Designed to address the paucity of published primary source materials on Connecticut Natives, the Yale Indian Papers Project represents a major academic endeavor to collect, edit, annotate, and publish close to four hundred years of existing manuscript documents relating to Connecticut Native Americans and their communities.
The transcribed, annotated documents will be published electronically in several volumes as The Connecticut Indian Papers Series. The series hopes to challenge the prevailing view on Connecticut’s Indians by providing humanities scholars, tribal people, and the general public with a well-researched and annotated set of primary documents from a balanced perspective. What will emerge from the collection will permit researchers to see Connecticut Indians in a fresh light and allow Connecticut Natives to find a place in discussions of land, sovereignty, colonialism, racism, and the complications of an American national identity.
The project’s goal to publish the Connecticut Indian papers is coupled with an initiative to bring together scholarly thought from different fields of the humanities, the Native community and traditional academic scholarship, both British and American. Its NATIVE AMERICAN VISITING SCHOLAR Program will encourage Native scholars to participate in the annotation of texts pertaining to their own tribes or one of their interest. Its BRITISH SCHOLARS PROGRAM will bring a Trans-Atlantic perspective to the collection. With this emphasis on active cooperation, the Yale Indian Papers Project will become an effective model for collaborative scholarship in the humanities.
The Yale Indian Papers project is organized under the History Department and American Studies Program at Yale University in cooperation with the Yale University Library, the Connecticut State Library, the Connecticut Historical Society, and the Connecticut Archaeology Center at the University of Connecticut at Storrs.
Editorial Board
The editorial board of The Yale Indian Papers Project brings to the endeavor over fifty years of scholarship in the field of American history, with nearly thirty-five years devoted to Connecticut and Eastern Native American issues. The board’s individual strengths of law, language, environment, and library science, combined with a shared interest in history produce an effective team capable of undertaking a documentary editing project.
Principal Investigator:
John Mack Faragher
Arthur Unobskey Professor of History, American Studies Program, Yale University
Project Director:
Tobias E. Glaza
Proposed staff
Project Editors:
Paul J. Grant-Costa
American Studies Program, Yale University
Nancy M. Godleski
Kaplanoff Librarian for American History, Sterling Memorial Library,Yale University
Advisory Board
The Yale Indian Papers Project advisory board consists of six well-respected scholars in various interdisciplinary fields. At present, five out of six members solicited have accepted their board positions.
John Demos
Samuel Knight Professor of History, History Department, Yale University
George Miles
William Coe Curator of Western Americana, Beinecke Library, Yale University
Nell Jessup Newton
Dean, University of Connecticut School of Law
Trudie Lamb Richmond (under consideration)
Schaghticoke tribal member, Director of Public Programs, Mashantucket Pequot Museum & Research Center
David Scott
Senior Research Fellow, History of Parliament Trust, London, England
William Simmons
Professor of Anthropology, Former Provost & Executive Vice President, Brown University
For more information on the Yale Indian Papers Project or its editorial and advisory boards, please contact Paul Grant-Costa at: paul.costa@yale.edu