Event—McNickle Center

2025 NCAIS Graduate Workshop in Research Methods

—Honoring Community Spirit, Revitalizing Relationships: Connecting Archival Research to Empowerment and Place

At this Graduate Workshop in Research Methods, Leola Tsinnajinnie Paquin and Maia Rodriguez will host NCAIS graduate students at the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque.

Mesa Vista Hall at the University of New Mexico

As Indigenous community-based and community-engaged scholars, scholarship often gives rise to questions about the role and voice of community in research. Furthermore, we contemplate how this form of research changes our assumptions about what research is, how we do it, and what our responsibilities are as scholars. This Graduate Workshop in Research Methods will examine the relationship between archives, community, and senses of place through three essential questions: 1) How does engaging archives empower communities? 2) What does it mean for an archive to be place-based, and how is the relationship between archive and place mediated by community? 3) How does understanding community as part of the archive change our conception of archives?

At this Graduate Workshop in Research Methods, Leola Tsinnajinnie Paquin and Maia Rodriguez will host NCAIS graduate students at the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, where they explore these central questions through discussion, practice, and building relationships. We will further develop our seminar discussions and research presentations through travels, visits, and gatherings that nuance our understandings of how place-making and community-building inform one another, what the responsibility of an archive is to the places and communities it relates to and affects, and the different ways archives can serve and strengthen communities. Some examples

of such topics, themes, and critical conversations that will emerge from the activities will include: the ethics of archives and the importance of community awareness, access, and input; understanding archives beyond “the archive”; politics of refusal and recognition in archival and community-engaged research; and how archival and community-engaged research can honor the sustained spirit of community transcendent of time and physical boundaries.

One student from each NCAIS institution may participate in the three-day workshop as part of an introduction to critical methodologies in American Indian and Indigenous Studies. Housing will be provided and participants will be reimbursed up to $750 for travel. Leftover funding will be used to lessen the travel costs of students whose travel costs exceed $750.

Workshop Participants

Racquel Banaszak, University of Minnesota

Elizabeth Camacho, University of Chicago

Shayla Chatto, University of Washington

Joshua Coleman, University of Nevada - Las Vegas

Carlie Domingues, University of California - Davis

Kayla Erickson, Oklahoma State University

Margie Giacalone, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Charlotte Logan, Cornell University

Travis Meyers, Penn State University

Josh Mika, University of Oklahoma

Pilar Munoz, University of Colorado

Jamie Nienhuysen, University of Manitoba

Danni Okemaw, University of Alberta

Cheyenne Morning Dove Reel, University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee

Sierra Ramirez, University of New Mexico

Cameron Roman, Michigan State University

Sierra Rosetta (Tumbleson), Northwestern University

Hayley Serpa, Yale University

Anthony Trujillo, Harvard University

Gavin Zempel, Harvard University