About the Creative Leads

This online resource and exhibit was created by two University of Michigan students, working remotely during the spring and summer of 2020. All materials represented in this exhibit are from the Richard Pohrt Jr. Collection of Native American Photography at the Clements Library unless otherwise noted. This project was possible by the generosity of the Frederick S. Upton Foundation.

Interpretive and Creative Leads:

Lindsey Willow Smith

Lindsey Willow Smith is a member of the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians, raised off reservation in Michigan’s lower peninsula. She is an undergraduate student at the University of Michigan, majoring in History with a minor in Museum Studies and is active within the Indigenous community on campus. Lindsey Willow is also researching the use of census data collection in describing Native populations with Arland Thornton and Linda Young-DeMarco at the Institute for Social Research at U-M.

Veronica Cook Williamson

Veronica Cook Williamson is a graduate student in the department of Germanic Languages and Literatures and in the program of Museum Studies. Her primary research focuses on racial(izing) processes in media and other cultural representations of newcomers in Germany. She is also interested in discourses of “decolonization” and the pedagogical implications of teaching a colonial language at the University of Michigan. She graduated with a BA in German Cultural Studies and Film and Media Studies from Dartmouth College in 2017. From 2017-2018 she worked as the Jones Memorial Digital Media Fellow at Baker-Berry Library of Dartmouth College, where she explored her interests in the Digital Humanities. She has Irish, British, and Choctaw ancestry and is a citizen of the Chickasaw Nation — chickasha saya.

Project coordinator:

Clayton Lewis, Curator of Graphics Material, Clements Library

Project consultants:

Eric Hemenway, Director of Repatriation, Archives and Records, the Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians

Jakob Dopp, Graphics Division Cataloger, Clements Library

Louis Miller, Reference Specialist, Clements Library

Jonathan Quint, Clements Library Intern and Department of History PhD Candidate, University of Michigan

Richard Pohrt Jr., collector

Dr. Arland Thornton, Professor of Sociology, Research Professor, Population Studies Center, Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan

Linda Young-DeMarco, Research Area Specialist Lead, SRC-Family Demography, Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan

Dr. Paul Erickson, Randolph G. Adams Director of the Clements Library