Contact and Forms

We will do all recordings through consultation with the sixteen O.Š. tribal communities in the United States, both off- and on-reservation, beginning with ones nearest to the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, campus: Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community, Prairie Island Indian Community, Lower Sioux, and Upper Sioux. Our first-year activities involve relationship-building between our researchers, tribal and community partners, the University of Minnesota and Marquette University. PI and Co-PI will coordinate with community partners to establish contacts with tribal councils and THPOs, asking them how a digital map of orature would benefit their/our communities, and seeking recommendations for community storytellers.

At the start of the year, the tribal nations will also select Tribal Research Fellows, who will work with the PI and co-PI first to identify key locales and then to record storytellers in their respective communities over the remainder of the year. Tribal Research Fellows will also serve as informal liaisons between the universities and tribal communities during their tenure, directing any further research and information gathering they feel would best represent their chosen locales and storytellers. Graduate and Undergraduate Research Assistants will then gather supplementary multimedia materials (photos and videos of locales) and begin conventional archival research to support the orature recordings of Tribal Research Fellows at both tribal and university library collections. 

In year two the Tribal Research Fellows, Undergraduate Research Fellow, and graduate RAs will record storytellers and make translations and transcriptions into both English and Dakhóta/Lakȟóta when appropriate. 

In our third year, the Postdoctoral Fellow, PI, and co-PI will work with UMN’s LATIS, or Liberal Arts Technologies and Innovation Services, to create StoryMaps that synthesize the oratures and our researchers’ interpretive commentary. By the end of this year we will have a full StoryMap-populated ArcGIS map to share with the sixteen O.Š. nations.

At the end of the third year we will hold two community knowledge-sharing events: first, at the Minneapolis American Indian Center, which is one of the oldest Indian centers in the United States; and second, at the Mystic Lake Center of the Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community near the Twin Cities. Our hope with these events is that they will be both a celebration and an occasion for making community members more aware of the ArcGIS map. In terms of the latter, we will use the knowledge-sharing events to open dialogue for how best to continue the university-tribal partnership, including discussion of a permanent digital home for the StoryMaps archive.