Franz Boas Papers Project

02/12/2025

Yep.

10/24/2024

“It doesn’t matter if it’s a corrido, a waltz, a bolero, a polka, or whatever. When I sing that song, I live that song.”

Mexican America singer Lydia Mendoza, the original Queen of Tejano musicc, is featured in Smithsonian Folklife's National Heritage Fellows story map: http://s.si.edu/storymap. And if you haven't heard her recording of "Mal Hombre", it's worth finding on Youtube. This link is from a much more recent performance (she was in her late 50s), a favorite of this Owl, "Por Un Amor" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vnFTZxT6dwA

10/23/2024

Sharing a post from ATALM, the Association of Tribal Archives, Libraries, and Museums LinkedIn pages. Definitely worth your time:
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ATALM has been following developments of the non-librarian, non-expert "Citizen Review Committee", appointed by the commissioner, which has been granted the authority to remove and/or reclassify books. In early October, the "Citizen Review Committee" reclassified "Colonization and the Wampanoag Story" by Linda Coombs (Aquinnah Wampanoag), a historian and expert, from nonfiction to fiction.

Coomb's book is classified as a work of nonfiction by its publisher, Penguin Random House, as well the Houston Public Library, The Austin Public Library, the Forth Worth Public Library, and the Library of Congress. The decision to reclassify the book was made without consultation by actual librarians.

This disturbing, shameful, and insulting attack "tells Indigenous kids that their ancestors are merely fictional characters, not actual human beings, and that their people's experiences and history are simply false, or even fantasy," shares ALA President Cindy Hohl, MBA, MLIS (Santee Sioux Nation).

Debbie Reese, Founder of the American Indians in Children's Literature, shared a great blog post with links to the latest developments. You can read more here:
https://americanindiansinchildrensliterature.blogspot.com/2024/10/what-is-going-on-with-colonization-and.html

UPDATE: *The Owl's are delighted to share that after ATALM's post, the "Citizen Review Committee" reversed its decision; Linda Coombs work is back where it belongs, as non-fiction. BRAVA, ATALM!

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The Franz Boas Papers, Volume 2 explores the development of the ethnography of Salishan-speaking societies on the North American Plateau as revealed through ...

01/09/2024

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The Franz Boas Papers, Volume 2 explores the development of the ethnography of Salishan-speaking societies on the North American Plateau as revealed through ...