Mellon Foundation grants $677,000 for new UTulsa, Muscogee (Creek) Nation project

Written By: Meredith Johnson

(TULSA, Okla.) The University of Tulsa has received a $677,000 grant from the Public Knowledge program of the Mellon Foundation to support a joint effort between the university and the Muscogee (Creek) Nation’s Historic and Cultural Preservation Department.

Read this story on Mvskoke Media here. 

The project’s Mvskoke (Muscogee) language title, “Mvskokvlke Hofone Enfulletv Rasvwetv (To Bring the Ways of the Mvskoke Back),” arises from the need and significance of reclamation of the tribal histories, languages, and other archival materials kept by settler repositories throughout the United States and lost to Indigenous peoples.

This historic collaborative project focuses on digitizing and “rematriating” the Robertson-Worcester Collection, a sizeable archival collection located in UTulsa’s McFarlin Library, which is of immense significance to the Muscogee (Creek) Nation. This critical archival project aims to provide the Muscogee (Creek) Nation with historical and language materials never possessed by the Muscogee people. According to the project’s co-authors, the perpetuation of this cultural loss allows continued suppression and erasure of tribal knowledge and lifeways, including the community roles of matriarchs: “The ‘rematriative’ process intends to restore balance and promote healing within Indigenous communities by revitalizing cultural practices, supporting Indigenous leadership and decision-making power, and reclaiming Indigenous knowledge.”

Donated in 1931 to UTulsa by Alice Robertson – a Presbyterian missionary who lived and worked in the Muscogee (Creek) Nation, Indian Territory, in the late 19th century and served as director of the Presbyterian School for Indian Girls (PSIG) – the Robertson-Worcester Collection embodies an abundance of Muscogee history and language. The project also will gather Muscogee materials from a second McFarlin collection titled “Indigenous Peoples of North America Historical Manuscripts and Documents, 1724-1981.”

Through hand-written letters, hymns, and scripture in the Muscogee language, federal and tribal government documents, newspaper clippings, photographs, maps, and other paper documents, these collections provide a critical research and educational resource.

The transformative Mellon grant will support the weekly work of project co-authors and principal investigators Midge Dellinger, oral historian for the Muscogee (Creek) Nation, and Sara Beam, Writing Program director and applied associate professor of English and creative writing at UTulsa. Melissa Kunz, director of Special Collections & University Archives, will serve as co-principal investigator. Funding will also support the hiring of a full-time digital archivist specializing in Indigenous librarianship, a part-time digital archivist, and a graduate student research assistant, as well as digital scanning costs and community outreach events targeted to Muscogee communities.

“With a strong commitment toward appropriate stewardship, including ethical service to surrounding Indigenous communities and the public, equitable access to diverse knowledge resources, and support of tribal digital sovereignty, The University of Tulsa and McFarlin Library are working with the Muscogee (Creek) Nation to ‘bring back’ pieces of tribal knowledge and history vital to the Muscogee story and tribal record,” said Beam (M.A. ’04, Ph.D. ’10).

“Sacred and treasured tribal historical and cultural materials are still confined within the settler-controlled archival spaces of the United States, leaving Indigenous people to seek what rightfully belongs to them,” Dellinger said. “This project aspires to change this centuries-long norm of such acts against Indigenous peoples and carries the hope of a future where other archival repositories in this country and around the world will do the same.”

Mellon’s Public Knowledge program supports the creation and preservation of the cultural and scholarly record – vast and ever-expanding – that documents society’s complex, intertwined humanity. The program works with archives, presses, and libraries across the U.S. whose work is foundational to knowledge production and distribution in culture and the humanities.

Dellinger and Beam also serve as principal investigators on the PSIG Project alongside Kristen Oertel, UTulsa’s Mary Frances Barnard Chair in 19th-Century American History. The PSIG Project was founded by then-UTulsa Professor Laura Stevens in 2020 and seeks to locate, identify, and honor the students who attended the Presbyterian School for Indian Girls. The school operated in the late 1800s and is the predecessor for Henry Kendall College and, eventually, The University of Tulsa.