Indians being written into the history of Massachusetts and Harvard

The Council on Library and Information Resources, through its Digitizing Hidden Special Collections and Archives awards program, has awarded a grant of $275,795 to the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, in collaboration with the Yale Indian Papers Project, to create the Digital Archive of Native American Petitions in Massachusetts.

With support from the Mellon Foundation, the project will digitize more than 4,500 petitions on Native American affairs that were sent to the Massachusetts legislature from 1640 to 1870. The petitions are housed at the Massachusetts Archives, which has collaborated with Harvard in digitizing them since 2012.

More than a third of these petitions were sent from Native Americans themselves, including dozens of Native American nations, communities, and individuals. The project was planned in consultation with and with the support of the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe, the Wampanoag tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah), and the Mohegan tribe, including consultation with representatives and governments of other Northeastern tribes and native communities.