Native American History

The Records of the Association on American Indian Affairs (MC147) document the corporate life of an influential and resilient player in the history of twentieth-century Native American advocacy. More than 500 boxes record the associations formation by non-Indians in New York in 1922 to its re-establishment in South Dakota in 1995 under a wholly Indian administration.  

The McCarter and English Records on U.S. Indian Claims Cases (WC030) consists of materials collected by the law firm of McCarter & English of Newark, New Jersey in connection with representation of the Iowa, Sac and Fox, Otoe and Missouria, and Omaha tribes before the United States Indian Claims Commission between 1958 and 1970.

The Taos Blue Lake Collection (MC106) brings together four discrete collections: the papers of Barbara Greene Kilberg, a White House Presidential Fellow at the time of the dispute; the papers of Corinne Locker, secretary to Association on American Indian Affairs (AAIA) president Oliver LaFarge (1901-1963) and later AAIA Southwest Field Secretary; the papers of Rufus G. Poole, regional attorney for the AAIA in New Mexico, and the papers of William G. Schaab, an Albuquerque attorney who became involved in the fight in 1967.

Collections with Divisional Holdings

  • William Byler Papers

    Byler's papers document his work on behalf of the Native American community after leaving AAIA. The papers include legal memoranda, draft and final agreements between Native American communities and companies or government agencies, and court documents, as well as topical files of related legislation and reports on the issues. The majority of the cases are concerned with water and land rights of individual tribes. Other issues include the use of natural resources and mining, tribal status, social services, and legislation that effected Native American communities.

  • Taos Blue Lake Collection

    Contains correspondence, memoranda, news releases, ledgers, and copies of bills and hearings documenting part of a land title dispute between the Taos Indians of New Mexico and the federal government. The Barbara Greene Kilberg Collection of White House Papers documents Kilberg's lobbying of the Nixon administration on behalf of the Pueblo and her efforts to end the strong opposition of New Mexico Senator Clinton P. Anderson. Her papers include correspondence between White House administration and staff and the White House and members of Congress.

  • Roman Bitsuie Papers

    The records in this collection document Roman Bitsuie's service on the Navajo Tax Commission, as an elected delegate to the Navajo Tribal Council, and as director of the Navajo-Hopi Land Dispute Commission.

  • McCarter and English Records on U.S. Indian Claims Cases

    This collection preserves the files of the law firm of McCarter & English of Newark, New Jersey, for several cases before the United States Indian Claims Commission between 1958 and 1970. These cases are as follows:
    Docket 11A, Otoe & Missouria Tribe and the Iowa Tribe… v. U.S.

  • George Adams Graham Papers

    The bulk of the collection consists of Graham's subject files from his service on the Committee on Indian Affairs in 1948. The committee was convened as a subcommittee of the Hoover Commission on Organization of the Executive Branch of Government. According to Graham, unlike the other Hoover Commission subcommittees, the Committee on Indian Affairs was formed later in the tenure of the Commission - almost as an afterthought - and Hoover asked Graham to chair the committee, although Graham had no prior special knowledge of Indian affairs.

  • Fergus M. Bordewich Tapes

    The Bordewich tapes are recordings of Community Council meetings and other meetings related to Native American affairs, most of which took place in 1959. There are 10 reel to reel tapes, and these tapes have been copied onto 15 Digital Audio Tapes (DAT).

  • Association on American Indian Affairs Records

    The Records of the Association on American Indian Affairs consist primarily of textual records, with modest but revealing bodies of photographic and audiovisual material. They represent the work of many hands, both paid and unpaid, and testify to the durability of the AAIA and the needs which called it into existence.

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You are currently only seeing content in the Public Policy Papers. You can also explore Native American History material in all divisions.