Selected Archives and Special Collections
- Anchorage Museum at Rasmuson Center Digital ArchiveThe Anchorage Museum at the Rasmuson Center is a world-class museum which seeks to preserve, exhibit and interpret the art and history of Alaska and the circumpolar North.
- Forge Project: CollectionsForge Project stewards a collection of contemporary art with an emphasis on the work of living Indigenous artists. The collection is displayed on a rotating basis on site and is available for research as well as loan for off-site exhibitions. Acquisitions for Forge Project Collection are led by Candice Hopkins.
- National Museum of the American Indian Archive CenterThe archival collections are particularly focused on Native art, culture, knowledge, politics, events, and social and political movements that reflect the historical and contemporary lives of Native peoples throughout the Western Hemisphere.
- UCLA American Indian Studies Center LibraryThe AISC Library houses a significant archival collection relating to a number of high profile contemporary Native artists and scholars, an audiovisual collection, and vertical files containing ephemera, clippings, archival materials, and gray literature.
- UCLA Fowler Museum Online Archive of CaliforniaThe Fowler Museum at UCLA explores global arts and cultures with an emphasis on Africa, Asia, the Pacific, and the Indigenous Americas—past and present. The Fowler enhances understanding and appreciation of the diverse peoples, cultures, and religions of the world through dynamic exhibitions, publications, and public programs, informed by interdisciplinary approaches and the perspectives of the cultures represented.
- University of British Columbia Archives: First Nations Historical ResourcesThese resources document First Nations history and culture in general, and the evolution of UBC’s relationships with First Nations in particular. They include archival materials in all media (textual, photographic, audiovisual, and digital), websites, and Internet-based collections and related resources.
- University of Washington Digital Collections: American Indians of the Pacific Northwest CollectionThe digital collection provides access to an extensive array of original photographs and documents about the Northwest Coast and Plateau Indian cultures, complemented by essays written by anthropologists, historians, and teachers about both particular tribes and cross-cultural topics.
Selected Primary Source Databases
- African Diaspora This link opens in a new windowCovers 1860-present, and includes digitized primary source documents, secondary sources and videos from around the world with a focus on communities in the Caribbean, Brazil, India, United Kingdom, and France. With content from The National Archives and Records Administration (US), National Archives at Kew (UK), Royal Anthropological Institute, and Senate House Library (University of London),
- American History, 1493-1945 This link opens in a new windowThe Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History’s archive of letters, diaries, maps pamphlets, printed books, newspapers, and ephemera sheds light on the political, economic, and social history of the United States up until the 20th century. The majority of the collection is unique manuscripts, with special emphasis on the revolutionary, early national, antebellum, and civil war eras.
- American Indian Correspondence: Presbyterian Historical Society Collection of Missionaries’ Letters, 1833-1893 (Archives Unbound) This link opens in a new windowThe collection consists primarily of the correspondence of missionaries written to the secretaries of the ABCFM and the Presbyterian BFM. Documenting the mission work among Native Americans, letters are presumably official in nature but often contain much personal comment and experiences. Also the collection consists of reports, including school and mission station reports and statistics; financial statements, accounts, and vouchers; agreements/contracts; maps; and other assorted material.
- Indigenous Histories and Cultures in North America This link opens in a new windowManuscripts, newspapers, diaries, maps, artwork, photographs, and rare printed books dating from the earliest contact with European settlers up to the mid-20th century. Cross-searchable with The American West database. This database was previously titled American Indian Histories and Cultures.
- American Indian Movement and Native American Radicalism (Archives Unbound) This link opens in a new windowThis collection includes the extensive FBI documentation on the evolution of AIM as an organization of social protest. In addition, there is documentation on the 1973 Wounded Knee Stand-off. Informant reports and materials collected by the Extremist Intelligence Section of the FBI provide unparalleled insight into the motives, actions, and leadership of AIM and the development of Native American radicalism.
- American Indians and the American West (via History Vault) This link opens in a new window
Several collections focusing on the interaction between American Indians and the U.S. government in the 19th and 20th Centuries, focusing on the 19th Century Indian Removal from 1832-1840, the U.S. Army and American Indians in the years from the 1850s-1890s, including detailed coverage of Indian Wars. The featured collections on the 20th Century are Records of the Bureau of Indian Affairs and records from the Major Council Meetings of American Indian Tribes.
- Indigenous Newspapers in North America This link opens in a new windowDigitized collection of print journalism from Indigenous peoples of the US and Canada over more than 9,000 individual editions from 1828-2016. The 45 unique titles also include bilingual and Indigenous-language editions, such as Hawaiian, Cherokee and Navajo languages. Previously titled American Indian Newspapers.
- ARTstor This link opens in a new windowHigh-resolution Images in the arts, architecture, humanities, and social sciences. Includes a suite of software tools to view, present, and manage images for research and teaching purposes. Images are contributed by museums, photographers, libraries, scholars, photo archives, artists, and estates, from a variety of sources including the Hartill Archive of Architecture and Allied Arts. UC campuses contribute additional images including: the Archivision Library, Saskia Art & Architecture images, the Visual Resources Collections from UCB, UCSB, UCI, UCLA, UCR, and the UCSC Library Instructional Collection. Now hosted on the JSTOR platform.
- Caribbean History and Culture, 1535-1920 This link opens in a new windowIncludes fully searchable books, pamphlets, almanacs, broadsides, and ephemera. Major subject areas covered include Atlantic Studies, Diaspora Studies, Economic Studies, History of Medicine, Ethnicity and Gender Studies, Latin America and Slavery.
- Caribbean Newspapers 1718-1876 This link opens in a new windowCollection of 18th and 19th-century Caribbean newspapers. Colonial history, the Atlantic slave trade, New World slavery with a comprehensive resource for studying the development of Western society.
- Colonial Caribbean: Colonial Office Files from The National Archives, UK This link opens in a new windowMakes available materials from 27 Colonial Office file classes from The National Archives, UK. Covering the history of the various territories under British colonial governance from 1624 to 1870, this resource includes administrative documentation, trade and shipping records, minutes of council meetings, and details of plantation life, colonial settlement, imperial rivalries across the region, and the growing concern of absentee landlords.
- Confidential Print: Latin America, 1833-1969 This link opens in a new windowDocuments from the British Foreign and Colonial Offices which cover the whole of South and Central America, plus the non-British islands of the Caribbean, from just after the final Spanish withdrawal from mainland America in the 1820s to the height of the Cold War in the 1960s. Includes coverage of revolutions, territorial changes and political movements, foreign financial interests, industrial and infrastructural development (including the building of the Panama Canal), wars, slavery, immigration from Europe, and and relations with indigenous peoples.
- Cuban Culture and Cultural Relations, 1959-. Part 1, "Casa y Cultura" This link opens in a new window
Primary-source collection of ca. 45,000 fully-searchable documents from the Casa de las Américas in Havana, documenting the culture and cultural relations of Revolutionary Cuba and countries in Latin America and the Caribbean.
- Early Encounters in North America: Peoples, Cultures and the Environment This link opens in a new windowContains full text letters, diaries, memoirs and accounts of early encounters, centered on present-day Canada and the United States with some limited coverage of Mexico.
- Frontier life: Borderlands, Settlements, and Colonial Encounters This link opens in a new windowPrimary sources from multiple archives that capture the lives, experiences and colonial encounters of people living at the edges of the Anglophone world from 1650-1920. Includes the various colonial frontiers of North America, as well as the settlers of Southern Africa, Australia and New Zealand.
- Indian Trade in the Southeastern Spanish Borderlands: Papers of Panton, Leslie and Company (Archives Unbound) This link opens in a new window
Comprising the papers of the Panton, Leslie & Co., a trading firm, this collection is the most complete ethnographic collection available for the study of the American Indians of the Southeast. More than 8,000 legal, political and diplomatic documents recording the company's operations for over half a century have been selected and organized for this collection.
- Indigenous Peoples of North America (Gale Primary Sources) This link opens in a new windowCross-searches collections from the U.S. and Canada, including manuscripts, book collections, newspapers from various tribe and Indian-related organizations, materials such as Bibles, dictionaries and primers in Indigenous languages. Covers 17th-20th centuries. UCLA provides access to Indigenous Peoples of North America, Part I and Indigenous Peoples of North America, Part II: The Indian Rights Association, 1882-1986.
- Meriam Report on Indian Administration and the Survey of Conditions of the Indians in the U.S (Archives Unbound) This link opens in a new windowThis collection comprises two sets of documents that helped the response to 40 years of failed Native American policies. The first is the full text of the report entitled The Problem of Indian Administration, better known as the Meriam Report. The second comprises the 41-part report to the U.S. Senate Committee on Indian Affairs detailing the conditions of life and the effects of policies and programs enacted by the Bureau of Indian Affairs on Native Americans. Both of these collections provide unique documentary insights into many major tribes: Sioux, Navaho, Quapaw, Chickasaw, Apache, Pueblo, Ute, Cherokee, Cheyenne, Arapaho, Kickapoo, Klamath, and many others.
- Sabin Americana: History of the Americas, 1500-1926 This link opens in a new windowScanned books, pamphlets, serials, and other works about the Americas. Covers a span of 400 years in North, Central, and South America, as well as the Caribbean, and provides primary source material to understand the society, politics, religious beliefs, literature, customs, and events of the times.
- War Department and Indian Affairs, 1800-1824 (Archives Unbound) This link opens in a new windowFrom 1789 until the Bureau of Indian Affairs was established in 1824, Indian affairs were under the direct control of the Secretary of War. This collection consists of the letters received by and letters sent to the War Department, including correspondence from Indian superintendents and agents, factors of trading posts, Territorial and State governors, military commanders, Indians, missionaries, treaty and other commissioners, Treasury Department officials, and persons having commercial dealings with the War Department, and other public and private individuals.
- Archives of Latin American and Caribbean History, Sixteenth to Twentieth Century This link opens in a new windowOver 1.3 million pages of archival material (manuscripts, monographs, newspapers and periodicals) concerning Latin America and the Caribbean, including major collections about Latin American independence, Brazilian popular groups, Diplomatic activities in Cuba and more. Under this database's former name, Gale World Scholar: Latin America and the Caribbean included some periodicals and reference books that have been moved to Gale’s Dictionary of Literary Biography and Gale eBooks.
