When the Sequoyah National Research Center began over 30 years ago, it was little more than an idea—just a small research project between two friends. Dr. Daniel Littlefield and Dr. Jim Parins, both UALR professors of English at the time, started collecting Native American works in 1983 while doing research for their two-volume bibliography of Native American writers. This accidental side project officially became the Sequoyah National Research Center in 1999, having already archived thousands of materials, launched a popular website, and garnered major public attention.
But in 1983, the two professors were simply trying to create a much-needed resource for students and researchers interested in Native works. They didn’t want to just talk about Native works and writers—they wanted to create a space in which Native works and writers could speak for themselves. This determination led Littlefield and Parins to research, collect, and begin archiving native newspapers. As the project continued, the archives grew, and the need for the work became even more apparent, the men, despite their fulltime teaching positions, resolved to commit to it. “We decided we would continue to do what we were doing until someone higher than the dean told us to stop. And nobody higher than the dean told us to stop,” says Littlefield.
Littlefield and Parins accrued and archived materials for the next 22 years without official university recognition as a stand-alone unit, working for over two decades without a budget. Today, the Center is the largest collection of Native newspapers and other forms of Native expression in the world. Littlefield estimates that around 5,000 writers are represented in one special collection alone. The SNRC is well-known and well-respected in Native communities, particularly among Native journalists. The SNRC now houses official archives of the Native American Journalists Association, the American Indian Library Association, and the National Trail of Tears Association.
The Center’s website, launched in 1997, resulted from a collaboration with the Ottenheimer Library and housed Parins’ and Littlefield’s two-volume bibliography as a database. The international need for such a resource was immediately clear—despite the relative newness of the internet at the time, the site received as many as 30,000 hits a month. “We were just staggered,” Littlefield says.
In truth, the success of the website made sense—nothing close to a searchable, comprehensive archive of Native works or writers existed then. Because the SNRC was one of the first establishments of its kind, as word got out about its work, everyone from librarians to academics to individuals began sending them materials. Much of the collection is the result of the generosity and investment of strangers. Littlefield can list countless instances of individuals simply walking into the Center, arms filled with records, writings, or artifacts, and offering to donate them to the collection.
Indeed, a currently in-progress collection, whose archiving is being supported by a grant from the Arkansas Natural and Cultural Resources Council (ANCRC), came about by a similar measure of happenstance. The Garrard Ardeneum Collection was donated by Francine Locke Bray, a member of the Choctaw Nation who, while doing unrelated research at the SNRC, simply asked Littlefield if he would be interested in it. The casual conversation resulted in two trips to Oklahoma, 100 cubic feet of materials, and a $56,000 grant. With the ANCRC funds, the SNRC recently hired an archivist to process the Garrard Ardeneum Collection, and work on the project began in August.
Littlefield’s grant-seeking philosophy for both the Garrard Ardeneum Collection and much of the Center’s other work is the same—identify a project that can’t be done without outside support, then make your case to ears that care about your mission. The resulting grants are invaluable to the SNRC’s work, supporting the intense labor, extensive expertise, and new materials required for the archiving and cataloging process. In addition, grant funding enables the SNRC to engage in special projects, such as the Trail of Tears park creation, completed in 2011, and historical films in Native languages, completed in 2005 by then-intern Roy Boney, a member of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma.
Visiting students and professors from all over the world can frequently be found immersed in the collections, undertaking their own research. The attention of both academics and organizations is well merited—the mission of the SNRC fills a major void in both research and culture. In addition to the newspaper archives, the SNRC retains a myriad of Native historical and contemporary documents and other information sources. According to Littlefield, the Center “collect[s] and archive[s] and make[s] available to the public native expression in all its forms. If it’s the printed word, we collect that; if it’s film, we collect that, if it’s music, we collect that, [as well as] visual art expressions.” Not only are these works archived, but the SNRC’s J.W. Wiggins Native American Art Gallery features a steady rotation of curated exhibits.
The SNRC’s focus on contemporary works sets it even farther apart from other collections in the country, Littlefield notes. “One of the things that we’ve found as we traveled around the country working on various research projects was that nobody was really collecting information about Indian communities in the twentieth century then. If you went to museums or archival collections, all of them stopped with about World War I. And I think that’s generally true with any contemporary society—it’s hard to see what’s important.”
With every collection and art installation, the SNRC is making sure that the world sees the undeniable importance of Native culture. Grant funding often supports the SNRC’s public awareness efforts. For example, a new award from the Arkansas Humanities Council will enable the SNRC to hold a presentation series titled “Native Americans in America’s Wars” on November 14 that will be open to the public. The event, featuring talks from three humanities scholars, will highlight the role of Native Americans in defending the United States since the Revolutionary War, a topic rarely discussed in modern portrayals of Native Americans.
When Littlefield and Parins began researching in 1983, they couldn’t have predicted that their efforts would lead the international conversation on Native American expressions. They worked together to build the Center until 2013, when Parins passed away; now, Littlefield and a small team of interns, volunteers, graduate assistants, and permanent staff continue the SNRC’s mission. The SNRC has steadily earned the trust and respect of scholars, journalists, and educators both within and outside of the Native community, and their ever-growing programs, grants, and collections promise that even more vital work is still to come.
The Sequoyah National Research Center, located at 500 University Plaza, is open for visitors from 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., Monday through Friday. To browse a selection of their archives and collections online, you can visit ualr.edu/Sequoyah.
