University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Huluniixsuwaakan:The Role of the Library in Munsee Delaware Language Revitalization and the Development of Community Relationships on Lenape Land

Akbari, Suzanne Conklin; McCallum, Ian; Moreton, Melissa; Vedantham, Anu

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/124996

Description

Title
Huluniixsuwaakan:The Role of the Library in Munsee Delaware Language Revitalization and the Development of Community Relationships on Lenape Land
Author(s)
  • Akbari, Suzanne Conklin
  • McCallum, Ian
  • Moreton, Melissa
  • Vedantham, Anu
Issue Date
2023-08
Keyword(s)
  • Indigenous studies
  • community engagement
  • traditional knowledge
  • library outreach
  • digitization
  • organizational complexity
  • language revitalization
  • Lenape Delaware
Date of Ingest
2024-10-31T15:23:43-05:00
Abstract
Since 2021, Munsee community members have joined historians and library staff from the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) and Princeton University (PU) for an annual language and history symposium on Lenape (Delaware) lands in Princeton, New Jersey, located on the traditional homelands of the Munsee people (or "Lunaapeew"). Informed by symposium conversations, PU faculty, students, and library staff, IAS faculty and researchers, and Munsee community members have been involved in a long-term project to locate, digitize, describe, and make accessible Munsee (or "Lunaape") language materials, currently comprising over two dozen rare manuscripts and printed books, to Munsee community members, the campus community, and the broader public. This article discusses the goals of the project for both Lunaape language teachers and library staff and explores the challenges encountered, including problems using existing standardized terminology and controlled vocabularies for describing library materials, difficulties encountered when working with a wide range of stakeholders, and institutional barriers to making materials freely accessible to community members. While this article is descriptive rather than prescriptive, it offers a series of questions and recommendations to assist academic libraries in developing relationships with Indigenous communities and implementing best practices to nurture such relationships.
Publisher
Johns Hopkins University Press
Series/Report Name or Number
Volume 72, Issue 1, August 2023
Type of Resource
text
Genre of Resource
article
Language
eng
Copyright and License Information
Copyright 2024 University of Illinois Board of Trustees

Owning Collections

Library Trends 72 (1) August 2023: Indigenous Librarianship [Restricted Access] PRIMARY
This special issue of Library Trends presents a glimpse into the current state of Indigenous librarianship. In the composition of this issue the editors followed an unconventional approach of soliciting articles. Instead of issuing a traditional call for papers, they reached out to individuals and institutions that were already stewarding Indigenous collections in a culturally respectful manner. This method of sourcing allowed the editors to provide the readers with insights into the current state of the field and to invite emerging scholars to share their perspectives. At the same time, it limited the range of experiences that the editors were able to explore. Additionally, availability for authoring was limited in part because publishing is not often incentivized for librarians. Thus, the issue serves as a collection of field reports featuring certain major trends occurring in Indigenous librarianship in North America.