Are you going to build a relationship with us that will be mutually beneficial or are we just helping you get your PhD and that's it? You know, and so often people don't seem to understand that there should be an exchange, you know, or some group of well-meaning people in our neighborhood will come and say, here's this project, don't you think it's great, we want you to approve of it. And they didn't' ask us to be involved in it the planning of the project or consider whether it would be useful to us in terms of time as well. So I think one of the things I like to encourage people to do is, before you begin a project, develop a relationship that is respectful and it might benefit both parties so that there is an actual dialog and that way everybody feels included. >> For me, thinking of what I do and how to maybe encourage young people out there may be watching this, that maybe are interested in museums, there's a lot of great programs and I remember when I was a kid, you know, I mean I didn't' think I'd be working in a museum one day. That thought never really entered into my mind, but I ended up working for a short time at our Pamunkey Indian Museum and got interested and got experience and was able to come here, but if you're very interested, definitely look at museum study programs, American Indian study programs, yeah, and learn how to fill out job applications [inaudible] jobs. That's really important. >> So the other question that I had and it's kind of more, I guess, a little bit more pointed maybe and that is when I think about the history of Washington D.C. and the history of the delegations and diplomats coming into the city over the past 200 plus years, all of them are coming to negotiate treaties with the federal government but also making very bold, very visible often, statements about sovereignty. When they do this, they're not only making a statement of about the sovereignty of their own nations and at the capital of the United States, but they're also doing it on the homeland of the Piscataway people and within a broader region. That makes Washington D.C. a different kind of city and when we think about the urban indigenous history of Seattle or Chicago or Detroit or Minneapolis, that's a different history than Washington and I just wonder what, and I think you all have different perspectives to offer on this issue, and I wonder what you might think about that or what you might say about that? >> Okay [laughing]. Well, yeah, so here's to fast forward a bit where, you know, I was talking earlier about some of this really deep ancestral history, but given our location, that has been absolutely integral, part and parcel of what did happen, what has happened next and what continues to be engaged with our community. We have really been in many ways hosting these delegations coming in, the earliest ones that I know my grandfather talked about was relationships with people coming into D.C. from the 1920's. This is where he started doing, sometimes recordings with people. There was a few things that actually there's cards for here, but the sound recording was lost, but that's where there's just been this incredible energy back and forth. I think that's probably been a very key factor to the way that our community really resuscitated, was because of our location, because of Native people coming in, our folks encountering them, having them come to stay with us. I mean this was before people had expense accounts and abilities to host from the 1920's through the 1940's with the founding of the NCAI through the 1950's and particularly in the late 1960's, a man maned Gene Shenandoah from 1970-71 came in as an advanced team for the American Indian Movement, ran into my uncle at a diner, and they looked at each other and they were like, hey. And that meant that our folks went whole in on the American Indian Movement. It meant that the couple of people who hung on to the culture suddenly got very energized, started to interact. They were at the [inaudible], they were on the longest walk, then they started going out West, started going to Sundance's. Our people started intermarrying with people out West. We were involved with the takeover at Kinyonga up at Mohawk territory, going with people to lobby at congress and then opening it up hemispherically. So we have a lot of contacts with Amazonian, Central Americans. We've married some of those folks [laughing], had kids with some of those people. There's lot of like Turtle Island Piscataways around and so I think, yeah, that's been a huge factor back and forth even though there's not a lot of us, that it really started to generate when we reincorporated formally in 1974, we chose the date of the Battle of Little Big Horn to do it. So, you know, yeah, it's been a very active relationship. [ Inaudible Comments ] >> So I think her perspective is probably one of the more important ones, since you are Piscataway. It definitely is, you know, when you come here it's often included in any type of dialogue that you have or at least, you know, what I've seen of tribal leaders talking to the federal government to remind them that we're on Indian lands. That's always part of the conversation, is to remind them we're on Indian lands because that kind of really stands for a lot. We're not here saying that, you know, these old treaty rights or whatever, which I would like to add, the constitution [inaudible], so I never understand that argument. It's ridiculous. But to remind them that, you know, the reason that the United States is here is because of the Indian people that were and still are here. So I do think, you know, it's great when people come in from out of town, and myself, I mean the first thing you do is find a community. It's a little bit harder here. I actually lived and worked in Minneapolis for a long time and that's where the American Indian Movement was founded and so we have a section and whole area of town that's, you know, you go there and you're going to see lots of people that you see all the time, and you'll know exactly that you're in your community. It's a little bit different here. It's not nearly as visible. It's something where you actually kind of have to have more of a network of people to figure out where you guys are. It's a little bit harder, and I think it kind of adds to making it a little bit more difficult, I guess, being out here because where I'm from and where, you know, a lot of us coming from like, you know, the Southwest, or you know, the Pacific Northwest or the Midwest, we're used to a really strong community and here I think the community is much, much smaller and, you know, East Coast tribes are a different situation. You guys are in such a different situation then we are but, you know, creating those relationships is incredibly important, so. >> Well I would say that our people have had a different history and that we didn't come to Washington to negotiate and that's because the only treaty I'm aware of that we were involved with predates the establishment of the United States. And by the time other tribes were coming negotiate, our tribe was just hanging out in the mountains trying to stay alive, but it was very interesting to me because when the National Museum of the American Indian opened, so many native people came to take part in those events and our people were among them, so they got to march in the parade with all of the other Indians nations and to feel this incredible validation and pride. It's the only time I ever felt really comfortable in Washington D.C. because there was so many Indian people around us. So we have initiated more of a dialog with other tribes and in so doing also initiated dialogs with political organizations and have come here many, many times on behalf of our federal recognition bill which is still in Congress. >> It makes me think of, kind of in a similar situation with Karenne where we're not federally recognized but still I do know of some trips here to D.C. and speeches that were given here in D.C. and also a major issue that we've had in Virginia is the Racial Integrity Act, you know, it's a paper genocide where, you know, we're not allowed to check that box of being Native American, and I know a lot of Virginia native people actually came here to D.C. to get married just to be able to, you know, check that box to say, you know, on their marriage certificate, that they are Native Americans, so that's definitely a big issue that still is having impact today for Virginia native people. And also being here, working here in D.C., it is always an interesting dynamic. Being at the museum, there's a lot of Native visitors we see or even just somewhere around in the city or suburb, you know, a lot of times we might see Native people and just kind of like, hey where you from? So, you know, and help people sometimes feel more comfortable, you know, people that are maybe just coming here or just here for a short business trip and for whatever reason, so it's always an interesting dynamic as well, so. >> Yeah, I just want to follow up on that. I mean that's, so this is a very, I kind of mentioned it at the end and you guys were talking about this, very distinctive to this area on the Atlantic seaboard, Chesapeake in particular, is the documentary Erasure of Native People on the record, so sometimes you'll see people listed as Indians in the church on church records or in other kinds of ethnic graphical records but on census, on being noted, you know, free people of color, sometimes from one census to the next or if a reservation was resolved, once the reservations were dissolved either legally or generally illegally, you see the change of designation from Indian to free people of color, free color, free negro. And then, of course, like you were saying in Virginia, the category of Indian was outlawed, it was prohibited until Loving versus Virginia in 1967 with the Racial Integrity Act. It's astounding, so those are the other things, it's like you may be looking at records that are Indian records, but they don't appear that way because you have to make a leap back to an earlier document to then trace it back forward, so it's, you know, it's tricky. >> We do have time for a question or two from the audience if anyone would like to ask questions of our panelists. >> Would you explain what you meant by racial genocide, I mean paper genocide? >> So the question is, can you explain by paper genocide? [ Multiple Speakers ] >> Karenne Wood: We refer to a specific instance where a guy named Dr. Walter Plecker and some of his colleagues managed to lobby for the passage for the Racial Integrity Act in 1924 which made it a felony for a person of color to marry a person that was considered white and Plecker mounted a campaign against Native people in particular, correcting he thought their birth certificate so they did not say Indian and so he changed their identification racially to colored to free issue or a number of different terms had popularity over the four decades he was in power which effectively erased the Native people of the region. So when we say paper genocide or documentary genocide, he wiped out whole groups of people in policy and on paper where they continue to exist but not with the identification that they had for themselves. >> Yeah, to me there is one other piece of paper genocide that is still very much an issue today, which is [inaudible]. So when you meet a lot of people and they ask, you know, what are you, after I tell them I I'm a person, I explain, yes, I'm Native American and often people will just say how much? Which people don't understand, that's incredibly offensive right. I'm fully Native American, I'm 100 percent a citizen of my nation, but that mentality comes from the Policy of [inaudible] and so it has, you know, there's a very, very set idea to bleed Indians out, right. That was kind of like the federal government's intent was let's say that you're not Indian unless you're this much blood because we're are going to decide just randomly, you're 100 percent, like so for instance my own family, we have members that are the same generation but somehow they all have different blood [inaudible] because of how dark they were. I mean, that is a really common thing. So it's those kind of politics, once you're down to that, you know, quarter or eighth or whatever it happens to be, then you're not Indian anymore. And to me that's absolutely paper genocide and it's something that a lot of our nations are struggling with. My own, we don't have blood [inaudible], but we still have a little blood [inaudible] on our cards still to remind you that you're only this much Indian. And it's become a really serious issue as far as maintaining the memberships that we have we have. I mean many nations are very small and if you can't marry outside your own nation or you know if you have to meet a certain amount of whatever the federal government said all those generations ago, it becomes a real significant problem survival. >> I see one more question over here. [ Inaudible Audience Question ] [ Background Sounds ] >> Yes, as I was mentioning earlier, there is some work being done, you know, just recently with our Pamunkey language. It's very similar to Piscataway, and you could hear when she was saying some of the words, you know, how similar they are. So there is some work. It's not, you know, fluently spoken by anyone now, but, you know, with this work there have been some classes recently on the reservation as well, so there's a little work being done on that. And also in my house with my wife. My wife also is Pawnee, so sometime she'll get out some things and we'll start practicing and teaching our son as well. So yeah, it's going on. >> I would encourage you to download the Nichi app also. That's [inaudible] of an application to, you know, have basically a pocket dictionary. So language revitalization is very serious, you know, across the board. Every nation is fully aware of it. There are a lot of congressional members and currently we have, you know, Senator Tester is actually really supportive of dedicating funding to immerging schools, to including Native American curriculum, you know, in public schools. They are Native Americans going to public schools, there's lots of us. Most of us go to public schools. I did. There's actually, if you also want to look, there's a [inaudible] online dictionary. The efforts to preserve the languages are still here. We are fortunate to have lots of fluent speakers. It's always so sad when you hear about people that don't have fluent speakers left. But language legalization is absolutely happening and I think, you know, Hawaii is a really great example of seeing incredible success by, you know, accommodation of immerging schools and developing these modern applications to children speaking the language again and get their parents speaking the language with them, so. >> Thank you for that question. I think saving our languages is so important because the way that we think is embodied in the way that we talk, you know, and how we translate the world through the words that we use, so it's really essential that we retain our languages if we still have them or try to bring them back if we don't. In the face of my people, the Monacan people, our language, the closest related language, which is called [inaudible] and it was actually documented in Canada after some of our people went there and affiliated themselves with the Haudenosaunee Iroquois people and it was documented there, so my PhD is actually in linguistic anthropology and that's the language that I'm working with, trying to ascertain what is most important to my people about brining that language back so that once we began a language revitalization program, we'll be able to target the areas they most want to learn about effectively. And what we've learned is that they really want to be able to pray because they feel like that is their natural language that corresponds to our homeland geography and to the ancestors that have died there. And we do our reburial ceremonies which we've done 4 of them, they want to be able to talk to the ancestors in the words that they would recognize. >> In a moment, I'm going to ask John to come up and say a few words, but I'd like you to join me in thanking these amazing panelists. I'm so astounded by these folks. Thank you. [ Applause ] And then we'll go ahead and step down off the podium and ask John to come up and say a few words before we break. Thank you. [ Background Sounds ] >> John Van Oudenaren: I'm John Van Oudenaren, the Director of Scholarly and Educational Programs at the Library of Congress, and I'm here to represent the Kluge Center. The mission of the Kluge Center, in case somebody didn't say it before, is to bring together scholars and researchers from around the world to stimulate and energize one another, to steal wisdom from the library's rich resources, and to interact with policymakers of the public. And I think what we've seen here today is just a great example of that actually happening with a researcher and people coming in from outside. Erica asked me to make an announcement about the program. At 2 o'clock, we continue with a program sponsored or run by the Law Library on the Indigenous Tribal Law Portal. I know they've put a lot of work into this, so you'll want to see this. And then at 3 o'clock, there's a tour of the great hall and then you go up to the rare books reading room where I'm sure they'll have some interesting things to see related to the top, so thank you very much and thanks for [inaudible]. [ Applause ] >> Carrie Lyons: Good afternoon and welcome to the Library of Congress as we celebrate Native American Heritage Month and thank you all for coming. My name is Carrie Newton Lyons. I am a research manager and legislative attorney in the administrative law section of the American law division of congressional research service here at the library. I'm also a citizen of the Cherokee nation of Oklahoma and a member of the library's group of Native American Employees and Colleague. And I would like to first send a thanks to those folks who have, from the group today, for shepherding the program and the events and making them happen, so thank you and thank you. As you know, this program will be highlighting the library's indigenous tribal law portal, but before the demonstration begins, I want to take a few moments to make some brief comments about the importance of the project, especially in light of Native American Heritage month. It's probably obvious that the indigenous law portal will provide a valuable resource and tool for analysts and academics, practitioners and students of both federal Indian law and federal Indian policy as well as tribal law and policy. Well, and as an attorney who has worked in the field of federal Indian law for quite some time, I can speak directly to the value of the portal as a resource that will provide access to an array of tribal laws and documents that are necessary for that work. But, I also want to highlight and speak more about the value of the portal outside of the practice of law and outside of scholarship on tribal law and policy. Since the portal will provide an outstanding vehicle for generally educating people about Indian tribes and Native Americans. As many of you many know, Native Americans and Indian tribes are often viewed as historical entities. Part of American history that is taught in schools as relics of the past such as sharing food with the Pilgrims at Thanksgiving, but people are not often taught that Indian tribes continue to exist as sovereign nations with governments and judicial systems that create, enforce, and adjudicate their laws within the nations. This portal, however, will provide a tool for educating people about Indian tribes as they currently exist and as they currently operate. This portal will show that tribes have constitutions and laws that are created and amended as the tribes continue to develop and deal with modern day issues. This portal will also show that tribes have legislative branches that inact ordinances, regulations, and laws and executive branches that enforce the laws, and judicial branches that interpret the laws and make decisions that set precedence for the tribes. This portal will allow people to access not only documents relating to Indian land sessions in the 1700s and 1800s but also to the 2013 amended constitution of the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma demonstrating that Indian tribes are not historical entities locked in the past but vibrant and current, self-governing nations that importantly contribute to American society. So again, thank you on behalf of the library's Native American Employees and Colleagues, and I hope that you enjoy the program today. [ Applause ] >> Roberta Shaffer: Let me add my welcome to Carrie's welcome. My name is Roberta Shaffer, and I have the pleasure of serving currently as the acting Law Librarian. We didn't confer on our notes, but we should have because basically my prepared remarks track Carrie's almost to a t. And therefore, it shows, well, I'm going to say not so much great minds. This is so obvious and so important that you don't have to have a great mind to see that this project is truly breaking new ground for the Library of Congress and serves so many purposes, not the least of which is the proof of concept that Native American tribes are alive and well in organic legal systems just like any other legal jurisdiction in the world today. But the beauty of the portal is really multifaceted. First and foremost, I want to say that for the Library of the Congress, it represents a change in the way that we look at the entire classification concept, and so for that alone, I applaud the woman who has really born all of the bricks and mortar for that, and that is Dr. Yolanda Goldberg, who is sitting in the audience. I don't know if you can pan her, but let us all just flatter her with some applause. [ Applause ] She, with the permission of Beacher Wiggins, the head of one of the major sections of library services, conceived of this ideology, this concept of moving from a historical approach to a geopolitical approach to organizing the information and then going that next step of linking to external websites and sources so that a person can really almost do a one-stop shop by, believe it or not, using a classification system. And so today we are really marking a moment in which the idea of the word classification system to describe accessed information goes out the window and we now finally can say that classification is a roadmap, is a guide, is a handbook for knowledge. So I applaud Yolanda and Tina Gein [phonetic] who worked with her from the law library originally, and now the 2 people who will be actually demonstrating the portal for you from the library staff, and that is Robert Brammer-I'm just looking down at my paper because I don't want to get his title wrong-and so he is Senior Legal Reference Specialist, and Jennifer Gonzalez who is an information analyst in the library. The final thing that I do want to say also about the value of this port is, that it enables one of the greatest assets of the Library of Congress as a clearinghouse of knowledge, and that is that not only does one now have access to the Seminole 2013 Constitutional Amendments, but there's an opportunity to now compare among and between the documents of indigenous peoples and other sovereign nations all over the world. And this is as truly important thing in today's times where no legal system exists as an island an all legal systems and all peoples of the world want to compare and contrast their cultures, their commercial way of life, their community habits, their civilizations to those of the past, of the present, and by way of these portals to the future. So thank you for stepping into the future with us, Dr. Yolanda Goldberg, and the rest of you who are here this afternoon. And without further ado, Robert and Jennifer. [ Applause ] [ Background Sounds ] >> Robert Brammer: Okay, I'll bring up the site. Okay, let me start by saying, researching indigenous law can be very difficult. Often, the only source of the materials, current materials, is the tribes themselves. And if you're looking for historical materials, they're often spread around many different sites. So to approach this challenge, the indigenous law portal is organized around Dr. Goldberg's K classification system. Providing a portal that combines the Library of Congress's vast historical resources with particularly historic constitutions, charters, and codes with links to current sources of law from the tribes themselves. That said, I want to mention what the portal is not do is identify every single law that's applicable to a given tribe. That's beyond the scope of the project. The indigenous law portal is integrated into law.gov, the Law Library of Congress site, and it initially focused on the United States. We've branched out to Canada and Mexico and in the future it will incorporate laws and regulations effecting Native Americans, particularly treaties and acts from the U.S. statues at large. The metadata provided in the portal is very detailed, built around Dr. Goldberg's classification schedule. And I want to go ahead and illustrate that by clicking on Canada and going to Ontario and now I'm going to bring up the source of the page. [ Background Sounds ] So I'm scrolling down to illustrate this. So here you have the name of a tribe and then you have the div ID which provides the classification for the tribe source from Dr. Golderberg's work. So that's how imbedded the metadata is, the classification schedule, and the metadata of the site. [ Background Sounds ] Sorry. Just going back here. Okay, so let's talk about how you use the portal. First you choose a country. I'm not sure why I'm not getting a map loading here. I apologize for that. We've got this great clickable maps that were provided by [inaudible] that allow you to just click on a state and go directly to that state's materials and the tribes represented within the boundaries of that state. So at the top, we've got general resources for indigenous legal materials. And if you scroll down, those resources include gateways, directories, research guides, topic-specific resources such as here you see like economic law. You've also got links to NGOs, IGOs, and indigenous organizations. Below that, you've got a link to Dr. Goldberg's classification schedule and the table of contents for this is actually clickable. So you can choose the location that you're interested in and then see the classifications associated with that location. Below that, you have a link to the digitized historical constitutions as a separate collection. These are also represented throughout the site with the tribe they're associated with. And then below that, you have links to tribes. You can browse tribes by region, state, and also an alphabetical listing. So I'm going to go ahead and go to state and choose Oklahoma to illustrate some of the resources that we have on the site. I'm going to choose the Cherokee Nation and I'm going to choose the constitution and laws of the Cherokee Nation from 1875. So this is an example of one of the historical resources from the Library of Congress that has been digitized. I find this one particularly interesting because it's actually written in Cherokee. Here we go. I want to mention that not everything on the site is written in the, you know, the tribe's language. So there's a lot of resources that even if you can't read the language that you can certainly make use of, but I just found this particular interesting as an example of one of the historical resources on the site. Okay, next I'm going to go to Washington and I'm going to choose the [inaudible] Tribe. And this is just an example of how we link to current sources of a tribe's law by linking directly to their website and also below that you see the [inaudible] order code. This is actually hosted by one of the partners that we link to to flush out the site, the National Indian Law Library. [ Background Sounds ] Okay. Now, I'm going to Alaska and specifically the Twin Hills Village. And this is just another example of how we're looking for current sources of law we link directly to the tribes themselves, making the sites easy to find by organizing in the portal. So I want to mention that this product is a collaboration both within and outside of the wall of the Library of Congress. Of course, Dr. Goldberg's great work on the K classification schedule, the Law Library, our fantastic interns, [inaudible] great clickable maps, the Geography and Maps Division, and partners outside of the library, the National Indian Law Library, the Law Library of Microform Consortium all were essential to the success of this project. We encourage feedback from all of our stakeholders and we've already incorporated feedback that we've received into the site. Hawaii, Central and South America are our next projects for inclusion into the portal. And with that, I'm going to turn it over to Jennifer who's going to talk about law.gov's resources for American Indian legal materials. Law.gov is the Law Library of Congress site. [ Background Sounds ] > Jennifer Gonzalez: Hello. Out front, if you have not received it, we have little handout that has all of the URL's that we've been talking about today, including the indigenous law portal URL which happens to be quite long, because we want, we have to fit into the website, so what I wanted to do is to start off by showing you an easy way to get to the indigenous law portal. The easiest way is to type in law.gov and that will bring you to the Law Library's home page. Scrolling down slightly you'll see this guide to law online with the law square, indigenous right here is in purple. That'll bring you directly to the indigenous law guide. This is the easiest way to get there instead of typing in that long, this long URL that you see up here. The law library's website also has several other resources, some of these resources we are trying to include and some of them are proving a little difficult so we're working on them but we want to be able to show you all the resources that the Law Library of Congress and Library of Congress has available for indigenous legal materials. [ Background Sounds ] So headed back to the homepage, we have law.gov, and scrolling down, I said that under this guide to online is where the indigenous law portal is housed. The guide to online also has many other materials that could be helpful. If you click on nations, you'll see that every nation in the world is represented in here. This is a great place to start for any sort of research on any other nation. And U.S. Federal is specifically where we have other American Indian material that has not been incorporated. If I scroll down, you'll see that we have an Indians of North America guide and this is for U.S. Federal law that has, the indigenous law guide is for indigenous legal materials. Legal material that are Native to those indigenous nations, but the U.S. has also created lots of legal material in regards to the Native Americans population that live within the geographical borders. And so this is what this material here is for. We have text, commentary, different links to different agencies and again another guide to the indigenous law portal. [ Background Sounds ] We are hoping to include many of this material into the portal soon, but for now this is where it's housed in sort of the same area. Headed back to law.gov, again to the homepage and scrolling down, below the guide to online is our section of legal reports. The Law Library writes reports primarily for congress and if I go to the comprehensive index we can see some of this report is written actually on indigenous material. These are the four reports so far that we have on our website about indigenous material. This one in particular is quite interesting. It's the preservation of historical cemeteries and it includes some information on the United States. So clicking on the name of the report brought us here to the report page and then in this table of contents box, clicking on the United States brings up some of the United States portion of the report that was written discussing of the preservation of the historical cemeteries in the U.S. Okay, scrolling back to the top and headed back to law.gov. Also from our homepage, if we click on research and reports, I'm going to head a little bit farther deeper into the website so that you can see more of our materials that might or maybe hidden in there. The first one here, again we clicked on research and reports of commemorative observances. This is a collection of materials that is all about just different commemorative observances that we have in the U.S., one of them being the American Indian Heritage month. We have an overview of the month, legislative branch, executive branch documents, and web resources specifically on, again, the Native American heritage month again these proclamations will bring you to a pdf. [ Background Sounds ] Excuse me [laughing]. Okay, our pdf that is the proclamation from the president about the National American Indian Heritage Month in the year 2007. So while the portal is a one stop shop, excuse me. Well the portal is a one stop shop for all the indigenous legal materials, again this is another place where we have materials that don't exactly fit into the confines of the portal that we wanted to show. Okay, law.gov again, research and reports, and then here we have some digitized material. This first link, American Indian Constitutions and Legal Materials is where all of those links that Robert was showing you before from the portal, where they live. Again we have a clickable map for different regions. And this is the South. This is our earliest material and it starts with 1810 in the Cherokee Nation. This is also the place where you can find the material [inaudible] of language of the tribe or the [inaudible] of the tribe. And we have it noted here by saying, in Cherokee or we several different ones, there's one in Choctaw, and so you can download this pdf and quickly view. There you go. And quickly view the document. [ Silence ] Okay, I'll go back to the South and scroll down to where we were. Our historical materials continue on through the 1950's-1960's with these constitutions and corporate charters. These two materials happen to be in several different places on the internet, but these are pdfs that we've digitized from the Library of Congress's collection. There are also some gems in here for these older materials. [inaudible] I'm going to search for this one. We have some ordinances that I have found extremely interesting and continue to find interesting as I keep going through. This is ordinances of this town. We can just look at some of the different titles here. You have an ordinance about dead animals. Yep [laughing]. Many different ones, in regard to dogs, taxes, oh, I haven't found-- my favorite one is up here. Where is it? Oh no. There we go, this is one of my favorite ones. Bean shooting [inaudible] for boys only. They were not concerned about girls, it seems. And no destroying of bird nests [laughing]. So this is one of my favorite documents that we have. I wanted to make sure I showed you. Okay, now back to research and reports and digitized material. I'm going to continue going through. We have some collections from the Law Library of Congress here, but we also have Statues at Large and United States Treaties. These are two collections that we are working on increasing what we have available currently, but here at the Statues at Large you are able to access all of the historical statues at large from 1776 through 1950. Some of them are available by chapter which means that you'll be able to look at each of the individual titles and control F to find those titles a lot quicker. I'm going to go to Congress 21 and you can see that each of these titles here with an individual pdf. So up here at the top you can download the full congress or you can download the small pdf's here that would just get you the chapter or the law that you are really looking for. I'm going to scroll down to chapter 148 to give an example of one of the Indian Laws that we have. This is an act to provide of an exchange of lands with the Indians residing of any of the states or territories and for the removal west of the Mississippi. This is the Indian Removal Act that, they didn't call it that back then, but this is was the actual title for that, and so by clicking on this pdf, you will be able to open up and directly read that statue starting here. [ Background Sounds ] Sorry, I'm going back to the Statue, I forgot to show that each of these statues, the advantage of breaking up each of these statues by title means that we are able to individually put metadata into each of these statues so that they are available to be searched exactly. So for instance, this statue about the Indians Removal Act had all of these terms here applied to it, so the search on the libraries main page putting in any of these terms will get you straight to this act. Okay and I also mentioned treaties. These are the treaties that the United States assigned with other nations. This treaties series so far does not include any of the treaties that the United States has signed with American Indian Nations. Those were in a separate volume of Statues at Large that we are currently working on very hard to get up as quickly as possible. But we have these treaties currently, which will show some international treaties that have happened that have to do with American Indians or Native peoples of anywhere. So typing in Indian brings us a search to this Inter- American Indian Institute and clicking on this pdf will show that this is something that has been signed in 1940 and it was trying to create an Inter-American Indian Institute. Okay, there's one more historical source that I wanted to mention. Let's close out some of these tabs, And I'm going to go back to law.gov and click on find legal resources. Legislative resources. Again this link is quite long, but the URL is in your handout and century of law making is here. This is still the Library of Congress website and it has the first hundred years of legal documents here. So many different things, bills, statues at large, journals. I'm going to click here to the Annals of Congress. This is what is the current congressional record or precursor to the current congressional record, which means all of the things that congress has said or went on in that day. If I browse the page headings and go to I and scroll down a little, we have, these are all of the different topics of what congress spoke about in regards to Indians during this time. So for example I will click on Indian fur trade in the Senate. They've spoken about this 5 times and so clicking on one of these will bring you directly to the page that they talked about the Indian fur trade. So that's it for historical documents that we have from the Library of Congress and now we have some current documents. And I have that, that we are going to go to congress.gov. This is available in multiple places in our website but typing in congress.gov works just as well and brings you here to this main page. The easiest way to get to the indigenous materials that we have here is to click on browse. And scroll to this where it says bills to subject policy area and policy areas. Each of the bills that congress puts out that has one policy area that is attached to it. And here we have Native Americans which is one of, they only have a few subjects here to choose from but Native Americans have 97 bills so far with this current congress. Clicking on Native American gets you those 97 bills. As you can see several have not gotten to far they are just now introduced here, using these facets on the left hand side you are able to navigate and see exactly what it is you are looking for. So you have bills and resolutions, let's say I only want bills, it will redo the search and only give me those 93 bills and take out the resolutions. I can narrow this down and can only look at the 3 that became law and we have other facets here that you can narrow down with the bills down by sponsors, committee, chamber or party. So I have the 3 bills that have passed, but if you wanted to look at an expand the search you can come here to the congress and currently we have the 114 congress checked which is our current congress, but by showing more you can look at all the bills, or in this case the laws since they've passed and become law, that were passed by congress in each of the different congressional years. [ Background Sounds ] So again, law.gov will get you here to this portal. That's the quickest link. Let's see if that map is working. Nope. Not yet. But the Canada one is, so you can see there. We have each of the regions here in a certain color and each of the different territories or provinces are highlighted there so you can go through. So we welcome any questions that you have, any questions today that you have, or if you have any help that you could give us on the portal any suggestions that you have, we would absolutely welcome it. So thank you. [ Applause ] Any questions? [ Inaudible Audience Question ] >> Jennifer Gonzalez: Right, we are doing as much outreach as we can to try to speak with the tribes, to let them know about the portal and all of the availability that we have. I think the first step is really making sure that people know about the portal and know that it's out there and once people start to recognize that its out there and then hopefully those relationships will really start to be developed. [ Background Sounds ] Yes? [ Inaudible Audience Question ] I think I will open that up to anyone else [laughing]. No, that's quite alright. [ Inaudible Audience Comment ] >> Jennifer Gonzalez : Fantastic. Anymore questions? Great. Thank you. Well, make sure that you get a handout when you leave, so that you have all those URL's or now you know how to find them. Thank you. [ Inaudible Audience Question ] Right. [ Inaudible Audience Question ] >>Robert Brammer : Typically, we use USA.gov as a link shortener. I think that's usually the standard process [inaudible]. [ Background Sounds ] >> Robert Brammer: Thank you. >> Jennier Gonzalez: Thank you. [ Applause ] >> Okay, thank you very much. Thanks Robert and Jennifer for an outstanding program. That was really, really good. Before everyone departs, I just want to hand out a couple of other thank yous as well. First I want to thank Eric Eldritch here [applause]. Yes. Eric was instrumental in putting this full day seminar together, getting the panels together, getting the programs together, getting the displays that were out here earlier today together as well. Did a fantastic job and thank you so much for putting this together for us today, this morning and this afternoon, so thanks, Eric. >> Eric Eldrich : It was a team effort. >> And, of course, I want to thank everyone here who attended today's seminar. We really appreciate your support of American Indian Libraries and connecting them to federal libraries, connecting them with the federal government in general, and getting the word out there that American Indian Libraries and American Indians, in general, are important parts of American cultural history, American history in general, and we need to continue to support them and work with them to get the resources and services that they deserve to have. >> This has been a presentation of the Library of Congress. Visit us at loc.gov