Participating Libraries

The material in Indigenous Newspapers in North America was sourced from two archives:

Adam Matthew would like to thank our archive partners for their continued support, invaluable advice and guidance throughout the production of this resource.

The Sequoyah National Research Center, University of Arkansas at Little Rock

The Sequoyah National Research Center (SNRC) holds the world’s most comprehensive collection of Indigenous, Alaska Native, and First Nations newspapers, periodicals, and other publications. From its origins as The American Native Press Archives (ANPA), originally established in 1983 by Drs. Daniel F. Littlefield, Jr. and James W. Parins, the collection now includes over 2,800 titles published by tribal communities and governments, Native organisations, language programs, and various groups.

Additionally, the SNRC is home to manuscript and special collections, maps, posters, photographs, and audio-visual recordings and is the official repository for the American Indian Library Association correspondence, the National Trail of Tears Association, and the Native American Journalists Association.

From the Sequoyah National Research Center’s homepage: “The collections of the University of Arkansas at Little Rock’s Sequoyah National Research Center constitute the largest assemblage of Native American expression in the world. Our mission, to acquire and preserve the writings and ideas of Native North Americans, is accomplished through collecting the written word and art of Native Americans and creating a research atmosphere that invites Indigenous peoples to make the Center an archival home for their creative work.

The Sequoyah National Research Center strives to ensure that the discussion of Native America accounts for the perspectives of the peoples themselves.”

The digitised collection includes titles from 1904 right up to 2016, with large runs from prominant news organisations such as the Navajo Times and Hocak Worak from the Ho-Chunk Nation. Proliferating around the key period of 1960-1980, these periodicals reflect the explosion of Indigenous journalism that grew out of the occupation of Wounded Knee, meeting the demand for objective reporting from within Indigenous territory. 

The Newberry Library, Chicago

The Newberry Library is an independent research library concentrating in the humanities with an active educational and cultural presence in Chicago. Free and open to the public, it houses an extensive non-circulating collection of rare books, maps, music, manuscripts, and other printed material. The Newberry offers exhibits based on its outstanding collections, musical and theatrical performances, lectures and discussions with today's leading humanists, seminars, and teacher programs.

The publications sourced from the Newberry Library date from 1828-1956 and include rare newspapers published in Indigenous languages including Ōlelo Hawaiʻi and Chinuk Wawa.

This collection also includes the earliest periodical in Indigenous Newspapers in North America, an 1828 issue of the Cherokee Phoenix, published in New Echota in the newly created Cherokee syllabary. Read more about the Cherokee Phoenix.