Indigenous Newspapers in North America

"A rich collection, [Indigenous Newspapers in North America (INNA)] offers a unique look at how news was reported by and to Native American communities across the US and Canada over the course of the last two centuries,” wrote Daniel W. Jolley for ccAdvisor.

AM contacted hundreds of publishers and tribal councils to find those willing to enter into digitisation agreements for sharing their collections in this central database. The result is 45 titles covering the years from 1828 to 2016 in such areas as Alaska, British Columbia, Hawaii, Georgia, North Carolina, and various states across central and western US - 43 publication locations in all. Along with English language newspapers are titles published in the Chinuk Wawa, Dakota, Diné Bizaad, Lakota, Sm’algyax, and Ōlelo Hawaiʻi languages. Notable titles include Cherokee Phoenix (Cherokee Advocate) and Cherokee Voices, Hopi Action News, Navajo Times, and Osage News.

Many of the titles began publication in the turbulent 1970s and so reflect the voices of more contemporary Native American tribes and communities that mattered to them. Among topics are tribal laws and elections, land rights, sovereignty, environmentalism, the preservation of local culture and language, and political activism and protest. Older newspapers provide a unique take on historical events and local political and cultural happenings among various tribes.

“[INNA] offers a unique, first hand perspective on indigenous life and culture and will be a rich resource for programs supporting Native American studies,” Jolley wrote.

Summing up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty.

Relationships with archives and libraries are key for the team working on archival databases with AM as well. Two collections - the [Indigenous Newspapers in North America] and the Service Newspapers of WWII - showcase the ways that the publisher has brought unique pri­mary sources to light.

The [Indigenous Newspapers in North America] collection compiles pub­lications from communities across the United States and Canada, published from 1828 to 2016. The Service News­papers collection presents a range of wartime publications, from numerous nations and theaters of war.

With both collections, AM began with newspapers that had "as complete runs as possible," according to Louise Hemmings, senior publisher with AM. The publisher's relationship with the Sequoyah National Research Center at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock - the leading repository for these newspapers - shaped the development of the [Indigenous Newspapers in North America], which was also supplemented with ma­terials from the Newberry Library in Chicago. 

According to Erin Fehr, an archivist with Sequoyah, the greatest benefit of this collaboration was exposing more resources to a wider audience and making the collections available to researchers - something Sequoyah couldn't do on its own because of limited staff time and money. Fehr has used the digitised collections herself to answer research que­ries that would have previously required time-consuming research in print.

The company decided to create the Service Newspapers collection after learning about scholarly interest in wartime journalism. Their key partners for this collection were the British Library and the Imperial War Museum.

Any professional who has worked with archival news­papers knows that these materials can be quite delicate. The AM approach to digitising materials involves visiting the archives and taking detailed accounts and assessments of materials. Some archives prefer to digitise their collections themselves, while for other projects, the publisher will work with a separate scanning vendor.

For the newspaper col­lections, Hemmings says that the publisher "hit chal­lenges in terms of conservation to make sure they were stable enough to be digitised" and to identify "what might need treat­ment." Close collaboration with the archives tied in with the projects' mission to preserve digital copies and safeguard archival collections. From there, a project management team at AM oversaw all aspects of the digitisa­tion process, including quality checking final images.

The in-house team also ensures that these are discover­able, accessible collections, and builds upon existing metadata, enhancing it where possible in consultation with cura­tors and an editorial board. With the Service Newspapers collection, for example, the database includes notation of military units and theaters of war, as well as an interactive map for users to gain a sense of the geographic spread of materials. For the [Indigenous Newspapers in North America], the team commissioned specialists to provide additional indexing for the newspapers in Indigenous languages.

Says Hemmings, "relationships with archives are at the center of what we do. That's why we have projects where we return to work with our key archival partners again and again. It's a massive privilege to look after this precious material."

These databases also offer publishers an opportunity to hone relationships with the communities that produced or will use the materials. For the [Indigenous Newspapers in North America] project, AM "aimed to give back to those communities," says Hemmings. To build trust with the newspaper publishers and secure necessary copyright clear­ance and permissions, the team visited tribal councils and publishers; Fehr initiated many conversations with publishers to build on established relationships and trust. The database has also been made available for free to all tribal colleges and universities in the United States - a decision that, Fehr said, distinguished AM from other publishers.

These databases compile unique materials and presented unique challenges. For each of them, however, the publish­ers have made an effort to bring to light what makes these materials special and ensure they are available to a wider community of researchers.