Collections

The collection consists of student oral history projects for History 110 (American Experience) and 221 (Growing up in America) at CMU.

The collection consists of student oral history projects for History 110 (American Experience) and 221 (Growing up in America) at CMU. The term papers are sometimes the only source of history for a Michigan person or experience. The writing style and depth of research varies with each paper. The collection is organized alphabetically by the name of the interviewee.

In the Box and Folder Listing, for each paper, the first name is that of the author, while the second is that of the person interviewed. The title of the paper and term and year of the course follow. Most of the papers document life in Michigan or of a Michigander. Those papers about life in other states or countries, usually note that in the title of the paper. If not, the name of the state or country has been added in parenthesis.

The collection includes mostly photocopies of materials generated by various lawsuits, and other materials documenting Native Americans of Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin, and First Peoples of Ontario, Canada, their history, culture, and relationship with the presiding government.Tribes documented are noted in the subject headings.

The collection includes mostly undated photocopies of materials generated by various tribal lawsuits against states and the United States (US) government in the collection. Some of the materials date back to the 1780s, but they are not originals, they are photocopies mostly made in the 1970s-1990s or later. There are some original reports and court records created during the time period of 1970-2008. The collection is rich in and dense in documenting Native Americans of Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin, and First Peoples of Ontario, Canada, their history, culture, and relationship with the presiding government.

The collection is in original order. It is organized alphabetically by series by tribe or community seeking tribal status, reservation boundary (KBIC) case, tax case, or for hunting and fishing rights (Voight or LCO case) (105 boxes, 102.5 cubic feet). Within each series there are various subseries which may include: calendar documents (reference documents in chronological order), Cleland reports and reports of others (un/published), Cleland’s testimony as an expert witness, reference documents and/or un/published sources including newspaper or journal articles, books, maps, government reports, laws, land, legal and tax records, correspondence, business or personal records, excerpts from journals, diaries, and accounts, treaties, various US or Canadian court documents, miscellaneous and/or related documents, footnotes, project files, transcriptions of oral histories, finding aids, various types of maps, sketches, and genealogical and/or family charts. Some materials are bound volumes and others are oversized materials. Tribes or communities represented in the collection include:

Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa (Wisconsin) 2 boxes (2 cubic ft.); Bay Mills Indian Community (Michigan) 15 boxes (14.5 cubic ft.); Fond du Lac Band of Chippewa (Minnesota) 8 boxes (7.5 cubic ft.); Forest County Potawatomi (Wisconsin), Notre Dame Project 4 boxes (4 cubic ft.); Keweenaw Bay Indian Community (KBIC, Michigan) 10 boxes (10 cubic ft.); Lac Courte Oreilles [Lake Superior Ojibwa]– Voigt Case 4 boxes (4 cubic ft.); Menominee (Wisconsin) 13 Boxes (12.5 cubic ft.); Mille Lacs Chippewa (Minnesota) 21 boxes (19 cubic ft.) (Note: Box 1 is actually half Menominee and half Mille Lacs Chippewas.); Saginaw Chippewa (Michigan) 13 boxes (13 cubic ft.); Sarnia [Chippewas of Sarnia Band (Ontario, Canada) who prefer to be known as Aamjiwnaang First Nation] 9 boxes (9 cubic ft.); Stockbridge-Munsee (Wisconsin) 8 boxes (8 cubic ft.).

Additional case and reference materials are found at the end in Boxes A-M (12 boxes, 9 Oversized folders, 13 cubic feet). These include: Box A: Bay Mills, US v. MI, 1 box (1 cubic foot); Box B: Bay Mills, US v. MI, KBIC Tax Case, KBIC Boundary Case, Crown v Sarnia, 1 box (1 cubic foot); Box C: Crown v. Sarnia 1 box (1 cubic foot); Box D: KBIC Boundary Case 1 box (1 cubic foot); Box E: KBIC Boundary Case 1 box (1 cubic foot); Box F: Saginaw Case 1 box (1 cubic foot); Box G: Miscellaneous Unpublished reports 1 box (1 cubic foot); Box H Finding Aids 1 box (.25 cubic ft.); Box I: Various legal cases, acts, statutes, decisions in Canadian cases 1 box (1 cubic foot); Box J: LCO Case, Stockbridge-Munsee, Mille Lacs, Fond du Lac, Grand Portage 1 box (1 cubic foot); Box K: Crandon Mine, Menominee Case, treaties US 1 box (1 cubic foot); Box L: Menominee Documents (really 1 Oversized folder on shelf); Box M: Calendars, Reference documents 1 box (1 cubic foot).

Also included are 5x8 inch notecards (4 boxes, 1.5 cubic foot), which usually document in one box each: KBIC, Grand Portage, MI and MN Chippewas, and Voigt.

Lastly, nine oversized folders (larger than legal-size, about .5 cubic foot) include mostly photocopies of a wide variety of maps, treaty signers, genealogy notes and family tree, and land claims.

All boxes in the collection are 1 cubic foot boxes except for the following: Boxes #15, 25, 68, 74-75 are .5 cubic foot boxes; Box #113 is .25 cubic foot box, Box #117 is really an Overszied folder; Boxes #119-122 are 5x8 inch index card boxes.

Materials were collected from a plethora of local, state, and national archives and historical institutions, as well as tribal archives, and various courts, both American and Canadian.

Abbreviations: Professor Cleland and his staff used numerous, and sometimes various, abbreviations for institutions, record groups and/or series names or other citations. Some of these were obvious to the processors, others were not. Many of these abbreviations are not identified in this finding aid. For example, enclosure is abbreviated multiple ways. These variations were retained during processing. Some of these variations are obvious and can be deduced by researchers from the materials.

Also, due to the length of the collection, a number of abbreviations and grammatical changes were implemented by the archivist.

The archivist also deleted: ["no reference" and "incomplete reference"], the, a, or an (articles) at the beginning of a title; Anonymous or Author unknown or a.u.; unknown dates, undated, ND, or n.d. and s.u. Marian also changed: Microfilm to micro and “and” to and; and abbreviated certain common words, as noted below, and the names of months.

Abbreviations used widely by Professor Cleland, his staff, and Marian the Archivist include: ABCFM=American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions; AFCP=American Fur Company Papers; AG=Attorney General; ARCOIA=Annual Report of Commissioners of Indian Affairs; B or Bx=Box; BBC=Bishop Baraga Collection; BIA=Bureau of Indian Affairs; ca.=circa; CCF=Central classified files; CMU=Central Michigan University; CHL=Clarke Historical Library; Co.=County; COIA=Commissioner/s of Indian Affairs; Corp.=Corporation; Dist.=District; E=East, not eastern; encl.=enclosure or enclosed; GLO=General Land Office; HR=House of Representatives; HS=Historical Society; ICC=Indian Claims Commission; IL=Illinois; IN=Indiana; JL=Journal; LC=Library of Congress; LLL=Letters of Lucius Lyon; LRBO-OHC=Little River Band-Oral History Collection; Ltd.=Limited; MH=Michigan History (a publication); MHM=Michigan History Magazine (a publication); MI=Michigan; Misc.=Miscellaneous; MPHC=Michigan Pioneer and Historical Collections (a publication); MN=Minnesota; MS=Mississippi; Mss.=Manuscript; MTRL-JP=Metro Toronto Reference Library-Jarvis Papers; N=North, not Northern; NAM=National Archives microfilm; NEB=Nebraska; NWT=Northwest Territories; OIA=Office of Indian Affairs; US=United States; PAC=Public Archives of Canada (National Archives of Canada); PAO=Public Archives of Ontario; PAO-WJLB=Public Archives of Ontario-William Jones Letterbook; Qly=quarterly; rec=received; S=South, not southern; SAM=State Archives of Michigan; TWP=township; UCA=United Church Archives; U.P.=Upper Peninsula; US=United States; UWO, RC-EP= University of Western Ontario, Regional Collection-Evans Papers; W=West, not Western; w/=with; WI=Wisconsin; WL, UWO-WP =Weldon Library, University of Western Ontario, Wawanash Papers.

Also, the original punctuation used varies. A few of the original folder labels were crossed out partially or entirely. These variations were retained during processing.

Processing Notes: Only a few duplicate copies were withdrawn from the collection. Several items which had suffered physical damage mostly due to mud or dirt stains or being badly crumpled or torn were copied and the originals were withdrawn from the collection. (The total withdrawn from this collection was less than .25 cubic ft.).

The vast majority of the collection was organized into series by tribal name or topic, foldered, and labeled before it came to the Clarke. Original folders were maintained in the collection. We endeavored as much as possible to duplicate the original label headings (which varied somewhat from series to series) in the Box and folder listing. Items that were not foldered were foldered by the archivist, and those that were unlabeled were identified and labeled by the archivist.

The papers include her research notes and cassette tapes of oral history interviews for Fuller's master's thesis on the topic of sports.

The collection includes her research notes and cassettes of oral history interviews she compiled for her master's thesis.

This is collection of oral history interview cassettes of Richard C. “Chit” Train, transcriptions of the one and only oral history interview with Kha Nay Ung Train, a draft outline of book chapters all by Joan Shippers Memering, and a few related materials.

This is collection of mostly oral history interview cassettes of Richard C. “Chit” Train, transcriptions of the one and only oral history interview with Kha Nay Ung Train, and draft outline of book chapters all by Joan Shippers Memering. There are also a few related newspaper clippings (copies) of Cambodian refugees in mid-Michigan, including one by Memering, a cassette of This Shattered Land by Jim Laurie [and Pamela Hill, who is not listed in the credits], a documentary of the destruction of Cambodia, 1970-1979, by the Khmer Rouge Regime and the Cambodian Famine, 1979-1980. The slides are all topically related. About half the slides are from a slide presentation titled Kampuchea: it’s People, Land and Culture by Asia Resource Center, Ontario, 1980. Kampuchea was the Cambodian state, 1975-1979, under the Khmer Rouge, the Communist Party of Kampuchea. The collection is organized alphabetically, chronologically, and by format. he collection is in very good condition.

The oral history interview cassettes includes black and white cassettes. The black cassette tapes are written on in pen or marker, while white cassettes have typed labels, so the black cassettes were the initial recordings and the white cassettes appear to be a master copy as they are not edited. For most dates there are both black and white cassettes, but for some dates there are only cassettes of one color.

Besides the Trains, Joan interviewed other Cambodian refugees: Meng Leng [Phou], Heng Suy Keang, who was called Lim Son Seak, Tan Chen Fu, Ing May, and Din Leng, who are discussed in her draft book chapter. For more information about them, please see the Joan Shipers Memering Papers finding aid.

There is also one folder of correspondence and between the Trains and Joan and one folder of materials about Richard C. Train.

Processing Note: A folder of a few mailing envelopes and a duplicate transcription were returned to the donors as specified on the donor form.