We started our site visits for the Oregon tribes archives and records training institute close to home yesterday with a trip up to the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde. While there, we met with members of the Cultural Resources and the Tribal Records departments. What a great place to start off our summer tour! David Lewis and his staff in Cultural Resources have done a great job pulling together archival resources from across the country to enrich the history of the Grand Ronde Tribe. One of our favorite parts of the project was the “Tribal Reference” Section in their library which features copies of important documents that community members can come in and utilize to research tribal and family history.
David Lewis and University Archivist Larry Landis viewing the tribal history reading area in the community library.
The other highlight of our visit to Grand Ronde was their amazing tribal records center. The staff have transformed the records center from the back room of a barn into an immaculate document storage facility that not only actively digitizes most of the tribe’s records, but also helps to ensure that their paper documents will be preserved for future generations of tribal members to draw upon.
Look at all those fabulous rows of boxes! Shelving in the tribal records center.
We left Grand Ronde full of planning ideas and excited for the rest of our site visits. Stay turned for updates as we travel to Warm Springs for the next leg of our journey next week.
