Building Bridges Between Archives and Indian Communities

The APS has a long, distinguished history of preserving Native American languages. It began when Thomas Jefferson was the President of the Society in the late eighteenth century. A new chapter in this history was written this past May at the “Building Bridges between Archives and Indian Communities” conference—the first time in more than two hundred years that a large number of Native Americans have been invited to the Library to reconnect with their heritage. It was my great privilege to organize the conference. As Larry Aitken, tribal historian from the Leech Lake band of Ojibwe, who performed the Sacred Pipe ceremony that began the conference, said, “It is good that the APS invited us here, opened their doors and their books so that we can bring these things back to life.