Indigenous Knowledge Embedded in Stone: Indigenous Voices and the Crabtree Collection – A case study in creating space for Indigenous perspectives

Abstract

Critically-engaged counter-storying seeks to create new narratives to disrupt the existing, damaging standard rhetoric that contributes to the marginalization of oppressed people, rhetoric that is too often upheld and disseminated by mainstream archives and special collections (Solórzano & Yosso, 2002). In this case study presentation, we will share our efforts to counter-story the Donald Crabtree Collection by seeking counter-stories to the collection’s accepted and embedded narratives. We will also share how collaborating with an Advisory Board of Native librarians, archaeologists, and anthropologists offers further opportunities to de-center Crabtree and trouble/critique the practices, appropriation, and anti-Indigenous erasure that created this collection and still persists today. Attendees will be asked to think critically about their own collections; consider how they can make visible the voices, stories, and histories that have been lost and actively ignored; and examine how their personal and professional identities may affect how they “story” collections.