Students to bring Native history home

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Additions --  Dominic Meyers dropped out of the project and was replaced by 
UM sophomore  anthropology student Glenn Still Smoking (Blackfeet). This is a  
project with the National Museum of Natural History at the  Smithsonian.   
Students to bring  Native history home
By  BETSY COHEN of the Missoulian 
June 1, 2008 
Five University of Montana  graduate students leave Sunday for the nation's 
capital on a mission to reclaim  the history of Montana's tribes.

Officially, they're called “Visiting  Native American Scholars” and they 
will be employed for the month of June by the  Smithsonian to copy all 
documentary materials related to Indians and tribes in  Montana and to bring back the 
information for UM's Mansfield Library.

The  project is a multi-year effort to make the nation's archival treasures 
available  to all Montanans, said David Beck, a UM Native American Studies 
professor who  helped arrange and secure the prestigious project.
     
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To  compensate the students for their time, each of them receives an $1,800 
stipend,  a plane ticket and will live in housing at George Washington  
University.

“It is such a great honor to be part of something so  revolutionary,” said 
UM student Wilena Old Person. “I am very excited about this  opportunity, and I 
am so excited to see all the stuff that is out  there.”

“I think for us to be looking at our history to see who we are,  where we 
came from and where we are going is just a great honor,” said Old  Person, who is 
the granddaughter of Blackfeet Chief Earl Old Person.

The  other students who will embark on this historic journey are Dominic 
Meyers, who  is of Crow and Chippewa-Cree descent; Eli Suzukovich, who is Cree; 
Helen Cryer,  who is Cree; and Miranda McCarvel.

Old Person said she is particularly  excited to be part of McCarvel's 
findings because McCarvel is a linguist who is  hoping to track down early audio 
recordings of native speakers.

“I know  there is a ton of Blackfeet stuff in the archives, and language is 
one of the  most important parts of who we are,” Old Person said. “It ties us 
to our  ancestors. So I am excited to see what she finds and what the 
Smithsonian  has.”

The project will take several years to complete and this first  venture is 
very much a “reconnaissance,” Beck said.

“This first summer is  really to get us going, get an assessment as much as 
anything and get a sense of  the materials we will need to copy,” he said. “We 
will use this summer to see  how we can do that the best, how to be the most 
efficient and not only get the  materials up on the Web but how to make them 
searchable.”

The project is  a colossal treasure hunt, and the students will likely 
uncover long-buried,  critical tribal knowledge, Beck said.

He knows for certain the famous  archive houses rare field notes produced by 
John Ewers, one of the nation's  foremost scholars of the Plains Indians and 
the history of the West. Ewers wrote  the book “The Blackfeet” in the late 
1950s, which is still considered one of the  most detailed accounts of the 
Montana tribe, Beck said.

It is in  documents such as Ewers' field notes, diaries, letters and other 
primary source  documents where nuggets of new knowledge sleep - information 
that never made it  into published or public works that can help provide the rich 
details of tribal  eras long gone, Beck said.

“The work these students will do will focus on  all the tribes in the state,”
 Beck said. “But, we may go beyond the  state.”

For certain, the information will be captured through digital  technology and 
made available to Montana's tribes, tribal colleges, and anyone  else who is 
interested in the findings.

“The documents we collect will be  the kind people use in research,” Beck 
said. “Instead of having to go to  Washington, D.C., to see these documents, 
researchers can access them through  their computer.

“People will be able to study tribal culture and history  from a document 
perspective with much greater depth without having to travel  across the country.”

To have such a democratic method of information  dispersal is stunning and 
amazing, Beck said. Because of it, countless doors  will open for students, 
professors, researchers and anyone else on a quest to  plumb the depths of 
Montana's Indian heritage.

Old Person said she hopes  to be a part of this important project every year.

“Education is the way  we are going to come through this economic downfall 
and overcome substance abuse  on our reservations,” Old Person said. “Through 
our history we will be able to  see how our great-grandparents did - how they 
fought for their right for  education and health care.

“It is important to bring this knowledge back  so we can study it,” she 
said. “We find strength from our history.” 



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