Course Details

UW Libraries is home to extensive collections documenting songs, stories, imagery, and ways of knowing from numerous Pacific Northwest Tribes. Assembled by generations of settler colonial anthropologists, linguists, and amateur enthusiasts, many of these materials remain cloistered in campus archives and libraries. In this class, students will explore the at times painful legacy of such collection practices, become familiar with current debates surrounding the ethics of repatriation, and explore the implications -both challenges and opportunities – to making meaningful repatriation of such materials a reality. In addition to theoretical discussions, students will receive practical experience by helping shepherd materials from UW Libraries through various stages of the Native Northwest Online repatriation project (ttps://guides.lib.uw.edu/native-nw).