Archival Oral Histories, Intellectual Property, and the Indigenous Community: The Legacy of Mary Kiona, “Grand Matriarch” of the Upper Cowlitz

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Archival collections of Native language oral histories are widely scattered among universities, museums, and tribal repositories throughout the Pacific Northwest region. Many of these oral histories are an important primary source of information relative to traditional Indigenous land-use practices, in turn critical to an understanding of the archaeological record. Audiotape interviews conducted in 1964–1965 with Taytnapam (Upper Cowlitz) elder Mary Kiona (1869–1970) provide a case study in process, the importance of legacy interview material, the challenges of translation and transcription, intellectual property concerns, and the rewards of collaboration with descendant communities and indigenous scholars. Traditional knowledge contained within the original Taytnapam Ichishkíin (Sahaptin) language narratives includes information relative to the identification and management of cultural resources over a broad landscape, including federal lands managed by the US Forest Service.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 37187.0