DCA is pleased to announce it has recently signed a donor agreement with the Cambridge based organization, Cultural Survival, to preserve its historical records. Cultural Survival (CS) was founded in 1972 to assist indigenous peoples across their globe in ‘struggles for human rights, sovereignty, and autonomy.’
CS was founded by David Maybury-Lewis, Evon Vogt, Jr., Orlando Patterson, and Pia Maybury-Lewis and was originally loosely affiliated with Harvard University where David Maybury-Lewis was a professor of anthropology. To find out more about CS, take a look at its online history.
CS boxes from 2nd shipment
This week DCA received the second major transfer of historical records including office records, project and special project files, CS publications, reports, publicity material and limited runs of smaller indigenous publications that might be difficult to obtain elsewhere. Among these records, photographs, slides, and VHS tapes created by indigenous peoples will be invaluable in documenting a history long ignored in Euro-American discourse regarding indigenous issues, self-empowerment, and the development of indigenous organizations across the globe.
As part of this donor agreement, Ted MacDonald, CS first project director, also transferred about 25 linear feet of historical materials to DCA. His files cover the first 15 years of projects developed, funded, or rejected by CS and will reveal many gems: take here a look at a very early example of self-demarcation by the indigenous Ye'kuana in Southern Venezuela (creating ethno-cultural maps) completed in 1995.
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Ye'kuana Self-Demarcation Project (1995)
And then read a CS Quarterly article about this project, The Ye'kuana Self-Demarcation Process, published fifteen years later when such demarcation projects had become wide-spread.