FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

Little Rock, AR – The Sequoyah National Research Center (SNRC) at ÌÇÐÄVlog´«Ã½ Little Rock received $57, 960 from the Arkansas Natural and Cultural Resources Council to utilize touch-screen technology for teaching the Trail of Tears through Arkansas.

SNRC has worked closely in the past with the Trail of Tears Association, the National Park Service, and the Five Tribes of Oklahoma to document Indian removal through the state of Arkansas. This project will use the existing research at the Center to create a visual journey by utilizing a tilted touch-screen surface table that will incorporate maps of removal routes, key sites along each tribe’s routes, historical information, photographs, timelines, and documents relevant to the tribes and the U.S. officials involved.

In this project, SNRC will also create a companion website for interested researchers around the world to experience the project without physically visiting the research center. The project will aid educators in telling a more complete history of the Trail of Tears through Arkansas that encompasses all five tribes.

About the Arkansas Natural and Cultural Resources Council
The Arkansas Natural and Cultural Resources Council (ANCRC) was established by the Arkansas Legislature in 1987 to manage and supervise a grants and trust fund for the acquisition, management and stewardship of state-owned properties acquired or used for ANCRC approved purposes.  The grants, funded through the state’s real estate transfer tax, support projects that protect and maintain state-owned natural areas, historic sites and outdoor recreation. The ANCRC consists of eleven voting members and is administered by the Department of Arkansas Heritage.

About the Sequoyah National Research Center
The Sequoyah National Research Center is the world’s largest assemblage of Native American expression. Located at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, SNRC is a unique facility dedicated to the collection, preservation, and dissemination of all forms of Native North American expression and has served as an archive for Native Americans since 1983.

Contact:
Erin Fehr
ehfehr@ualr.edu
501-569-8336
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In May 2015, the Sequoyah National Research Center received a $56,000 grant from the Arkansas Natural and Cultural Resources Council to hire a project archivist for one year and buy the necessary archival supplies to properly house the Garrard Ardeneum Collection acquired in 2014 from the City of McAlester, Oklahoma, through Francine Locke Bray, a member of the Choctaw Nation. SNRC hired Zachery Whitaker, a graduate of the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, in August 2015.

The collection was created by Francine’s cousin Allece Locke Garrard (1909-1999), a Seminole/Choctaw, who was the granddaughter of Alice Brown Davis (1852-1935), the first female chief of the Seminoles. Garrard established the Ardeneum, a combination arboretum, garden, and museum, as a philanthropic effort to promote the arts and culture in southeastern Oklahoma.

The collection contains records of Allece Locke Garrard and her husband, Thomas E. (Tom) Garrard (1904-1984). Allece’s records highlight her time at the University of Oklahoma, her career as a speech and drama teacher in Oklahoma City public schools, and her term as a Director in the US Army Hostess Service, where she opened three servicemen clubs—one at Camp Gruber, Oklahoma, and two in occupation Germany. Tom’s records include materials related to his time at the McAlester Fuel Company, a company begun by his uncle, Jay G. Puterbaugh, where Tom served first as vice president and director and then as President in 1963. Allece and Tom’s philanthropic endeavors are well-documented, including the establishment of the Best Play Prize at the Five Civilized Tribes Museum in Muskogee, Oklahoma, in 1974. Additionally, correspondence and other materials can be found of both Allece and Tom’s family members and personal friends.

The collection is substantial with over 130 cubic feet of material and is now open for research. The finding aid may be found in our archives catalog.

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The Sequoyah National Research Center (SNRC) at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock is pleased to announce that the Arkansas Natural and Cultural Resources Council awarded a grant of $24,000 to SNRC for the digitization of the Jeanie Greene Collection in May 2016.

The Jeanie Greene Collection, acquired in 2014, is an audiovisual record of contemporary Alaska Native life. In 1990, Jeanie Greene, an Inupiaq journalist, established the television show Heartbeat Alaska as a forum for Alaska Native people to share the stories that impacted their lives on a daily basis. Mark Trahant, Charles R. Johnson Endowed Professor of Journalism at the University of North Dakota and former SNRC advisory board member, states that Greene “had this remarkable idea in 1990 of letting people from the villages across Alaska tell their own stories. This became Heartbeat Alaska. This was a radical idea. The media had all but ignored the daily story of Alaska Native life, popping in only occasionally. But Greene’s approach of basically turning over a camera to a community changed the tone and the content.�

In addition to Heartbeat Alaska, the collection also contains recordings of her other television shows: Northern Lives, This Generation, and We Win, a faith-based show. The videos provide a window into important topics such as whaling, subsistence, environment, culture, language, and more. The collection contains 1,263 Beta and U-matic tapes that include thousands of hours of final broadcast productions and raw footage.

Once cataloging is complete, the videos will be made available online to allow broader access for Alaska Natives and interested researchers.

The digitization for the grant was completed by Preservation Technologies in Cranberry, Pennsylvania.

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