Archival Repatriation Project

This project brings together collections scholars and professionals with community collaborators whose histories are held in part in our university collections, in order to effect archival restoration and repatriation. We are focusing on impacted communities, particularly Indigenous Nations, to promote data sovereignty. We aim to 1) advance efforts to return control of community-specific and culturally sensitive archival materials and related collections and knowledge to the communities they were extracted from, and 2) develop a process, model, and guidelines that can be used with additional collections and communities to continue and sustain this work.  The core University team includes Kat Hayes (Anthropology), Ellen Holt-Werle (University Archives), Dylan Goetsch (Office of Native American Affairs), Samantha Porter (LATIS), and Emily Andrews (HSPH) as our graduate research assistant.

Our first community gathering is December 17th!  This online event will bring together Tribal cultural professionals and experts with institutional professionals to discuss how we build towards reparative and regenerative relations supporting data sovereignty.  More detail may be found on this page.

This project is funded by the CLA Interdisciplinary Collaborative Workshops (ICW) program. The grant program started in 2018 in the Office of Research and Graduate Programs as part of the CLA Roadmap commitment to a relentless focus on research and creative excellence. The application process moved to the Liberal Arts Engagement Hub (The Hub) in Fall 2024. ICWs continue to be funded by the Joan Aldous Innovation Fund.