EDITORIAL PROJECTS
Editorial projects that make the results of research widely available to scholars, tribal members, and the general public is one of the primary goals of AISRI. Print and electronic publication of important documents, employing the highest standards of historical editing, is a major focus. Throughout the history of the study of American Indians, Indians and non-Indians alike have recorded a vast range of descriptive material—ethnographic, historical, and linguistic—that has remained unpublished in archives. Preparation of those materials for publication requires interdisciplinary skills, drawing on the concepts and methods of anthropology, history, linguistics, and information science, to make those documents optimally useful for understanding the American Indian past.
The range of editorial projects in which AISRI members have been and are engaged includes the following:
Current projects include:
- Historical documents, comprising journals and other writings of fur traders and explorers of the Great Plains, records of the treaties and agreements between tribes and the U.S. government, and more recent manuscripts relating to American Indian cultures written by anthropologists and by Indian people themselves.
- Linguistic texts and dictionaries, comprising transcriptions and translations of the oral traditions of various Plains tribal groups, particularly members of the Caddoan (Arikara, Pawnee, Kitsai) and Siouan (Sioux, Assiniboine, Hidatsa) language families.
- Gilmore Papers
- Bowers Papers