Archives

From the Archives: An archival oral history collection created to support sacred site litigation in Fools Crow v. Gullet

Wenona Singel

The Oglala Lakota College has assembled an archive of oral history recordings called “A Song From Sacred Mountain Collection.” This is an excellent resource that includes digitized interviews with Cheyenne and Lakota leaders from the 1980s that were collected by the Oglala Lakota Legal Rights Fund in connection with sacred site litigation related to Bear Butte in Crow v. Gullet, 706 F.2d 856 (8th Cir. 1983). The collection provides a rare body of extensive online recorded interviews that relate to the intersection of land, sacred sites, history, and litigation.

From the Archives: 70 years since the Indian Relocation Act

Wenona Singel

Public Law 959, known as the Indian Relocation Act of 1956, was enacted on August 3, 1956. The National Archives has assembled an excellent online guide to BIA urban relocation records, including the original statute, federal relocation promotional materials, field office records, case files, and records from the relocation offices including the Chicago relocation office for folks interested in Great Lakes relocation history.

Additional resources

Native community centers helped preserve culture and connection during urban relocation, Rachel Schuit for Crosswinds, August 3, 2026

The Federal Indian Relocation Programme of the 1950s and the Urbanization of Indian Identity, Donald Fixico, in
RICHARD BESSEL AND CLAUDIA B. HAAKE (eds.), Removing Peoples. Forced Removal in the Modern World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009)

From the Archives: The Warrior Women Project

Wenona Singel

The Warrior Women Project Oral History Archive is a collection of online interviews, audio recordings, photographs, and written content documenting the women of the Red Power Movement from the 1960s to the 1980s. The Project website states:

These are stories of resistance, resilience, and hope. They remind us that change is possible, but it requires courage, determination, and solidarity. This transformative history is recovered through community-informed research and activist archiving which informs our media production, rapid response activism, and the creation of a  decolonizing curricula and teaching toolkits to be used for impact education. 

Blast from the Past: Vine Deloria’s White Paper on the Right to Education and Accessing Federal Archives and Libraries

Matthew L.M. Fletcher

Here is “The Right to Know — A Paper”:

Vine Deloria — The Right to Know.pdfDownload
Reading Indian law.