Leveraging the Protocols for Native American Archival Materials to Support Indigenous Digital Collections: A Case Study from the Sherman Indian Museum Digital Project

Authors

Eric L. Milenkiewicz, California State University, San BernardinoFollow

Abstract

The Sherman Indian Museum houses a rich collection of archival materials that document the student experience, institutional culture, and community history of California’s sole remaining off-reservation American Indian boarding school. To broaden access to its collection for community and scholarly use, the museum partnered with the University of California, Riverside Library on a grant-funded project to digitize and provide online access to nearly 14,000 items from their collection. With a shared understanding of the unique ethical and communal protocols present in a digital project of this scope, the two repositories turned toward the standards and goals articulated in Protocols for Native American Archival Materials (PNAAM) for guidance. This case study details how the principles outlined in PNAAM were incorporated into the Sherman Indian Museum Digital Project to help guide this collaborative effort between an Indigenous and non-Indigenous institution. It discusses how PNAAM was not only utilized to establish and maintain an effective partnership between the repositories, but also to ensure that the process to digitize and make these materials accessible online was conducted in a culturally-responsible and -responsive manner. This approach highlights a framework that can then be adapted by similar cross-institutional digital projects working with Indigenous collections.

Author Biography

Eric Milenkiewicz is the University Archivist at California State University, San Bernardino. He holds a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from the University of California, Riverside (1999) and earned his Master of Library and Information Science with a concentration in Archival Studies from San Jose State University (2007). Mr. Milenkiewicz currently oversees the University Archives program at CSUSB, providing leadership for the selection, description, management, and preservation of library archival collections.

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Recommended Citation

Milenkiewicz, Eric L. (2024) "Leveraging the Protocols for Native American Archival Materials to Support Indigenous Digital Collections: A Case Study from the Sherman Indian Museum Digital Project," Journal of Western Archives: Vol. 15: Iss. 1, Article 3.
Available at: https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/westernarchives/vol15/iss1/3